A COUNTRY LIFE.

"How sacred and how innocent
A country life appears!
How free from tumult, discontent,
From flattery, or fears!

"This was the first and happiest life,
When man enjoy'd himself;
Till pride exchanged peace for strife,
And happiness for pelf.

""Twas here the poets were inspir'd,
Here taught the multitude;

The brave they here with honour fir'd, And civiliz'd the rude.

"That golden age did entertain

No passion but of love;

The thoughts of ruling and of gain
Did ne'er their fancies move.

"Them that do covet only rest,
A cottage will suffice;
It is not brave to be possest
Of earth; but to despise.

'Opinion is the rate of things,

From hence our peace doth flow; I have a better fate than kings,

Because I think it so.

"When all the stormy world doth roar,

How unconcern'd am I!

I cannot fear to tumble lower,

Who never could be high.

"Secure in these unenvied walls

I think not on the state,
And pity no man's case that falls
From his ambitious height.

"Silence and innocence are safe;
A heart that's nobly true,
At all those little arts can laugh,
That do the world subdue."

An exceedingly elegant poetess of this time. was Anne, Countess of Winchelsea. It was her great merit to write with nature, simplicity, and purity in an artificial and corrupt age. Between the publication of the " Paradise Lost" and that of Pope's "Windsor Forest," she alone, of all the poets, used natural rather than classical imagery. "The Nocturnal Reverie," "The Atheist and the Acorn," are well known and admired; nor is the following, though sad, less graceful.

LIFE'S PROGRESS.

"How gaily is at first begun

Our life's uncertain race!

Whilst yet that sprightly morning sun,
With which we first set out to run,
Enlightens all the place.

"How smiling the world's prospect lies,
How tempting to go through!
Not Canaan to the prophet's eyes,
From Pisgah, with a sweet surprise,
Did more inviting show.

“How soft the first ideas prove

Which wander through our minds!
How full the joys, how free the love,
Which does that early season move,
As flowers the western winds!

“Our sighs are then but vernal air,
But April drops our tears;
Which swiftly passing, all grows fair,
Whilst beauty compensates our care,
And youth each vapour clears.

"But, oh, too soon, alas! we climb,
Scarce feeling we ascend,
The gently rising hill of time,

From whence with grief we see that prime,
And all its sweetness end.

"The die now cast, our station known,
Fond expectation past;

The thorns which former days had sown,
To crops of late repentance grown,
Through which we toil at last;

"Whilst every care's a driving harm,

That helps to bear us down;

While faded smiles no more can charm,
But every tear's a winter storm,

And every look a frown."

Dorothy, the daughter of Lord Coventry, Keeper of the Seal to James I., and wife of Sir John Packington, was a remarkable literary ornament of the seventeenth century. The authorship of that compendium of practical divinity

"The Whole Duty of Man" has been ascribed to her, on evidence that it seems difficult to doubt. Rev. Thomas Caulton, vicar of Worksop in Nottinghamshire, on his death-bed, revealed the secret of the authorship of that work, and produced the manuscript in Lady Packington's own handwriting. She died in 1679. In the church of Hampton Lovett, in Worcestershire, she and her husband are interred; and their grandson says of them, that he was "tried for his life, and spent the greatest part of his fortune in adhering to King Charles I.; and the latter (Lady Packington) justly reputed the authoress of The Whole Duty of Man, who was exemplary for her great piety and goodness."

Lady Rachel Russell's name is generally known and deservedly esteemed. Her letters have something more to recommend them than mere literary merit. They are full of real feeling, actual experiences, and genuine piety.

These admirable women were all as remarkable for their virtues as their talents. They were lights in a dark age; and time, in reference to the two first, and the last named, has added to rather than diminished their brightness.

CHAP. XII.

DRYDEN AND THE RISE OF CRITICISM IN ENGLAND.-FRENCH INFLUENCE.-LITERARY PATRONS.-ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF PERIODICALS.-DE FOE, ADDISON, STEELE.

MILTON is not the only great poet whose writings are an exposition of his life. Dryden's great genius, his varied course and frequent changes of opinion, his alternations of feeling from piety to profligacy, may all be traced equally in his life and in his writings, the one elucidating the other. He was the son of a worthy Puritan in Northamptonshire, and received a liberal education at Westminster School. His first poetical production was an heroic poem in honour of Oliver Cromwell, written in a very animated style. He says of his hero,

"His greatness he deriv'd from Heaven alone,

For he was great e'er fortune made him so; And wars, like mists that rise against the sun, Made him but greater seem, not greater grow."

At the Restoration, Dryden had done with the Puritans: he hastened to write poetical addresses to the King and the Lord Chancellor; and plays being the favourite amusement of the court and