"To the kindest, the dearest-oh! judge by the

tear,

"That I shed while I name him, how kind and how dear!"

'Twas thus, by the shade of a calabash-tree, With a few who could feel and remember like me,

though concurred in by the government of the day, was a wild and useless speculation. Mr. Hamilton, who was governor of the island some years since, proposed, if I mistake not, the establishment of a marine academy for the instruction of those children of West-Indians, who might be intended for any nautical employment. This was a more rational idea, and for something of this nature the island is admirably calculated. But the plan should be much more extensive, and embrace a general system of education, which would entirely remove the alternative in which the colonists are involved at present, of either sending their sons to England for instruction, or entrusting them to colleges in the States of America, where ideas by no means favourable to Great Britain are very sedulously inculcated.

The women of Bermuda, though not generally handsome, have an affectionate languor in their look and manner, which is always interesting. What the French imply by their epithet aimante seems very much the character of the young Bermudian girls-that predisposition to loving, which, without being awakened by any particular object, diffuses itself through the general manner in a tone of tenderness that never fails to fascinate. The men of the island, I confess, are not very civilized; and the old philosopher, who imagined that, after this life, men would be changed into mules and women into turtle-doves, would find the metamorphosis in some degree anticipated at Bermuda.

The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw,
Was a tear to the past and a blessing on you!

Oh! say, do you thus, in the luminous hour
Of wine and of wit, when the heart is in flower
And shoots from the lip, under Bacchus's dew,
In blossoms of thought ever springing and new!
Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim
Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him,
Who is lonely and sad in these valleys so fair,
And would pine in Elysium, if friends were not
there?

Last night, when we came from the calabash-tree,
When my limbs were at rest and my spirit was free,
The glow of the grape and the dreams of the day
Put the magical springs of my fancy in play,
And oh!-such a vision as haunted me then
I could slumber for ages to witness again!
The many I like, and the few I adore,
The friends, who were dear and beloved before,
But never till now so beloved and dear,
At the call of my fancy surrounded me here!
Soon, soon did the flattering spell of their smile
To a paradise brighten the blest little isle;

Serener the wave, as they look'd on it, flow'd,
And warmer the rose, as they gather'd it, glow'd!
Not the valleys Heræan (though water'd by rills
Of the pearliest flow, from those pastoral hills,*
Where the song of the shepherd, primæval and
wild,

Was taught to the nymphs by their mystical child)
Could display such a bloom of delight, as was given
By the magic of love to this miniature Heaven!

Oh, magic of love! unembellish'd by you,
Has the garden a blush or the herbage a hue ?
Or blooms there a prospect in nature or art,
Like the vista that shines through the eye to the
heart?

Alas! that a vision so happy should fade!

That, when morning around me in brilliancy play'd,

The rose and the stream I had thought of at night Should still be before me, unfadingly bright;

* Mountains of Sicily, upon which Daphnis, the first inventor of bucolic poetry, was nursed by the nymphs. See the lively description of these mountains in DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. iv. Ηραια γαρ ορη κατα την Σικελίαν ετιν, ο φασί καλλει κ. τ. λ.

While the friends, who had seem'd to hang over

the stream,

And to gather the roses, had fled with my

dream!

But see, through the harbour, in floating array, The bark that must carry these pages away* Impatiently flutters her wing to the wind,

And will soon leave the bowers of Ariel behind! What billows, what gales is she fated to prove, Ere she sleep in the lee of the land that I love! Yet pleasant the swell of those billows would be, And the sound of those gales would be music to me! Not the tranquilest air that the winds ever blew, Not the silvery lapse of the summer-eve dew, Were as sweet as the breeze, or as bright as the foam Of the wave that would carry your wanderer home!

66

LOVE AND REASON.

Quand l'homme commence à raisonner, il cesse de sentir." J. J. ROUSSEAU.*

"Twas in the summer-time so sweet,

When hearts and flowers are both in season, That-who, of all the world, should meet, One early dawn, but Love and Reason!

Love told his dream of yester-night,

While Reason talk'd about the weather; The morn, in sooth, was fair and bright, And on they took their way together.

The boy in many a gambol flew,

While Reason like a Juno stalk'd,
And from her portly figure threw
A lengthen'd shadow as she walk'd.

No wonder Love, as on they pass'd,
Should find that sunny morning chill,

For still the shadow Reason cast

Fell on the boy, and cool'd him still.

*

Quoted somewhere in ST. PIERRE's Études de la Nature.