Jews stole insensibly into the kingdom, where they have ever since maintained their footing, and no doubt contributed their fair proportion to the national wealth. SCENERY AND POETRY. Now tell it not in Scotland, lest the cockneys of the Canongate rejoice; but give me, dear N., before all the barren suburbs in the world (bits of mountains included), the green pastures and gentle eminences round about glorious London. There we have fields: there one can walk on real positive turf: there one can get trees that are of no use, and get under trees, and get among trees; and have hedges, stiles, field-paths, sheep, and oxen, and other pastoral amenities. Sometimes walking, not unseen, By hedge-row elms on hillocks green; How pleasant it is to read one of our poets in a foreign country! I pass from page to page, as I used from meadow to meadow, not omitting to enjoy the style by the way. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, While the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns and fallows gray. Observe the colouring! Where the nibbling flocks do stray. Mark the nicety! Mountains Mountains what does he mean by that? Mountains on whose barren breast L Genoa pitched in the vale of Thames! He must have seen Genoa by a sort of unnatural second sight. I beg you to look upon this as an impertinent vision, foreign to the subject, or only brought in to show the beauty of the rest by force of contrast. Meadows trim with daisies pied. There he comes home again. Shallow brooks and rivers wide: Complete justice is never done to a fine passage in a poet, if you do not know the one that preceded it: just as a new key in a musician demands a comparison with that of the previous air. How admirably contrasted, and yet with the properest and mellowest gradation, is the richness and elevation of this passage about the tufted trees, and the high-born beauty in their turrets with the "two aged oaks," and the peasant's habitation that smokes between them! Alas, there are no such oaks here, and no such tufted trees! Do you remember our picnics on the grass in the Hampstead fields? Do you remember our books, our lounges, our trios, our crowns of field flowers for heads, "not our own?" Do you recollect that strange centaur of a squire who came riding in his meadows with a monster of a footman behind him, and could not help being delighted at seeing our dinner trespassing on his premises? Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade! Ah, fields beloved in vain! Where once my careless childhood strayed, I feel the gales that from you blow A momentary bliss bestow, As waving fresh their gladsome wing, My weary soul they seem to soothe, To breathe a second spring. وو And yet the fields are not "beloved in vain : neither was my childhood a stranger to suffering. My life has had strong lights and shades upon it from its commencement; but upon the whole I am grateful; and the pleasures I have enjoyed make me love even the memory of some of the pains. "A dram of sweet is worth a pound of sour." How could Gray say that his fields were "beloved in vain,” when the sight of them, in pain or melancholy, could still please him in this manner; and when he cultivated flowers in his cottage window to the last? Nature is never beloved in vain. Shakespere, after running the whole round of humanity, went to live and die in his native fields. Rousseau's botany never forsook him. The oaks are firm friends, and we can love the most blooming of roses in our old age. Leigh Hunt. There is a troublesome humour some men have, that if they may not lead they will not follow; but had rather a thing were never done than not done their own way, though otherwise very desirable. This comes of an overfulness of ourselves, and shows we are more concerned for praise than the success of what we think a good thing. Dr. T. Fuller. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Sit Jessica, look how the floor of heaven Merchant of Venice. SATAN CAST FORTH FROM HEAVEN. Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view, Raised impious war in heaven, and battle proud, Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, Nine times the space that measures day and night Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded though immortal. But his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him. Round he throws his baleful eyes, That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. At once, as far as angels ken, he views The dismal situation waste and wild; A dungeon horrible on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. O, how unlike the place from whence they fell! And thence in heaven called Satan, with bold words "If thou beest he; but O, how fallen! how changed And hazard in the glorious enterprise, Joined with me once, now misery hath joined From what height fallen; so much the stronger proved He with his thunder; and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, Can else inflict, do I repent or change, Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind, And high disdain, from sense of injured merit, |