e reciprocate? inquires the reader. Are
not truth and generosity the princely paragons of manly virtue, greater,
because unostentatious? and these perfect attributes are part and parcel
of great Giles. He makes no speeches--soils no satin paper--vows no
vows--no, he is above such humbug. His motto is evidently deeds, not
words. And what does he do? Send a flimsy epistle, which his fair reader
pays the vile postage for? Not he; he

"_Gave_ a ring with _posy_ true!"

Think of this. Not only does he "give a ring," but he annihilates the
suppositionary fiction in which poets are supposed to revel, and the
ring's accompaniment, though the child of a creative brain--the burning
emanation from some Apollo-stricken votary of "the lying nine," imbued
with all his stern morality, is strictly "true." This startling fact is
not left wrapped in mystery. The veriest sceptic cannot, in imagination,
grave a fancied double meaning on that richest gift. No--the motto
follows, and seems to say--Now, as the champion of Giles Scroggins, hurl I
this gauntlet down; let him that dare, uplift it! Here I am--

"If you _loves_ I, as I _loves_ you!"

Pray mark the syncretic force of the above line. Giles, in expressing his
affection, felt the singular too small, and the vast plural quick supplied
the void--_Loves_ must be more than love.

"If you loves I, as I loves you,
No knife shall cut our loves in two!"

This is really sublime! "No knife!" Can anything exceed the assertion?
Nothing but the rejoinder--a rejoinder in which the talented author not
only stands proudly forward as a poet, but patriotically proves the _amor
propriae_, which has induced him to study the staple manufactures of his
beloved country! What but a diligent investigation of the _cut_lerian
process could have prompted the illustration of practical knowledge of the
Birmingham and Sheffield artificers contained in the following exquisitely
explanatory line. But--pray mark the _but_--

"But _scissors_ cut as well as knives!"

Sublime announcement! startling information! leading us, by degrees, to
the highest of all earthly contemplations, exalting us to fate and her
peculiar shears, and preparing us for the exquisitely poetical sequel
contained in the following line:--

"And so un_sart_ain's all our lives."

Can anything exceed this? The uncertainty of life evidently superinduced
the conviction of all other uncertainties, and the sublime poet bears out
th