Blanchard, proud Haydon, and others, strike uneasily upon the sensitive heart when it hears them. We trust, sincerely, that Art, Science, and Literature will not much longer be thus criminally neglected, and that beggarly pittances will not be all the reward doled out ungraciously to National benefactors. What can we say at present, in answer to our question concerning present improvement upon the past, we can but sigh-Little improvement, if any!

We should delight to see a new Order of Merit established, earned by superior individual mental worth, and dying with the being who earned it; each such distinction, or title if you will, being accompanied with a liberal and suitable annuity. A nation honors itself in honoring the lights of time, as surely as any man, who can, but does not, benefit by those lights, denies himself a pure and lofty privilege.

K

130

Lines to the Memory of Hood,

Poor Tom Hood, thy memory dear
Let each Englishman revere;
For thy wit and ceaseless fun;

For thy jokes, and pun on pun,

For thy songs, so fresh and new,
For thy epigrams, not few!

For thy whims, so quaint and terse,
For thy newly-metred verse,
For thy pathos, so divine,
For thy sentiment, so fine,
For thy all-descriptive mind,
For thy love of all mankind,
For thy resignation meek,
For thy struggle for the weak,
For thy Christian charity,
For thy mental rarity,

For thy aid to hapless man,

For thy good in thy brief span,

For these we love it, and for more

For thy rich mind's exhaustless store.

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.-COLERIDGE ON EXISTENCE.

HE Poetry of Science is beginning to

attract a considerable increase of

attention, and it is most just that it should be so; for the Natural and Mechanical Sciences are alike loaded with rich and wonderful Poetry. Poetry which only requires the clear eyes of the Poet's calm and lofty soul to be perceived and appreciated, and then to be translated palpably by him to the general mind, through the instrumentality of his divine art.

All known Sciences contain within themselves Worlds of exquisite Poetry, and the

more the general mind becomes familiarized with the ever-varying interest and fascinations connected with their Study, the more rapid will become the diffusion and the rise of Science. Science is a holy devotion, and the pursuits and the results attained are alike glorious.

Those Sciences which appear to us to be most attractive to the imagination, and to present the widest and best revealed fields of investigation, and to contain—even to a surface-inspection of their wonders, their beauties, and their combinations-the most Poetry, are the studies of the Philosophical Naturalist, the Botanist, the Geologist, the Astronomer, and the Chemist. The Study and extraction of Poetry from these sciences, is like reading mighty books of Life, Beauty, and Divinity. But we can only obtain in the end, even if we spend a life in abstract

Scientific studies," a cloud-reflection of the

vast Unseen."

Coleridge asks, "Hast thou ever raised thy mind to the consideration of EXISTENCE, in and by itself, as the mere act of existing? Hast thou ever said to thyself thoughtfully, IT IS! heedless at the moment whether it were a man before thee, or a flower, or a grain of sand-without reference, in short, to this or that particular mode or form of existence? If thou hast, indeed, attained to this, thou wilt have felt the presence of a mystery, which must have fixed thy spirit in awe and wonder."

The study of the sciences only increases our reverence and love, and brings us in closer contact with the spirit of the Great Designer.

With what an advance of interest over that of ordinary men must the Man of Science