66 There was doubtless an open footpath over that 'heaven-kissing hill," whereon, according to Shakspeare, the feathered Mercury alighted; and there were, probably, many enamoured wanderers abroad on that tranquil night recorded by the same poet"When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise." Even that phlegmatic compound, a pie, has its kissingcrust. There is no kissing, indeed, animate or inanimate, that has not its recommendations; but there is a nondescript species, somewhat between both, against which I beg to enter my protest-I mean the degrading ceremony of a man made in God's image, kneeling to kiss the hand of a fellow-mortal at Court, merely because that mortal is the owner of a crown and the dispenser of places and titles. Nay, there are inconsistent beings who have kissed the foot of the Servant of servants at Rome, and yet boggled at performing the ko-tou at Pekin, to the Son of the Moon, the Brother of the Sun, and the Lord of the Celestial Empire. Instead of complaining at knocking their nobs upon the floor before such an august personage, it seemed reasonable to suppose that they would conjure up in their imaginations much more revolting indignities. Rabelais, when he was in the suite of Cardinal Lorraine, accompanied him to Rome, and no sooner saw him prostrate before the Pope, and kissing his toe, as customary, than he suddenly turned round, shut the door, and scampered home. Upon his return, the Cardinal asked him the meaning of this insult. “When I saw you," said Rabelais, “who are my master, and, moreover, a cardinal and a prince, kissing the Pope's foot, I could not bear to anticipate the sort of ceremony that was probably reserved for your servant." TO A LOG OF WOOD UPON THE FIRE. WHEN Horace, as the snows descended That Logs be doubled, Until a blazing fire arose, I wonder whether thoughts like those His fancy troubled. Poor Log! I cannot hear thee sigh, Without evincing thy success, To let thee know it. Peeping from earth-a bud unveil'd, While infant winds around thee blew, Earth-water-air-thy growth prepared, Perch'd on thy crest, it rock'd in air, In the sun's ray, as if they were A fairy banner. Or if some nightingale impress'd And in the leafy nights of June Thou grew'st a goodly tree, with shoots That thou whom perching birds could swing, Thine offspring leaves-death's annual prey, In heaps, like graves, around thee blown, Bursting to life, another race At touch of Spring in thy embrace Aloft, where wanton breezes play'd, How oft thy lofty summits won How oft in silent depths of night, In hush'd devotion "Twere vain to ask; for doom'd to fall, The day appointed for us all O'er thee impended: The hatchet, with remorseless blow, But not thine use-for moral rules, Bidding me cherish those who live So when death lays his axe to me, My hold terrestrial; Like thine my latter end be found THE WORLD. Nihil est dulcius his literis, quibus cœlum, terram, maria, cognoscimus. THERE is a noble passage in Lucretius, in which he describes a savage in the early stages of the world, when men were yet contending with beasts the possession of the earth, flying with loud shrieks through the woods from the pursuit of some ravenous animal, unable to fabricate arms for his defence, and without art to staunch the streaming wounds inflicted on him by his four-footed competitor. But there is a deeper subject of speculation, if we carry our thoughts back to that still earlier period when the beasts of the field and forest held undivided sway; when Titanian brutes, whose race has been long extinct, exercised a terrific despotism over the subject earth; and that "bare forked animal," who is pleased to dub himself the Lord of the Creation, had not been called up out of the dust to assume his soi-disant supremacy. Geologists pretend to discover in the bowels of the earth itself indisputable proofs that it must have been for many centuries nothing more than a splendid arena for monsters. We have scarcely penetrated beyond its surface; but, whenever any convulsion of Nature affords us a little deeper insight into her recesses, we seldom fail to discover fossil remains of gigantic creatures, though, amid all these organic fragments, we never encounter the slightest trace of any human relics. How strange the surmise, that for numerous, perhaps innumerable centuries, this most beautiful pageant of the world performed its magnificent evolutions, the sun and moon rising and setting, the seasons following their appointed succession, and the ocean uprolling its invariable tides, for no other apparent purpose than that lions and tigers might retire howling to their dens, as the shaking of the ground proclaimed the approach of the mammoth, or that the behemoth might perform his unwieldy flounderings in the deep! How bewildering the idea, that the glorious firmament and its constellated lights, and the varicoloured clouds, that |