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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
On Mount Soracte, recommended

That Logs be doubled,

Until a blazing fire arose,

I wonder whether thoughts like those
Which in my noddle interpose

His fancy troubled.

Poor Log! I cannot hear thee sigh,
And groan, and hiss, and see thee die,
To warm a Poet,

Without evincing thy success,
And as thou wanest less and less,
Inditing a farewell address,

To let thee know it.

Peeping from earth-a bud unveil'd,
Some "bosky bourne" or dingle hail'd
Thy natal hour,

While infant winds around thee blew,
And thou wert fed with silver dew,
And tender sun-beams oozing through
Thy leafy bower.

Earth-water-air-thy growth prepared,
And if perchance some Robin, scared
From neighbouring manor,

Perch'd on thy crest, it rock'd in air,
Making his ruddy feathers flare

In the sun's ray, as if they were

A fairy banner.

Or if some nightingale impress'd
Against thy branching top her breast
Heaving with passion,

And in the leafy nights of June
Outpour'd her sorrows to the moon,
Thy trembling stem thou didst attune
To each vibration.

Thou grew'st a goodly tree, with shoots
Fanning the sky, and earth-bound roots
So grappled under,

That thou whom perching birds could swing,
And zephyrs rock with lightest wing,
From thy firm trunk unmoved didst fling
Tempest and thunder.

Thine offspring leaves-death's annual prey,
Which Herod Winter tore away
From thy caressing,

In heaps, like graves, around thee blown,
Each morn thy dewy tears have strown,
O'er each thy branching hands been thrown,
As if in blessing.

Bursting to life, another race

At touch of Spring in thy embrace
Sported and flutter'd;

Aloft, where wanton breezes play'd,
In thy knit-boughs have ringdoves made
Their nest, and lovers in thy shade
Their vows have utter'd.

How oft thy lofty summits won
Morn's virgin smile, and hail'd the sun
With rustling motion;

How oft in silent depths of night,
When the moon sail'd in cloudless light,
Thou hast stood awestruck at the sight,

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,
First laid thee in the forest low,
Then cut thee into logs-and so
Thy course was ended-

But not thine use-for moral rules,
Worth all the wisdom of the schools,
Thou may'st bequeath me;

Bidding me cherish those who live
Above me, and the more I thrive,
A wider shade and shelter give
To those beneath me.

So when death lays his axe to me,
I may resign as calm as thee

My hold terrestrial;

Like thine my latter end be found
Diffusing light and warmth around,
And like thy smoke my spirit bound
To realms celestial.

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