so numerous, (their name indeed is legion,) that I can offer only a few recitations. In no invidious spirit are they placed before you; by no means with a view to comparisons, more or less prejudiced, perhaps ; but culled almost at random from the fair and flowery meads of poetic inspiration. Like the fox on the ice, we should ever beware of trusting to appearances, but the extracts that follow will, at once, pass current for

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gold to matchless purity refined,

And stamp'd with all the Godhead" of the "mind.”

They are carved like a cameo; each presents a glowing a perfect picture; the attention is riveted to them, as Theseus fixed in his eternal chair. They are here to speak for themselves, in tones of harmony, grandeur, and feeling, to which none, I am sure, will be indifferent. The list might have been enlarged, but a great constituency can only be represented by a few members.

In a popular work, entitled the "Ingoldsby Legends," there are two capital stanzas on Night. The "Poetry of Night" has been pretty well handled, and with its accessories of "the moon, sweet regent of the sky," the "stars of God," that gem the deep pall of dark

ness; the midnight winds, earth's never-ceasing penitents; the hushed tranquillity of slumbering nature, and the many mysterious sights and sounds that haunt its solitude, has been full oft and eloquently depicted. I hesitate much, however, if Mr Barham is yet surpassed for pathos in his lines on the subject just now introduced.

"Oh! sweet and beautiful is Night, when the silver moon is high,

And countless stars, like clustering gems, hang sparkling in the sky,

While the balmy breath of the summer breeze comes

whispering down the glen ;

And one fond voice alone is heard-oh! Night is lovely then.

"But when that voice, in feeble moans of sickness and of

pain,

But mocks the anxious ear, that strives to catch its

sounds in vain

When silently we watch the bed by the taper's flickering light,

Where all we love is fading fast-how terrible is Night!"

The contrast is sad and sorrowful, and the closing couplet strikes on the ear like a funeral knell. Ah! "the taper's flickering light" will soon only burn

mournfully by the dead unable to warm its ashes; and

rapidly following, will

“The plumes of the hearse wave to and fro,

And Death be the lord of that doleful show,
In the rank churchyard, amid mouldering stone,
Death holds his terrible reign alone!"

Dr Croly, who, in his talented work, "Salathiel the Immortal,”—a composition abounding with passages of the most singular excellence, and it may be fearlessly asserted, with more genuine prose-poetry than can be met with in perhaps the best prose fictions known,—has recorded that "vastness, obscurity, and terror are the three spirits that work the profoundest wonders of the poet," presents to us in his poem, "Cataline," the following noble passage, uttered by Hamilcar, one of the lawless confederates of that desperado, or filibuster, as it were :

That shall shake hearts like fearful prodigies;
Strip the patrician's robe from many a back,

And give it to his slave; make beggars rich,
And rich men beggars; drag authority

Down on its knees."

What a spirited, what an effective figure is the last

drag authority down on its knees!" Like the great image which that redoubted autocrat Nebuchadnezzar beheld in sleep, and the dread meaning of which Daniel interpreted to him, that, with all its seeming endurability and colossal proportions, was dashed to pieces by a stone cut out without hands; so could we almost realise the ideal dragging down of arrogant authority, well depicted here, as if it were a marble impersonation; or, metaphorically speaking, authority that, Icarus-like, had soared too near the sun, but must now lie crushed and mutilated, low, prostrate in the dust; and like Sesostris, Belshazzar, and his conqueror, Cyrus, where will it leave its glory!

Solitude and silence are the meet companions of imperial desolation. At the close of the first canto of the "Veiled Prophet of Korassan," Mokanna, in the course of a strain of mocking demoniac hate, reveals to his startled dupe, the beauteous Zelica, what he has hitherto artfully kept concealed-viz., his features, hideous as Stygian gloom, "fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell." He concludes thus :

"And now thou seest my soul's angelic hue,

'Tis time these features were uncurtain'd too;-
This brow, whose light—O rare celestial light!

Hath been reserved to bless thy favour'd sight;

These dazzling eyes, before whose shrouded might
Thou 'st seen immortal man kneel down and quake—
Would that they were Heaven's lightnings, for his sake!
But turn and look—then wonder, if thou wilt,
That I should hate, should take revenge, by guilt,
Upon the hand whose mischief or whose mirth
Sent me, thus maim'd and monstrous, upon earth;
And on that race who, though more vile they be
Than mowing apes, are demigods to me!
Here-judge if hell, with all its power to damn,
Can add one curse to the vile thing I am!

"He raised his veil-the maid turn'd slowly round, Look'd at him-shriek'd-and sunk upon the ground!"

"Fear," Lord Bacon tells us, " is a medium through which trifles become gigantic; like jealousy, it makes its own food;" and certainly there is often, on many and various occasions, far more of apprehension than of hazard, though yet

"E'en the boldest and the wisest quail
At any goblin hid behind a veil ;"

but this is a real case. The agonising suspense of the lovely listener while the fiend proceeds with his fell harangue is drawn with a masterly hand; no novice,