The muse, less daring than the Argive raft,
Shrinks from the classic region of the fleece ;*
How vain an idle rhymester's idle craft,

To hymn the trophies of Britannia's peace!

Still, commerce, thine unfettered track pursue,
Court torrid zephyrs, brave the icy gale,
Rivet creation's severed links anew,

With thy light rudder and thy roving sail.

Crowned with the myrtle, vine, and olive leaf,
Before thy peaceful keel chase gory strife,
Waft to each want that visits man, relief,
The lamp of knowledge, and the cross of life.

But thou, coy maiden of the rustic shell,

Hie from yon busy haunts, where Airedalet leads
Thy silent step, o'er tangled brake and dell,
Thro' wooded slopes and intermingled meads

Or where romantic Wharfe, 'mid wilder steeps,
Tosses the gladness of his torrent spray,

Round Bolton's shrine, with softer murmurs creeps,
Then winds thro' opening plains his ampler way:

All lovely Bolton! tho' no incense roll

O'er cloistered courts by holy footsteps trod,
Where, from earth's thousand altars could the soul
Hold a more rapt communion with its God?

As Clifford erst in Barden's neighbouring tower,
The Shepherd Lord, unscathed by civil jars,
Undazzled by the blaze of sudden power,

Trained his meek spirit 'mid the silent stars!

commemorates the decisive battle between the Yorkists and Lancasterians. is now the chief place for warehousing corn in the north.

* Here begins the great woollen district, of which Leeds is the centre.

The town

In this most pleasing valley stands the picturesque ruin of Kirkstall Abbey. The history of Henry, the Shepherd Lord, may be found in the second volume of Sir James Mackintosh's interesting Abridgment of the History of England, p. 46.

*

Vaunt not Helvetian hills, Ausonian vales,
Vaunt not each painted, each poetic scene,
Still, still I cling to Craven's pastoral dales,
Their purple heather, and their emerald green.

Pause, my bewildered harp, nor leave unpraised
Farnley's green upland, Harewood's stately glade,
The antique pile* by mail-clad Templars raised,
Hackfall's wild glen, and Bramham's alleyed shade.
Ye towers of Pomfret! in your blighted round!
No rose shall blossom, and no muse shall sing,
Blood, blood bedews the rank and tainted ground,
of unarmed nobles,† and an uncrowned King.‡

Nor gaze unmoved on Ebor's ancient wall!
The purple masters of imperial power§
Changed for its guarded hold, at honour's call,
Their Latin mount, or bright Byzantine bower:

Our peaceful streets no stranger legions fill,

No Eastern pomps in gay procession smile;
But say, can Roman power, or Grecian skill,
O'ermatch the grandeur of our Gothic pile?

This lyre might linger with too fond a praise,
O'er Vanburgh's|| airy domes and sculptured halls :
Or, to the sterner works of earlier days,

Byland's rent-fane, and Gilling's ivied walls.

In Helmsley's tower no Villiers¶ revels now,
On yonder hills he met untimely doom;
At Rivaulx' shrine no sandalled beadsmen bow,
But Nature's self has canonized their tomb.

Temple Newsom.

The Earl of Salisbury and twelve Yorkist chiefs, after the battle of Wakefield; Earl Rivers, Lord Richard Grey, &c., upon the death of Edward IV.

Richard II..

§ Adrian, Caracalla, Geta, and probably Theodosius, served; Septimus Severus, and Constantius died; Constantine was proclaimed Emperor, and perhaps was born, at York. || Sir John Vanburgh was the architect of Castle Howard.

¶ George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, died in the house of his agent,

See Fountains' yet more massive glories rise,
On Studley's lawns‡ see spring eternal bloom;
Let Wensley's fertile vale arrest thine eyes,

Richmond's gay terraces and castled gloom.

From Calder's fount to Cleveland's mossy hill,
From Humber's tide to Skipton's mountain hold,
All hues and forms the varied canvas fill,

The rich, the soft, the fertile, and the bold.

Mark where yon rocky barrier fronts the main,
And seems the guardian of the favoured land;
Oft has its iron strength repelled the Dane,

Or the armed barks of Norway's rugged strand.

Mark Scarborough's keep, and Whitby's shattered aisle, †
Once the proud sea-mark of the troubled deep;
While Mulgrave's tower still views old ocean smile
From its lone crag and wood-embosomed steep.

The darker spoils domestic struggles yield,
May not on page so light as mine be read;

How Yorkshire mourned o'er Towton's‡ crimsoned field,
How Fairfax§ triumphed while her bravest bled.

Not now the theme:-may all her future years
In peace, in wealth, in freedom roll along;
Unstained by crimes, by conflicts, and by tears,

Brightened by Virtue, and adorned by Song.

at Kirby Moorside, in consequence of a cold he caught while seeing a fox dug. Helmsley Castle and Rivaulx Abbey are both in the beautiful grounds of Duncombe Park. *The evergreens at Studley are particularly fine.

† A considerable part of the very striking ruin of the Abbey of Whitby has fallen recently.

At the battle of Towton, A.D. 1461, 37,000 Englishmen are said to have fallen.

§ Thomas, Lord Fairfax, a great general, and a worthy man. From a period of mutual dissensions and errors, it is pleasing to select upon either side such names as Fairfax and Falkland.

SPEECHES AND ADDRESSES

OF

THE EARL OF CARLISLE.

EDUCATION.

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY IN IRELAND.

CONFERRING OF DEGREES AND HONORS IN SAINT PATRICK'S HALL, DUBLIN CASTLE.

WHEN

[OCTOBER 11TH, 1855.]

WHEN the conferring of Degrees and Honors had concluded, the Vice-Chancellor of the Queen's University (the RIGHT HON. MAZIERE BRADY), said: :

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY,

Having reached the close of our University proceedings, there remains to me the grateful office of returning to you the thanks of the Senate for the privilege you have been graciously pleased to accord to them of holding their public meeting in this hall, and for the honour you have done us in gracing our assembly with your presence. The Queen's Colleges have received their foundation since the period of your Excellency's former official connexion with this country; they have had to sustain much, but I will still hope, a gradually decreasing opposition. Their progress has been necessarily affected by the times of public calamity with which our country has so awfully been visited-they have difficulties to contend with; some in the social condition of the people, some in the pecuniary expenditure which the continuous course of study : established in them requires from the students; but, perhaps, the great

B

est is the want of a good local supply of preparatory schools where the young could be sufficiently educated to enter at once, and with adequate preliminary instruction, upon the more advanced courses of collegiate instruction. We have further the satisfaction of knowing that our courses of study and degrees have deservedly attracted the estimation of learned men in other lands, who witnessed the success of students of our Colleges in competition with members of every other seminary in the United Kingdom. The Legislature has sanctioned additional aids to the pecuniary resources of the Colleges; and we have been honoured from the commencement of our labours by the gracious support and fostering encouragement of your Excellency's predecessors in the exalted office which Her Majesty has intrusted to your charge. I venture to assure myself and this institution that we build on no insecure foundation, when we calculate that from your Excellency we shall receive a no less favourable acceptance, a no less kind and encouraging support. We have already abundant evidence to satisfy us of the justice of these expectations in the interest you have ever taken in the advancement and prosperity of Ireland, the knowledge of her wants and her resources, with which your official condition with this country has abundantly supplied you, and the careful and benevolent anxiety you have shown in your personal inspection and examination of the condition of all the public establishments of the country. On the part of the Colleges and the University, I tender to your Excellency our acknowledgment of the favour thus shown, and the value with which such a recognition of the principle of examination must confer on the system itself, and on the institutions under our care. I trust that they will always be found deserving of your Excellency's support, and of the honour such as that conferred upon us by your Excellency's presence here to-day.

The EARL OF CARLISLE replied:
:-

MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR AND GENTLEMEN,

I receive with pleasure and gratitude the compliment which has been so obligingly proposed by you, and conferred upon me, on behalf of the Senate. Let me assure the whole of the very learned and distinguished assembly here convened, that it has been no common satisfaction to me to have thus assisted at the proceedings which have now been brought to a close. It is also gratifying to me-as it must be to all, I ima