"For Sir Ralph he is hardy and mickle of might, _Ha_, _la belle blanche aubepine_! And his love shall ungirdle his sword to-night, _Honneur a la belle Isoline_!" Such is the romantic, esoteric, old French way of saying-- "Hark, 'tis the troubadour Breathing her name Under the battlement Softly he came, Singing, "From Palestine Hither I come. Lady love! Lady love! Welcome me home!" The moral of all this is that minor poetry has its fashions, and that the butterfly Bayly could versify very successfully in the fashion of a time simpler and less pedantic than our own. On the whole, minor poetry for minor poetry, this artless singer, piping his native drawing-room notes, gave a great deal of perfectly harmless, if highly uncultivated, enjoyment. It must not be fancied that Mr. Bayly had only one string to his bow--or, rather, to his lyre. He wrote a great deal, to be sure, about the passion of love, which Count Tolstoi thinks we make too much of. He did not dream that the affairs of the heart should be regulated by the State--by the Permanent Secretary of the Marriage Office. That is what we are coming to, of course, unless the enthusiasts of "free love" and "go away as you please" failed with their little programme. No doubt there would be poetry if the State regulated or left wholly unregulated the affections of the future. Mr. Bayly, living in other times, among other manners, piped of the hard tyranny of a mother: "We met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me. He came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me. He spoke, his words were cold, and his smile was unaltered, I knew how much he felt, for his deep-toned voice faltered. I wore my bridal robe, and I rivalled its whiteness; Bright gems were in my hair,--how I hated their brightness! He called me by my name as the bride of another. Oh, thou hast been the cause of this anguish, my mother!" In future, when the reformers of marriage have had their way, we shall read: "The world may think me gay, for I bow to my fate; But thou hast been the cause of my anguish, O State!" For even when true love is regulated by the County Council or the village community, it will still persist in not running smooth. Of these passions, then, Mr. Bayly could chant; but let us remember that he could also dally with old romance, that he wrote: "The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall." When the bride unluckily got into the ancient chest, "It closed with a spring. And, dreadful doom, The bride lay clasped in her living tomb," so that her lover "mourned for his fairy bride," and never found out her premature casket. This was true romance as understood when Peel was consul. Mr. Bayly was rarely political; but he commemorated the heroes of Waterloo, our last victory worth mentioning: