BOOKS.

FAITTIFITL FOU EVER.° Ir we rightly understand the eternal fidelity which Mr. Coventry Patmore undertakes to celebrate in this poem, we should define it as a loyal devotion to that noble, semi-celestial love, which, per- haps, can have no satisfying completion, under the many limita- tions of our aspiring and restless nature, and our perplexing mor- tal destiny. This royal passion, which is at once a kind of reli- gious eestacy and an intense human feeling, seeks to embody and realize itself, in a true substantial love for some beautiful shape of womanhood. " The shadow of that idol of our thought" is rarely, perhaps never found. Sometimes, the seeker supposes him- self to have found it ; =but the discovery proves a dream, and dis- appointment follows the profitless experience. More often, per- haps, the Being whom the spirit meets " on its visionary wander- ings," passes into the sphere of another's life.; leaving the memory of noble delights, softened and subdued by the regrets and holy sorrows, of "love that never found his earthly close." This ini- tiation into the mysteries of affection is vouchsafed only to a few. For them the recollection of early love remains as a purifying creed. They learn, in the language of Wordsworth, by a mortal yearning to ascend towards a higher object ; but, if again we rightly interpret the utterances of the present hierophant of this religious love, the "Shadow of their thought" still lives and reigns in their stricken soul, not as an earthly influence, but as a heavenly presence, symbolizing the marriage of true hearts, ex- alting and hallowing all human relations ; inspiring a higher sense of duty, creating a "devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow," and awakening the mighty hope of some glorious sequel to this unfinished love, in which the human reality shall not be wholly superseded by the celestial ideal, but in which a secondary service to the bright original form of tangible beauty, in some new angelic phase of being, shall be reconeileable with a self-surrender to the claims of the Divine Life and the duties of the universal love.

This, or something like this, is the moral of the poem which bears the somewhat vague title of Faithful for Ever. The ex- ample of this perennial constancy and the hero of Mr. Patmore's epistolary song, Mr. Frederick Graham, imagines himself se- cure against the fascinations of a fair Wiltshire cousin, Honoria Churchill, on the ground of an earlier attachment. • Loire, he tells his mother, Mrs. Graham, in the letter with which the volume commences, is a nursery malady. He had taken the infection of Charlotte Hayes, his playmate in the harvesting at Knatchley, and did not expect to have it badly again. The symptoms of this poetical early love are very prettily described. The graces of the sisters, Mary and Mildred, are lightly touched on ; but, notwith- standing the boasted protection of a prior spell, the moral and personal loveliness of Honoria is portrayed, with such evidences of self-interested enthusiasm, as to justify the maternal warnings and predictions which are contained in the following letter. Ac- cordingly, we read, without surprise, in Mr. Frederick's next epistle, the self-confuting disclaimer-

" But why, dear mother, warn me so ;

I love Miss Churchill ? Ah ! no, no.

I view enchanted from afar'

And love her as I love a star."

Frederick's profession, that of a sailor, has long since been chosen, and trial made of it. His ship again awaits him at Ply- month; but before he rejoins it definitively, he determines to see his cousin yet once more. This determination he speedily carries into effect; he sees the noble girl, whose smile confers knighthood on all with whom she condescends to talk ; he indulges in a little self-praise of his deeds at Acre ; exaggerates his chances of honour and advancement in the coming war ; and interprets a sad silence into indifference. Half the priceless hour of his interview has elapsed, when a Mr. Vaughan appears, and Honoria's " lovely gravity of light is scattered into many smiles and flattering weak- ness ; " hope deserts him ; and feeling at once the richness of his love and the poverty of his claim, he hurries away with a de- spairingly familiar, Heaven bless you, dearest Honoria." Two years pass by. The sailor lover returns to England. Vaughan and his ten-day's bride, visiting his ship, become, by a heaven- sent chance, the transitory guests of the loyal Graham. Satisfied with the prospect of her secured happiness, and reflecting that she is safe in Vaughim's•devotion, he exelaims- " --,the thought of this,

Though more than ever I admire, Removes her out of my desire."

He even relinquishes the " claim divine,"—to have her in the heavens for his own,—conferred, as he had previously imagined, by the superior greatness of his love, and, in a characteristic pas- sage, which we quote, mainly because it is characteristic, he re- conciles himself finally, to his loss- " Now

I've seen them. I believe- their vow Immortal; and the dreadful thought, That he less honour'd than he ought Her sanctity, is laid to rest, And, blessing them, I, too, am blest. My goodwill, as a springing air, Unclouds a beauty in despair ; I stand beneath the sky's-pure cope, Unburden'd even by a hope ; • Faithful for Ever. By Coventry Patmore. Publiebed by John W. Parker and Son.

And peace unspeakable, a joy Which hope would deaden and destroy, Like sunshine fills the airy gulf Left by the vanishing of self. That I have known her ; that she moves Somewhere, all-graceful ; that-she loves, And is belov'd, and that she's so Yost happy ; and to heaven will go, Where I may meet with her (yet this I count but adventitious bliss), And that the full, celestial weal Of all shall sensitively -feel The partnership and work of each, And, thus,-my love and labour reach Her region, there the more to bless Her last, consummate happiness, Is guerdon up to the degree Of that alone true loyalty Which, sacrificing, is not nice About the terms of sacrifice, But offers all, with smiles that say, "Twere nothing if 'twere not for aye !' "

As the first book of these Letters in rhyme is entitled " Ho- noria," so the second is entitled " Jane." Jane, the chaplain's daughter, is very unlike her splendid predecessor. Deficient in knowledge and conversational power, a notable seamstress, with a homely limited mind, but sensible, gentle, affectionate, and good, Jane has capabilities, which are subsequently developed, under the favouring influences of married and social life ; and Lady Clitheroe, once Mildred Churchill, acknowledges the inquisitive Miss Smythe's story to be quite untrue, and declares Jane the oddest little pet, so outr'ee and natural, that, when she first arrived, they all wondered at her, as they might at a robin who had come in through the window to eat crumbs at breakfast with them. The same goodnatured critic gives her credit for sense, humility, and confidence ; slightly censures her love for colours and thought too gay, describing the general effect of her costume in a parenthetical sentence- (" Today she looks a cross between

Gipsev and fairy, red and green)"

and pronouncing, finally, that " all that she does is somehow well."

" This odd wife of Fred adores his old love in his stead."

She accompanies her husband on a visit to High Hurst, the residence of the peerless Honoria and her happy lord. Frederiek Graham, writing to his mother, draws a pretty picture of the Vaughan's private joy and public good-intent ; celebrates Ho- noria's youth "that seems her natal clime, and no way relative to time ;" characterizes her days, as high, pure, sweet and practical; and admires the serene self-possession of his wife, who has caught, by a kind of natural instinct, the grace of his former idol's stately home—of that " shadow of his thought," whom he loves rather more than less.

" But she alone was loved of old : Now love is twain, nay, manifold ; For, somehow, he whose daily life Adjusts itself to one true wife, Grows to a nuptial, near degree With all that's fair and womanly."

At the end of three weeks, Jane and her husband leave High

Hurst Park to spend their twelfth wedding day, (the first they ever kept,) in their own green woodland home ; the odd little wifie stitching, her poetical husband enjoying the sounds and sights of June, with muffled ear and folded arm, " in con- scientious idleness ;" John, the first-born, looking for births- nests, and Grace and Baby lodging grasshoppers in "the-warm blades of the breathing green." And, then, sings the philosophic visionary, in unpremeditated verses, which may fairly be taken to express the mingled grace and careless felicity of 'Mr. Patmore's ready-letter writer kind of poetry- " And then, as if I sweetly dream'd,

I half remember'd how it seem'd, When I, too, was a little child About the wild wood roving wild. Pure breezes from the far-off height, Melted the blindness from my sight, Until, with rapture, grief, and awe, I saw again as then I saw.

As then .I saw, I saw again, The harvest waggon in the lane, With high-hung tokens of its pride Left in the elms on either side ; The daisies coming out at dawn, In constellations on the lawn ; The glory of the daffodil ; The three black windmills on the-hill, Whose magic arms flung wildly by, Sent magic shadows past the rye. Within the leafy coppice, lo ! More wealth than miser's dreams could show, The blackbird's warm and woolly brood, Five golden beaks agape for food ; The mimics all. the summer seen Native as poppies to the green ; The winter with its frosts and thaws And opulence of hips and haws; The lovely marvel ofthe snow ; The Tamar, with its altering show OLgay ships sailing up. and.down, Among the fields and by the town. And, dearer far than anything,

Came back the songs you used to sing.

(Ali ! might you sing such songs again,

And I, your child,, but hear as then, With CQIESC/OUS WO& of the gulf

Flown over from my present self!) And, as to men's retreating eyes

Beyond high mountains higher use

Still farther back there shone to me The dazzling dusk of infancy. Thither Llooked, as, sick of night The Alpine shepherd looks to the height And does not see the day, 'tis true, But sees the rosy tops that do."

The extracts that we have given from Mr. Coventry Patmore's new poem, will serve to show its object, character, and merits. This is not an age in which, speaking generally, men, who claim the sacred name of poet, care to live laborious days, and scorn de- lights to build the lofty rhyme. There is, however, a pleasant gossipping sort of muse, with a touch of modern philosophy and modern sentiment, with whom the poets of the hour, not unpro- fitably flirt. Such • appears to us to be Mr. Patmore's favourite muse ; a thoughful, graceful, semi-celestial, semi-terrestial, demi- angelical, demi-feminine lady who glides in ball-rooms, dreams in verandahs, feeds peacocks, talks romances under tented trees with her courtly admirers,—Mr. Patmore among others,—whom " she knights with her smile "—and -then floats away into purple mist, rosy twilight, starry exhalation, and the seventh heaven of saintly, heroic, self-renouncing, yet passive, visionary love. Such a muse, it is pleasant to know. Such poems as Mr. Pat- more can produce, under her inspiration, it is agreeable to read and not difficult to forget. For they have merit, undoubted merit ; but not we fear of a high order. Such extremely facile verse,— with its pretty negligences, its charming undress qualities, and its noble Christian platonism, as we find in this little volume, may be once murmured gratefully over, in some still afternoon, when 'the kind heavenly powers send us a sunny sky, a happy half- holiday, and a genial mood, in those golden moments, when in our poet's phrase,

tg life is mere delight In being wholly good and right."