oftened his voice to whispers--each pale face
Did but reflect the sadness fixed in his:
Save where the two--two fair and lovely ones,
Too young for guilt or sorrow, or to know
Such words as wordlings know them--save where they,
Pranking in childhood's headlong gaiety,
Sent the loud shout--like laughter through the tomb--
And mocked his anguish, with their joyousness.
Oh, that in sleep, some cry of joy or pain
From forth those lips had bursten piercingly,
When that sad Man his daring hand had lain,
Maddened with hours of musing, on his death!
Then would great Nature, o'er the soldier's heart
Her power have all recovered; his seared soul
With gushing tears enflooded, been restored;
Mistaken Honour, false chivalric Pride,
Flown with the Tempter;--life have been preserved,--
And unendangered an immortal soul.

_Gentleman's Magazine._

* * * * *

SELECT BIOGRAPHY.

THE LATE MR. MUNDEN.

(_With Recollections_.)

Great actors have two lives, or rather they have double deaths. Their
leave-taking of the public, their "retirement," as biographers call it, is
one death; since a playgoer then considers an actor dead "to all intents
and purposes"--a very _non est_. Public regrets are showered about your
great actor, and by some he is forgotten with the last trump of his praise.
He "retires:" that is, he looks out for a cottage in the country, far
removed from his former sphere of action, (as plain John Fawcett did the
other day,) or he diverges to a snug box in the suburbs of London, still
lingering about the great stage, as did honest Joseph Munden about seven
years since. People in the boxes or pit look out for his successor in the
bills of the play--then say "we ne'er shall look upon his like again,"
(the greatest, though perhaps the most equivocal, tribute ever paid to
genius,) but a few months reconcile them to the loss; they approve the
successor, though they deplore the change, "and though the present they
regret, they are grateful for the past." Then comes your actor's second
farewell--his final exit--and "last of all comes death." A line or two in
a newspaper tells you that Munden died on Monday last. One exclaims "I
thought he had been dead these seven years;" but another, of more grateful
and reflective temperament, throws down the "_diurnal_" to lament the
death of the man as he had hitherto regretted the loss of the actor. His
former regr