But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:
By one and one the bolts full easy slide:

The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago

These lovers fled away into the storm."

We are here admitted into the very interior of the palatial mansion; we see the fond pair descending the staircase with bated breath and palpitating heart— we watch them stealthily stealing across the hall, in consternation lest the Porter, awakening from his drowsy stupor, should sound alarm, and place an interdict on their egress-we hear the key creaking in the sullen lock, and, as the door swings slowly and heavily back, we cower instinctively 'neath the blast of the pelting and pitiless storm that raves around. The effect altogether, as our friends across the Channel would say, is excellent.

The "Athenæum," though a journal often remarkable for sour critiques, pronounced as its fiat on the appearance, if I mistake not, of "Aurora Leigh," that its authoress, ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, was the best Poetess that has ever diffused a halo of radiance over the literature of our country. This opinion would

seem to have been entertained by the gifted but hapless EDGAR ALLAN POE, the American writer (many of whose prose-fictions might well have been indited 'neath the gloomy boughs of cypress and of yew, by some unearthly pencil), for, the collected edition of his poetical works he dedicates to that lady, whom he addresses as "the noblest of her sex." And I must solicit your indulgence if, fully coinciding with, and prepared to endorse that verdict, as it were, I give a more lengthened recitation than the previous ones from her exquisite verses, "The Romaunt of Margret"; a poem which has always affected me much, and the vigour of which is no less distinct and pointed than its pathos: its rhythmical flow is voluptuous in the extreme:

"Now reach my harp from off the wall
Where shines the sun aslant!

The sun may shine, and we be cold-
O harken, loving hearts and bold,
Unto my wild romaunt."

The Lady Margret is represented as sitting by a river at night-a calm star-lit night-when, on the sudden, her shadow, that had previously reposed tranquil on the placid stream, assumes a semblance of separate

existence, and places itself in the same sitting posture

at her side. It tells her,

"The like may sway the like,

By which mysterious law

Mine eyes from thine and my lips from thine
The light and breath may draw."

It however concedes to Margret,

"Yet go with light and life,

If that thou lovest one

In all the earth, who loveth thee
As truly as the sun."

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The lady enumerates her knightly brother, and her little sister who wears the look" their "mother wore, both of whom are represented, with bitter mockery, to be selfish and unsincere. Margret next instances her proud, old, stately father, the baron, who, in her belief, really loved his daughter; and another who adored her, and was adored in return, with all the fervid intensity of woman's passion! 'T is now that we arrive at the melting tenderness and sad solemnity of this effusion of true poetic prowess: the stamp of sorrow is indeed upon it, as cypress hung over the doors of a house among the ancients when a death had happened there:

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The lady did not heed

The withering on the bough:

Still calm her smile, albeit the while

A little pale her brow.

'I have a father old,

The lord of ancient halls;

An hundred friends are in his court,

Yet only me he calls.

'An hundred knights are in his court,

Yet read I by his knee;

And when forth they go to the tourney show

I rise not up to see.

'Tis a weary book to read;

My tryst 's at set of sun;

But loving and dear beneath the stars

Is his blessing when I've done.'

IT trembled on the grass

With a low shadowy laughter;

And moon and star, though bright and far,

Did shrink and darken after.

High lord thy father is!

But better loveth he

His ancient halls than his hundred friends,

His ancient halls than thee.'

The lady did not heed

That the far stars did fail:

Still calm her smile, albeit the while.

Nay, but she is not pale!

'I have a more than friend

Across the mountains dim: No other's voice is soft to me, Unless it nameth him.

Though louder beats mine heart,
I know his tread again,

And his far plume aye, unless turned away,
For the tears do blind me then.

We brake no gold, a sign

Of stronger faith to be,

But I wear his last look in my soul,

Which said, I love but thee!'

IT trembled on the grass

With a low shadowy laughter;

And the wind did toll, as a passing soul
Were sped by church-bell after;

And shadows, 'stead of light,

Fell from the stars above,

In flakes of darkness on her face,
Still bright with trusting love.