better to commune with his own soul. He finds a better response to his feelings and thoughts amidst nature than amongst men. His loneliness of heart often arises from his fear to impart his doubts and imaginings to others. It is well worth while to seek solitude occasionally, for the very sake of contemplating the mystic Universe and Existence apart from Man. The beatific influence of majestic Nature is most powerfully transfused into the spirit when we are alone! A divine and invisible atmosphere-a something felt-in nature will cause a doubt or a fear to vanish, which all the most logical works of reasoning divines, and all the most ingenious arguments of learned sophists would be alike unable to Reason is often found to be but a poor substitute for that irresistible faith induced by the spirit which permeates external nature. Even in his lonely study, the Poet remove. can have all nature and all ages as his companions, and can transport himself to the most distant regions. It can be no matter of surprise, that the poetical mind turns with fond recallings, and melancholy sighs, to the remembrances of that charmed period of our mortal existence which we term Childhood! What innumerable tender associations! what pure joy, and loving kindness, are mingled with that only truly happy time in our sojourn in this sad and woeful world. Who, that has left the shore of Childhood's charmed land for ever, cannot sigh forth with Moore— "Ne'er tell me of glories, serenely adorning The close of our day, the calm eve of our night;- Who that loves to linger upon the remembrance of old songs and companions, but will keenly feel the following lines from a student song. "Think oft, ye brethren; Think of the gladness of our youthful prime,— With what exquisite, and sweetly delusive fancies, we fill in Childhood the wondrous future of our lives; colouring all things with those bright and glowing tints of early imagination which not unfrequently accompany, in the child of poetical temperament—our early and blissful ignorance of mankind. We people the future world in which we are to have our being, with the same spirits of tenderness and true friendship which guarded us along the pleasant and rosy paths of Childhood. Oh how we sigh for what we deem to be independence! And yet, how little real independence we ever reach; nor would it be well that we should. It often happens, that the Child gives little, or no indication of the Man of a poetical nature. It seems to prove a melancholy satisfaction to most thoughtful hearts, when Childhood and early youth have become treasured dreams of the past, to bid "the ghosts of gentler years arise," and to review, in many a subdued reverie, the glories of those days. How priceless, then, to the weary man, appears the full trustfulness, and the full hope of Youth. The large love and sympathy of the great Poet's heart is fiercely world-tried, because throughout existence battling with the world, as the potent history of the lives of these saddened beings too plainly displays. How we all long, in Childhood, to enter quickly upon what we term-and then ignorantly deem to be "The glorious battle of Life." All awakening feelings in Youth, as they are gradually revealed to us, have that exquisite relish and charm which belongs to novelty of sensation; but after the first fresh and madly-enjoyed period is past, and we begin to estimate man and his motives with some degree of correctness, then how bitter, and, at times, how almost hopeless is existence! As, one by one, the masks have fallen from the various phases of character we were wont ignorantly to venerate; as the clouds, which hid men's motives, have melted before the increasing flame of our “Lamp of knowledge;" how almost overwhelming, at moments, has been our agonizing disappointment. And although that mightiest revealer of thought, whom the world shall ever contemplate, has taught us, that— "Tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," the struggle is sometimes hard. His large |