turists. In my love of nature I felt jealous of the artist beyond mere fidelity of form (I speak principally of figures); and in engraving, where there is no colour to compensate for alienating the eye, I deemed that style the best which is confined to outline. Some of the commoner productions of this sort are generally lying on my table, and I find undiminished delight in the French Cupid and Psyche from the paintings of Raphael's pupils, Hope's Costumes of the Ancients, etchings of the Elgin Marbles, Retch's Faustus, and other similar productions. Generally speaking, artists and professors appear to me to acquire a false artificial taste, which, overlooking the simple and natural, makes difficulty of execution the test of excellence,a mistake extending from painters and sculptors down to opera-dancers and musicians. My mind is less excursive than it was; it requires less excitement, and is satisfied with less nutriment, preserving, in its mystic union with the body, a consentaneous adaptation; for, though I walk or ride out whenever the weather permits, I can no longer exercise my limbs as I was wont. A sunny seat in my garden begins to be preferred to my old grey mare. I sit there sometimes for a considerable time, and think that I am thinking, but I find that the hour has passed away in a dreamy indistinctness-a sort of half consciousness, sufficient for enjoyment, though incapable of definition. These waking dreams may be a resource of nature for recruiting the mind, as I have always found mine more vigorous and active after such indulgence. There is one calamity to which age seems inevitably exposed-the dropping off into the grave of our early friends and associates, as we advance towards the final bourne and seem to have most need of their social offices. But nature, ever on the watch to provide substitutes for our deprivations, while she blunts our sympathies in this direction, quickens them in another, by raising up a new circle of friends in our chil dren and grand-children, less subject to the invasion of death, and better qualified by attachment and gratitude to minister to the wants of the heart. These are the affections that garland it with the buds and blossoms of a second spring; these are the holy band whose miraculous touch can bid the thorn of mortality, like that of Glastonbury, break forth into flowers even in the Christmas of our days. This is the cup of joy that contains the sole aurum potabile, the genuine elixir vite that can renovate our youth and endow us with a perpetuity of pleasure. In my former solitary wanderings and contemplations of nature, I had delighted to let my imagination embody forth the dreams of Grecian mythology and fable; to metamorphose the landscape that surrounded me to the mountains and dells of Arcadia and Thessaly; to people the woods and waters with nymphs, fauns, Dryads, Oreads, and Nereids; losing myself in classical recollections, and bidding them occasionally minister to the inspirations of the Muse. But the charms of rural scenery now kindled in my bosom a higher and holier sentiment. I looked out upon the beautiful earth, clothed in verdure and festooned with flowers, upon the glorious all-vivifying sun, upon the great waters bounding in unerring obedience to the moon, and into the blue depths of heaven, until I stood, as it were, in the presence of the Omnipotent Unseen; my senses drank in the landscape till they became inebriated with delight; I seemed interfused with nature; a feeling of universal love fell upon my heart, and in the suffusion of its silent gratitude and adoration I experienced a living apotheosis, being in spirit rapt up into the third heaven, even as Elijah was in the flesh. Bold romantic scenery was not es sential to the awakening of this enthusiasm: it has sprung up amid my own fields; and in the study of botany, to which I have always been attached, the dissection of a flower has been sufficient to call it forth, though in a minor degree. All nature, in fact, is imbued with this sentiment, for every thing is beautiful, and every thing attests the omnipresence of Divine love; but grand combinations will, of course, condense and exalt the feeling. Old as I am, I can still walk miles to enjoy a fine prospect; I often get up to see the sun rise, and I rarely suffer it to set, on a bright evening, without recreating my eyes with its parting glories. I can now feel the spirit in which the dying Rousseau desired to be wheeled to the window, that he might once more enjoy this sublime spectacle. How often, in my younger days, have I repeated the well-known lines of Dryden, "Strange cozenage! none would live past years again, And from the dregs of life think to receive Which fools us young, and beggars us when old." I would live past I had lived to disprove them. years again, but it should be the latter, not the former portion; for the current of my life, as it approaches the great ocean of eternity, runs smoother and clearer than in its first out-gushing. Like Job's, my latter days have been the most fully blessed. I am now seventy years of age; and bating the loss of a few teeth, and some other inevitable effects of age upon my person, I still possess the mens sana in corpore sano, and "bate no jot of heart or hope." My journey from sixty to seventy has been as delightful as that from forty to sixty; nor do I anticipate any future disappointment should it be extended to eighty or ninety, for my confidence in nature's substitutions and benignant provisions is boundless. Had she fixed a century as the impassable boundary of life, we might feel some annoyance and apprehensions as we approached it; but by leaving it undetermined, she has, to a certain extent, made us immortal in our own belief, for Hope is illimitable. I often catch myself anxiously inquiring of what disease my seniors have died, as if their disappearance were contrary to the usual course of things, and attributable to accident." The shortness of human life," says Dr. Johnson, "has afforded as many arguments to the voluptuary as the moralist." How operative, then, must it be with me who am anxious to combine both tendencies, and be considered a moral voluptuary, or, in other words, a philosopher: not a follower of Aristippus, or disciple of the Cyrenaic school, devoted to worldly and sensual delights under which the soul "embodies and embrutes;" but as a pupil of the much misunderstood and calumniated Epicurus, cultivating intellectual enjoyments, and holding pleasure to be the chief good, and virtue the chief pleasure! These are the laudable delights to which I feel a new stimulant from considering the shortness of my remaining career; and whether its termination be near or distant, these enjoyments will, I verily believe, accompany me to the last, and enable me to fall, like Cæsar, in a becoming and decent attitude. I have just laid down Wordsworth's Excursion, which I have been reading in the fields. How beautiful is the evening! The ground is strewed with dead leaves, which the wind has blown up into little heaps like graves; autumn has spread her varicoloured mantle over those which still flutter on the trees, some of which, crisp and red, tinkle in the air; while, from the chestnuts over my head, a large russet leaf, flitting from time to time before my eyes, or falling at my feet, seems to pronounce a silent "memento mori." The sun is rapidly sinking down, leaving the valley before me in shade, while the woods that clothe the hill upon my left, suffused with rosy light, but tranquil and motionless, seem as if they reposed in the flush of sleep. Three horses, unyoked from the plough, are crossing the field towards their stable, and the crows that have been following the furrow retire |