The Witch of Atlas' is a purely imaginative poem of some seventy stanzas. Some of its descriptions are among the most exquisite things we remember :

"A LOVELY lady garmented in light

From her own beauty-deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night

Seen through a tempest's cloven roof-her hair
Dark-the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,

Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.

"For she was beautiful: her beauty made

The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
No thought of living spifit could abide,
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.

"Which, when the lady knew, she took her spindle
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds, and waves, and mountains with, and she
As many starbeams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully;

And with these threads a subtile veil she wove-
A shadow for the splendor of her love.

"The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling

Were stored with magic treasures-sounds of air
Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;

Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die—yet ere we are aware,

The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone.

"And there lay visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ;

Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint,
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss ;

It is its work to bear to many a saint

Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's-and others white, green, grey and black,
And of all shapes-and each was at her beck.

"And odors in a kind of aviary

Of ever blooming Eden-trees she kept,

Clipt in a floating net, a lovesick fairy

Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept ;

As bats at the wired windows of a dairy,

They beat their vans; and each was an adept,

When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds.

"And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, And change eternal death into a night

Of glorious dreams-or if eyes needs must weep, Could make their tears all wonder and delight, She in her crystal vials did closely keep: If men could drink of those clear vials 'tis said The living were not envied of the dead.

"This lady never slept, but lay in trance

All night within the fountain-as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance:
Through the green splendor of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance

Like fire-flies-and withal did ever keep,

The tenor of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.

"The silver noon into that winding dell,

With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell; A green and glowing light, like that which drops From folded lilies in which glow worms dwell, When earth.over her face night's mantle wraps; Between the severed mountains lay on high Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.

"And where, within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased, but tremble ever
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-pav'n canals, and wheresoever

The works of man pierced that serenest sky With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight To wander in the shadow of the night.

"With motion like the spirit of that wind

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Past through the peopled haunts of human kind, Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet, Through fane and palace court and lab'rinth min'd, With many a dark and subterranean street

Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep,
She past, observing mortals in their sleep.

"A pleasure sweet, doubtless, it was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep : Here lay two sister-twins in infancy;

There, a lone youth, who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linked innocently

In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem;-and there lay calm
Old age with snow bright hair and folded palm.

"And she saw princes couched under the glow

Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court In dormitories ranged, row after row,

She saw the priests asleep,-all of one sort,

For all were educated to be so.

The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,

And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

"She all those human figures breathing there
Beheld as living spirits-to her eyes
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,

And often, through a rude and worn disguise,
She saw the inner form most bright and fair-

And then, she had a charm of strange device,
Which murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
Could make that spirit mingle with her own."

There are single passages of remarkable beauty to be found even in Shelley's faultiest productions. Here are two or three of them :—

Asia! who, when my being overflowed,
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust."

These are certainly exquisite passages, and you may mark them on every page. It is poetry of a peculiar and hitherto unfashionable school, but, if we are not much mistaken, the poetry of Shelley will take a high stand in the literature of the age. We will give one more extract to show his manner more distinctly.

The novelties in the literary world for the last month are few, and of that character which cannot come properly under the slight criticism of our Table. Devereux and Captain Hall are not gentlemen to be passed lightly by. The latter has come up to our expectation, and, we thank heaven, he is properly appreciated on both sides the water. We had the pleasure of travelling some distance with him both in Canada and the United States, and have seen his modus operandi in both to our heart's content. He certainly has the faculty of making himself disagreeable to his own countrymen, and ours in a very remarkable degree. We shall read his book again, and review it at leisure.

A virgin volume of our own, last and least, lies modestly on the extremest verge of our table. If the world were a candid world, we could take up that thin octavo and criticise it more justly than it ever will be criticised. It is a false notion that the writer is no judge of

his own book. Verses in manuscript and verses in print, in the first place, are very different things, and the mood of writing and the mood of reading what one has written, are very different moods. We do not know how it is with others, but we open our own volume with the same impression of strangeness and novelty that we do another's. The faults strike us at once, and so do the beauties, if there are any, and we read coolly in a new garb, the same things which upon paper, recalled the fever of composition, and rendered us incapable of judgment. As far as we can discover by other's experience and our own, no writer understands the phenomena of composition. It is impossible to realize, in reading, that which is, to him, impassioned, the state of feeling which produced it. His own mind is to himself a mystery and a wonder. The thought stands before him, visible to his outward eye, which he does not remember has ever haunted him. The illustration from nature is often one which he does not remember to have noticed the trait of character or the peculiar pencilling of a line in beauty altogether new and startling. He is affected to tears or mirth, his taste is gratified or shocked, his fancy amused or his cares beguiled, as if he had never before seen it. It is his own mind, but he does not recognise it. He is like the peasant child taken and dressed richly; he does not know himself in his new adornments. There is a wonderful metamorphosis in print. The Author has written under strong excitement, and with a developement and reach of his own powers, which would amuse him were he conscious of the process. There are dim and far chambers in the mind which are never explored by reason. Imagination in her rapt frenzy wanders blindly there sometimes, and brings out their treasures to the light-ignorant of their value and almost believing that the dreams when they glitter are admired. There are phantoms which haunt the perpetual twilight of the inner mind, which are arrested only by the daring hand of an 'overwrought fancy, and like a deed done in a dream, the difficult steps are afterwards but faintly remembered. It is wonderful how the mind accumulates by unconscious observation-how the tint of a cloud, or the expression of an eye, or the betrayal of character by a word, will lie for years forgotten in the memory till it is brought out by some searching thought to its owner's wonder. The book which lies before us, in that fair print, has scarce a figure which we can trace to its source, or a feeling which we can rememher to have nursed. We could criticise it, therefore, as well as another, if not, indeed (because it is after our own taste) far better. We have a great mind to do it as it is. It would at least be a new attempt in our innocent republic