THE KEEPSAKE—THE COURT ALBUM..

MBEs is something melancholy in the last look at anything, whether it be place or person. Even an enemy whom we are to see no more has a triste if not a touching interest in our eyes, and a fiat or indifferent-looking spot puts on attractions when we know that we shall never revisit it again. Some feeling of this kind arises in the mind as it contemplates the books before us; for we suppose we are looking our last at the Annuals. Mr. Heath, one of their originators and main supporters is dead. Their most remarkable contributors—Mrs. Hemans, Letitia Zan- don, Bernard Barton--are departed ; the titled Lady Blessington, who as author and editor stuck by them so long, is no more. Some of the lesser stars are also gone ; some contributors have grown old, some have got "satiate with applause," and some, we fancy, have grown shy. Of the celebrities who under the fascination and fashionable influence of Lady Bles- sington used to throw a tale, or a fragment, or a piece of poetry, to the aristocratic Keepsake, Barry Cornwall alone has stuck to the colours ; all the rest have either deserted or never answered the roll-call.

A sense of this appears in a prefatory notice to The Keepsake, which apologizes for the " very peculiar circumstances under which it was brought out " ; Lady Blessington, it would appear, having made but little actual progress in her task beyond writing a ale. Something like the necessity of the "eleventh hour," which the preface speaks of, is visible in the book. It is not merely that it wants the salt which a trifle from a practised band imparts, but several of the tales would have been as well away, on other than literary grounds,—as "Extremes Meet," and the Baroness de Calabrella's "Sketch." The best of the boudoir prose tales are Mrs. Abdy's "Government Appointment," and Mr. Bernal's "Cuirassier of London." Into the latter Mr. Bernal infuses a good deal of knowledge of life and character, though the structure is too Annual-like, if that be a fault in an Annual. In" Two Nights beside the Zwart liops," the scenery, incidents, and persons of South Africa, give an air of novelty that a home subject by Isabella Munro might not have attained. In "The Spirit of Truth," by Georgians C. Munro, an attempt is made to point a social moral. A zealous talker in favour of people expressing their real opinions—" the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth "—is preternaturally compelled, by a mischievous Nemesis in the guise of an old man, to utter his exact thoughts for a single day; in which short space of time he contrives to blight all his prospects. There is novelty, utility, and point in the idea; but it is not artistically de- veloped. The hero of the tale is not so much the victim of unpleasant or malapropos truths, as an example of downright hypocrisy and roguery. The poetical gem of the volume is Barry Cornwall's "Verdict— Found Dead." The subject is akin to the third part of his London Lyric, originally published in Friendship's Offering, eleven years ago ; but the reality is too frequent in life not to bear repetition in literature.

• VERDICT—" FOUND DEAD."

THE SURGEON'S YALE. BY BARRY CORNWALL.

("About ten years ago, a paragraph appeared in some of the daily newspapers, giv-

ing an account of an Inqwelit held on the body of a young woman, • found dead,' in some obscure street or lane in London. The body was discovered frightfully emaciated, scantily clothed, and in a poor garret, which was entirely destitute of every article of

fundture, comfort, or otherwise, except a few ragged love-letters, which she had pre-

served through every privation. According to the evidence, she had been at one time a person of considerable beauty, anti had evidently died of hunger."]

"'Twas on a dark December's evening, Loud the blast, and bitter cold; Downwards came the whirling waters, Deep and black the river rolrd: Not a dog beneath the tempest; Not a beggar upon his beat; Wind and rain, and cold and darkness,

Swept through every desert street.

" Mcdfiedto the teeth, that evening I was struggling in the storm,

Through pestilent lanes and hungry alleys: Suddenly, an ancient farm

Peer'd from out a gloomy doorway, And, with trembling croak, it said—

'In the left-hand empty garret You will find a woman—dead.'

"'Never stepp'd a finer creature, When she was a simple maid;

But she did like many others—

Loved a man, and was betrayed.

I have seen her in her earring!

Biding, diamonds in her haul

And I've seen her starving (starving,

Do you hear?) and now—she's there!'

"Up the worn end slippery. stair With a quicken'd,palse I sprung.

Famine, filth, and mean despair,

Round about the darkness • The Keepsake, 1550. Edited by the late Countess of Elessin,gton, With beautiful finished Engravings, from Drawings by the first Artists, engraved under the superin- tendence of Mr. Frederick A Heath Published by Stigde.

The (bun Album. Fourteen Portraits of the Female Aristocracy': !Engraved by Use best Artists, from Drawings by John Ilvisr. ,Published by BaKilllei

No kind vision met my glances, Friend or helper of the poor; So the crazy room I enter'd, And look'd down upon the floor!

"There—on the rough and naked boards, A long, gaunt, wasted figure lay, liturder'd in its youth by hunger; All its beauty—wrinkled clay. Life's poor wants had left her nothing— Clothes nor fuel, food nor bed— Nothing save some ragged letters, Whereon lay the ghastly head.

• • • "'Nothing !'—Yet what more could Pity Crave, for one about to die, Than sweet words from one she worship'd (Sweet, though every word a lie)? In the morning of her pleasure, In the midnight of her pain, They were all her wealth, her comfort, Treasured,—ay, and not in vain.

"And with her they now lie mouldering, And a date upon a stone

Telleth where (to end the story) Love's poor outcast sleeps alone. Mourn not ; for at length she sleepeth

The soft slumber of the dead. Resting on her loved love-letters, Last, fit pillow for her head."

The Court Album seems a sort of substitute for the old "Book of Beauty." It consists of fourteen " heads" of British young ladies con- nected with the aristocracy : two pages of letterpress are attached to each, giving an account of the family, or a notice of some member of the family to which the lady belongs. The faces may possibly be what are commonly called " likenesses ; but they are insipid and uniform

in style, and do not rise to portraiture. The letterpress challenges no remark.