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has fallen a victim; and then concludes with these lines, which it would not be easy to match for everything that constitutes good poetry. As he writes he chides himself for suspecting his friend; and at that moment (it seems to have been written on Christmas day) he hears the song of a thrush, and forthwith he “bursts into a song,” as full-voiced, as native, as sweet and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered friend.

“But, hark that sound! the mavis! can it be?
Once more! It is. High perched on yon bare tree,
He starts the wondering winter with his trill;
Or by that sweet sun westering o’er the hill
Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth
Due to the holy season of Christ’s birth.–
And hark! as his clear fluting fills the air,
Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear
From other emulous birds, the brakes among;
Fain would they also burst into a song;
But winter warns, and muffling up their throats,
They liquid–for the spring–preserve their notes.
O sweet preluding! having heard that strain,
How dare I lift my dissonant voice again?
Let me be still, let me enjoy the time,
Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme.”

This author must not be allowed to “muffle up his throat,” and keep his notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse of the mavis. He must give us more of his own “clear fluting.” Let him, with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as Cowper did, upon the restless, noisy world he has left, seeing the popular bustle, not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses as these what his understanding and his affections think and feel and his imagination informs, and we shall have something in verse not unlike the letters from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be immortalized over the cherished bins of our wine-fanciers, where repose their

“Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape.”

What is good makes us think of what is better, as well, and it is to be hoped more, than of what is worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as that of a large and deep nature; there is no knowledge so good, so strengthening as that of a great mind, which is forever filling itself afresh. “Out of the eater comes forth meat; out of the strong comes forth sweetness.” Here is one of such “dulcedines verae”–the sweetness of a strong man:–

“Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompany’d; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glow’d the firmament
With living saphirs; Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.”

Were we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and be thankful–giving ourselves up to its gentleness, informing ourselves with its quietness and beauty,–we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the quietness of its language, the “sober livery” in which its thoughts are clad. In the first thirty-eight words, twenty-nine are monosyllables. Then there is the gradual way in which the crowning fantasy is introduced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not wholly unexpected; it “sweetly creeps” into our “study of imagination;” it lives and moves, but it is a moving that is “delicate;” it flows in upon us incredibili lenitate. “Evening” is a matter of fact, and its stillness too–a time of the day; and “twilight” is little more. We feel the first touch of spiritual life in “her sober livery,” and bolder and deeper in “all things clad.” Still we are not deep, the real is not yet transfigured and transformed, and we are brought back into it after being told that “Silence accompanied,” by the explanatory “for,” and the bit of sweet natural history of the beasts and birds. The mind dilates and is moved, its eye detained over the picture; and then comes that rich, “thick warbled note”–“all but the wakeful nightingale;” this fills and informs the ear, making it also “of apprehension more quick,” and we are prepared now for the great idea coming “into the eye and prospect of our soul”–SILENCE WAS PLEASED! There is nothing in all poetry above this. Still evening and twilight gray are now Beings, coming on, and walking over the earth like queens, “with Silence,”