commonly much better than the plays they are taken from. The plays are alive, but as wholes they are not for the most part delightful. Barry Cornwall's Dramatic Scenes are delightful if we will take them for what they are, without asking if they too might not have been enshrined in live coherent plays. There is one sort of romanticism which finds the fresher air and brighter light it longs for in old books, as another finds it in old life; and for romanticists of the first sort Barry Cornwall seized (and reproduced the charm of the gracious pathos and nobility of the Elizabethan, or rather Jacobean, drama, with as much mastery as Scott, on a larger scale, seized and reproduced the charm of the picturesqueness and generosity of Border and Highland life. Every nation which is fortunate enough to possess a classical drama inherits from it a school of classical acting, and this school in turn propagates a longer or shorter succession of acting plays, with classical pretensions, which perhaps in a period of literary revival may possess genuine literary merit. Mirandola was so good and succeeded so well that, as late as 1844, Mr. Carlyle, among others, was still pressing the author to persist in the career of dramatist, which he had long abandoned. According to the author's own account it was a very hurried and imperfect production. "Had I taken pains I could have made a much more sterling thing; but I wished for its representation, and there were so many authors struggling for the same object that I had not firmness to resist the opportunity that was opened to me through the kindness of Mr. Macready to offer it to the proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre. I allowed the play to appear, while I was conscious of its many shortcomings. The toil of placing a tragedy or comedy on the stage (apart from the trouble of writing it) is sufficient to daunt most men from repeating the experiment. Without doubt, the activity and kindness of Mr. Macready, and the general good-will of the actors, saved me from much trouble, and from many rebuffs. The tragedy was acted for sixteen nights; it produced, including the copyright, £630; and then passed away (with other temporary matters) into the region of the moths."

Mirandola was performed in 1821. In

that year the author became engaged to Miss Skepper, the daughter of Mrs. Basil Montagu by her first husband. Considering the way in which he spoke of his most considerable literary effort, it is anything but strange that his marriage in 1825 should have been the close of his literary career. Literature had been the pastime of his leisure, when leisure had been the whole of his life; he had neither strength nor ambition to pursue it in the intervals of business. And he turned to his business of conveyancing with an ardent appetite which left few intervals, as men often do who take up practical life late, and find they are still in time to succeed. Apparently the sense of having got hold of reality at last, just before a man's power is over, is one of the keenest enjoyments there is. Mrs. Procter says her husband never expressed so much satisfaction at any literary success as when the solicitor on the opposite side employed him because he admired his work. He took many pupils-Eliot Warburton and Kinglake among them. He sat up two nights a week to work, and lived to reflect, that if in all labor there is profit, this too is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Here are two stanzas from "Labor Improbus," published for the first time in the work before us :

In the morn are dreams of labor,
Labor still till set of sun;
Evening comes with scanty respite,
Night-and not one good is won.
Formal phrases !-barren figures!

Sentence such as steam might turn!
What, from such laborious trifling,
Can the human creature learn?

I remember hopeful visions

Since that time have fled away-
When wild autumn brought its leisure,
And the sunshine summer day;
Now unseen the river wandereth,

And the stars shine on their way;
Flowers may bloom, but I, poor laborer,
With the worn-out year decay.

One notices that what he regrets is liberty to enjoy nature rather than liberty to cultivate art. Long ago he had defended poetry on the ground that it helps better than most things to keep us near our ideal; but after all, people come nearer their ideal in a really hap py marriage.

Mr. Procter's marriage must have been very happy; and busy as he was, a really tuneful nature can always

find space for song. Mr. Procter agreed with most of his friends in regarding the English lyrics as the most permanent portion of his work. He differed from them, characteristically, in doubting whether they would really last. He rather overrated the power of fashion, and thought it hard to believe that any author could be classical when the sale began to fall off; he thought he had lived to see the end of even Wordsworth's day. Even the editor feels a need of reassuring himself against his author's selfdistrust he fortifies his own judgment with the testimonies of Landor and Mr. Swinburne; but there is really no need to go beyond the unbroken consent of the literati of fifty years. The interest of the Dramatic Scenes is purely literary, and though it is probable that good judges here and there will always be found to rate their literary merit as high as that of the English Lyrics, the time has come when they have decidedly more interest for literati than for cultivated men at large. And the English Lyrics appeal to all cultivated men, and as literati are men too, they appeal more readily than the Dramatic Scenes even to literati.

It is easier to feel the charm of the English Lyrics than to define it. We know approximately what Burns is admired for, or what Shelley is admired for. We know the sort of grace which seemed admirable in Moore, or, to come to a later reputation, we know what is the attraction of the Legends and Lyrics of Barry Cornwall's own daughter, which it seems now are selling better than any poetry but Mr. Tennyson's. But when we try to appraise the English Lyrics, it seems hard at first to get beyond praise that would do for anybody. When we have said that the sense and feeling and tune are thoroughly good and manly, and that the metre and finish are quite good enough, we have said no more than we might fairly say of any creditable fiasco of a personal friend. That is clearly not an adequate account to give of poetry which a whole generation of intelligent readers, including many like Miss Martineau, who were not easily moved, found the most moving poetry of the time. Perhaps we come a little nearer when we notice that one of the most individual traits of Mr. Procter's lyrics is a hearty

æsthetic appreciation of horseflesh and wine. When we remember how sober he was in the actual enjoyment of both, his praise of them takes the character of an escapade, and this character seems in a way to fit his lyrics as a whole, and to account for the attractiveness they have for earnest and intelligent readers in a community which is getting more complex rather than more perfect. Such readers are repelled by a systematic revolt against what is indispensable, or a systematic pursuit of what is unattainable, but a short sincere musical cry interprets and relieves their passing moods of personal discontent, and the deeper under-current of social dissatisfaction that runs through most generous lives.

One of Mr. Procter's few irrepressible convictions was that the inequalities of an old civilisation were too iniquitous to be borne without relieving them, and he quite consistently exhorted the community in verse to wholesale almsgiving, while in prose he wanted the few, who found it almost as hard as he did to be callous to distress, not to impoverish themselves to relieve the ratepayers. His own generosity took the form of secret and delicate assistance to the temporary distresses of people of his own condition. The editor has told the secret of an unasked loan of this kind to a friend whose wife was saved by the timely help, although Mr. Procter's own income had been largely reduced by his relievency from the Commission of Lunacy. In such cases he was always willing to act on the maxim qui prête donne, but it did not raise his opinion of human nature to find the maxim generally taken for granted by those he helped. There are plenty of useless people in the world who never get any good luck or deserve any, and hardly know a happy day, and yet when they excite themselves over human life in general, they say, as sincerely as they can say anything, how fine and admirable they think it all. Mr. Procter's life was full of good luck till he was over seventy, and full of good deeds till the last, and yet, whenever he got excited over human life as a whole, he always thought it a poor, sorry, contemptible thing, and said so with emphasis.

The literary character of the English Lyrics is as composite as that of the other poems. As Lord Jeffrey says in

the admirable review of the Sicilian Story, from which the editor has quoted largely, there are echoes of the cavalier poets of the usurpation; the terrible verses on the Burial Club in 1839, now printed for the first time, seem to owe their motive to Dickens; but the manner is almost an anticipation of the imitators of Browning. The Hebrew Priest's Song reads almost like a very early work of Mr. Swinburne.

Mr. Procter was too sure of perception for a critic, who had best not be much wiser than the public, so that he can sit down with them to analyse and feel his way, and we probably lost little by his being too busy to respond to Jeffrey's endeavors to secure him for the staff of the Edinburgh. But the few fragmentary recollections of contemporaries, mostly written down after he was seventy-eight, deepen the regret which the classical life of Lamb, published when he was seventy-seven, left behind, that he did not put a complete account of his literary souvenirs on record. Now and then, as in the case of Carlyle (from whom there is a beautiful letter on the life of Lamb), Mr. Procter's judgment is too straightforward to be suggestive, but in a hundred pages, more or less, there are not a few stories as good as this of Rogers. Mr. Wordsworth was breakfasting with him one morning, he said, but he was much beyond the appointed time, and excused himself by stating that he and a friend had been to see Coleridge, who had detained them by one continuous flow of talk. "How was it you called so early upon him?" inquired Rogers. "Oh!" said Wordsworth," we are going to dine with him this evening, and

"And," said Rogers, taking up the sentence, "you wanted to take the sting out of him beforehand."

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There is more than one appreciation as rare and gentle as this of Leigh Hunt, He saw hosts of writers, of less ability than himself, outstripping him on the road to future success, yet I never heard from him a word that could be construed into jealousy or envy, not even a murmur. This might have arisen partly from a want of susceptibility in his constitution, not altogether from that stern power of self-conquest which enables some men to subdue the rebellious instincts which give rise to envious 'passions. . . He had no vanity, in the usually accepted sense. of the word, I mean, that he had not that exclusive vanity which rejects all things beyond self. He gave as well as received, no man more willingly. He accepted praise less as a mark of respect from others than as a delight of which all are entitled to partake, such as spring weather, the scent of flowers, or the flavor of wine. It is difficult to explain this; it was like an absorbing property in the surface of the skin. Its possessor enjoys pleasure almost involuntarily, whilst another of colder or harder temperament is insensible to it."

When Mr. Procter spoke of pleasure, he spoke of what he knew. He had said long ago, "If life itself were not a pleasure, the utility even of its necessaries might very well be questioned." He is almost an unique example of one who without a touch of baseness deliberately and consistently preferred enjoyment to activity.-Fortnightly Review.

IT has been recognised, ever since geology has become truly a science, that the two chief powers at work in remodelling the earth's surface are fire and water. Of these powers one is in the main destructive, and the other preservative. Were it not for the earth's vulcanian energies, there can be no question that this world would long since have been rendered unfit for life, at least of higher types than we recognise among seacreatures. For at all times aqueous

causes are at work, levelling the land however slowly; and this not only by the action of sea waves at the border-line between land and water, but by the action of rain and flood over inland regions. Measuring the destructive action of water by what goes on in the lifetime of a man, or even during many successive generations, we might consider its effects very slight, even as on the other hand we might underrate the effects of the earth's internal fires, were we to limit our atten

tion to the effects of upheaval and of depression (not less preservative in the long run) during a few hundreds or thousands of years. As Lyell has remarked in his Principles of Geology, "our position as observers is essentially unfavorable when we endeavor to estimate the nature and magnitude of the changes now in progress. As dwellers on the land, we inhabit about a fourth part of the surface; and that portion is almost exclusively a theatre of decay, and not of reproduction. We know, indeed, that new deposits are annually formed in seas and lakes, and that every year some new igneous rocks are produced in the bow els of the earth, but we cannot watch the progress of their formation; and as they are only present to our minds by the aid of reflection, it requires an effort both of the reason and the imagination to appreciate duly their importance." But that they are actually of extreme importance, that in fact all the most characteristic features of our earth at present are due to the steady action of these two causes, no geologist now doubts. We propose to consider, in the present essay, one form in which the earth's aqueous energies effect the disintegration and destruction of the land. The sea destroys the land slowly but surely, by beating upon its shores and by washing away the fragments shaken down from cliffs and rocks, or the more finely divided matter abstracted from softer strata. In this work the sea is sometimes, as we have lately had occasion to note, assisted by the other form of aqueous energy, the action of rain. But in the main, the sea is the destructive agent by which shore lines are changed. The other way in which water works the destruction of land affects the interior of land regions, or only affects the shore line by removing earthy matter from the interior of continents to the mouths of great rivers, whence perhaps the action of the sea may carry it away to form shoals and sand-banks. We refer to the direct and indirect effects of the downfall of rain. All these effects, without a single exception, tend to level the surface of the earth. The mountain torrent whose color betrays the admixture of earthy fragments is carrying those fragments from a higher to lower levels. The river owes its color in like manner NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXVI., No. 1

to earth which it is carrying down to the sea level. The flood deposits in valleys matter which has been withdrawn from hill slopes.

Rainfall acts, however, in other ways, and sometimes still more effectively. The soaked slopes of great hills give way, and great landslips occur. In winter the water which has drenched the land freezes, in freezing expands, and then the earth crumbles and is ready to be carried away by fresh rains; or when dry, by the action even of the wind alone. Landslips too are brought about frequently in this way, which are even inore remarkable than those which are caused by the unaided action of heavy rainfalls.

The most energetic action of aqueous destructive forces is seen when water which has accumulated in the higher regions of some mountain district breaks its way through barriers which have long restrained it, and rushes through such channels as it can find or make for itself into valleys and plains at lower levels. Such catastrophes are fortunately not often witnessed in this country, nor when seen do they attain the same magnitude as in more mountainous countries. It would seem, indeed, as though they could attain very great proportions only in regions where a large extent of mountain. surface lies above the snow line. reason why in such regions floods are much more destructive than elsewhere will readily be perceived if we consider the phenomena of some of these terrible: catastrophes.

The

Take for instance the floods which inundated the plains of Martigny in 1818.. Early in that year it was found that the entire valley of the Bagnes, one of the largest side-valleys of the great valley of the Rhône above Geneva, had been con'verted into a lake through the damming. up of a narrow outlet by avalanches of snow and ice from a lofty glacier overhanging the bed of the river Dranse.. The temporary lake thus formed was no less than half a league in length, and more than two hundred yards wide, its greatest. depth exceeding two hundred feet. The: inhabitants perceived the terrible effects. which must follow when the barrier burst,. which it could not fail to do in the spring.. They therefore cut a gallery seven hundred feet long through the ice, while as. yet the water was at a moderate height. When the waters began to flow through

5

this channel, their action widened and deepened it considerably. At length nearly half the contents of the lake were poured off. Unfortunately, as the heat of the weather increased, the middle of the barrier slowly melted away, until it became too weak to withstand the pressure of the vast mass of water. Suddenly it gave way; and so completely that all the water in the lake rushed out in half-an-hour. The effects of this tremendous outrush of the imprisoned water were fearful. "In the course of their descent," says one account of the catastrophe, "the waters encountered several narrow gorges, and at each of these they rose to a great height, and then burst with new violence into the next basin, sweeping along forests, houses, bridges, and cultivated land." It is said by those who witnessed the passage of the flood at various parts of its course, that it resembled rather a moving mass of rock and mud than a stream of water. "Enormous masses of granite were torn out of the sides of the valleys, and whirled for hundreds of yards along the course of the flood." M. Escher, the engineer, tells us that a fragment thus whirled along was afterwards found to have a circumference of no less than sixty yards. "At first the water rushed on at a rate of more than a mile in three minutes, and the whole distance (fortyfive miles) which separates the Valley of Bagnes from the Lake of Geneva was traversed in little more than six hours. The bodies of persons who had been drowned in Martigny were found floating on the farther side of the Lake of Geneva, near Vevey. Thousands of trees were torn up by the roots, and the ruins of buildings which had been overthrown by the food were carried down beyond Martigny. In fact, the flood at this point was so high, that some of the houses in Martigny were filled with mud up to the second story."

It is to be noted respecting this remarkable flood, that its effects were greatly reduced in consequence of the efforts made by the inhabitants of the lower valleys to make an outlet for the imprisoned waters. It was calculated by M. Escher that the flood carried down 300,000 cubic feet of water every second, an outflow five times as great as that of the Rhine below Basle. But for the

drawing off of the temporary lake, the flood, as Lyell remarks, would have approached in volume some of the largest rivers in Europe. "For several months after the débâcle of 1818," says Lyell, "the Dranse, having no settled channel, shifted its position continually from one side to the other of the valley, carrying away newly erected bridges, undermining houses, and continuing to be charged with as large a quantity of earthy matter as the fluid could hold in suspension. I visited this valley four months after the flood, and was witness to the sweeping away of a bridge and the undermining of part of a house. The greater part of the ice-barrier was then standing, presenting vertical cliffs 150 feet high, like ravines in the lava-currents of Etna, or Auvergne, where they are intersected by rivers." It is worthy of special notice that inundations of similar or even greater destructiveness have occurred in the same region at former periods.

It is not, however, necessary for the destructive action of floods in mountain districts that ice and snow should assist, as in the Martigny flood. In October, 1868, the cantons of Tessin, Grisons, Uri, Valois, and St. Gall, suffered terribly from the direct [effects of heavy rainfall. The St. Gothard, Splügen, and St. Bernhardin routes were rendered impassable. In the former pass twenty-seven lives were lost, besides many horses and waggons of merchandise. On the three routes more than eighty persons in all perished. In the small village of Loderio alone, no less than fifty deaths occurred. The damage in Tessin was estimated at forty thousand pounds. In Uri and Valois large bridges were destroyed and carried away. Everything attested the levelling power of rain; a power which, when the rain is falling steadily on regions whence it as steadily flows away, we are apt to overlook.

It is not, however, necessary to go beyond our own country for evidence of the destructive action of water. We have had during the past two years very striking evidence in this respect, which need scarcely be referred to more particularly here, because it will be in the recollection of all our readers. Looking over the annals of the last half century only, we find several cases in which the power of running water in carrying away