view of nature. The silent grove, the sequestered cell, the bubbling brook, the plaintive notes of the ringdove, and the song of the nightingale, become associated with the feelings of poetic enthusiasm, and they have been the constant theme or subject of poetical description from the first ages of the world.

With Spencer through a fairy grove.

Spencer one of our earliest and best poets wrote a poem called the Fairyqueen-therefore he is spoken of here as wandering through a fairy grove.

"Me Goddess by the right hand lead
Sometimes through the yellow mead,
Where joy and white robed peace resort,
And Venus keeps her festive court;
Where mirth and youth each evening meet
And lightly trip with nimble feet,

Nodding their lily-crowned heads

Where laughter rose-lip'd Hebe leads;
Where Echo walks steep-hills among,
List ning to the Shepherd's song."

Me goddess by the right hand lead. This whole poem is an undisguised imitation of Milton's Allegro and Penseroso-the imitation is so exact as to determine by which hand the goddess should lead him. Milton, however, distinctly gives the right hand place with great civility to the mountain nymph sweet Liberty. But our poet takes the post of honour (the right side) to himself.

Hebe is the goddess of cheerfulness, her history may be found in Lempriere. She was cup-bearer to the gods, who drank nectar and eat ambrosia instead of wine.

Mirth and youth each evening meet.

Each evening is not poetic-at evening would have been better.

And lightly trip with nimble feet.
Imitated from Milton's Allegro,
"Come and trip it as you go."
Nodding their lily-crowned heads.

This beautiful description brings the figures, as it were, before the eye. Echo-is here beautifully introduced as roaming among the rocks and mountains listening to the song and music of the shepherd. Echo is fabled to have been a beautiful female who pined away till nothing but her voice remained, which still is heard among the rocks and woods repeating the last part of every sound that reaches

them.

Yet not these flowery fields of joy
Can long my pensive mind employ;
Haste, Fancy, from these scenes of folly
To meet the matron Melancholy;
Goddess of the tearful eye,

That loves to fold her arms and sigh!
Let us with silent footsteps go
To charnels and the house of woe,
To gothic churches, vaults, and tombs,
Where each sad night some virgin comes,
With throbbing breast and faded cheek
Her promised bridegroom s urn to seek.
Or to some Abbey s mould'ring towers,
Where to avoid cold winter's showers,
The naked beggar shivering lies,
While whirling tempests round her rise,
And trembles lest the tott'ring wall
Should on her sleeping infants fall.”

The whole of this passage is in imi-
Wharton has

tation of the Penseroso.

joined the two subjects of mirth and melancholy in one poem, and in the succeeding stanza he seems to have in

view Collins's Ode to Fear which has been already mentioned in Poetry Explained for young People. Pensive.-Thoughtful.

Charnels.-Places in church-yards where the bones of the dead are kept It properly means, where bodies are kept from the latin word carnis, flesh. The naked beggar shivering lies, &c. This is a sublime passage; no idea can fill the mind with more compassion than that of a wretched, houseless mother, being obliged to take shelter during the night under a building which she fears the storm will blow down upon her sleeping children.

"Now let me louder strike the lyre,
For my heart glows with martial fire:
I feel, I feel with sudden heat
My big tumultuous bosom beat;