And cruel wars expire. The way is marked, So fare the many; and the thoughtful few, Who in the anguish of their souls bewail This dire perverseness, cannot choose but ask, Shall it endure?-Shall enmity and strife, Falsehood and guile, be left to sow their seed; And the kind never perish? Is the hope Fallacious, or shall righteousness obtain A peaceable dominion, wide as earth, And ne'er to fail? Shall that blest day arrive Whom Morn awakens, among dews and flowers Bedimmed with smoke, in wreaths voluminous, And full assemblage of a barbarous host; The existing worship; and with those compared, Whence but from thee, the true and only God, And from the faith derived through Him who bled Upon the cross, this marvellous advance Of good from evil; as if one extreme Working through love, such conquest shall it gain, Were left, the other gained.-O ye, who come Such triumph over sin and guilt achieve? Once," and with mild demeanour, as he spake, On us the venerable Pastor turned His beaming eye that had been raised to Heaven, The thing that hath been as the thing that is, To kneel devoutly in yon reverend Pile, Your very poorest rich in peace of thought Audible praise, to thee, omniscient Mind, This vesper-service closed, without delay, From that exalted station to the plain Descending, we pursued our homeward course, In mute composure, o'er the shadowy lake, Under a faded sky. No trace remained Of those celestial splendours; grey the vault— Pure, cloudless, ether; and the star of eve Was wanting; but inferior lights appeared Faintly, too faint almost for sight; and some Above the darkened hills stood boldly forth In twinkling lustre, ere the boat attained Her mooring-place; where, to the sheltering tree, Our youthful Voyagers bound fast her prow, With prompt yet careful hands. This done, we paced The dewy fields; but ere the Vicar's door Was reached, the Solitary checked his steps; Then, intermingling thanks, on each bestowed A farewell salutation; and, the like Receiving, took the slender path that leads To the one cottage in the lonely dell: But turned not without welcome promise made To enfeebled Power, NOTES. Page 16. 'And, hovering, round it often did a raven fly.' From a short MS. poem read to me when an undergraduate, by my schoolfellow and friend, Charles Farish, long since deceased. The verses were by a brother of his, a man of promising genius, who died young. Page 24. 'The Borderers.' This Dramatic Piece, as noticed in its title-page, was composed in 1795-6. It lay nearly from that time till within the last two or three months unregarded among my papers, without being mentioned even to my most intimate friends. Having, however, impressions upon my mind which made me unwilling to destroy the MS., I determined to undertake the responsibility of publishing it during my own life, rather than impose upon my successors the task of deciding its fate. Accordingly it has been revised with some care; but, as it was at first written, and is now published, without any view to its exhibition upon the stage, not the slightest alteration has been made in the conduct of the story, or the composition of the characters; above all, in respect to the two leading Persons of the Drama, I felt no inducement to make any change. The study of human nature suggests this awful truth, that, as in the trials to which life subjects us, sin and crime are apt to start from their very opposite qualities, so are there no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion of the understanding to which they may carry their slaves. During my long residence in France, while the Revolution was rapidly advancing to its extreme of wickedness, I had frequent opportunities of being an eye-witness of this process, and it was while that knowledge was fresh upon my memory, that the Tragedy of "The Borderers " was composed. Page 64. "The Norman boy.' 'Among ancient Trees there are few, I believe, at least in France, so worthy of attention as an Oak which may be seen in the Pays de Caux,' about a league from Yvetot, close to the church, and in the burial-ground of Allonville. 'The height of this Tree does not answer to its girth ; the trunk, from the roots to the summit, forms a complete cone; and the inside of this cone is hollow throughout the whole of its height. 'Such is the Oak of Allonville, in its state of nature. The hand of Man, however, has endeavoured to impress upon it a character still more interesting, by adding a religious feeling to the respect which its age naturally inspires. The lower part of its hollow trunk has been transformed into a Chapel of six or seven feet in diameter, carefully wainscotted and paved, and an open iron gate guards the humble Sanctuary. 'Leading to it there is a staircase, which twists round the body of the Tree. At certain seasons of the year divine service is performed in this Chapel. The summit has been broken off many years, but there is a surface at the top of the trunk, of the diameter of a very large tree, and from it rises a pointed roof, covered with slates, in the form of a steeple, which is surmounted with an iron Cross, that rises in a picturesque manner from the middle of the leaves, like an ancient Hermitage above the surrounding Wood. Over the entrance to the Chapel an Inscription appears, which informs us it was erected by the Abbé du Détroit, Curate of Allonville in the year 1696; and over a door is another, dedicating it 'To Our Lady of Peace." Vide 14 No. Saturday Magazine. Page 117. To the Daisy.' This Poem, and two others to the same Flower, were written in the year 1802; which is mentioned, because in some of the ideas, though not in the manner in which those ideas are connected, and likewise even in some of the expressions, there is a resemblance to passages in a Poem (lately published) of Mr. Montgomery's, entitled, a Field Flower. This being said, Mr. Montgomery will not think any apology due to him; I cannot, however, help addressing him in the words of the Father of English Poets. 'Though it happe me to rehersin 'That ye han in your freshe songis saied, Page 120. The Seven Sisters.' 1807. The Story of this Poem is from the German of FREDERICA BRUN. Page 131. 'The Waggoner.' Several years after the event that forms the subject of the Poem, in company with my friend, the late Mr. Coleridge, I happened to fall in with the person to whom the name of Benjamin is given. Upon our expressing regret that we had not, for a long time, seen upon the road either him or his waggon, he said:" They could not do without me; and as to the man who was put in my place, no good could come out of him; he was a man of no ideas." The fact of my discarded hero's getting the horses out of a great difficulty with a word, as related in the poem, was told me by an eye-witness. But Benjamin, in his vexation, He knows his ground, and hopes to find An upright mural block of stone, A slender spring; but kind to man It is, a true Samaritan ; Close to the highway, pouring out Cries Benjamin, "Where is it, where? Its image tremulously imprest, That just marked out the object and withdrew : Right welcome service! ROCK OF NAMES! Light is the strain, but not unjust To Thee, and thy memorial-trust That once seemed only to express Love that was love in idleness; Tokens, as year hath followed year How changed, alas, in character! For they were graven on thy smooth breast By hands of those my soul loved best; Meek women, men as true and brave As ever went to a hopeful grave: Their hands and mine, when side by side With kindred zeal and mutual pride, We worked until the Initials took Shapes that defied a scornful look.Long as for us a genial feeling Survives, or one in need of healing, The power, dear Rock, around thee cast, Thy monumental power, shall last For me and mine! O thought of pain, That would impair it or profane! Take all in kindness then, as said With a staid heart but playful head; And fail not Thou, loved Rock! to keep Thy charge when we are laid asleep.' Page 158. Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,' Henry Lord Clifford, &c. &c., who is the subject of this Poem, was the son of John Lord Clifford, who was slain at Towton Field, which John Lord Clifford, as is known to the reader of English History, was the person who after the battle of Wakefield slew, in the pursuit, the young Earl of Rutland, son of the Duke of York, who had fallen in the battle, 'in part of revenge' (say the Authors of the History of Cumberland and Westmoreland); for the Earl's Father had slain his.' A deed which worthily blemished the author (saith Speed); but who, as he adds, 'dare promise any thing temperate of himself in the heat of martial fury? chiefly, when it was resolved not to leave any branch of the York line standing; for so one maketh this Lord to speak.' This, no doubt, I would observe by the bye, was an action sufficiently in the vindictive spirit of the times, and yet not altogether so bad as represented; 'for the Earl was no child, as some writers would have him, but able to bear arms, being sixteen or seventeen years of age, as is evident from this, (say the Memoirs of the Countess of Pembroke, who was laudably anxious to wipe away, as far as could be, this stigma from the illustrious name to which she was born,) that he was the next Child to King Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age and for the small distance betwixt her children, see Austin Vincent, in his Book of Nobility, p. 622, where he writes of them all. It may further be observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only twenty-five years of age, had been a leading man and commander, two or three years together in the army of Lancaster, before this time; and, therefore, would be less likely to think that the Earl of Rutland might be entitled to mercy from his youth.-But, independent of this act, at best a cruel and savage one, the Family of Clifford had done enough to draw upon them the vehement hatred of the House of York: so that after the Battle of Towton there was no hope for them but in flight and concealment. Henry, the subject of the Poem, was deprived of his estate and honours during the space of twenty-four years; all which time he lived as a shepherd in Yorkshire, or in Cumberland, where the estate of his Fatherin-law (Sir Lancelot Threlkeld) lay. He was restored to his estate and honours in the first year of Henry the Seventh. It is recorded that, when called to Parliament, he behaved nobly and wisely; but otherwise came seldom to London or the Court; and rather delighted to live in the country, where he repaired several of his Castles, which had gone to decay during the late troubles.' Thus far is chiefly collected from Nicholson and Burn; and I can add, from my own knowledge, that there is a tradition current in the village of Threlkeld and its neighbourhood, his principal retreat, that, in the course of his shepherd-life, he had acquired great astronomical knowledge. I cannot conclude this note without adding a word upon the subject of those numerous and noble feudal Edifices, spoken of in the Poem, the ruins of some of which are, at this day, so great an ornament to that interesting country. The Cliffords had always been distinguished for an honourable pride in these Castles; and we have seen that, after the wars of York and Lancaster, they were rebuilt; in the civil wars of Charles the First they were again laid waste, and again restored almost to their former magnificence by the celebrated Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, &c. &c. Not more than twenty-five years after this was done, when the estates of Clifford had passed into the Family of Tufton, three of these Castles, namely, Brough, Brougham, and Pendragon, were demolished, and the timber and other materials sold by Thomas Earl of Thanet. We will hope that, when this order was issued, the Earl had not consulted the text of Isaiah, 58th chap. 12th verse, to which the inscription placed over the gate of Pendragon Castle, by the Countess of Pembroke (I believe his Grandmother), at the time she repaired that structure, refers the reader :-' And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the |