expressions, and by a speaking smile, that they believe themselves to be enjoying an inward source of satisfaction, which their companions know not of. Imagination invests with a peculiar importance and a mysterious charm, all the minutiæ of life, as it is connected with one individual being, and the mind broods over its own private and particular hoard of joy, with a constant watchfulness and jealousy lest the world, that fell spoiler, should break in and pollute, even if it had no inclination or ability to steal. Under the influence of love, we are sus picious even of ourselves. We shrink from making it the common topic of conversation. It is a feeling which admits of no participation. We would not, if we could, make converts, any farther than our admiration extends; and as there is no sympathy to be obtained by communication, no one at all acquainted with the world, or with the principles of human nature, would ever tell their love, were it not for the power which this passion possesses to overthrow the rational faculties, to blind perception, and to silence experience, holding the wise man captive in the leading strings of second childhood, and drawing him on from one folly to another, until at last he awakes from his dream, and feels, like the unfortunate bellows-mender, that he is wearing an ass's head. No sooner is the spell dissolved, than he turns upon his fellow-creatures the weapons of ridicule, dipped in the venom of his wounded pride; he laughs the more in order that he may appear to make light of his recent bonds, and thus revenges himself for his own mortification. Those who are wise enough to profit by the experience of others, learn to keep silence on this theme, but it pervades their thoughts and feelings not the less. It is present with them in the morning when they awake, and in the evening when they seek repose. It is cradled in the bosom of the scented rose, and rocked upon the crested waves of the sea. It speaks to them in the lulling wind, and gushes forth in the fountain of the desert. It is clothed in the golden majesty of the noonday sun, and shrouded in the silver radiance of the moon. It is the soul of their world, the life of their sweet and chosen thoughts, the centre of their exis tence, which gathers in all their wandering hopes and desires. Here they fix them to one point, and make that the altar upon which all the faculties of the soul pour out their perpetual incense. Burns, who has written of love more fre quently, yet with more simplicity of sweetness than any other of our poets, strikingly illustrates the potency of this sentiment in associating itself with our accustomed amusements and avocations. There was no object in nature which he did not find it possible to compare or contrast with the reigning queen of his affections; but the memory of one, above all others, he has immortalized in strains as touching and poetical, as ever flowed from a faithful recollection, a warm imagination, and a too fond heart. The lines beginning "Thou lingering star with less'ning ray," are, or ought to be, too familiar to every "Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Or, "Not the bee upon the blossom, Not the poet, in the moment Fancy lightens on his e'e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gies to me." Or again,― "Altho' thou maun never be mine, Altho' even hope is denied; 'Tis sweeter for thee despairing, Than aught in the world beside." And where in the records of feeling can we find a more affectionate description of love and poverty contending against each other, than in the following song; the first and last stanza of which I shall quote for the benefit of those who are too wise to think of love, who are too happy to have ever been compelled to take poverty into their calculations, and who are consequently unacquainted with the fact that both together struggling for mastery over the wishes and the will, create a warfare as fearful and desolating as any which the human heart is capable of enduring. "O Poortith cauld, and restless love, "How blest the humble cotter's fate! Moore has done much, perhaps more than any other man was capable of doing, to render this hackneyed theme agreeable to modern tastes, by arraying the idol whose divinity the public had begun to question, in every kind of drapery, graceful and gorgeous, and placing it in every possible variety of light and shadow. Yet throughout the many elegant lines which he has devoted to this subject, there are none which occur to my recollection more poetically simple and touching than these. "A boat sent forth to sail alone At midnight on the moonless sea, A harp whose master chord is gone, A wounded bird that has but one Unbroken wing to soar upon, Are like what I am without thee." In the pages of Shelley we find more freshness, and sometimes more pathos. There is a vividness in his thoughts, and in the character of his mind, which we may well believe to have proved too keen and restless for the mortal frame in which his delicate, sensitive, and ethereal spirit was inclosedtoo refined for the common purposes of life, too brilliant for reason, and too dazzling for religion, and too exquisite for repose. The following lines have great poetical beauty. "Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, Or the death they bear, The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, And the following fragment, addressed to love itself, with the exception of the first line, which is in extremely bad taste, is perhaps without its equal in poetry of this description. "Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all We can desire, O Love! and happy souls, Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall, "Catch thee and feed from their o'erflowing bowls Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew;Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls "Investest it; and when the heavens are blue Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair The shadows of thy moving wings imbue "Its deserts, and its mountains, till they wear Beauty like some bright robe;-thou ever soarest Among the towers of men, and as soft air "In spring, which moves the unawakened forest, Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest "That which from thee they should implore :—the weak Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts The strong have broken-yet where shall any seek "A garment whom thou clothest not?" From love, as a passion, it is truly delightful to turn to the consideration of love in its more social and domestic character; and here again we find the same poet offering to his wife the noblest tribute of affection, in language as tender as it is elevated and pure. "So now, my summer task is ended, Mary, With thy beloved name, thou child of love and light. No longer where the woods to frame a bower Or where with sound like many voices sweet It is worthy of remark, that these lines form the introduction to a work in which the poet concentrated all the powers of his genius. The merits of this work have nothing to do with the fact, that it was the richest offering he had to lay upon the shrine of affection, and that that offering was dedicated to his wife. The late amiable Bishop of Calcutta, a less exceptionable poet, and a less eccentric genius, has left us a beautiful and affecting tribute to affection, under the same pure and sacred form; and the woman who could inspire these lines ought to have been satisfied for the rest of her life, never to receive the incense of less hallowed praise. "If thou wert by my side, my love! "If thou, my love! wert by my side, How gaily would our pinnace glide "I miss thee at the dawning ray "I miss thee when by Gunga's stream But most beneath the moon's pale beam "I spread my books, my pencil try, "But when of morn and eve, the star I feel, though thou art distant far, Then on! then on! where duty leads, "That course, nor Delbi's kingly gates, For sweet the bliss us both awaits Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, But ne'er were hearts so light and gay, If the language of a pure and dignified attachment, proved by long trial, refined by suffering, clothed in humility, and wholly divested of weakness or selfishness, was ever wrung out by the power of affliction from the inmost recesses of an elevated and virtuous mind, it is in the words of Mrs. Hutchinson, where she speaks of the love of her lamented husband. "There is only this to be recorded, that never was there a passion more ardent and lesse idolatrous; he loved her better than his life, with inexpressible tendernesse and kindnesse, had a most high obliging esteeme of her, yet still considered honour, religion, and duty above her, nor ever suffered the intrusion of such a dotage as should blind him from marking her imperfec tions: these he looked upon with an indulgent eie, which did not abate his love and esteeme of her, while it aug mented his care to blot out all those spotts which might make her appeare lesse worthy of that respect he payed her; and thus indeed he soon made her more equall to him than he found her; for she was a very faithful mirror, reflecting truly, though but dimly, his own glories nothing before his inspection gave her a faire figure, upon him, so long as he was present; but she that was when he was removed, was only filled with a darke mist, and never could again take in any delightful object, nor return any shining representation. The greatest excellencie she had was the power of apprehending, and the virtue of loving his: soe as his shadow she waited on him every where, till he was taken into that region of light, which admitts of none, and then she vanished into nothing. 'Twas not her face that he loved, her honour and her virtue were his mistresses, and these (like Pigmalion's) images of his own making, for he polished and gave form to what he found with all the roughnesse of the quarrie about it; but meeting with a compliante subject for his own wise government, he found as much satisfaction as he gave, and never had occasion to number his marriage among his infelicities.” This beautiful illustration of love combines all that is essential to the most ardent, as well as the most ennobling sentiment, and wants nothing but metre to entitle it to a high place in the scale of poetical merit. There remains one important observation to be made on the subject of love, that it marks the progress of national civilization, and the improvement or the deterioration of public morals. Love, above all other passions, is capable of producing the greatest happiness, or the greatest misery; of being the most refined, or the most degraded. It may be associated with the highest virtue, or made the companion of the lowest vice. Where a nation or a community is the most licentious, love is the least respected. Where deference is paid to moral laws, and religious duties, love is regarded as the bond of domestic union, the charm which diffuses a secret, but holy influence over our domestic enjoyments. In patriarchal times, when men were dispersed over the face of the earth in separate families or tribes, love dwelt among them like a patient handmaid, ministering to their private comfort, but wholly uninfluential in directing their important movements. In the days of chivalry, when men, following the standard of false glory, maintained their possessions by force of arms, sacrificed ease, honesty, or life, to the laws of honour, and the adventures of knight-errantry, love was worshipped as a goddess, whose inspiration endowed her votaries with superhuman power, and whose protection was a shield of adamant. And thus through the different changes of national character and customs, love adopts itself to all, luxuriating in the indulgence of artificial life, or sharing the drudgery of corporeal toil. Even in individuals, it is not going too far to say, that low notions of the nature and attributes of love, bespeak a vitiated mind, and show, like the "trail of the serpent," in the garden of Eden, that the principle of evil has been there. There is in its elevated nature, a character of constancy, truth, and dignity, which constitutes the essence of its being, and no pure eye can behold it robbed of these, without sorrow and indignation. well chosen is the greatest treasure we can possess. We have in such a friend the addition of another mind, whose strength supplies our weakness, and whose virtues render us ambitious of the same. We see frequent instances that men alone in the world—unknown, and unvalued, will commit errors, we might say vices, from which the well-timed warning of a friend would have restrained them, and stain their character with follies, for which, if a friend had blushed, they too would have been ashamed. All the endearing associations which enhance our pleasures, or console us under affliction, are centred in the name of friend. When the stroke of adversity falls upon us, the sympathy of a true friend takes away half its heaviness. When the world misunderstands our meaning, and attributes bad motives to what are only ill-judged actions, we think (with what satisfaction those who have experienced the feeling alone can tell) that there is one who knows us better. When good fortune comes unexpectedly upon us, in a tide too sudden and too full for enjoyment, we hasten to our friend who shares the overplus and leaves us happy. When doubtfully we tread the dangerous path of life, misdirected by our passions, and bewildered by our fears, we look for the hand of friendship to point out the safe footing, from whence we shall bless our guide. When wounded, slighted, and cast back into the distance, by those whose fickle favor we had sought to win, we exclaim in the midst of our disappointments, "There is one who loves me still!" And when wearied with the warfare of the world, and "sick of its harsh sounds, and sights," we return to the communion of friendship, as we rest after a laborious journey, in a safe sweet garden of refreshment and peace. There is unquestion It is this faculty of adaptation to all circumstances and states of being, which renders love so entirely subservient to the purposes of the poet; because it takes the tone of the times, as well as that of individual charac-ably much to be done in the way of cultivater, and participating in good or evil, calls forth these opposing principles in all their power. Besides the love here spoken of, poetry abounds in descriptions of that which assumes the sober garb of friendship, and which is perhaps of all others the most substantial support to the human mind, through the difficulties and temptations necessarily encountered in the journey of life. A friend ting this garden, and maintaining our right to possess it; but it repays us for the price, and when we have exercised forbearance, and interchanged kind offices, and spoken, and borne to hear, the truth, and been faithful, and gentle, and sincere, we find a recompense in our own bosoms, as well as in the affections of our friend. There are yet other modifications of love such as that which constitutes the chain of sadness or melancholy, and then as a gloomy passion, absorbing every faculty of the soul. Of all the distinctive characters assumed by grief, from simple sadness to wild despair, melancholy is the most poetical, because while it operates as a stimulant to the im domestic union-the love of brothers and sisters; and lastly, and most to be revered as the foundation of family concord and social happiness, we might almost say of moral feeling, the love which subsists between parents and children, uniting on one hand the tenderest impressions we have received, with the first lessons we have learn-agination, its influence is so gentle as to ed; on the other, the warmest affection, with the weightiest responsibility. The weakness and the waywardness of a child watched over by parental love, directed by parental care, and reclaimed by parental authority, are so frequently alluded to in the Scriptures, when describing the condition of man in reference to his Maker, and in themselves harmonize so entirely with that relation, that we use the name of " Heavenly Father," not only in obedience to scriptural authority, but because we comprehend in these holy words, the highest object of our love, our gratitude, and our veneration. We cannot better conclude this chapter than with the following appropriate lines by Southey. They sin who tell us love can die. All others are but vanity. In heaven ambition cannot dwell, Nor avarice in the depths of hell. Earthly these passions, as of earth, They perish where they have their birth. Its holy flame for ever burneth, From heaven it came, to heaven returneth; And hath in heaven its perfect rest; THE POETRY OF GRIEF. THE poetry of grief is exhibited under so great a variety of forms, all capable of so wile a difference in character and degree, that it will be necessary to speak of the sentiment of grief, first, under that mild and softened aspect which assumes the name of leave all the other intellectual powers at full liberty to exercise their particular functions. Burton speaks of melancholy as engendering strange conceits-as quickening the perceptions, and expanding the faculties of the mind; and Lord Byron, scarcely less intimate than this quaint old writer with the different mental maladies to which our nature is liable, describes the "glance of melancholy" as a fearful gift." "What is it but the telescope of truth Which strips the distance of its phantasies, When melancholy takes possession of the soul, we lose as it were the perspective of our mental vision. We forget the relative! proportions of things, and mistaking the small for the great, or the distant for the : near, magnify their importance, examine their particular parts, and fill our imaginations with their nature and essence. This is in fact "making the cold reality too real;" for though there is much of truth in the vivid perceptions ef melancholy, it is truth misplaced; truth with which the wise man has little to do, but which ministers powerfully to the wretchedness of the "mind diseased.” Being in our nature as liable to pain as we are susceptible of pleasure; and by the neglect of our privileges, and abuse of our faculties, subjected to the experience of even greater suffering than enjoyment; it necessarily follows, that those views of the condition of man which are tinctured with the sombre hues of melancholy, should be regarded as the most natural as well as the most interesting. There is little poetry in mirth, or even in perfect happiness, except as it is contrasted with misery; and thus all attempts to describe the perfection of heavenly beatitude fail to interest our feelings. The joys of heaven are, according to the writers who have ventured upon these de |