Nor all the graces that enchain the view,
And render beauty still more beautiful—

But the resemblance that can renew

Past youth, past hopes, past loves, no shroud may dull-
Affections, years may dim, but never quite annul:
Wresting from death and darkness undecayed,
The kindred lineaments we honoured here;
The breast on which our infant brow had laid;
The lips that kissed away our first brief tear.

Which gave me all the grave had left of mine!
I gaze upon this portrait till my heart
Remembers every touch, and every line;
And almost do I deem the gift divine,
Direct from heaven, and not from human skill!
Instinct with love those noble features shine-
The eyes some new expression seems to fill-
And half I know thee dead-half hope thee living still.
C. Swain.

ANTIQUITY.

ANTIQUITY is worthless, except as the parent of experience. That which is useful is alone venerable; that which is virtuous is alone noble; and there is nothing so illustrious as the dedication of the intellect and the affections to the great end of human improvement and happiness; an end which will be the ultimate test and touchstone of all our institutions, by a reference to which they will be judged, and either perpetuated or swept away.

Westminster Review.

POET OF NATURE.

NATURE, exerting an unwearied power,
Forms, opens, and gives scent to every flower;
Spreads the fair verdure of the field, and leads
The dancing Naiads through the dewy meads:
She fills profuse ten thousand little throats
With music, modulating all their notes;

And charms the woodland scenes, and wilds unknown,
With artless airs and concerts of her own:
But seldom, as if fearful of expense,
Vouchsafes to man a poet's just pretence-
Fervency, freedom, fluency of thought,
Harmony, strength, words exquisitely sought;
Fancy, that from the bow that spans the sky,
Brings colours, dipped in heaven, that never die;
A soul exalted above earth, a mind

Skilled in the characters that form mankind;

Thus graced, the man asserts a poet's name,
And the world cheerfully admits the claim.

*

Cowper.

PERSEVERANCE.

ALL the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-axe, or of one impression of the

spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet these petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings.

Johnson.

SENSE OF BEAUTY.

MIND, mind alone, (bear witness, earth and heaven!)
The living fountain in itself contains

Of beauteous and sublime here hand in hand
Sit paramount the Graces; here enthroned,
Celestial Venus, with divinest airs,

Invites the soul to never-fading joy.

Akenside.

WOMEN AND PICTURES.

Ir, indeed, women were mere outside, form and face only, and if mind made up no part of her composition, it would follow that a ball-room was quite as appropriate a place for choosing a wife, as an exhibition-room for choosing a picture. But, inasmuch as women are not mere portraits, their value not being determinable by a glance of the eye, it follows that a different mode of appreciating their value, and a different place for viewing them antecedent to their being individually selected, is desirable. The two cases differ also in this, that if a man select a picture for himself from among all its exhibited competitors, and bring it to his own house, the picture being passive, he is able to fix it there: while

the wife, picked up at a public place, and accustomed to incessant display, will not, it is probable, when brought home, stick so quietly to the spot where he fixes her, but will escape to the exhibition-room again, and continue to be displayed at every subsequent exhibition, just as if she were not become private property, and had never been definitely disposed of.

Hannah More.

CHURCH OF THE CARMELITES.*

In this chapel wrought

One of the few, Nature's interpreters;

The few, whom genius gives as lights to shine,
Massaccio;† and he slumbers underneath.

Wouldst thou behold his monument? Look round!
And know that where we stand stood oft and long,
Oft till the day was gone, Raphael himself,
He and his haughty rival‡-patiently,
Humbly to learn of those who came before,
To steal a spark from their authentic fire;
Theirs who first broke the universal gloom,
Sons of the morning.

Rogers.

NATURE AND ART.

that

Ir is a great mortification to the vanity of man, his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a * At Florence. The first great painter of Italy. Michael Angelo.

few strokes of embellishment to those pieces which come from the hand of the master. Some of which may be of his drawing, but he is not allowed to touch the principal figure. Art may make a suit of clothes, but nature must produce a man.

Hume.

STUDY FROM NATURE.

WHO to the life an exact piece would make,
Must not from others' work a copy take,
No, not from Rubens or Vandyck,

Much less content himself to make it like
The ideas and the images which lie
In his own fancy or his memory:
No, he before his sight must place
The natural and living face;

The real object must command

Each judgment of his eye, and motion of his hand.

Cowley.

SUNSHINE AND CLOUD.

IT is with the moral as with the natural world. It is not amid the serenity of fortune, it is not in the unshaded light of noon, that the sublime of the one or the other is to be sought. Amid the mingled light and shadow which compose sunrise, the grandest combinations are formed; from the struggle of adverse or doubtful fortune, the loftiest morals are gathered. The doubt and the darkness, the shadow and the cloud, make the glory and the beauty! The moral and the natural light, in their