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twisting their long necks to crop the of towered masonery formed by Lambeth blades of the flowering flags, or lifting Palace and Church. As we zigzag from their red beaks to the leaves of the over- side to side, the mist-bordered reaches hanging trees. The lazy ripple of the of the river look like wide lakes. We river on the pebbly strand at the foot of run in so close to the Houses of Parlia the water-side of the park so trim in ment that, in spite of the mist, we can its core, so rough at its edges-sug- see the scaled-off look of the stones of gests a trip upon the water. Let us take that magnificent modern-antique readyboat at the pier hard by. Old Chelsea made: to one who has crossed the line, Church and the old trees and houses of the noses of some of the sculptured Cheyne Walk have a Fata Morgana look. figures suggest a memory of the time Two white wager-boats, pulled by white- when the skin peeled off his nose in clad spectres, dart out of the mist ahead, curly shavings, though from a very differand dart into the mist astern-emblems ent cause. Red and white St. Thomas's reversed in life. A train thunders over Hospital on the other side might serve the railway-bridge, adding a coil of slug- for a dyspeptically despondent butcher's gishly curling snowy vapour to the mouse- dream of vanishing raw beef. When, coloured mist. A black lighter-one under graceful Westminster-Bridge, the long sweep sprawling like a broken fin, funnel comes down, like a hemlock-stalk the other tugged at, doggedly though half cut in two by stick of idle wanderer seemingly lazily, by the lighterman, practising sword exercise - most ungenwhose sulky features are indistinguish erously making use of its monopolized able flounders past like a wounded privilege to smoke abaft itself, by clogwhale. Tiers of black lighters, as gloomy ging our nostrils and defiling our shirtas if they were meant for Titans' floating fronts with unconsumed carbon-the hearses, loom alongside the shore's fog is thickening so that we begin to blurred higgledy-piggledy of piles and doubt whether our boat will get beyond wharfs and cranes, and "travellers" on Hungerford; but, just as we gaunt timber skeletons, and coal, and passed Hungerford Bridge, brick and stone, and chimney-pots and drain-pipes. At Nine Elms there is a maze of curving and crossing rails that look like half-obliterated fork-scratches

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Apollo's arrow flashes through the murk,
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greasy plate, with stumbling The sudden sunbeam gleams but for a horses straining at lead-coloured and few moments, but it has turned the emmud-coloured trucks, and men-clad bankment granite, and Somerset House presumably in green corduroy, but and Waterloo Bridge into shimmering looking exactly like chimney-sweeps snow, the embankment gardens into shouting huskily to the horses and glistening emerald; it has lit up church One another under the supervision of vanes and windows in dusty brick houses, mist-magnified overseers, also leaden- glorified straw-laden barges, even grimy hued. The extinguisher turrets of Mil- coal-barges and then it vanishes as bury Penitentiary perk up, blurred, suddenly as it came. As we flap the above the blurred jumble of its dirty- brown waters into dingy cream on our drab brick the mist gives the place a way to our City wharf, we pass biliousBastille look of mystery. The Lambeth looking blotches of artificial light in embankment glimpses through the murky Temple chambers and riverside wareair like a long line of pale ghosts drawn houses: fog in her sober drab livery hath up along the banks of Styx; it is just once more all things clad when our skippossible to make out that builders are per sidle his boat like a shying horse somewhere at work in the dark jumble up to the Allhallows pier.

A PROJECT has been set on foot by Colonel Grant, so well known from his African travels, to form a loan exhibition of skulls and horns of hollow-horned animals, in order that by observation and comparison of a large number of characteristic specimens, facts may be obtained regarding the form, sexual characters, and locality of each particular species. It is proposed to have as many as from twenty to

fifty specimens of each species, so as to be able to form groups representing every stage in the life of each, as also to show the varieties of species in different localities. When from three to five thousand specimens of the one hundred and fifty existing species have been promised, means will be taken to secure the most suitable place in London for their exhi bition.

Nature.

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THE HAPPINESS OF A PASTORAL LIFE, 770 | SONNETS-THE EARLY THRUSH,
SUMMER,

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PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY
LITTELL &

GAY,

BOSTON.

TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.

For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical.

An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY.

THE HAPPINESS OF A PASTORAL LIFE.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF BERNARDO TASSO.

(In the Original Metre.)

THRICE happy shepherd race,
Who live content upon your humble store
Full in the heaven's kind face;
Far from the crowd's wild roar,

Ye fear no winds, or waves that lash the shore.

We live mid each dull care

Which in the troubled waters man must meet;
The chiefest joys we share
Are as the shadows fleet,

And far more full of bitter than of sweet.

A thousand thoughts await

With anxious mien the dawn of every day;
Which, like some gloomy Fate,

Track us along our way,

With peace unbroken rife.
How much I envy this

I dare not say - how near to perfect bliss.
Tinsley's Magazine.

SUMMER.

SHE sat beneath an ancient spreading oak
At close of day, the while the young May

moon

Rose like a queen to grant a promised

boon

He lying at her feet, his purple cloak
Beside him, while delicious silence woke
Heart-echoes. Fairy ferns made tune

In the soft-sighing wind, and foxgloves soon
Answered the strain, and the sweet silence

broke.

And from our shadowed life take all the joy Around them bloomed primrose and violet,

away.

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Then as the day grows bright,

Your flocks towards the pastures move along;
With hearts all pure and light,
And free from every wrong,

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Your labours ye beguile with blithesome song. Will shew green tissues where the leaflets lie

Oft in some valley deep

Yet winter-held, and to the bluer sky

Give fragrance fresher than the scents of June. Which never glowed beneath the sun's warm Still howls the northern wind with angry look,

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But this loud airy music rings his knell ;
In her own tuneful tongue doth Nature tell
By her own warbling prophet that the hour
Approaches fast when a benigner reign
Will beautify the world with greener robes
again.

The song is not thine own that thou, fond bird,
From thy lone perch upon the budding thorn,
Bestowest on the misty-hooded morn:
'Tis the old voice of Love that Time has heard
Through all the changes of aspiring years.
Full-hearted Hope, pavilioned by thy wings,
Inspires thy breast, and in thy matin sings,

The cattle haste their milky draughts to pour. Pouring a mirthful wisdom in our ears;

Or when the wintry skies

And we who listen, feel our spirits rise
As to the dawning of a better day,

Bring long surcease to all your summer mirth, Responsive to the presage of thy lay.

Amid the snows and ice

Ye sit around the hearth,

Green fields are with the coming spring and skies

And let the draughts of wine to joy give birth. Breasted by softer clouds, and flowers and

A quiet tranquil life,

Where all our mad delights and griefs ye miss,

streams

Rejoicing in the presence of her brighter
beams.
Chambers' Journal.

From The Edinburgh Review.
THE TREVELYAN PAPERS.*

thought and similarity of will is testified no less by the records of their actions than by their features in the family portraits.

"SOME," says Boswell, in that sententious style which it was usually his pleasure to assume after having had the ben- It is therefore with some little regret efit of the great Doctor's conversation that we discover, as yet, such slight probfor some weeks, "some have affected to ability of accession to our existing malaugh at the History of the House of terials in this department from the Yvery'" (a production which seems never labours of the Commission on Historical to have got beyond the stage of private Manuscripts, of which the third Report printing and distribution). "It would be is now before us. It is needless to say well if many others would transmit their that the Appendix to this Report embodpedigrees to posterity, with the same ies a considerable variety of matter of accuracy and generous zeal with which importance to the antiquarian, the histothe noble lord who compiled that work rian, and the genealogist; and the Rehas honoured and perpetuated his ances- port itself promises much more. But of try. Family histories, like the imagines majorum of the ancients, excite to virtue." We entirely agree with our favourite biographer, though not adopting the magniloquence with which he announces his opinion. As the life of an individual furnishes upon the whole the most agreeable of all literary subjects, other than the merely romantic, to the majority of readers; so the life of a family, duly traced and authenticated, ought to supply matter not indeed of the same class of interest, but still of no common utility both for amusement and instruction. For the individual lives on in his family. It has often been remarked how the great Gentes of Roman history - the Valerii, the Claudii, the Scipios, and so forth seemed to prolong, generation after generation, particular types, not only of political sentiment and conduct, but of personal character. And the same specialty has been observed in respect of our noble English races, which have taken from father to son so large a share in our political and social life. Percys, and Mortimers, and Cliffords in old days; Howards, Russells, Grenvilles, and many more in later times, have constituted not merely households, but as it were castes lines of men in whom a certain identity of

1. The Paston Letters. A New Edition. Edited by JAMES GAIRDNER, of the Public Record Office. Vol. I. 1872.

2. Trevelyan Papers. Part I. II. Edited by J. PAYNE COLLIER, Esq. Part III. (with introduction). Edited by Sir Walter CalverleY TREVELYAN, Bart., and Sir CHARLES EDWARD TREVELYAN, K.C.B. Printed for the Camden Society. 1857-1872.

In

that particular kind of memorial of the
past of which we are now in search — the
domestic correspondence and diaries of
private families, continued from one gen-
eration to another - we find but slender
trace. Such treasures are no doubt
scarce, and perhaps they are somewhat
charily communicated. Possibly the ex-
plorations of the Commission may yet
serve to disinter a few more of them.
the meantime we have abundant reason to
be thankful to those few who have opened
for us the innermost recesses of their
family archives, and enabled us, here and
there, to trace to our satisfaction the his-
tory of a knightly or gentle name through
some comprehensive period of time,
and the position which it held towards
the changing world around it.

At the head of all English records of this description stands the collection commonly known as the "Paston Letters." We have before us the first volume of it, in a handsome reprint,* edited by the thoroughly competent hand of Mr. James Gairdner of the Record Office, who has supplied it with a voluminous introduction, to which we can only take one objection that he has had it printed in so exceedingly minute a character, that an antiquary duly solicitous about his eyesight would almost as soon encounter a roll of papyrus, or a monkish

*This reprint forms part of a series of the English Classics of the sixteenth century, which are republished in excellent taste, and at a very low price, by Mr. Arber, of Queen's Square. They ought to be household books wherever the English tongue is spoken.

manuscript charter of the thirteenth cen- will, when he carried it off from council tury. The singular history of the "Pas- in his pocket, from his Majesty they ton Letters" has of late acquired re- never returned. "The originals of the newed interest. They found their way first two volumes are missing, though from divers repositories, previously to they were presented to the King in 1787, 1787, into the possession of Mr. Fenn of bound in three volumes, and, no doubt, East Dereham, in Norfolk, afterwards the binding was a handsome one." All Sir Richard; described by Horace Wal- search to recover them has hitherto pole as a "smatterer in antiquity, but a proved fruitless. "There is a tradition very good sort of man." Mr. Fenn ar- that they were last seen in the hands of ranged and published the two first vol- Queen Charlotte, who, it is supposed, umes, "with a very lengthy title." Their must have lent them to one of her ladies appearance at once excited considerable in attendance. (?) If so, it is strange attention, mainly owing to the interest taken in them by Walpole himself, who, whatever amount of frivolity may have attached to his tastes, was au fond a zealous and a discerning student of English antiquity. "These letters," he said, "make to me all other letters not worth reading." Hannah More, no doubt in common with many other literary personages at that time, was of a different opinion. The letters, she declared, were quite barbarous in style, with none of the elegance of their supposed contemporary Rowley! "They might be of some use to correct history, but as letters and fine reading, nothing was to be said for them!" Nevertheless

"The Paston Letters" (Mr. Gairdner continues) were soon in every one's hands. The work appeared (1787) under royal patronage; for Fenn had got leave beforehand to dedicate it to the King as the avowed patron of antiquarian knowledge. . A whole edition was disposed of in a week; and a second edition called for, which, after undergoing some little revision with the assistance of Mr. George Steevens, the Shakespearian editor, was pub

lished the same year. Meanwhile, to gratify the curious, the original MS. letters were deposited for a time in the library of the Society of Antiquaries; but the King having expressed a wish to see them, Fenn sent them to the palace, requesting that if they were thought worthy of a place in the royal collection, his Majesty would be pleased to accept them. They were accordingly added to the royal library, and as an acknowledgment of the value of the gift, Fenn was summoned to court, and received the honour of knighthood.

Here begins the problematical part of the history. To the King the letters certainly went; but, like George II.'s

that they should have been lost sight of. They are not in the library of King George III., which is now in the British Museum, nor do they appear in any of the Royal palaces. The late Prince Consort, just before his death, instituted a search which he had great hope would at last bring them to light. I have been informed that it has since been completed, but the missing originals remain still unaccounted for."

Singularly enough, the history of the remaining part of the work is subject to difficulties and obscurities almost equally great. A third and fourth volume were published by Mr., now become Sir Richard, Fenn. The collective originals of these have never been recovered; but "it happens that the first document in volume iii. has been actually found, and is now in the British Museum."

Volume v. was published, several years afterwards, by the late Serjeant Frere ; of this, also, the MS. was altogether lost sight of. The consequence of these strange deficiencies was, that “an ingenious littérateur," as Mr. Gairdner terms him, raised critical doubts, which were acknowledged by some as plausible, respecting the authenticity of the whole series. This was done in an article which appeared in "the Fortnightly Review." Its appearance set the descendant of the editor, Mr. Philip Frere, on a new search; and the originals of volume v. were actually discovered at last in an old box at his house in Norfolk. Those who were present at the following meeting of the Society of Antiquaries may well remember their triumphant production in the very presence of the unlucky sceptic,

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