When first reviewers teamed to show Their judgment without mercy; When Blackwood was as young and lithe As now he’s old and pursy; When Gifford, Jeffrey, and their clan, Could fix an author’s doom, And Keats was taught how well they knew To kill _à coup de plume_. Few womenfolk were rushing then To the Parnassian mount, And seldom was a teacup dipped In the Castalian fount; Apollo kept no _pursuivant_, To cry out “_Place aux Dames_:” In life’s round game they held GOOD _hands_, And didn’t strive for _palms_. Oh! the world will never be again What it was when we were young, And shattered are the idols now To which our boyhood clung; Gone are the _giants_ of those days, For whom our wreaths we twined, And _pigmies_ now _kick up a dust_ To show the _march of mind_. * * * * * THE GIPSY QUEEN. BY JOSEPH R. CHANDLER. [SEE ENGRAVING.] Power, consequence, importance, greatness, are relative terms; they denote position or attainment, comparable with some other. And hence a queen is a queen at the head of a band of gipsies as much as if she sat upon a throne, at the head of a nation whose morning drum beats an eternal _reveille_. It was therefore, and for another cause yet to be told, that I lifted my hat with particular deference when I opened suddenly upon the head woman of a gipsy tribe, as I was passing through a small piece of woodland. Though, truth to say, I had been looking at her for some time, an hour previous, as she was giving some directions to one or two of her ragged and dirty train. Now I had known that woman in other circumstances. I had seen her in the family, had heard her commended by the men for her graceful movements, and berated by the women for exhibiting those movements to the men, and being as free with her tongue in presence of her female superiors as she had been with her feet before her male admirers. But neither the admiration of the men nor the rebuke of the women produced any effect. All that this woman received from a long sojourn with the people of the village, was a little loss of the darkness of the skin, and a pretty good understanding of the wants and weaknesses of society. Everybody knew that she had been left in exchange for a healthful child—and some years before it had been discovered that the healthful child would be worth nothing to the gipsies, and the gipsy girl would, at the first opportunity, return to her “brethren and kindred according to the flesh.” And such was the skill which she manifested on her return, such her ability to direct,