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the statesman, Walpole; are all most graphically given in their circumstantial details, and most accurately wrought out in their varied combinations.
With the other beings of the author's mind, excepting Walter Maynard, we cannot now linger, as we have elsewhere commented on the melancholy history of Lady Marchmont; while for Ethel Churchill and Norborne Courtenaye, we feel from the first an irresistible conviction that we shall somehow leave them comfortably together; there is nothing in either to excite our strongest sympathies. These are called forth by Walter Maynard, the gifted, the enthusiastic, but unfortunate young poet, who is, perhaps, mentally, but too often, a true type of his class.
A sad, yet faithful tale, indeed, is contained in the page of human history which we have now opened; its picture of a literary life is so fraught with truth and beauty, with knowledge and feeling, that we cannot refrain from examining it somewhat minutely, while we embody our quotations from these volumes as illustrations of the mental character and outward history of the young poet.
Walter Maynard is first introduced among the still valleys of his youthful home, where, though apparently leading a desultory life, he was storing his mind with materials for the future productions of a creative and poetical mind. His reflections are the natural results of his own hopes and dreams of fame's charmed futurity.
"Ay," said he, while musing over the tombstones of a village churchyard, "this rude verse long outlasts those for whom it was written. The writer, the reader, the sorrow which it embalmed have long past away; not so the verse itself. Poetry is the immortality of earth; where shall we look for our noblest thoughts and our tenderest feelings, but in its eternal
