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For lapse of water, swell of breeze, Or nut-fruit falling from the trees!

"The stir without the glow of passion-The triumph of the mart

The gold and silver's dreary clashing

With man's metallic heart-
The wheeled pomp, the pauper tread-
These only sounds are heard instead.

"Yet still, as on my human hand
Their fearless heads they lean,
And almost seem to understand
What human musings mean-

(With such a plaintive gaze their eyne
Are fastened upwardly to mine!)

"Their chant is soft as on the nest,
Beneath the sunny sky:

For love that stirred it in their breast,
Remains undyingly,

And 'neath the city's shade, can keep
The well of music clear and deep.

"And love that keeps the music, fills With pastoral memories! All echoings from out the hills,

All droppings from the skies, All flowings from the wave and wind, Remembered in their chant I find.

"So teach ye me the wisest part,
My little doves! to move
Along the city ways, with heart
Assured by holy love,

And vocal with such songs as own
A fountain to the world unknown.

"T'was hard to sing by Babel's stream-
More hard, in Babel's street!
But if the soulless creatures deem
Their music not unmeet
For sunless walls-let us begin,
Who wear immortal wings, within!

"To me, fair memories belong

Of scenes that erst did bless ; For no regret-but present song, And lasting thankfulnessAnd very soon to break away, Like types, in purer things than they !

"I will have hopes that cannot fade, For flowers the valley yields

I will have humble thoughts, instead
Of silent, dewy fields !

My spirit and my God shall be
My sea-ward hill, my boundless sea."

Unambitious verses these-and haply the fair Elizabeth sets no great store by them-recurring in her daydreams of fame to "The Seraphim." But they will live in the memory of

many a gentle girl—and mothers will ask their daughters to recite them, that they may watch the workings of nature in the eyes loving innocenceand even fathers looking on and listening

"May from their eyelids wipe the tear That sacred pity had engendered."

Surely Poetesses (is there such a word?) are very happy, in spite of all the "natural sorrows, griefs, and pains," to which their exquisitely sensitive being must be perpetually alive. Tighe suffered woman's worst -wounded affections; nor was Hemans without a like affliction-but she who died first had a cheerful genius, and fancy led her heart into lands of enchantment, where her human life was lulled in repose, and its woes must have often and long been forgotten in the midst of visionary bliss. That other Sweetest Singer had children round her knees, and sufficient happiness it must have been for her, in that long desertion, to see

"How like a new existence to her heart Uprose those living flowers beneath her eyes,'

now flourishing, when she is gone, in the light of Heaven. Lætitia Landon-a name not to be merged—is a joyous spirit not unacquainted with. grief-her genius was invigorated by duty-now it is guarded by love-and in good time-may gentler suns shine again on her laurelled head-returning to us from the "far countrie," that may even now be inspiring into her startled imagination the beauty of "a New Song."

And our Elizabeth-she too is happy-though in her happiness she loveth to veil with a melancholy haze the brightness of her childhood-and of her maidenhood but the clouds we raise we can ourselves dispel-and far away yet beyond the horizon are those that may gather round the decline of her life.

THE DESERTED GARDEN.

"I mind me in the days departed, How often underneath the sun, With childish bounds I used to run To a garden long deserted.

"The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe'er had fallen the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature led,
To sanctify her right.

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"Nor he nor I did e'er incline
To mar or pluck the blossoms white-
How should I know but that they might
Lead lives as glad as mine?

"To make my hermit-home complete, I brought clear water from the spring Praised in its own low murmuring,—

And cresses glossy wet.

"And so, I thought my likeness grew (Without the melancholy tale) To gentle hermit of the dale, And Angelina too!

"For oft I read within my nook Such minstrel stories! till the breeze Made sounds poetic in the trees,And then I shut the book.

"If I shut this wherein I write,
I hear no more the wind athwart
Those trees!-nor feel that childish heart
Delighting in delight!

"My childhood from my life is parted; My footstep from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew

The garden is deserted!

"Another thrush may there rehearse The madrigals which sweetest areNo more for me !—myself afar

Do sing a sadder verse!—

"Ah me! ah me! when erst I lay
In that child's-nest so greenly wrought,
I laughed to myself and thought
The time will pass away!'

66 I laughed still, and did not fear
But that, whene'er was past away
The childish time, some happier play
My womanhood would cheer

"I knew the time would pass away. And yet beside the rose-tree wall, Dear God!-how seldom, if at all,

I looked up to pray!

"The time is past -and now that grows The cypress high among the trees, And I behold white sepulchres

As well as the white rose

"When wiser, meeker thoughts are given, And I have learnt to lift my face, Remembering earth's greenest place

The colour draws from heaven

"It something saith for earthly pain, But more for Heavenly promise free, That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again."

"Has not love," says Elizabeth in her Preface," a deeper mystery than wisdom, and a more ineffable lustre than power? I believe it has. I venture to believe those beautiful and of ten-quoted words, God is Love,' to be even less an expression of condescension towards the finite, than an assertion of essential dignity in Him, who is infinite." To illustrate that attribute she wrote "The Seraphim." But there is nothing in that poem so affecting as the following simple lines. They cannot be read without bringing to mind the sum of all consolation, "Come unto me all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

THE SLEEP.

"Of all the thoughts of God that are Borne inward unto souls afar, Along the Psalmist's music deepNow tell me if that any is, For gift or grace, surpassing this'He giveth His beloved, sleep?'

"What would we give to our beloved? The hero's heart, to be unmovedThe poet's star-tuned harp, to sweepThe senate's shout to patriot vowsThe monarch's crown, to light the brows? 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.'

"What do we give to our beloved? A little faith, all undisproved

A little dust, to overweep-
And bitter memories, to make

The whole earth blasted for our sake! 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.'

"Sleep soft beloved!' we sometimes say, But have no tune to charm away, Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep; But never doleful dream again Shall break the happy slumber, when 'He giveth His beloved, sleep!'

"O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the wailer's heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And giveth His beloved, sleep!

"His dews drop mutely on the hill; His cloud above it saileth still, Though on its slope men toil and reap! More softly than the dew is shed, Or cloud is floated overhead, 'He giveth His beloved, sleep.'

"Yea! men may wonder while they scan A living, thinking, feeling man,

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"It went up from the Holy's lips
Amid his lost creation,
That of the lost, no son should use
Those words of desolation;

That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope,
Should mar not hope's fruition;
And I, on Cowper's grave, should see
His rapture, in a vision !"

More to the mind than to the eye -or rather to some perception belonging to all the senses-is manifested the change that steals over nature towards the to-fall of the day-such change as is now going on among the mountains, and informs us, who have been taking no heed of time, of the very hour, which we could name within a few minutes as surely as if there were a clock to look at in the niche above our head. Is that the murmur of insects or of the sea? That hoarser noise, till now inaudible, is of the cataract behind the Castle, and it tells of Cliffs.

The small Loch is smaller in shadow has lost much of its expression

-and ceased almost to be beautiful; but the solemnity of the mountainranges, lying far and wide in the blue haze that precedes the twilight, attracts the eyes of a spirit desirous of the calm momently settling deeper and deeper on them all-the uniting calm of earth and heaven.

the truth-seldom during all this long Strange and sad to say-but it is lonely day-only then when writing down a few words concerning them— have we thought of them whom we visited in the Castle-last time we were there and who so soon afterwards were dust! To-night we shall go to the Old Burial Place, and sit by their Tomb.

Like subterranean music the noise of the Bagpipe comes from the Castle to our Cave. That oldest of Celtsno raven can be his contemporaryis now strutting like a Turkey-cock with his tail up, to and fro on the esplanade-blowing out from below his elbow "The Gathering of the Clans" -for the Yacht is coming up the Loch goose-winged before the wind, and Donald is saluting the advent of his Chieftain, on his return from a victorious expedition into the Forest against the King of the Red-Deer. And there goes the Gong-struck by the Hindu. An hour to dinner-time--and we must descend to our toilet for there is to the Castle, and we shall show them in brilliant company this evening at full fig a Lowland Gentleman of the

be a

Old School.

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Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Company, Paul's Work.

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