was never weary of comparing rivers to heroes; and so enamoured were Du Bartas and Drayton with river scenery, that the one wrote a poetical catalogue of those which were the most celebrated; and the other composed a voluminous work upon their history, topography, and landscapes. De Lille directs us to rear the monument of a friend on the banks of a river; since, lulled by the music of waters, he will enjoy a more engaging slumber than in the midst of an assemblage of tombs of marble. Camoens fancies the nymphs of the waters frequently to have seen him, wandering by moonlight on the green shores of the Tagus: and Park confesses, that no one can imagine the melancholy delight with which, from a ridge which overlooks a branch of the Senegal, he beheld the Niger rolling its immense stream along the distant plain. On the borders of the Strymon, Orpheus lamented the loss of Eurydice1; and beautifully pathetic is the passage, in a small ballad of Logan, where, describing the wanderings of a mother and sister, the poet heightens the solemn simplicity of the scene, by alluding to the roar of the stream, that winded through the forest.

His mother from the window look'd

With all the longing of a mother;

His little sister weeping walk'd

The green-wood path to meet her brother.

They sought him east; they sought him west;

They sought him all the forest thorough;

They only saw the cloud of night;

They only heard the roar of Yarrow !

Many rivers in Britain wind through captivating scenery. Who, that has traversed the banks of the majestic Thames,

Georg iv.

and still more noble Severn; who, that has observed the fine sweeps of the Dee in the vale of Landisilio, and those of the Derwent near Matlock; who, that has contemplated the waters of the Towy, the graceful meanderings of the Usk, or the admirable features of the Wye, that does not feel himself justified in challenging any of the far-famed rivers of Europe, to present objects more various landscapes more rich, or scenes more graceful and magnificent? In Africa, the most delightful of all beautiful objects is a river; and the weary and exhausted traveller, over its burning deserts, calls out "river," with as much transport as a sailor calls out "land." The want of water, experienced by the Israelites in Rephidim, affords one of the most curious passages in Exodus. There was no water, says the text, for the people to drink; and they murmured. Moses struck the rock in Horeb with his rod; a fountain gushed forth; and the people drank till they were satisfied1.

VI.

Without rocks or mountains no country can be sublime; without water, no landscape can be perfectly beautiful. Few countries are more mountainous, or exhibit better materials for a landscape painter than Persia; yet, it loses a considerable portion of interest from its possessing but few springs, few rivulets, and fewer rivers. What can be more gratifying to a proud and inquisitive spirit, than tracing rivers to their sources; and pursuing them through long tracts of country, where sweep the Don,

1 Exodus, xvii. Nehemiah, ix. 15.

the Wolga, and the Vistula; the Ebro and the Douro ; the Rhine, the Inn, the Rhone, or the Danube? or in travelling the banks of the Allier, described so beautifully by Madame de Sevigné; or of the Loire, sleeping, winding, and rolling, by turns, through several of the finest districts in all France: where peasants reside in the midst of their vineyards in cottages, which, seated upon the sides of the hills, resemble so many birds' nests; and where the peasant girls, with their baskets of grapes, invite the weary traveller to take as many as he desires. "Take them," say they," and as many as you please; they shall cost you nothing."

What traveller, possessing an elegant taste, but is charmed, almost to rapture, as he wanders along the banks of the Po, the Adige, and the Brenta; or in Greece, amid the fairy scenes of the Eurotas, now shaded by roselaurels; and once peopled, like the Cayster, with innumerable swans-Swans ?-The imagination associates with them the mistress of Cunningham:

The gentle swan, with graceful pride,

Her glossy plumage laves;

And sailing down the silver tide,

Divides the whisp'ring waves:
The silver tide, that wandering flows,

Sweet to the bird must be !

But not so sweet, blithe Cupid knows,
As Julia is to me!

Delightful, too, were it to wander on the banks of the Jordan, where thousands of nightingales warble together; or on those of the Tay, the Clyde, and the Teith, where the culture of bees forms so considerable an article of rural economy. How is our fancy elevated, when we traverse,

even in imagination, those wild solitudes and fruitful deserts, enlivened by the humming-bird, through which the Orionoco, the Mississippi, and the Amazon, (rivers, to which the proudest streams of Europe are but as rivulets), pour their vast floods; and, as they roll along, experience the vicissitudes of every climate! The Mississippi! What grandeur in the very name! At its confluence, flowing into the ocean, it preserves its freshness and its colour, even three leagues from shore. In its course, along the continent, it is fringed with immense trees, frequently adorned with a grey mossy mantle, descending, in festoons, from the summit to the root1: and, while its waters are animated by swans, its forests resound with the exquisite melody of the cardinal. When leaning, too, on the parapet of an arch, bestriding a wild and rapid river, how often do we relapse into profound melancholy, as, following, with implicit obedience, the progressive march of association, the mirror of time and the emblem of eternity are presented to our imagination; till a retrospect of the past, and a perspective of future ages, mingling with each other, the mind is lost in the mazes of its own wanderings!

VII.

Ovid, Horace, and Rapin, compare the motion of rivers to the flying of time. This thought, so natural in itself, has been adopted by the Persian poets, as well as

'De Pages, vol. 1. p. 85. 8vo.

2 Ovid. Met. xv. 179.-Horat. iii. Od. 29.-Rapin. Hortor. lib. iii.-Est Mataphora a fluminibus, pro, annos aliis alivs more aquarum fluentium succedentes et accrescentes denumerat. CHABOTIUS.

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by the English1. "Seat yourself by the margin of a stream," says Hafiz, "and see how time glides away! This intimation how time passes is enough for me.”

The Rabbins inform us, that their kings, in ancient times, were anointed by the side of a spring: a running stream being considered an emblem of a perpetual reign. And here it may be not unamusing nor uninstructive, to observe the various analogies, connected with the flowing of rivers. One writer compares it to the vanity of life; which is constantly passing away, and yet as constantly returning others associate streams with the characters of men; the terms violent, restless, active, gentle, and bounteous, belonging equally to both. Barthelemy describes Anacharsis, when sailing on the Peneus, winding through the vale of Tempe, as contemplating the succession of its waves, and comparing it to the image of a pure and tranquil soul, in which one virtue engenders another; and all act in concert and in peace. Maximus Tyrius esteems a transparent brook, which overflows a plain, in which flowers penetrate the surface, yet remain concealed from the eye, an emblem of an exalted soul, animating a beautiful body. While Winkelman compares the noble simplicity and calmness of a great soul to a sea, the bottom of which always enjoys undisturbed tranquillity, even when storms and tempests agitate its surface 2.

Coxe compares the House of Hapsburgh to a small

1 Young, Night V. 401.

* "Deus est materia simplex," says Theodore Lau; "ego materia modificata Deus terra; ego gleba: Deus oceanus; ego fluvius."-Meditationes Philosophie de Deo, Mundo, et Homine.