may be magnificent in themselves-the willow, the heath, and the ivy, may each present a picture to the imagination; but what are these, considered separately, compared with the ever-varying combination of form and colour, majesty and grace, presented by the forest, or the woodland, the sloping banks of the river, or the leafy dell, where the round and the massive figures are broken by the spiral stem, or the feathery foliage that trembles in the passing gale-where the hues that are most vivid, or most delicate, stand forth in clear contrast from the depths of sombre shade-where every projecting rock and rugged cleft is fringed with a curtain of green tracery, and every glassy stream reflects again, in its stainless mirror, the variety and the magnificence of the surrounding groves? Yet what are words to tell of the perfection of nature, the glories that lie scattered even in our daily path? And what are we, that we should pursue the sordid avocations of life without pausing to admire?

In order that the harmony of sweet sounds may be distinctly perceived and accommodated to the taste, there must be a peculiar formation of the human ear; nor is it possible for

the poetry of any object, even the most beautiful in nature, to be felt or understood without an answering chord in the human heart. There are many rational beings, worthy and estimable in their way, altogether insensible to the unseen or spiritual charm which lies in almost every subject of intellectual contemplation; who gaze upon the ivy-mantled ruin, and behold nothing more than grey walls with a partial covering of green, like the man so aptly described by Wordsworth, when he

says

"The primrose by the water's brim,

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

But there are others, whether happier in this state of being it might not be easy to prove, but certainly more capable of intense and refined enjoyment, who, accustomed to live in a world of thought, and to derive their happiness from remote and impalpable essences of things, rather than from things themselves, cannot look on nature, nor behold any object with which poetical association holds the most distant connection, but immediately a spark in the train of imagination is kindled, and consciousness, memory, and anticipation,

heap fuel on the living fire, which glows through the expansive soul.

It is, still to speak figuratively, by the light of this fire, that they see what is imperceptible to other eyes. They can discover types and emblems in all created things; and having received in their own minds deep and indelible impressions of beauty and harmony, majesty and awe, can recur to those impressions through the channels which external things afford, and draw from thence a never-failing supply of the purest poetical enjoyment.

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THE POETRY OF ANIMALS.

WHILE flowers, and trees, and plants in general, afford an immense fund of interest to the contemplative beholder, the animal kingdom, yet scarcely touched upon in these pages, is perhaps equally fertile in poetical associations. From the reflections of the melancholy Jacques upon the wounded deer, down to the pretty nursery fable of "The Babes in the Wood," the same natural desire to associate with our own the habits and feelings of the more sensitive and amiable of the inferior animals is observable, as well in the productions of the sublimest, as the simplest poet.

Burns' "Address to a Mouse," proves to us with how much genuine pathos a familiar and ordinary subject may be invested. No mind

which had never bathed in the fountain of poetry itself-whose remotest attributes had not been imbued with this ethereal principle as with a living fire, could have ventured upon such a theme. In common hands, a moral drawn from a mouse, and clothed in the language of verse, would have been little better than a burlesque, or a baby's song at best; but in these beautiful and touching lines, so perfect is the adaptation of the language to the subject so evident, without ostentation, the deep feeling of the bard himself, that the moral flows in with a natural simplicity which cannot fail to charm the most fastidious reader.

The lines in which Cowper describes himself as a "stricken deer," are also affecting in the extreme; but as my object is not to quote instances, but to examine why certain things are pre-eminently poetical, we will proceed to the consideration of a few individual subjects; first premising, that animals obtain the character of being so in a greater degree in proportion as we imagine them to possess such qualities as are most elevated or refined in ourselves, and in a less degree as we become familiarized with their bodily functions: Le