extracts from its pages. One passage, however, we shall give, to illustrate the pervading tone of the composition. Of the plan generally we need only state, that it confines itself to a very few characters, and that the leading interest arises out of the loves of two superhuman intelligences, for mortal maidens, whose joint guilt hastens the catas trophe,—which, after displaying, with great power and characteristic spirit, the dying agonies of several different classes of the doomed of the earth, closes upon a scene at once the grandest and most touching that mortal imagination ever compassed-that of an entire world of waters, bearing on its heaving bosom one little bark, holding the sole living remnants of the human race.

It would be difficult to find any thing of the same length in our contemporary poetry (to say the least) that is at once more high and holy in feeling, more appropriate in character, more lofty yet pure in style, than the following passage. Irad, the rejected of Astarte-rejected for the superhuman intelligence whose guilty love hastens the catastrophe of the poem-Irad soliloquizes among the solitudes of Mount Hermon, on the day preceding the Deluge.

"How motionless the time and scene! Earth lies
Steeping herself in sunshine; basked beneath
The over-arching canopy of Heaven!
What silent interchange of life exists

Between her and yon watching sun! The dews,
Her mighty respirations, float above her,
Even as a mantle, folding from the rays

Of his too-ardent brow; while, in her trance
Of deep, and silent, and absorbing gladness,
She feels his warmth inspiring her with life;
Yea, with a living soul.

Thou eye of Heaven!

Watcher of earth! all seeing-whom all see:
Thou fountain of the light! and visible god

In glory and in beauty! thou that foldest

Thy brow in clouds and storms, which are but moods
Of thy unvarying love; for thou dost leave
Lingering behind thee, o'er each folded scene,
Rays that are feelings; hues that tint the heart
Till it become as beautiful as they :-
Thou living power! a world-or what thou art-
A life and an intelligence like ours

Thou hast-I feel the truth, and know; mankind
Will worship thee upon the mountain-tops,

As God-or God's own symbol-with the love,
The adoration which thou dost inspire.

Oh! had I never known Him-never heard
That He had walked as man with man in Eden,
Nor felt His love and mercy speaking in
The meanest flower that lives beneath my feet,
To look on thee alone, thou glorious image!
Rising, or sinking, or when in mid-heaven,
Thou sittest on thy burning throne, when men
Turn from thee as the angels from their God:-
To look on thee and worship were the same.

Circle of glory-fare thee well! thou wert
A blessing to my eyes and to my heart,

Which I have given back to thee; and made thee
Confessional to feelings and to hopes

Rejected here: not vainly offered. I
Have dwelt upon thy brow till I have felt
Its own tranquillity! until absorbed
In thy majestic presence, I forgot

My wounded spirit, calmed by thine to rest.

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

ODD PEOPLE.

BY THE EDITOR.

A MONTH or two since, we had the pleasure of exhibiting to our readers the vagaries of an exceedingly eccentric family; who, from the singular way in which they carried on the every-day business of life, were known as the "Odd People" at Avignon, some seventy or eighty years ago.

This month we propose to exhibit the vagaries of a certain Mr. and Mrs. Deveril (or rather one of their vagaries), who had a reputation for eccentricity in the neighbourhood of a flourishing town in a fine midland county-and, for all I know, have still-but, certainly not involving murders, fires, abductions, assassinations, slow poisonings, and sudden deaths; but rather all sorts of little mischiefs, and mauvaise plaisanteries (no pleasantries at all), in which they contrived, and do contrive as I believe, to entangle and embrangle their nearest and dearest friends.

This passion for practical jokes upon a great scale, has long been extremely popular and predominant. A noble earl, not many years dead, in order to divert himself and two or three chosen friends

"At another's expense,"

used sometimes to invite to dine with him some six men, each minus an arm or a leg; on another day, half a dozen worthy personages, who were stone deaf; on another, half a dozen others, whose obliquity of vision happened to be exceedingly remarkable. One day, six bald men were asked on another, three men six feet four high, with three men scarcely four feet six ; on a third occasion, a neat half-dozen of stutterers; and on a fourth, an equal batch of sufferers under some nervous affection, which induced them to keep winking their eyes and twitching their noses at each other, during the whole of the repast, perfectly unconscious themselves of the oddity of the proceeding.

About the middle, or perhaps rather an earlier part of the last century, the then Duke of Montague, was as celebrated for this sort of practical playfulness, as in much later days was the eccentric earl to whom allusion has just been made; but as in the cases-let us hope-of all these "mad wags," there were many redeeming qualities about his Grace. There is a story on record-which, perhaps, our readers may know as well as ourselves-but still it is a story, and we question whether anecdotes of such a kind do not, like sound wine, get even better by April.-VOL. LV. NO. CCXX.

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