His hopes are vain; he is removed thither only to die; but Alma, now advanced in years, yet pure, sweet, and spiritual as before, comes to wait upon her ancient lover, and-drinking forgiveness and consolation from her lips-Adam Homo, amid the memories of the happier past, expires. The embrace of Alma's affection sanctifies the moment of the worldling's departure, as it had sanctified, many years ago, the hours of his less selfish youth; and it is this very affection of Alma, which, on the whole, imparts the element of perennial vitality to Paludan-Müller's poem. So that, in a twofold sense, we have thus the sweetest and most perfect commentary on the great Swedish brother-poet's pregnant and suggestive lines: To all things else the sun beneath But the kiss of love and the kiss of death Alma herself does not long survive the deceased, and the deep pathos of the closing scene in her earthly tragedy makes the passage in which it is described one of the finest portions of the work. This, however, is only the beginning of the end. With a daring that would be utterly unpardonable in any one endowed with less than the author's genius, Paludan-Müller follows the fortunes of his hero even into the shadows of the future world. He has ventured to draw aside the curtain that veils from mortal ken the everlasting mystery, and show us the departed spirit arraigned at the Divine Judge's bar. Many may charge such conduct on the part of the author with irreverence, and wish that he had contented himself with the completion of Adam Homo's merely terrestrial career. To our mind, the accusation of irreverence appears unfounded, and the conclusion in the eternal world, when taken in its intimate and natural reference to the character of the whole poem, seems thoroughly to harmonise therewith, and to form an appropriate and noble close. We have not a little here that reminds us of the last scene in the second part of "Faust," yet, with resemblance in the general principle, enough of diversity remains to vindicate-and that in the most successful fashion-the self-subsistent originality of the Danish poet. As Gretchen's love draws upwards to the heavenly regions the soul of Faust, when freed from the dross of lingering earthly elements, so Alma's love pioneers, for Adam Homo's spirit, the way to the celestial glories. But, with a depth of beautiful significance which, in our opinion, surpasses even the marvellous symbolism of Goethe, Paludan-Müller brings Alma down from the blessedness of saints and angels in order that she may rescue her beloved from woe by walking at his side through the midst of the purifying fires. Along with him she rejoicingly suffers, that he may be saved from the abyss; and, as the furnace of that cleansing flame * Ty hvarje stund i dödligheten Af tiden mäts och har sin gräns, De äro barn af evigheten.-ES. TEGNER. † Curious it is to remark how two Protestant poets, both Paludan-Müller and Goethe (for the latter, in the broad sense of the words, can alone be rightly styled a Protestant poet), have had recourse to the Roman Catholic church for the symbolic imagery at the conclusion of their respective poems. The one has availed himself of the poetical element inherent in the idea of purgatory; the other, of that in the worship of the Virgin. Aug.-VOL. CXXXIV. NO. DXXXVI. 2 D opens to receive them, as the dark forms at its portal flock in wonder round the strangely-mated pair, and as the worldly, sinful soul, borne up by the white-robed seraph-on whose brow still rest the traces of the old earthly beauty, ripened into far richer perfection now by the golden suns of heaven-fades away in the lurid distance, while the choir of the purified spirits bursts forth in the grand song with which the book concludes, we feel that immortal Love has triumphed, and we know that on that ghastly pathway through the sanctifying fires will break at last the soft sweet splendour of the celestial dawn. A large part of the concluding section of the work is occupied with Alma's poems, found in her repositories after her death, and given in chronological order to the readercommencing with those composed by her when she first learned Adam Homo's faithlessness, and ending with those she wrote after years of solitude and reverie had restored to her mind its early calm. In the first class-entitled "Lyric Poems," and couched chiefly in the sonnet form— are many very beautiful pieces, breathing a spirit completely in accordance with that of their supposed authoress. We present one, taken quite at random, as a specimen : How brief a summer has our northern clime! Sweet summer's coming!"-'tis the common chime But summer-dreams within us wake again, It is in the second class, entitled "Religious Contemplations," that we find what has been already described as the crowning defect of the whole poem. Some of the compositions, forming this second class, evince, it may freely be conceded, much blended power and sweetness, and successfully appeal at once to the spiritual element in the hearts of all readers, of whatever creed. The following sonnet, for example, just because it has in it less of the purely dogmatic than many of the rest, is marked by a quaint and peculiar beauty : In the celestial mansions of the blest, Where all our time and all our strivings close, To mar its course divine, but tide-like flows Recovery of the Remains of Dr. Hamell's lost Guides. 395 Still the greater number, while perhaps pwvâvra ovverÔto-congenial to a select few-are to ourselves, for the most part, unintelligible, and we should suppose will be equally so to the majority of the persons who peruse them. Nay, further, it seems a complete poetical mistake to represent such verses as the work of the old gardener's simple-hearted daughter. The lustrous image of the Alma we knew before-lustrous from its strange combination of fresh, fair, budding womanhood, with ethereal spirituality is lost to our view in a cloud of misty religious metaphysics. Can it be, we ask astonished, that Alma, through the long years of sorrow and desertion, has drawn her only religious sustenance from the dry husks of dogmatical theology, and that Schleiermacher's "Glaubenslehre," and Hagenbach's "Dogmengeschichte," have been the pabulum which supported this devout, this loving, this tender soul? Impossible, is the instinctive rejoinder. A violation of the principles of poetic art has been certainly committed in the fact to which we now allude; and the marvel seems, that any one so pre-eminently a poetic artist as PaludanMüller undoubtedly is, should have been guilty of an error that so sadly injures the significance and mars the symmetry of his poem. Into the question of the "orthodoxy" or "heterodoxy" of these singular productions it is not our intention, because it is neither our wish nor our province, to enter. With creeds as creeds, true poetry has nothing in the world to do, and we gladly pass from the contemplation of the chief blemish, on a large scale, that defaces the fair features of PaludanMüller's noble work. Enough has been advanced, we hope, in the preceding pages, to prove the extensive range and rich significance of "Adam Homo" as a genuine product of poetic art, and to show that the Scandinavian muse speeds onwards in the race of song with no unequal step behind her German and English sisters, inasmuch as we thus owe to a Dane what may with justice be denominated one, at least, of the great poems of the nineteenth century. J. J. RECOVERY OF THE REMAINS OF DR. HAMELL'S LOST TO THE EDITOR OF THE "NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE." DURING last summer, while on the Glacier des Bossons, my guides and myself discovered a leg of one of the three guides who perished in 1820 in making the ascent of Mont Blanc with Dr. Hamell, and of whose remains portions have been found on the lower part of the glacier during the last few years. One thing in respect to the limb, which was undoubtedly that of Pierre Carrière, from its dimensions, as he was known to be a large and powerful man, is worthy of remark—namely, that, making every allowance for the leg being that of an unusually large man, it was, in the opinion of myself and of my guides (Jean Marie Couttét and Mark 396 Recovery of the Remains of Dr. Hamell's lost Guides. Tiarraz), heavier than it could have been when the poor fellow was living. We were each of us decidedly of this opinion. We might, of course, be wrong, but it would be difficult to persuade me to the contrary. The leg was cut off just above the knee-joint, at that part of the bone known as the os femoris, which was the part that protruded from the ice. The ice, like that on the lower part of all glaciers, was extremely hard, and it was not without some difficulty that my guides cut out the leg. At first we were ignorant what sad human fragment it might be; but, as they proceeded to cut it out, the appearance of the foot soon settled that point. The limb, though shrunk (from great pressure, I imagine), was nevertheless completely preserved. The skin remained upon it en tire, and the nails and the toes were perfect, as much so as those of any living man. The foot was twisted quite round at the tarsus, or instep, the bones there being apparently broken, as it came back to its proper position with little or no force, and was apparently held together by the skin. I did not myself perceive any disagreeable odour from the limb, but after it had been exposed a short time, my guides did; or (which I think more probable) fancied they did. The sun was very hot at intervals; "so foul and fair a day" I have seldom seen, inasmuch as we were caught in very bad weather on the glacier. It was not until we got off the ice that we could in any way protect the limb; but as soon as we reached vegetation we cut off small branches of trees, and carefully guarded it from the rays of the sun. We had a longish trudge homewards with it to Chamounix, each taking our turn in carrying the leg, which we did by securing it at the end of our batons, and placing it across our shoulders. I should have left this operation entirely to my guides, but I found (greatly to their credit) they were both affected by the incident, so much so that I began to wish I had left the leg where I found it, and suggested burying it in the heart of the forest, or lowering it into the roaring torrent alongside of us. But Couttét, with great good feeling, was for taking it to Chamounix. Poor Mark declared he could not carry it any farther, or touch it again upon any account, neither did he. It was this that made me try to set the example, which Couttét willingly followed, and carried it himself afterwards the whole distance. It threw us all off our feed for two or three days together. The limb, as stated in the procès verbal, was buried in the earth in one common grave with other portions of the three bodies. The commissionnaire spécial who attended at the grave, with a large number of people who had collected, stated that some of those melancholy relics which had been deposited in that grave two, and even three years ago, were still in the same perfect state of preservation as the day upon which they were taken out of the ice. I did not satisfy myself upon this point, but if it be the fact it is not without interest. I have from time to time, during the last three years, found various fragments of clothing on the Glacier des Bossons when with Couttét. Some of them, however, I discovered much higher up. These, indeed, were the first we ever noticed; and when we found these fragments it did not occur to us that they were those of the lost guides. A PRIVATE, LATE 38TH (ARTISTS). WOODBURY. BY MRS. BUSHBY. PART THE TWELFTH. I. UNE CHUTE. BETWEEN two and three months had elapsed since the departure of Captain Howard, and Woodbury and its neighbourhood had fallen back for some time into their usual quiet-a quiet which Madeleine, not without some reason, called "stupidity." The Mackenzies had returned, after a visit of a few weeks at Barwell Lodge, to their Highland home; Juliet had gone back to school, and Mr. and Mrs. De Vere were comfortably settled in the pretty parsonage which was to be their future domicile. The Joliffes were away paying visits to some of their friends, so were two or three other families in the neighbourhood, therefore even more than usual tranquillity prevailed in the vicinity of the village of Woodbury; there was only one exception, and that was Mrs. Percy's tongue, which, like an unextinguished volcano, remained in constant activity. It would have been an advantage to the locality if that dame had been, as the song says, Dumb, dumb, dumb. But she was not dumb, neither was she deaf, nor blind; indeed, her senses were extraordinarily acute, for she saw and heard more than any one else. Mrs. Percy, for want of better employment for her redundant energy, had turned her attention towards the Percival family. She had ferreted out Miss Stuart's refusal of Captain Howard, and had wondered much thereat. "There must be a reason for her refusing him," she said to herself, and also to her reverend spouse. "Did ever anybody hear of a girl who had not a penny refusing a man worth twenty thousand pounds? And you know, Prony, as you were present when old Montague's will was read, that he left his nephew Edgar that sum. It was very strange that he did not leave his favourite nephew more. Of course that was Mrs. Percival's doing; they say still water runs deep,' and though she looks as if butter could not melt in her mouth,' I'll be bound she tampered to some purpose with the old man. What can be that girl Stuart's reason for refusing Captain Howard, Prony?" "Mrs. Percy, when you choose to address me, be so good as to call me Mr. Percy;' that is more befitting my age and my position than -faugh! Prony! I am neither a stable-boy, nor a charity-school scholar." "Good lord, Pro-Mr. Percy! what does it signify what I call you when we are alone together? Do get yourself made a D.D., then I can always call you Doctor, which will be a great comfort to me. They did say," she continued, "that Captain St. George admired Miss Stuart |