sense.
Impertinent and flippant, I was universally hailed an original and a wit.
But the most remarkable incident was, that the baroness and myself became
the greatest friends. I was her constant attendant, and rehearsed to her
flattered ear all my evening performance. She was the person with whom I
practised, and as she had a taste in dress, I encouraged her opinions.
Unconscious that she was at once my lay figure and my mirror, she loaded
me with presents, and announced to all her coterie, that I was the most
delightful young man of her acquaintance.

From all this it may easily be suspected, that at the age of fifteen I had
unexpectedly become one of the most affected, conceited, and intolerable
atoms that ever peopled the sunbeam of society.

* * * * *

[This gem is from a volume of Songs and other small Poems, by Barry
Cornwall. It is one of the prettiest poetical _bijoux_ of the season, and
shall receive more attention in our next.]

PETITION TO TIME.

Touch us gently, Time!
Let us glide adown thy stream
Gently,--as we sometimes glide
Through a quiet dream!
Humble voyagers are We,
Husband, wife, and children three--
(One is lost,--an angel, fled
To the azure overhead!)

Touch us gently, Time!
We've not proud nor soaring wings:
_Our_ ambition, _our_ content
Lies in simple things.
Humble voyagers are We,
O'er Life's dim unsounded sea,
Seeking only some calm clime:--
Touch us _gently_, gentle Time!

* * * * *

THE SPIRIT OF SONG-WRITING.

Song-writing is the most difficult species of poetry; failure is not to be
recovered--one slip ruins the whole attempt. A good song is a little piece
of perfection, and perfection does not grow in every field. There must be
felicity of idea, lightness of tone, exquisiteness or extreme naturalness
and propriety of expression; and this within the compass of a few verses.
And this is not all; the writer must betray a sustained tone of enthusiasm:
the song should have neither beginning nor end,--it must seem a snatch
from out of a continuous strain of melody--something that swells upon the
ear, as if the previous parts had been unheard, and which dies away as if
the air had carried its notes afar, and the sounds were wafted along to
other lands. Men of genius are now and then born song-writers; such were
Horace and Burns, such is Beranger. England has not had her