"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
the intenseness of his impressions by the uncertainty of his spelling!
Now, reader, mark the next line, and its context:--
"The very night they were to wed!"
Fancy this: the full blossoming of all their budding joys, anticipations,
death, and hope's accomplishment, the crowning hour of their youth's great
bliss, "_the very night they were to wed_," is, with _extra syncretic_
skill, chosen as the awful one in which
"Fate's scissors cut Giles Scroggins' thread!"
Now, reader, do you see the subtle use of practical knowledge? Are you
convinced of the impotent prescription from _knives_ only? Can you not
perceive in "_Fate's scissors_" a parallel for the unthought-of host "that
bore the mighty wood of Dunsinane against the blood-stained murderer of
the pious Duncan?" Does not the fatal truth rush, like an unseen draught
into rheumatic crannies, slick through your soul's perception? Are you not
prepared for this--_to be resumed in our next_?
* * * * *
THE NEW ADMINISTRATION.
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