VIRGINS. Fairest of women! what is thy beloved That we receive so strict a charge from thee? BRIDE. Fair is he with his cheeks of ruddy hue, His cheeks like garden-beds, which spice-flowers fill; His hands like rings of gold, inlaid and bright And like the cedar-trees which grow thereon; And he is altogether loveliness. This is my own beloved, my precious gem, My partner, daughters of Jerusalem! VIRGINS. Fairest of women! whitherward went he? Thy love, thy partner, will we seek with thee. BRIDE (recollecting where he has probably retired). He to his garden went, within the bowers To feed, and from the beds to gather flowers. I am all his; he dearly loveth me; Among the garden lilies feedeth he. BRIDEGROOM (who meets them going to the garden). Fair as Jerusalem art thou to sight, And beautiful as Tirzah, my delight; And dazzling as an army's bright array, With streaming banners marching on the way. Oh, turn aside thy tender eyes, my fair; They have o'ercome me; and thy clustering hair And threescore queens and fourscore concubines; The only one, the choice one of her mother. The virgins saw her, and pronounced her blest; SCENE VI. BRIDE, VIRGINS, Bridegroom, and his COMPANIONS. BRIDE. I to my sheltered garden went, to view COMPANIONS. Return, Salome! turn, that we may see BRIDE. Why would you see Salome? why with song VIRGINS (having withdrawn with the Bride into a pavilion, they begin to undress her). How beautiful thy feet are in thy shoon! Looking towards Damascus; on thy neck But while the beauties of his queen we sing, BRIDEGROOM (entering the pavilion). BRIDE. Let my speech ever flow for thee like wine, Soft, sweet, and sparkling-I am wholly thine. And mark what blossom 'mid the green appears, SCENE VII. Bride, VirginS, BRIDEGROOM, Vine-dressers. VIRGINS. Who cometh from the wild in beauty's sheen, BRIDEGROOM. When thou wert outcast, and none pitied thee, BRIDE. Oh! set me as a signet on thy heart, And on thine arm-thence never more to part. BRIDEGROOM. Yea, love is strong as death, strong as the gates BRIDE. We have a little sister, small and lean, BRIDEGROOM. She is a wall- and on it there shall be BRIDE. I am a wall, provided with the towers; ONE OF THE VINE-DRESSERS. Oh! thou in sweetness all the sweets excelling, BRIDE. Make haste, my partner, hasten unto me; No. VIII. A SONG OF LOVES. As the clear water from a shady spring, Gush from my heart my love-thoughts of the King; Fairer than human! love and grace divine Flow in thy mouth — God's blessing ever thine! True, meek, and righteous, ride and prosper thou! Thy robes are fragrant from the sweets they fling, And on thy right hand sits thy chief delight, Hearken, O daughter! for thy gracious spouse Forget thy people and thy father's house. The daughter of the King is pure and true, In golden garments radiant to the view. Dressed in her robes with broidering needles wrought, She with her virgins shall to thee be brought. With gladness comes the pomp in royal state, Enters, rejoicing, at the palace-gate. From thee shall princely sons derive their birth, THE RELIQUES OF FATHER PROUT, LATE PARISH PRIEST OF WATERGRASSHILL, IN THE COUNTY CORK, IRELAND. COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY US; ILLUSTRATED AND LAMPLIGHTED BY ALFRED CROQUIS, ESQ. 2 VOLS. 8vo. "An infallible cure for the Maw-worms.-Poti fortis quartum unum, rowlorum brownorum ad minimum tres: his addatur butyri culinaris quantum valeat duos denarios, cum bunsho radishorum vel WATERGRASSI."- SWIFT, Tripos, Act I. Scorr's Edition, vol. iv. p. 231. THE thinking portion of the public must have felt considerable uneasiness, and the rest of mankind lost itself in vain conjecture, to account for the glaring fact of our having for several months back stopped the supplies from Watergrasshill, and discontinued our accustomed issues of Prout Paper. It were hard, in sooth, to cloak so obvious a deficit in the economy of our immortal Magazine; and we therefore fain admit that, as far as these valuable documents are concerned, REGINA hath since November last exhibited what scientific men are agreed to denominate "a solution of continuity"-while grammarians describe such appearance by the established formula," hiatus valde deflendus”—the same being called by Lady Morgan "a hole in the ballad." No doubt Glorvina's vernacular phraseology properly describes the true nature of the case: nor can we account for the circumstance otherwise than by laying the blame on a Fraserian, who went off last autumn to Italy, taking with him the key of the chest. A gaping void was thus occasioned in the periodical literature of the land—an awful chasm, to fill up which no "Roman" has been found willing to devote himself to the infernal gods. Our known abhorrence of forgery, in all its branches, has prevented us from applying to the smiths (James or Horace). The coffer has remained unopened, and the vacuum unclosed. Even had we been disposed to practise an imposition on the public, the thing, in this instance, were impossible, Prout's chest and its contents being matters apart and unique: nor could to personate successfully our vieur de la montagne. To bend the bow of Ulysses, to wield the gridiron of Cobbett, to revive the sacred pigeon of Mahomet, to reinflate the bagpipe of Ossian, to reproduce the meal-tub of Titus Oates, or (when Dan goes to his long account) to get up a begging-box, must necessarily be hopeless speculations. Under the management of the original and creative genius these contrivances may work well; but they invariably fail in the hands of copyists or imitators. This affords us a desirable opportunity of animadverting on the erroneous theories of a new weekly periodical called Fraser's Literary Chronicle, in the fifth number of which appeared a polyglott" Lament of all Nations on the Death of the late Mr. Simpson," the renowned Master of Ceremonies at Vauxhall. In the cecumenic grief for Simpson we cordially concur - great men are in fact becoming every day more scarce among us— "We are fallen on evil days;— Star after star decays;" but we cannot approve of the arrangement proposed for supplying the deficiency. Not attending to the fact, that a truly original character can have no successor in whatever peculiar department of excellence he has made his own, this imaginative chroniqueur has indulged in the fanciful contemplation of various personages undertaking to fill the vacant office; and finally hits, with curious infelicity, on a ci-devant Lord High Chancellor of England, as |