verse. While the vast floating bodies, on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our countrymen, under the happy conduct of His Royal Highness, went breaking, by little and little, into the line of the enemies, the noise of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city, so that all men being alarmed with it, and in dreadful suspense of the event which we knew was THEN deciding, every one went, following the sound, as his fancy led him; and leaving the town almost empty, some took towards the Park, some cross the river, others down it; all seeking the noise in the depth of the silence. "Among the rest it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites, Lisideus, and Neander to be in company together." -- I dwell not on the magnificent exordium of this passage, or the full organ harmony of period, the manly English,—I had almost said his own English English, so purely, so radically vernacular it is, which distinguishes the style of Dryden; I dwell not on these, though, in all the writings of this great master, not less admirable in prose than in verse, there will hardly be found a paragraph of equal power and impression with this, and the context which I shall presently quote; - I dwell not on these, but I call the earnest attention of my audience to the simplest phrases in the whole," the noise of cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city." The fulness of meaning expressed, and the unutterable meanings implied in these few and plain words, cannot be too much admired. "The force of (language) could no further go," to parody a noble line of his own; yet a Westminster schoolboy of that day, writing to his sister in the country on the occasion, might have used the very same. Examine the sentence. Here is "the city," and there are "both navies," out of sight, but giving note of their proximity by low deaf sounds, which would not have disturbed the children at play in the streets, but which reaching 66 our ears," - the narrator is one who repeats what he himself heard, saw, felt, and did,-which reaching "our ears," threw all the adult population of the metropolis (half a million souls) into anxiety, fear, and consternation. Let us proceed : "All men being alarmed with it, and in dreadful suspense of the event which we knew was then deciding, every one went, following the sound, as his fancy led him." The latter most picturesque and imaginative circumstance is repeated at the end of the clause, in a new and striking form of words, — "all seeking the noise in the depth of silence." Thus, amidst the din and hubbub, the hurry, confusion, and whirl of men, horses, and carriages at high noon, at 'change time, a few slight percussions of the air awakened such intensity of interest and curiosity, that the town was, in a little time, left "almost empty." And what occasioned this? The inevitable association of ideas; the poetry of sounds, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been disregarded by the ear, so that if a man had asked his neighbour whether he heard them, the other would have had to listen before he could answer the question. The firing of the Park and Tower guns, on a royal birthday, made a thousand times louder reports, yet nobody was ever alarmed or startled for more than a moment: now, however, because, by these faint intonations, they knew what an event was "then deciding," but knew not what that decision, or its consequences to themselves, might be, — all the cares, the business, the dissipation of life were suspended; and the throne of the monarch might be said to tremble beneath him at every repetition of sounds, scarcely more audible than the beating of the hearts of those who were listening to them. Let us seek the result in a few lines of the sequel. : "Taking then a barge, which the servant of Lisideius had provided for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them that great fall of waters, which hindered them from hearing what they desired after which, having disengaged themselves from many vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up the passage to Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently; and then, every one favouring his own curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived the air breaking about them, like the noise of distant thunder, or of swallows in a chimney, those little undulations of sound, though almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror, which they had betwixt the fleets. After they had listened till such time as the sound, by little and little, went from them, Eugenius, lifting up his head, and taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated D to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory; adding, we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, that we might hear no more of that noise which was now leaving the English coast." The power of painting, here displayed, has almost made sound itself picturesque; and in poetical painting it may be so; it is so in those phrases, "they left behind them that great fall of waters" (under the old London Bridge), “which hindered them from hearing what they desired;"" they perceived the air breaking around them" in "little undulations of sound, almost vanishing before they reached them;" above all, that most magnificent and impressive close, concerning "that noise which was now leaving the English coast." Who does not hear the diminishing sounds? Who does not see the defeated enemy sheering off with his ships, and "the meteor-flag of England," which had "braved the battle," now "flying on the breeze” in full pursuit? Every word in the paragraph, like a gun-fire, tells; every touch of the pencil adds to the graphic representation of the scene, both in and out of sight; or rather, every new idea heightens the reality of it: - the mysterious murmurs, their gradual subsidence, and the happy omen, with true British spirit inferred by Eugenius, that the victory must have fallen to his countrymen, are all in the noblest style and the purest taste, are all poetry in substance, maiden poetry, and only not "Married to immortal verse." The Poetical of Place and Circumstance. But we must descend from this elevation. Imagine a small sea-port town, rank with all the ordinary nuisances of such localities, — sights, smells, sounds; mean buildings, narrow streets; the uncouth dress, coarse manners, and squalid appearance, of a poor, ill-favoured, hard-faring population, likely to be doubled in no long time by the mob of dirty, mischievous children, swarming from every corner, and frolicking in every kennel, when the dame's school breaks up at noon. unvarying, and barren; stunted and straggling, The hills behind are low, the few trees upon them you may count them three miles off, so lonely do they look; the harbour occupied by half a score brigs and sloops, one or two masted; on the dreary beach (a mile broad at low water) you may here and there descry a fishing boat, waiting for the tide, with weather-beaten, worn-out mariners, in tarry jackets, leaning on its flanks, or walking, singly or in pairs, along the edge of the spent waves, that seem scarcely to have strength to return to their flood-mark, or even to wash back into the deep the relics of putrid fish that are strown in their way, or the wreaths of dark sea-weed which they left behind when they last retired. But a ship appears, emerging from the ring of the utmost horizon. We must hasten to it, and step on board. On its deck stand the collected crew, eagerly, anxiously looking out for land; for he at the mast-head has already hailed it, that very line of sand and rock, so little esteemed by us, but the |