1864.]

The farmer's wife turned to the door-
What was't upon her cheek?
What was there rising in her breast,
That then she scarce could speak?

DR. BEECHER'S Autobiography, etc., has been republished by Sampson Low (London), and is re

ceived with decided favor.

In

THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF EDWARD IRVING.
Five Volumes. Edited by his Nephew, the
Rev. G. CARLYLE, M.A. Vol I. London: Stra-

han & Co. 1864.

Ar a later stage we purpose to direct special attention to this new edition of Irving's works. Meantime we emphatically announce this first volume of the best writings of that "bright particular star" among modern preachers, before whom all the most richly gifted minds of the last generation were spell-bound and subdued. Much of Mr. Irving's pulpit oratory is among the grandest, the stateliest, and yet withal ofttimes the most pathetic, which our language knows; some of it is unapproachable in its prophet-like sublimity. The rich antique style is most musical. Irving and Spurgeon-how absolute the contrast! yet each legitimately popular. The latter bids fair to be more happy and far more useful in his life; the former will doubtless live the longest in his writings. In the days of Spurgeon it will be more than a little profitable for preachers to retire into the past and listen to the strains of Irving. We may add that Mr. Carlyle, the editor, is a nephew of Mr. Irving's, and in every way competent for a task which is to him a labor of love.London Quarterly Review.

DIARY OF MARY, COUNTESS COWPER, Lady of the Bed-Chamber to the Princess of Wales, 17141720. London; Murray. 1864.

A VALUABLE and very interesting contribution to our information respecting a period of English history of which less is known than of almost any other belonging to modern times. Lady Cowper was the second wife of Lord Chancelor Cowper. The Diary is perfectly simple and unaffected, written not for publication, but merely for the lady's own use; and on this account is both more piquant and more trustworthy. It reveals a condition of social and political morality with which, | after making all due correction for what is dependent merely on fashion or circumstance, our own times very favorably compare. "This day Monsieur Rohethon procured the Grant of the King of Clerk of Parliament, after Mr. Johnson's Death, for Anybody he would name. He let my Brother Cowper have it in Reversion after Mr. Johnson for his two Sons for £1800.” Let this scandalous transaction, so quietly told, as a thing

NOTICES.

of course, be duly noted. "Anybody he would name!" and. for two lives in reversion! The editor's annotation here is worth quoting. "Spencer Cowper, M.P. for Truro, and one of the Man agers on Sacheverel's Trial, was made a Judge in 1727. His two sons, William and Ashley Cowper, held this lucrative employment in succession from 1716 to 1768; and their nephew, the late Henry Cowper, of Tewin Water, was Deputy Clerk of the Parliaments from 1785 to 1825."

Our next quotation reveals the dawn of a better day of public morality, though the long succeeding reign of Walpole is in proof that that day was very late in making its appearance. 1716, Jan uary 17th. This Month used to be ushered in with New Year's Gifts from the Lawyers, which used to come to near £3000 to the Chancellors. The Original of this Custom was presents of Wine and Provisions. In process of Time a covetous Chancellor insinuated that Gold would be more acceptable; so it was changed into Gold, and continued so till the first Time my Lord had the Seals. The Earl of Nottingham, when Chancellor, used to receive them standing by a Table; and at the same Time he took the Money to lay it upon the Table, he used to cry out, O tyrant Cuthtom!' (for he lisped.) My Lord forbade the bringing them." With a king who created, and who was able to create, his German mistress, Mademoiselle Schulenberg, an English duchess, Duchess of Munster, and who paraded both this woman and his other concubine, Madame Kielmansegge (a third, Madame Von Platen, was instated in Hanover), in the face of the English nobility and in precedence of the highborn English ladies, making them the mistresses of fashion and the depositaries of state-secrets and state-power; with a prince who in this respect trod closely in his father's steps, and who, being indisposed in bed, had his princesses' ladies into his bed-chamber to play at ombre with his lords; with such court manners as permitted, nay, required, all the ladies of the court, including vir tuous and accomplished women such as Lady Cowper, to pay visits of congratulation to the German frau or fräulein, Schulenberg by name, on her taking the oaths upon her advancement to the rank of an English duchess; we are not sur prised even at such revelations respecting Lady Mary and Lady Harriet De Vere, daughters of the last and twentieth Earl of Oxford of that name, as are disclosed in this Diary. What a compendium of infamy is there in this one sen tence! "I told him (Bernstorff) that Mrs. Kirk” (proposed by the Duchess of St. Albans, sister of the Ladies De Vere, as Bed-chamber woman to the Princess of Wales) "had managed all the Intrigues between Lady Mary Vere and the Duke of Ormond, took care of the child, was Manager of all the Intrigues of the Oxford Family, had an ill reputation as to herself, and had been the Duke of Somerset's Mistress."

In one of the letters contained in the Appendix there is a striking passage relating to the Czar

Peter. Mr. Clavering, Lady Cowper's brother, is the writer. "His Czarian Majesty did us the Honour to pass by Hanover, and stayed two or three days at Herrenhausen, a Country House of the King: so I had the Honour to eat at his Table several Times, which I was not very ambitious of; for he never uses Knife or Fork, but always eats with his Fingers; never uses his Handkerchief, but blows his Nose with his Fingers; therefore, you may guess how agreeable it is to be in his Majesty's Company."-London Quarterly.

ENOCH ARDEN, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1864.

THIS new and eagerly-expected volume by the poet-laureate will be welcomed by his numerous admirers on both sides of the Atlantic. It contains some twenty poems, and takes its name from the first and chief one in the collection.

Enoch Arden is a poem of elaborate finish and great power-quite equal, it seems to us, to any thing that Tennyson has written. We can not do better than give our readers a specimen or two. The actors are:

"Three children of three houses, Annie Lee,
The prettiest little damsel in the port,
And Philip Ray, the miller's only son,
And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad."

Annie is truly loved by the rich miller's son, but is wooed and married by the manly sailor. Three children are born to them; and to get the means to educate and provide for them, Enoch resolves on a long voyage. The parting is after this wise:

"Enoch rose,

Cast his strong arms about his drooping wife,
And kissed his wonder-stricken litt e ones;
But for the third, the sickly one, who slept
After a night of feverous wakefulness,

When Annie would have raised him Enoch said
'Wake him not; let him sleep; how should the child
Remember this?' and kissed him in bis cot.

But Annie from her baby's forehead clipt

A tiny curl, and gave it: this he kept
Thro' all his future; but now hastily caught
His bundle, waved his hand, and went his way."

After ten long, weary years' waiting for his return, the wife finally marries Philip, whose love had only grown the stronger by years' delay, and who had truly been a father to the two surviving children. Meanwhile, after great vicissitudes, Enoch returns; but, learning the state of the case, he generously resolves to remain incognito:

"But Enoch yearned to see her face again;
'If I might look on her sweet face again
And know that she is happy.' So the thought
Haunted and harassed him, and drove him forth,
At evening when the dull November day
Was growing duller twilight, to the hill.
There he sat down gazing on all below;
There did a thousand memories roll upon him,
Unspeakable for sadness. By and by
The ruddy square of comfortable light,
Far-blazing from the rear of Philip's house,
Allured him, as the beacon-blaze allures
The bird of passage, till he madly strikes
Against it, and beats out his weary life.

"For Philip's dwelling fronted on the street,
The latest house to landward; but behind,
With one small gate that opened on the waste,
Flourished a little garden square and walled;
And in it throve an ancient evergreen,
A yewtree, and all round it ran a walk
Of shingle, and a walk divided it:

But Enoch shunned the middle walk and stole
Up to the wall. behind the yew; and thence

That which he better might have shunned, if griefs
Like his have worse or better, Enoch saw.

"For cups and silver on the burnished board
Sparkled and shone; so genial was the hearth:
And on the right hand of the hearth he saw
Philip, the slighted suitor of old times,
Stout, rosy, with his babe across his knees;
And o'er her second father stoopt a girl,
A later but a loftier Annie Lee,
Fair-haired and tall, and from her lifted hand
Dangled a length of ribbon and a ring

To tempt the babe, who reared his creasy arms,
Caught at and ever missed it, and they laughed:
And on the left hand of the hearth he saw.
The mother glancing often toward her babe,
But turning now and then to speak with him,
Her son, who stood beside her tall and strong,
And saying that which pleased him, for he smiled.

Now when the dead man come to life beheld His wife his wife no more, and saw the babe Hers, yet not his, upon the father's knee, And all the warmth, the peace, the happiness, And his own children tall and beautiful, And him, that other, reigning in his place, Lord of his rights and of his children's loveThen he, tho' Miriam Lane had told him all, Because things seen are mightier than things heard, Staggered and shook, holding the branch, and feared To send abroad a shrill and terrible cry, Which in one moment, like the blast of doom, Would shatter all the happiness of the hearth.

"He therefore turning softly like a thief,
Lest the harsh shingle should grate underfoot,
And feeling all along the garden-wall,
Lest he should swoon and tumble and be found,
Crept to the gate, and opened it, and closed,
As lightly as a sick man's chamber-door,
Behind him, and came out upon the waste.

"And there he would have knelt, but that his knees Were feeble, so that falling prone he dug His fingers into the wet earth, and prayed.

"Too hard to bear! why did they take me thence?
O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou
That didst uphold me on my lonely isle,
Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness
A little longer! aid me, give me strength
Not to tell her, never to let her know.
Help me not to break in upon her peace.
My children too! must I not speak to these?
They know me not. I should betray myself.
Never no father's kiss for me-the girl

So like her mother, and the boy, my son.""

The death scene is vividly painted. He has told all to Miriam Lane, but made her swear not to reveal it till he was dead. When she would persuade him from his purpose, he exclaims:

"Womar, disturb me not now at the last,
But let me hold my purpose till I die.
Sit down again; mark me and understand,
While I have power to speak. I charge you now,
When you shall see her, tell her that I died
Blessing her, praying for her, loving her;
Save for the bar between us, loving her
As when she laid her head beside my own.
And tell my daughter Annie, whom I saw
So like her mother, that my latest breath
Was spent in blessing her and praying for her.
And tell my son that I died blessing him.
And say to Philip that I blest him too;
He never meant us any thing but good.
But if my children care to see me dead,
Who hardly knew me living, let them come,
I am their father; but she must not come,
For my dead face would vex her after-life.
And now there is but one of all my blood,
Who will embrace me in the world-to-be:
This hair is his; she cut it off and gave it,
And I have borne it with me all these years,
And thought to bear it with me to my grave:
But now my mind is changed, for I shall see him,
My babe in bliss: wherefore when I am gone,
Take, give her this, for it may comfort her:
It will moreover be a token to her,
That I am he."

"Then the third night after this, While Enoch slumbered motionless and pale, And Miriam watched and dozed at intervals,