f their
pensions. Our gifted friends, Bailey, of "Festus," and Yendys, of the
"Roman," are yet in blossom--though it is a glorious blossom. Henry Taylor
is rather in the sere and yellow leaf--nor was his leaf ever, in our
judgment, very fresh or ample: a masterly builder he is, certainly, but
the materials he brings are not highly poetical. When Dickens is promoted
to Scott's wizard throne, let Browning succeed Wordsworth on the forked
Helvellyn! Landor is a vast monumental name; but, while he has overawed
the higher intellects of the time, he has never touched the general heart,
nor _told_ the world much, except his great opinion of himself, the low
opinion he has of almost every body else, and the very learned reasons and
sufficient grounds he has for supporting those twin opinions. Never was
such power so wasted and thrown away. The proposition of a lady laureate
is simply absurd, without being witty. Why not as soon have proposed the
Infant Sappho? In short, if we ask again, _Where_ is the poet worthy to
wear the crown which has dropped from the solemn brow of "old Pan," "sole
king of rocky Cumberland?"--Echo, from Glaramara, or the Langdale Pikes,
might well answer, "Where?"

We have, however, a notion of our own, which we mean, as a close to the
article, to indicate. The laureateship was too long a sop for parasites,
whose politics and poetry were equally tame. It seems now to have become
the late reward of veteran merit--the Popedom of poetry. Why not, rather,
hang it up as a crown, to be won by our rising bards--either as the reward
of some special poem on an appointed subject, or of general merit? Why not
delay for a season the bestowal of the laurel, and give thus a national
importance to its decision?

SIDNEY SMITH. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

[Illustration.]

Sidney Smith.

It is melancholy to observe how speedily, successively, nay, almost
simultaneously, our literary luminaries are disappearing from the sky.
Every year another and another member of the bright clusters which arose
about the close of the last, or at the beginning of this century, is
fading from our view. Within nineteen years, what havoc, by the "insatiate
archer," among the ruling spirits of the time! Since 1831, Robert Hall,
Andrew Thomson, Goethe, Cuvier, Mackintosh, Crabbe, Foster, Coleridge,
Edward Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Southey, Thomas Campbell,
&c.,