Nevertheless, there is a vividness—­a freshness—­and altogether a superior interest, in all the details which must render “The King’s Secret” a favourite work with the fiction-and-fact-reading public.  The scenes are so complicated in their interest, that it is scarcely possible to detach an extract.

In the early part of the first volume occurs a passage relative to the resistance of the people of Ghent to the oppression of their rulers, which smacks strongly of the enthusiasm of liberty.

“Whilst impelled on the one hand by the strong desire to regulate the arbitrary and oppressive exactions, which cramped their energies and held them for ever at the mercy of their despot’s caprice, and restrained on the other hand by their habitual reverence for their feudal princes.  Artevelde stepped forth, and in their startled ears pronounced the word “Resist!” His eloquence was well seconded by the grasping severity of a needy and extravagant court, until gradually combining their wrath and intelligence with the energies of the populace jealous of their rights, the merchants and citizens of the cities of Flanders rose upon the bears and butterflies who infested and robbed them, and, thrusting them forth, set modern Europe the first fearful example of a people’s strength, and the rottenness of the wooden gods for whom they laboured.  Whilst princes, on their parts, learned a lesson they have not since forgotten or ever ceased to practise, and combining their hosts of slaves, lashed them onward to scare this stranger, Freedom, from the earth, even as in our times of intelligence they have done, and will do; and the brainless slaves, so lashed, shouted and went forward to the murderous work which rivetted their own fetters, even as in our time they have done, and will again do in times to come.”

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

TWENTY YEARS.

BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

  They tell me twenty years are past
  Since I have look’d upon thee last,
  And thought thee fairest of the fair,
  With thy sylph-like form and light-brown hair! 
  I can remember every word
  That from those smiling lips I heard: 
  Oh! how little it appears
  Like the lapse of twenty years.

  Thou art changed! in thee I find
  Beauty of another kind;
  Those rich curls lie on thy brow
  In a darker cluster now;
  And the sylph hath given place
  To the matron’s form of grace.—­
  Yet how little it appears
  Like the lapse of twenty years.

  Still thy cheek is round and fair;
  ’Mid thy curls not one grey hair;
  Not one lurking sorrow lies
  In the lustre of those eyes: 
  Thou hast felt, since last we met,
  No affliction, no regret! 
  Wonderful! to shed no tears
  In the lapse of twenty years.