PHILO.

[1] Here is a stump of wood which denotes the grave of Major Labelliere, a deranged officer of the Marines, who, by his own request was buried on this spot, with his head downwards; it being a constant assertion with him, “that the world was turned topsy-turvy, and, therefore, at the end he should be right.”

From this point may be seen Leith Hill, with an old prospect tower, within which are interred the remains of another eccentric gentleman who died in the neighbourhood.  In the road from Dorking thence is Wotton, the family seat of the Evelyns.

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NOTES OF A READER

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER AND OTHER POEMS.

We usually leave criticism to the grey-beards, or such as have passed the viginti annorum lucubrationes of reviewing.  It kindles so many little heart-burnings and jealousies, that we rejoice it is not part of our duty.  To be sure, we sometimes take up a book in real earnest, read it through, and have our say upon its merits; but this is only a gratuitous and occasional freak, just to keep up our oracular consequence.  In the present case, we do not feel disposed to exercise this privilege, further than in a very few words—­merely to say that Mr. Robert Montgomery has published a volume of Poems under the above title—­that the poems are of unequal merit, and that like Virgil, his excellence lies in describing scenes of darkness.

The “Universal Prayer” is a devotional outpouring of a truly poetical soul, with as much new imagery as the subject would admit; and if scriptural poems be estimated in the ratio of scriptural sermons, the merit of the former is of the first order.[2]

From the other poems we have detached the following beautiful specimens:—­

CONSUMPTION.

  With step as noiseless as the summer air,
  Who comes in beautiful decay?—­her eyes
  Dissolving with a feverish glow of light,
  Her nostrils delicately closed, and on
  Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip
  Of Beauty’s finger faintly press’d it there,—­
  Alas!  Consumption is her name. 
  Thou loved and loving one! 
  From the dark languish of thy liquid eye,
  So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray
  Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom;
  And on thy placid cheek there is a print
  Of death,—­the beauty of consumption there. 
  Few note that fatal bloom; for bless’d by all,
  Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life,
  Of one,—­the darling of a thousand hearts. 
  Yet in the chamber, o’er some graceful task
  When delicately bending, oft unseen,
  Thy mother marks then with that musing glance
  That looks through cunning time, and sees thee stretch’d
  A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb. 
  The Day is come, led gently on by Death;