The clan was bereft! the old walls they left; With cries they rushed to the mountains drear. But now great sorrow their heart has cleft;-- See, one by one they are drawing near! Ululah! Ululah! Low, sing low! The flakes fall fast on the little bier;-- The yew-branch and eagle-plume over them throw! The last of the Desmond chiefs lies here." We close, far from completing our sketch of the poet. We have not exhausted the volumes before us, and they do not exhaust their author. De Vere has written several other books, mostly of early date--from 1843 to 1850--which one must read to know him entirely. But we are very sure that those who will read the books from which we have drawn our illustrations will read all. There are few authors who grow so upon the reader. Somehow the force and beauty of the thoughts do not impress at first. We think the rationale of the process is that we mostly begin by reading three parts of sound to one of sense. After the melody comes the harmony; gradually, on after-reading, the glitter of the words ceases to dazzle, and then, if ever, we commune mind to mind with the author. This is as rare with modern readers as a hand-to hand bayonet fight in modern battles. Now Aubrey de Vere writes a great deal of thought so very quietly, that we miss the cackling which even talent nowadays is apt to indulge in on laying any supposed golden eggs of wisdom. Hence we have some singular opinions about him. One finds him cold and impassible; another votes him a sort of gentlemanly Fenian visionary, while a third devotes a column of one of our best hypercritical periodicals to viewing him as a mere love-poet. These are all windfall opinions, which had been better ripening on the tree. The grace, the rhythm, and, above all, the stern ascendency of truthful exactness over inaccurate felicities of expression, strike one constantly more and more. We have ourselves passed through these phases of opinion, besides several others; but every day fortifies our final conviction. It is, that Aubrey de Vere is one of those true poets whom the few love well; who will always have admirers, never popularity; and who must wait for his full fame until that distant but coming day when blind, deep movements of unity shall thrill the sects of Christendom, and bigotry no longer veil from the gifted and appreciative the merits of the first Catholic poet of to-day. -------- {87} From The Lamp. UNCONVICTED; OR, OLD THORNELEY'S HEIRS. CHAPTER X. UNCONVICTED!