Julius Cæsar landed on it? He cannot altogether, even if he would. What then is he to do? Here is the problem presented to him:-Can he, in any way, unlock the hearts of the most ignorant, and at the same time write such poems as are worthy of the highest thinkers of his age? The greatest alone have been able to solve this problem in some measure, and perhaps Shaksperé is the only one who has been completely successful. Hamlet' has always seemed to us the most perfect example of this unique power. Its root-idea is one of the grandest that modern minds have conceived, reaching as it does to the very bottom of man's intellectual nature, opening the lowest depths of the human soul, and giving evidence of a grasp of thought which ever appears the more wonderful, the oftener we read it. Notwithstanding all this, 'Hamlet' is a favourite with the least thoughtful. There is scarcely a single sentence uttered by the prince that does not find its way straight to the heart of the most uncultivated. Milton stands not far off from Shakspere.

In more recent times Goethe and Schiller alone have reached the poetic altitudes in which the thoroughly popular and the thoroughly wise are blended. Schiller, in one point of view, stands higher than Goethe, as in his dramas he has struck into the very hearts of the German masses, while his ideals were grand and worthy of a great thinker. But his thoughts were not so profound, his vision was not so clear, and his sympathies were not so universal as those of Goethe. So that looked at from another point of view Goethe has been far more successful. Goethe has not, it is true, in one drama united his mighty thoughts with strong universal interest. His 'Faust' cannot be called popular, even though it is occasionally brought on the German stage. But following a plan suited to his powers, he has written at one time for the educated and at another for the masses. Just as in 'Faust,' he has separated the devil from the man, the Mephistopheles from the Faust, where Shakspere would have been able to give the two sides of the character in one human being, so he has given up the great unity which only the highest intellect could accomplish, content with addressing himself to the reflective for the most part, but occasionally to the masses. His social and other songs are sung, wherever the German language is known.

Among ourselves there has been a regular division of poets into those who try to reach the hearts of the people and those who appeal to the audience few but fit. And these two classes of poets have their defenders and assailants. The intellectual aristocrats look down on Byron and Scott. The democrats maintain that Wordsworth and Tennyson are absolutely unintel

ligible or silly. We believe that both are partly right and partly wrong. In all our educated poets there must be the endeavour to unite the high impulses of the age with the universal sympathies of the masses. The result is only partial success. Scott succeeded with the great masses, because he strained none of their faculties, but pleased, cheered, and animated them by beautiful scenes in nature and in human life. Our aristocratic class, however, read him only once in their lives (they read all poets once), because they find nothing in him calculated to brace them up for the high purposes of life, to calm the struggles and agonies of their intellectual and moral nature. Wordsworth, on the other hand, though he tried to be popular, failed. Even in his simplest pieces there is a vein of philosophy which is foreign to an unreflective man. Even his most unadorned narratives are saturated with philosophic dews.

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In these remarks we think we have pointed out the cause why so few of our modern songs come from our poets. Tennyson is the poet of this age, but only of this age viewed in its highest and noblest features. As a reflex of the aspirations of our time, as the genuine outcome and expression of what a noble man of this nineteenth century feels, we regard Locksley Hall' as inimitable. But our poet-laureate is surpassed by Haynes Bailey and many others when songs for the people are in demand. Even his May Queen,' and some of the songs in the 'Princess,' which have been set to music, require a poetic education to relish them properly.

We were going to say that we were sorry the state of matters should be such. We retract at once. We rejoice in the lights which God has given us, whatever be the forms in which they come. We enjoy the musings of our meditative poets, the strange artistic shapes they cause to rise before us, and the powerful lessons they teach us in this life's struggle. We find equal benefit from our popular poets. They may not draw grand ideals, throw strange weird lights over earth, sea, and sky, or fill our souls with dim questionings, but they have felt deeply as men, they have viewed life, as it is, in its truest colours, and giving expression to their thoughts and feelings in well-chosen, easily intelligible language, they help to knit us to the great masses who, though straggling in the rear of humanity, are yet one with us. The sorrows, the joys, the lives of all men are at bottom essentially one, because the nature of man is one. And there is nothing for which we ought to be more thankful than for the song or poem that can shake off from us the learned dust of folios and rid us of that iciness which freezes the heart of a man too much absorbed in thoughts shared with him by

few, and apt to separate himself with ill-becoming pride from the poor, the ignorant, and the debased, yet God-made sons of

men.

Of the two classes of poetry we deem the esoteric the higher. The requirements of the song writer are not so great. They consist principally in simplicity, true pathos, severe taste, and the power to give accurate and exact expression to the emotions of the heart. His themes are equally humble. They circle round those paragraphs of a newspaper on which a lady's eyes fall first-the births, marriages, and deaths. The happy scenes of childhood, the early impressions of youth, the odd characters of our acquaintance, the natural scenery around us, the wooings and cooings preparatory to marriage, the joys and bickerings that follow it, the hard, often heroic struggles of poverty, the delights of friendship, the pleasures of society, and the sad farewell which we must take of all earthly things; these and such like are the material from which the people's songs must be taken. But simple though songs thus are, they still afford room for the highest exertions of genius, just as a Paganini could educe the richest melodies out of a single string. Burns' 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' contains as much of the poetic power as whole cart-loads of heaven-scaling dramas that have been written in these latter days.

Just as we reckon the more intellectual to be evidence of higher powers, so we think is its influence nobler and more potent. It may not reach so many, it may not split the ears of the groundlings, but it penetrates the very soul of the judicious, moves the movers of the age, and thus permeates the community. Goethe's 'Faust' and 'Wilhelm Meister' (for it too is a poem) are an instance. Read and comprehended by comparatively few, they have yet moulded the German nation, and Goethe is seen wherever German society is seen.

The great influence of intellectual poetry seems to us to have allured many in these days to attempt it, with not the best consequences. For it ought ever to be remembered that it demands very peculiar gifts; and just as many lose their whole lives on a great work, their unfortunate hulk being overladen, and consequently sinking, so it is sad to see the absolute waste of fine talents, because the possessor of them has aimed at exploits beyond his strength. How often now must our criticisms be, 'Here are evident marks of genius, fine wonderful genius; but as a whole the poem is unreadable. The power of setting the ideas in their proper framework of words is sadly wanting. The poetic feeling gleams out everywhere; the poetic vehicle jolts frightfully, and indeed intolerably. For the unintelligible can never become poetic. The first demand of the reader must be

that he receives the intelligible for his perusal. If those who are so fond of scaling empyrean heights, and tossing up stars and moons as a juggler tosses balls, were to know thoroughly their own faculties, and cling more to mother earth, we might have a rich posy of songs suited to our own times.

As an instruThe influences we are least

While thus estimating what we regard as our higher poetry, we should by no means depreciate song-writing. ment of moral instruction its power is enormous. which affect us most, are often those of which conscious. That which we hum in thoughtless mood sinks sometimes into the very depths of the heart.

At the same time there are so many intellectual forces at work that songs have not nearly so much power as they once had. They are now only one of the varied forms in which mind acts on mind. Our newspapers harmonize more with the rhythm of men's minds in these unmusical days, and men march more willingly to the tunes they play. The effect of songs, however, is always elevating, provided their morality be right, and they work strongly and powerfully against the materialistic tendencies of the times. Therefore it is that we hail a genuine song-writer with all our hearts, and when, as in the case before us, the song-writer has passed from this world before her claims were known, we regard it alike a duty and a pleasure to pay her memory that tribute which she has nobly earned. The authoress of the Land o' the Leal,' and the 'Laird o' Cockpen,' deserves no small meed of praise.

Carolina Oliphant was born in Perthshire, on the 16th of July, 1766. The scene of her birthplace is one of the most beautiful spots in Scotland. The impressions which the fair face of nature made upon her tender opening soul were never effaced, and she rejoiced to sing of Strathearn, the sweet scene of her childhood, the delight of her youth,' and of the 'auld house of Gask.'

Oh, the auld house, the auld house!

What though the rooms were wee?
Oh, kind hearts were dwelling there,
And bairnies fu' o' glee!
The wild-rose and the jessamine
Still hang upon the wa';
How mony cherish'd memories

Do they, sweet flowers, reca'!

Here was awakened within her that keen sense of the beautiful in nature which pervades her poems, and by means of which she felt towards lovely spots as towards kind and affectionate friends, from which it was difficult to wrench herself. In after years she travelled over foreign lands, but she never forgot dear auld Scotland, with its burnies tumblin' down, the bonny banks and

braes of its rivers, its stern mountains and its cloudy many-tinted sunsets. She was thoroughly Scottish in feeling. She finds delight in her native land, wherever she is, in Banff as well as on the banks of Clyde, in Edinburgh as well as in Strathearn. What a beautiful image is that in her farewell to Edinburgh

‘Auld Reekie, fare ye weel, and Reekie new beside-
Ye're like a chieftain auld and gray,
wi' a young

bonnie bride." Her father gave her the name of Carolina in honour of Prince Charlie, to whose family he was a devoted adherent. Dr. Rogers says of him (p. 185)-He would not permit the names of the reigning monarch and his queen to be mentioned in his presence; and when impaired eyesight compelled him to seek the assistance of his family in reading the newspapers, he angrily reproved the reader if the "German lairdie and his leddy" were designated otherwise than by the initial letters " K. and Q.""

The daughter caught the infection from her father. She was fond of the good old cause, as she believed it to be, and has written several of the very best of our Jacobite songs. 'A hundred pipers an' a',' Will ye no come back again,' 'There grows a bonnie brier bush,' are doubtless well known to many of our readers. There is a great deal of spirit in these verses, and sometimes she rises into a region of grandeur; witness these lines, addressed to one of the Stuart family under the name of the man o' the moon

Now liberty's awaking,

The clouds around thee breaking;
The darkest hour o' night

Is just before the light:

So man o' the moon we hail thee.

A questionable liberty it certainly would have been, and we are thankful that we had no trial of it.

Notwithstanding her strong attachment to the Stuarts, Lady Nairne's heart was too good not to sympathize deeply with the Covenanters; and though her poems on them are far from being among her best, they testify to her sense of their heroic character and worth.

Lady Nairne began to write verses while she was yet young. The beautiful sweet girl, known in her neighbourhood as the 'Flower of Strathearn,' was patriotic to the core, and above everything the songs of her native country moved her inmost soul. Much later in life she wrote

Strains of my native land,

That thrill my soul,

Pouring the magic of

Your soft control!