Brother, we don't want you. There! Mrs. H. cannot arrange the flower-vase without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hartman.

Hush! Preaching, you mean, Eliza.
ELIZA (impatiently).

Pshaw!

FRIEND.

Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world: and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, "John Anderson, my jo, John," in addition to a depth and constancy of character of bility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional comno every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensimunicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within-to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life-even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which, in all our

From a man turned of fifty, Catherine, I imagine, lovings, is the Love;——— expects a less confident answer.

ELIZA.

There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself.

CATHERINE.

I, too, seem to feel what you mean. Interpret the feeling for us.

FRIEND.

-I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a gener. ous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own-that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart mo mently finds, and, finding, again seeks on-lastly, when "life's changeful orb has pass'd the full," a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience: it supposes, I say, a

Say another word, and we will call it downright heart-felt reverence for worth, not the less deep be affectation. cause divested of its solemnity by habit, by familiar.

CATHERINE

Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a "John Anderson, my jo, John," to totter down the hill of life with.

ity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of guise of playful raillery, and the countless other modesty which will arise in delicate nunds, when infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial they are conscious of possessing the same or the feeling. correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow, and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged VIRTUE the caressing fondness that belongs to the INNOCENCE of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies as had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty.

ELIZA.

What a soothing-what an elevating idea!

CATHERINE.

If it be not only an idea.

FRIEND.

At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife! A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbor, friend, housemate-in short, in all the concentric circles of attachment, save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes be estranged from the highest perfection in this! Pride, coldness or fastidionsness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper-one or the other too often proves "the dead fly in the compost of spices," and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldom a sort of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of its own selfimportance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same but by negatives-that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical,-or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in remembering.

ELIZA (in answer to a whisper from CATHERINE). To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. Save me from such folks! But they are out of the question.

FRIEND.

FRIEND.

Not so! Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for

the rarest virtue.

ELIZA.

Surely, he who has described it so beautifully, must have possessed it?

FRIEND.

If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment!

(Then, after a pause of a few minutes).
ANSWER (ex improviso).

Yes, yes! that boon, life's richest treat,
He had, or fancied that he had;
Say, 't was but in his own conceit―

Crown of his cup, and garnish of his dish!
The fancy made him glad!
The boon, prefigured in his earliest wish!
The fair fulfilment of his poesy,
When his young heart first yearn'd for sympathy.

But e'en the meteor offspring of the brain
Unnourish'd wane!

Faith asks her daily bread,
And Fancy must be fed!
Now so it chanced-from wet or dry,
She miss'd her wonted food: and quickly
It boots not how-I know not why-
Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly.
Then came a restless state, 't wixt yea and nay,
His faith was fix'd, his heart all ebb and flow;
Or like a bark, in some half-shelter'd bay,
Above its anchor driving to and fro.

That boon, which but to have possess'd
In a belief, gave life a zest-
Uncertain both what it had been,
And what it was—an evergreen
And if by error lost, or luck;
Which some insidious blight had struck,
Or annual flower, which past its blow,
No vernal spell shall e'er revive;
Uncertain, and afraid to know,

True! but the same effect is produced in thousands
by the too general insensibility to a very important
truth; this, namely, that the MISERY of human life is
Doubts toss'd him to and fro;
made up
of large masses, each separated from the Hope keeping Love, Love Hope alive,
other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a Like babes bewilder'd in a snow,
child; years after, a failure in trade; after another That cling and huddle from the cold
longer
or shorter interval, a daughter may have In hollow tree or ruin'd fold.
married unhappily-in all but the singularly un-

fortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum Those sparkling colors, once his boast,
total of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily Fading, one by one away,
counted, and distinctly remembered. The HAPPINESS Thin and hueless as a ghost,
of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute frac- Poor Fancy on her sick-bed lay;
tions the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a Ill at distance, worse when near,
smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the dis-Telling her dreams to jealous Fear!

Where was it then, the sociable sprite
That crown'd the Poet's cup and deck'd his dish!
Poor shadow cast from an unsteady wish,
Itself a substance by no other right
But that it intercepted Reason's light;

It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow,
A peevish mood, a tedious time, I trow!
Thank Heaven! 'tis not so now.

O bliss of blissful hours!

The boon of Heaven's decreeing,
While yet in Eden's bowers

Dwelt the First Husband and his sinless Mate!
The one sweet plant which, piteous Heaven agreeing,
They bore with them through Eden's closing gate!
Of life's gay summer-tide the sovran Rose!
Late autumn's Amaranth, that more fragrant blows
When Passion's flowers all fall or fade;
If this were ever his, in outward being,
Or but his own true love's projected shade,
Now, that at length by certain proof he knows,
That whether real or magic show,
Whate'er it was, it is no longer so;
Though heart be lonesome, Hope laid low,
Yet, Lady! deem him not unblest:
The certainty that struck Hope dead,
Hath left Contentment in her stead:
And that is next to best!

THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO.

Of late, in one of those most weary hours,
When life seems emptied of all genial powers,
A dreary mood, which he who ne'er has known
May bless his happy lot, I sate alone;
And, from the numbing spell to win relief,
Call'd on the past for thought of glee or grief.
In vain! bereft alike of grief and glee,
I sate and cower'd o'er my own vacancy!
And as I watch'd the dull continuous ache,
Which, all else slumb'ring, seem'd alone to wake;
O Friend! long wont to notice yet conceal,
And soothe by silence what words cannot heal,
I but half saw that quiet hand of thine
Place on my desk this exquisite design,
Boccaccio's Garden and its faëry,

The love, the joyaunce, and the gallantry!
An Idyll, with Boccaccio's spirit warm,
Framed in the silent poesy of form.
Like flocks adown a newly-bathed steep
Emerging from a mist: or like a stream

Of music soft that not dispels the sleep,

Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan

Of manhood, musing what and whence is man
Wild strain of Scalds, that in the sea-worn caves
Rehearsed their war-spell to the winds and waves
Or fateful hymn of those prophetic maids,
That call'd on Hertha in deep forest glades;
Or minstrel lay, that cheer'd the baron's feast;
Or rhyme of city pomp, of monk and priest,
Judge, mayor, and many a guild in long array,
To high-church pacing on the great saint's day.
And many a verse which to myself I sang,
That woke the tear, yet stole away the pang,
Of hopes which in lamenting I renew'd.
And last, a matron now, of sober mien,
Yet radiant still and with no earthly sheen,
Whom as a faëry child my childhood woo'd
Even in my dawn of thought-Philosophy.
Though then unconscious of herself, pardie,
She bore no other name than Poesy;
And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee,
That had but newly left a mother's knee,
Prattled and play'd with bird and flower, and stone
As if with elfin playfellows well known,
And life reveal'd to innocence alone.

Thanks, gentle artist! now I can descry
Thy fair creation with a mastering eye,
And all awake! And now in fix'd gaze stand,
Now wander through the Eden of thy hand;
Praise the green arches, on the fountain clear
See fragment shadows of the crossing deer,
And with that serviceable nymph I stoop,
The crystal from its restless pool to scoop.
I see no longer! I myself am there,

Sit on the ground-sward, and the banquet share.
"Tis I, that sweep that lute's love-echoing strings,
And gaze upon the maid who gazing sings:
Or pause and listen to the tinkling bells
From the high tower, and think that there she dwells.
With old Boccaccio's soul I stand possest,
And breathe an air like life, that swells my chest.

The brightness of the world, O thou once free,
And always fair, rare land of courtesy!
O, Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills!
And famous Arno fed with all their rills;
Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy!
Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine,
The golden corn, the olive, and the vine.
Fair cities, gallant mansions, castles old,
And forests, where beside his leafy hold
The sullen boar hath heard the distant horn,
And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn,
Palladian palace with its storied halls;
Fountains, where Love lies listening to their falls

But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream, Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span,

Gazed by an idle eye with silent might
The picture stole upon my inward sight.

A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest,
As though an infant's finger touch'd my breast.
And one by one (I know not whence) were brought
All spirits of power that most had stirr'd my thought.
In selfless boyhood, on a new world tost
Of wonder, and in its own fancies lost;
Or charm'd my youth, that kindled from above,
Loved ere it loved, and sought a form for love;

And Nature makes her happy home with man;
Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed
With its own rill, on its own spangled bed,
And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head,
A mimic mourner, that with veil withdrawn
Weeps liquid gems, the presents of the dawn,
Thine all delights, and every muse is thine:
And more than all, the embrace and intertwine
Of all with all in gay and twinkling dance'
'Mid gods of Greece and warriors of romance

Fauns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to thy the spondee, composed of two long syllables, and the

Guardian and friend of the Moon, O Earth, whom IV. THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE DESCRIBED the Comets forget not, AND EXEMPLIFIED.

Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round, and In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column ; again they behold thee!

Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap any narrow fall of water from the summit of a moun

Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thou- Beneath the moon in gentle weather
They bind the earth and sky together:

Filled, as a dream, the wide waters: the rivers sang But oh! the Sky, and all its forms, how quiet! The things that seek the Earth, how full of noise and riot!