As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air
Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades.
For them there was an eloquent voice in all
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun,
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way,
Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds,—
The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun
Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes,-
Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in,
Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale,
The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees,
In many a lazy syllable, repeating
Their old poetic legends to the wind.

And this is the sweet spirit that doth fill

The world; and, in these wayward days of youth,
My busy fancy oft embodies it,

As a bright image of the light and beauty
That dwell in nature,-of the heavenly forms

We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues
That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the
clouds
When the sun sets.

Within her eye

The heaven of April, with its changing light,
And when it wears the blue of May, is hung;
And on her lip the rich red rose. Her hair
Is like the summer tresses of the trees,
When twilight makes them brown; and on her
cheek

Blushes the richness of an autumn sky,
With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath,
It is so like the gentle air of spring,

As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it comes
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy

To have it round us, and her silver voice

Is the rich music of a summer bird,

Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence.

[THOMAS BABINGTON, afterwards Lord MACAULAY. See Page 129.]

N his road to France Temple fell | King Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advan tageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was, in the meantime, besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his illustrious father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of his elder brother, this young man was, perhaps, a more formidable rival in love than either of them would have been.

in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the king, and the young people were, like their father, warm for the royal cause. At an inn where they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought before the governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers. This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for

Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to procure her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only Lord-General, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition, and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision; though, in a letter written just at the time when all England was ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with pardonable vanity, "how great she might have been, if she had been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer of H. C."

Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mis By kind permission of Messrs, Longman and Co,

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE'S LOVE STORY.

tress regarded him with personal dislike, and
spoke of him as an unprincipled adventurer, with
out honour or religion, ready to render service to
any party for the sake of preferment. This is,
indeed, a very distorted view of Temple's cha-
racter. Yet a character, even in the most distorted
view taken of it by the most angry and prejudiced
minds, generally retains something of its outline.
No caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a
Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any
libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or
profusion to Marlborough. The poor girl was ex-
ceedingly hurt and irritated by these imputations
on her lover, defended him warmly behind his
back, and addressed to himself some very tender
and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances
of her confidence in his honour and virtue.
Near seven years did this arduous wooing con-
tinue. We are not accurately informed respecting
Temple's movements during that time. But he
seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on
the Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in
London.

291

common that lay hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads," is anything to us. Louis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill stands on the ruins of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof of Chicksands. But of that information for the sake of which alone it is worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love-letters which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in state-papers taken at random. To us, surely it is as useful to know how the young ladies of England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to them, what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments they most valued in men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to know all about the seizure of Franche Compté and the treaty of Nimeguen. The mutual relations of Temple appears to have kept up a very active the two sexes seem to us to be at least as imporcorrespondence with his mistress. His letters are tant as the mutual relations of any two governlost, but hers have been preserved. We only wishments in the world; and a series of letters written that there were twice as many. Very little in- by a virtuous, amiable, and sensible girl, and deed of the diplomatic correspondence of that intended for the eye of her lover alone, can generation is so well worth reading. There is a scarcely fail to throw some light on the relations vile phrase of which bad historians are exceed of the sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as ingly fond, "the dignity of history." One writer all who have made any historical researches can is in possession of some anecdotes which would attest, to read bale after bale of despatches and illustrate most strikingly the operation of the protocols, without catching one glimpse of light Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of about the relations of governments. the Parisians. But he suppresses those anecdotes, because they are too low for the dignity of history. Another is strongly tempted to mention some facts indicating the horrible state of the prisons of England two hundred years ago. But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen felons, pigging together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square, would form a subject suited to the dignity of history. Another, from respect for the dignity of history, publishes an account of the reign of George II., without ever mentioning Whitfield's preaching in Moorfields. How should a writer who can talk about senates, and congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines, and counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed, and six thousand men with fifty stand of colours and eighty guns taken, stoop to the Stock Exchange, to Newgate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle? In the seventeenth century, to be sure, Louis XIV. was a much more important person than Temple's sweetheart. But death and time equalise all things. Neither the great king nor the beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli nor Mistress Osborne's favourite walk "in the

Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne's devoted servants, and expresses a hope that the publication of her letters will add to the number. We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really seems to have been a very charming young woman-modest, generous, affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights of the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn for coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of good-nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord Broghill, French memoirs recommended by her lover, and the Travels of Fernando Mendez Pinto.

THE NIGHT PIECE.
TO JULIA.

[R. HERRICK. See Page 130.]

HASSAN; OR, THE CAMEL-DRIVER. [WILLIAM COLI INS. See Page 44.]