mson weeds, which spreading flow,
Or lie like pictures on the sand below:
With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun,
Through the small waves so softly shines upon;
And those live lucid jellies which the eye
Delights to trace as they swim glittering by:
Pearl-shells and rubied star-fish they admire,
And will arrange above the parlour fire,--
Tokens of bliss!--'Oh! horrible! a wave
Roars as it rises--save me, Edward! save!'
She cries:--Alas! the watchman on his way
Calls and lets in--truth, terror, and the day!"

Allowing for a certain melodramatic climax here led up to, we cannot
deny the impressiveness of this picture--the first-hand quality of its
observation, and an eye for beauty, which his critics are rarely
disposed to allow to Crabbe. A narrative of equal pathos, and once
equally celebrated, is that of the village-girl who receives back her
sailor-lover from his last voyage, only to watch over his dying hours.
It is in an earlier section (No. ii. _The Church_), beginning:

"Yes! there are real mourners--I have seen
A fair sad girl, mild, suffering, and serene,"

too long to quote in full, and, as with Crabbe's method generally, not
admitting of being fairly represented by extracts. Then there are
sketches of character in quite a different vein, such as the vicar,
evidently drawn from life. He is the good easy man, popular with the
ladies for a kind of _fade_ complimentary style in which he excels; the
man of "mild benevolence," strongly opposed to every thing new:

"Habit with him was all the test of truth:
'It must be right: I've done it from my youth,'
Questions he answered in as brief a way:
'It must be wrong--it was of yesterday.'"

Feeble good-nature, and selfish unwillingness to disturb any existing
habits or conventions, make up his character:

"In him his flock found nothing to condemn;
Him sectaries liked--he never troubled them:
No trifles failed his yielding mind to please,
And all his passions sunk in early ease;
Nor one so old has left this world of sin,
More like the being that he entered in."

An excellent companion sketch to that of the dilettante vicar is
provided in that of the poor curate--the scholar, gentleman, and devout
Christian, struggling against abject poverty to support his large
family. The picture drawn by Crabbe has a separate and interesting
origin. A year before the appearance of _The Borough_, one of the
managers of