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Come, my love-look

up-behold,―

Again to my breast

Thy cheek is press'd:

Oh! how cold-how shuddering cold !”

No sooner had she ceased than the attendants resumed their consolatory chaunt.

"For a winding-sheet we'll take
Leaf of lily from the lake:-
Silver shell of nautilus

Shall his coffin be-and thus

Will we see him tomb'd afar
In some silent cave of spar,
Where a glow-worm in an urn
Of chrystal for a lamp shall burn.
His toll-bell shall the death-watch ring,
Humming birds his dirge shall sing,
And for banners he shall have

Tulips waving o'er his grave.

Thus shall he enshrined be,

Royally-right royally."

Gazing upwards with a look of appealing grief, the disconsolate Queen exclaimed

"Must I leave him?-Never, never!

Lay me by his side for ever,

For

my

bosom's thrilling smart

Tells me,-oh, my heart! my heart!"

Still the mourner would have spoken,
But, alas! her heart was broken ;—
Still her scarlet lips she stirr'd,
But their music was not heard:
Prone she fell upon her lover,

Heaved a sigh-and all was over!

Methought a wailful cry was uttered by the whole

assemblage, followed by a sad and strange funereal mu

sic, which was suddenly interrupted by the loud barking of a dog; when I found that the volume of Shakspeare in which I had been reading the Midsummer Night's Dream, having fallen from my hand upon my pointer's head, he had instantly dissipated my reverie, and most unwelcomely hurried me back from the Pacific Ocean, and the dreams of imagination, to the dull and dusty reality of my chambers in Gray's Inn Square.

A SPRIG OF SPLEENWORT.

"A fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo to retire into a corner, to lie down and howl and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, wanted neither food nor water; nor did the servant imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only remedy they found was to set him to hard work; after which he would infallibly come to himself." SWIFT.

IF the only rational animal were not by far the most unreasonable of beings, we should never have heard so many lugubrious complaints about the wretched lot and miserable destiny of man. Moralists and divines, with the intention of impressing the probationary nature of our existence, have harped upon this strain usque ad nauseam; for it may be doubted whether their doctrine be perfectly salutary in its tendency, while it is clear that it is by no means tenable as to truth. Ingratitude and discontent can never be the constituents of virtue, nor can our unhappiness in this world confer upon us the smallest

additional claim to happiness in the next. If it be self-inflicted, we may rather presume the contrary; and it is our interest to favour this impression, for however prone we may be to indulge in mental sufferings and despondency, there are very few of us who would attempt to compete in bodily anguish with the Hindoo fanatics who keep their hands clasped till the nails grow out at the back, hang before a slow fire with their faces downwards, or while they swing upon hooks suspended from elevated beams, shower down flowers upon their admirers, as if in the act of beatitude. Ille placet Deo cui placet Deus, says St. Augustine; Addison asserts that "Cheerfulness is the best hymn to the Divinity," and in fact it is impious to suppose that the Great Father of mankind, whose benignity and love so strikingly pervade universal Nature, could delight in the misery of his children, or have created them for other purposes than those of virtuous enjoyment.

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Let us consider the fate of this unhappy creature in the abstract. We, whose lot is cast in the temperate regions of the earth, have at least no reason to complain of the habitation provided for us. We might have been freezing under the pole, or scorched beneath the torrid zone: this forms at least one. ground of gratitude.

Who can place limits to the gratifications which may be administered to us through the senses alone, inferior as they are to those of the mind? Nature has been prodigal in supplying delights, and the ingenuity of man has been unceasingly occupied in con

tributing to their increase or modification. A whole world of pleasure is perpetually streaming into us through the eye, to whose sensations the green livery of Nature has been rendered peculiarly grateful and refreshing. This little organ, like the vases of the Belides, is never filled, although perpetually replenished; and we pass from the contemplation of natural beauties to the study of artificial ones,-from the ever-changing landscape, heavens and sea, to the endless succession of buildings, statues and paintings, as if the day were too short for its enjoyments. When the bodily eye is shut the mental vision is opened, and the same sights are again presented to us, heightened to the exquisite of ideal perfection, or made attractive by every species of grotesque and fantastic combination. What a succession of pleasant tattoos are perpetually beating upon the tiny drum of the ear, from the siren mouth of Beauty, "warbling immortal verse and Tuscan air," or the rich harmonies of song and cymbal, cithern, harp and lute," "in many a bout of linked sweetness long drawn out," to the symphonious concert of the birds, the music of the winds, "the murmuring woodlands, the resounding shore,” or that "deep and dreadful organ-pipe-the thunder!" Is there a fish, bird, or animal in any of the elements, or one of the corners of the world, however remote, which has not been rendered subservient to the indulgences of our palate; while earth spreads before us a never-ending banquet of inanimate productions, stretching up her branching hands from the ground, and pouring into our mouths corn, wine, and

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honey, with a thousand varieties of fruit and vegetable luxury? And that they may not leave a single sense ungratified, do not the greater part of them emit delicious fragrance, while myriads of flowers impregnate the very winds with odours the most exquisite? Yet these ministerings to the sense, manifold and voluptuous as they are, were always meant to be kept in subjection to the enjoyments provided for the celestial part of this lord of the creation! Pleasures of bodily perception he shares with the beasts that perish; but what a new creation of unbounded beatitude is opened to him by the possession of the reasoning faculty, and the consciousness of an immortal soul! The consolations of religion-the delights of literature-the joys that emanate from the head and heart-books and intellectual society, friendship and domestic bliss,-every one of these is an inexhaustible source of joy, whose runnels and streamlets it would require a separate essay to specify; and yet the happy creature who combines them all with the keen though subordinate delights of sense-who is placed in the midst of this transitory paradise under a promise that if he walks in that path which imparts the most intense enjoyment to existence, he may exchange it for an eternal one,-dares, in the blindness of ingratitude, to murmur at his fate! It only depends upon himself to be a demi-god, and to convert the world into an elysium.

"Let us but strive

To love our fellow-men as heaven loves us,
(Which is true piety,) and earth will seem
Itself a heaven."-

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