chiefly maintained for the diversion of royalty; we now recognize and respect in it an important national engine, for the proper condition and conduct of which—as for that of the navy—a Secretary of State is directly responsible to Parliament. But a change of such magnitude has not been carried out without much peevish remonstrance and factious opposition on the part of the many whose patronage it has diminished, and whose power it has curtailed; and there are still not a few who offer what opposition they dare to its harmonious consummation.
It is to be feared that a slight leaven of the same spirit which, sixty years ago, wasted the resources and paralyzed the energies of this powerful nation, may, perchance, still linger around the precincts of Whitehall and St. James's,—and it is not impossible that when the Smith and Elder of the twentieth century present to the public their first editions of the Panmure Papers and the Herbert Memoirs, facts, bearing on the disasters of the Crimean war, and on the invasion panic of 1859-60, may for the first time be made known—not entirely different from those with which we have recently become acquainted through The Cornwallis Correspondence.
To Goldenhair.
(FROM HORACE.)
Ah, Pyrrha—tell me, whose the happy lot
To woo thee on a couch of lavish roses—
Who, bathed in odorous dews, in his fond arms encloses
Thee, in some happy grot?
For whom those nets of golden-gloried hair
Dost thou entwine in cunning carelessnesses?
Alas, poor boy! Who thee, in fond belief, caresses
Deeming thee wholly fair!
How oft shall he thy fickleness bemoan,
When fair to foul shall change—and he, unskilful
In pilotage, beholds—with tempests wildly wilful—
The happy calm o'erthrown!
He, who now hopes that thou wilt ever prove
All void of care, and full of fond endearing,
Knows not that varies more, than Zephyrs ever-veering,
The fickle breath of Love.
Ah, hapless he, to whom, like seas untried,
Thou seemest fair! That my sea-going's ended
My votive tablet proves, to those dark Gods suspended,
Who o'er the waves preside.
Thomas Hood.
