From the Manchester Examiner.
LOVE.—A SONNET.
BY J. C. PRINCE.
Love is an odor from the heavenly bowers,
Which stirs our senses tenderly, and brings
Dreams which are shadows of diviner things
Beyond this grosser atmosphere of ours.
An oasis of verdure and of flowers,
Love smiteth on the Pilgrim's weary way;
There fresher air, there sweeter waters play,
There purer solace charms the quiet hours.
This glorious passion, unalloyed, endowers
With moral beauty all who feel its fire;
Maid, wife, and offspring, brother, mother, sire,
Are names and symbols of its hallowed powers.
Love is immortal. From our head may fly
Earth's other blessings; Love can never die!
Ashton, 5th March.
From the Spectator.
THE HISTORY OF SORCERY AND MAGIC.[I]
The rationale of magic, when a combination of skill and fraud imposed upon the vulgar, is easily settled. The priests of the ancient mythology, the adepts of the middle ages, turned their knowledge of chemistry and mechanics and their proficiency in legerdemain to account; and before we denounce the latter as impostors, we should bear in mind the ignorance of the times in which they lived. People would not have believed any natural explanation, though they might have felt inclined to persecute the man when stripped of his magical character: we should also consider how far the general belief might influence even the man himself; how far he could in his inmost mind draw the distinction between what we call natural philosophy and what the age considered magic—a lawful if a riskful power over nature and spirits, by means of occult knowledge. An allowance is further to be made for the stories as they have come down to us; a distinction is to be drawn between the actual facts and the fancy of the narrator, between the reality and the romance of magic.