Themselves will fade, But not their memory; And memory has the power To recreate them from the dust. They remind me, too, Of martyred Dorothea, Who, from celestial gardens, sent Flowers as her witnesses To him who scoffed and doubted. ELSIE. Do you know the story Of Christ and the Sultan's daughter? That is the prettiest legend of them all. PRINCE HENRY. Then tell it to me; But first come hither. Lay the flowers down beside me, And put thy hands in mine. Now, tell me the story." This, whatever else it may be, has certainly no pretensions to the name of verse. Occasionally, whilst retaining rhyme and the semblance of metre, Mr Longfellow is betrayed into great extravagance. What plea of justification can be urged in behalf of the construction of the following lines, which are put into the mouth of Lucifer?-- "My being here is accidental; The storm, that against yon casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither astonished nor dismayed me. And I hastened hither, though late in the night, To proffer my aid!" We are almost tempted to say, with old Mr Osbaldistone, that the bellman makes better verses: certainly he could hardly construct more dislocated specimens of versification than these. Sometimes, even when revelling in the luxuriance of verse, Mr Longfellow commits strange improprieties. To the structure and music of the lines which we shall now transcribe, no abstract objection need be stated, though such objection could be found; but they are terribly out of place in a poem of this kind, and inconsistent with its general structure. An eclogue after the manner of Virgil or Theocritus would hardly appear more incongruous if introduced in the middle of a Shakspearean drama-- ELSIE. "Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring! PRINCE HENRY. This life of ours is a wild æolian harp of many a joyous strain, But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain. ELSIE. Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma. PRINCE HENRY. Man is selfish, and seeketh pleasure with little care of what may betide; Else why am I travelling here beside thee, a demon that rides by an angel's side?" We were wrong in limiting our remark to the incongruity. To such verse as this, if verse it can be termed, there are serious objections. We presume it is constructed on some rhythmical principle; but what that principle may be, we defy any living artist to discover.