to a chamois, deals with a chamoishunter. He describes one scaling "Catton's battlement" before the peep of day, and now at its summit.

"Over the top, as he knew well,
Beyond the glacier in the dell
A herd of chamois slept;
So down the other dreary side,
With cautious step, or careless slide
He bounded, or he crept."

"And now he scans the chasmed ice; He stoops to leap, and in a trice

His foot hath slipp'd,-O heaven! He hath leapt in, and down he falls Between those blue tremendous walls, Standing asunder riven.

"But quick his clutching nervous grasp Contrives a jutting crag to clasp,

And thus he hangs in air;O moment of exulting bliss! Yet hope so nearly hopeless is Twin-brother to despair.

"He look'd beneath,-a horrible doom!
Some thousand yards of deepening gloom,
Where he must drop to die!
He look'd above, and many a rood
Upright the frozen ramparts stood
Around a speck of sky.

"Fifteen long dreadful hours he hung, And often by strong breezes swung

His fainting body twists, Scarce can he cling one moment more, His half-dead hands are ice, and sore

His burning bursting wrists.

"His head grows dizzy, he must drop,
He half resolves,-but stop, O stop,
Hold on to the last spasm,
Never in life give up your hope,-
Behold, behold a friendly rope
Is dropping down the chasm!

"He thought what fear it were to fall Into the pit that swallows all,

Unwing'd with hope and love; And when the succour came at last, O then he learnt how firm and fast Was his best Friend above."

That is much better than any thing yet quoted, and cannot be read without a certain painful interest. But the composition is very poor. "O heaven!

He hath leapt in !”

Well-what then?" and down he falls!" Indeed! We do not object to "between those blue tremendous walls," but why tell us they were "standing asunder riven?" We knew he had been on the edge of the "chasmed ice." "O moment of exulting bliss!" No-no-no. "Many a rood"-perpendicular altitude is never measured by roods nor yet by perches. Satan "lay floating many a

rood"-but no mention of roods when "his stature reached the sky." "His head grows dizzy"-aye that it did long before the fifteen hours had expired. "But stop, O stop" is, we fear, laughable-yet we do not laugh -for 'tis no laughing matter-and "never in life give up your hope" is at so very particular a juncture too general an injunction. "Be cool, man, hold on fast" is a leetle too much, addressed to poor Pierre, whose" half dead hands were ice," and who had been hanging on by them for fifteen hours.

"And so from out that terrible place, With death's pale paint upon his face, They drew him up at last"

is either very good or very bad-and we refer it to Wordsworth. The con

here,

Thy gathered neighbours far and near,
Be cool, man, hold on fast:
And so from out that terrible place,
With death's pale paint upon his face
They drew him up at last.

"And he came home an altered man, For many harrowing terrors ran

Through his poor heart that day; He thought how all through life, though young,

Upon a thread, a hair, he hung,

Over a gulf midway:

treme;

"For many harrowing terrors ran Through his poor heart that day!”

We can easily believe it; but never after such a rescue was there so feeble an expression from poet's heart of religious gratitude in the soul of a sinner saved.

The "African Desert" and "The Suttees" look like Oxford Unprized Poems. The Caravan, after suffering the deceit of the mirage, a-dust are aware of a well.

What

There is no thirst here our palate grows not dry as we read. passion is there in saying that the camels rushed along the waste,

"Swift as the steed that feels the slackened rein,"

And flies impetuous o'er the sounding plain ?"

"Not a bit." And still worse is

"Eager as bursting from an Alpine source The winter torrent in its headlong course;' for there should have been no allusion to water any where else but there; the groan and the cry was for water to drink; and had Mr Tupper felt for the caravan, men and beasts, no other water would he have seen in his imagination-it would have been impossible for him to have thought of likening the cavalcade to Alpine sources and winter torrents-he would have huddled it all headlong, prone, or on its hands, hoofs, and knees, into the water of salvation. "The green oase, an emerald couched in gold!!" Water! Water! Water! and there it is!

"That bow of hope upon a stormy sky!!!" They are on its banks-and

“In silent rapture gaze upon the scene!!!"

And then he absolutely paints it! not in water colours-but in chalks. Graceful arms of palms-tangled hair of acacia-scarlet tassels of kossoms in festoons-and the jewels of promise of the flowering colocynth!!!

Stammering or stuttering, certainly is an unpleasant defect-or weakness in the power of articulation or speech, and we don't believe that Dr Browster VOL. XLIY. NO. CCLXXVIII.

could much mend it; but some of the most agreeable men we know labour under it, and we suspect owe to it no inconsiderable part of their power in conversation. People listen to their impeded prosing more courteously, and more attentively, than to the prate of those "whose sweet course is not hindered;" and thus encouraged, they grow more and more loquacious in their vivacity, till they fairly take the lead in argument or anecdote, and are the delight and instruction of the evening, as it may hap, in literature, philosophy, or politics. Then, a scandalous story, stuttered or stammered, is irresistible-every point tells and blunt indeed, as the head of a pin, must be that repartee that extricates not itself with a jerk from the tongue-tied, sharp as the point of a needle.

We beg to assure Mr Tupper, that his sympathy with the "Stammerer," would extort from the lips of the most swave of that fortunate class, who, it must be allowed, are occasionally rather irritable, characteristic expressions of contempt; and that so far from thinking their peculiarity any impediment, except merely in speech, they pride themselves, as well as they may, from experience, on the advantage it gives them in a colloquy, over the glib. If to carry its point at last be the end of eloquence, they are not only the most eloquent, but the only eloquent of men. No stammerer was ever beaten in argument - his opponents always are glad to give in-and often, after they have given in, and suppose their submission has been accepted, they find the contrary of all that from a

3 H

dig on the side, that drives the breath out of their body, and keeps them speechless for the rest of the night, while the stream of conversation, if it may be called so, keeps issuing in jets and jerks, from the same inexhaustible source, pausing but to become more potent, and delivering, per hour, we fear to say how many imperial gallons

into the reservoir.

Therefore, we cannot but smile at "the Stammerer's Complaint"-as

put into his lips by Mr Tupper. He

is made to ask us

"Hast ever seen an eagle chained to earth? A restless panther to his cage immur'd? A swift trout by the wily fisher check'd? A wild bird hopeless strain its broken wing?"

We have; but what is all such sights to the purpose? An eagle chained cannot fly an inch-a panther in a cage can prowl none-a trout "checked"— basketted, we presume-is as good as gutted—a bird winged is already dished-but a stammerer, "still beginning, never ending," is in all his glory when he meets a consonant whom he will not relinquish till he has conquered him, and dragged him in captivity at the wheels of his chariot,

"While the swift axles kindle as they roll."

Mr Tupper's Stammerer then is made

to say,

"Hast ever felt, at the dark dead of night, Some undefined and horrid incubus Press down the very soul,-and paralyse The limbs in their imaginary flight From shadowy terrors in unhallowed sleep?"

We have; but what is all that to the purpose, unless it be to dissuade us from supping on pork-chop? Such oppression on the stomach, and through it on all the vital powers, is the effect of indigestion, and is horrible; but the Stammerer undergoes no such rending of soul from body, in striving to give vent to his peculiar utterance -not he indeed-'tis all confined to his organs of speech-his agonies are apparent not real-and he is conscious but of an enlivening emphasis that, while all around him are drowsy, keeps him wide awake, and banishes Sleep to his native land of Nod. We our selves have what is called an impediment in our speech-and do "make wry faces," but we never thought of exclaiming to ourselves,

"Then thou canst picture-aye, in sober truth,

In real, unexaggerated trath,—
The constant, galling, festering chain that

binds

Captive my mute interpreter of thought; The seal of lead enstamped upon my lips, The load of iron on my labouring chest,

The mocking demon, that at every step Haunts me, and spurs me on to burst in silence."

Heaven preserve us! is the world so ill off for woes-are they so scant

that a Poet who indites blank verse to Imagination, can dream of none wor thier his lamentations than the occa sional and not unfrequent inconve niences that a gifted spirit experiences from a lack of fluency of words?

"I scarce would wonder, if a godless man, (I name not him whose hope is heaven. ward.)

A man whom lying vanities hath scath'd
And harden'd from all fear,—if such an one
By this tyrannical Argus goaded on,
Were to be wearied of his very life,
And daily, hourly foiled in social converse,
By the slow simmering of disappointment,
Become a sour'd and apathetic being,
Were to feel rapture at the approach of
death,

And long for his dark hope,-annihilation."

What if he were dumb?

Mr Tupper is a father-and some of his domestic verses are very pleas ing-such as his sonnet to little Ellen, and his sonnet to little Mary; but we prefer the stanzas entitled "Children," and quote them as an agreeable sample, premising that they would not have been the worse of some little tincture of imaginative feeling-for, expressive as they are of mere natural emotion, they cannot well be said to be poetry. We object, too, to the sentiment of the close, for thousands of childless men are rich in the enjoyment of life's best affections; and some of the happiest couples and the best we have ever known, are among those from whom God has withheld the gift of offspring. Let all good Christian people be thankful for the mercies graciously vouchsafed to them; but beware of judging the lot of others by their own, and of seeking to confine either worth, happiness, or virtue, within one sphere of domestic life, however blessed they may feel it to be;

"For the blue sky bends over all,' and our fate here below is not determined by the stars.