But misery still delights to trace No voice divine the storm allayed, When snatched from all effectual aid But I beneath a rougher sea And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. Very different, yet scarcely less melancholy, was the destiny of the writer of the following sonnet, called by Coleridge the finest in our language. Most remarkable it undoubtedly is, not merely for the grandeur of the thought, but for the beauty of the execution. In reading these lines, it is difficult to believe that the author (Blanco White) was not only born and educated in Spain, but wrote English very imperfectly until he was turned of thirty. TO NIGHT. Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame And, lo! creation widened in man's view. Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed While fly and leaf and insect stood revealed That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! Most different again is the following quaint sonnet, taken from a series of sixty-three, all addressed to his mistress, and called by Drayton "Ideas." The turn of the language is exceedingly dramatic. Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part! Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath, Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over The concluding poem of this paper, although in a very different style, resembles its companions in the one grand quality of being among the best, if not the very best, of its class, at the least a great promise. That promise has been amply redeemed. A singular honor befell our English Apollo, that of being recited at the foot of the statue (then still in the Louvre), by no less a person than Mrs. Siddons herself. The grace and harmony of the verse are worthy of such a distinction. THE BELVIDERE APOLLO. An Oxford Prize Poem. Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky? Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain, Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face, A god in strength with more than godlike grace; In deathless glory lives the breathing stone. Bright kindling with a conqueror's stern delight, Mighty Ephesian! with an eagle's flight Thy proud soul mounted through the fields of light, Viewed the bright concave of Heaven's blest abode Yet on that form in wild delirious trance With more than reverence gazed the Maid of France. Blushing she shrunk, and thought the marble smiled; Slowly she waned, and cold and senseless grown Once more she gazed, then feebly smiled and died. It is remarkable that Dean Milman's professional residences have kept close to the great river of England: his first curacy at Ealing, his vicarage at Reading, his Oxford professorship, his stall at Westminster, the deanery of St. Paul's. Well! there are other ecclesiastical dwellings on the banks of the Thames : Rochester, Fulham, Lambeth; who knows! One thing is quite certain, go where he may, he will find respect and admiration, and leave behind him admiration and regret. XXXIV. AUTHORS ASSOCIATED WITH PLACES W. C. BENNETT. FIFTY years ago, our Berkshire valleys abounded in old Catholic houses, to which tradition usually assigned subterranean communication with neighboring nunneries, in the case of abbeys or priories, of which, so far as I know, none hath ever come to light; or, if the mansions had been secular, secret hiding-places for priests during the religious persecution (sad words to join) of the seventeenth century, especially during the times that preceded and followed Guy Fawkes's unaccomplished crime, and the frightful delusion known by the name of the Popish Plot. That tradition was right enough there, and that the oppressed Catholics did resort to every measure permitted to their weakness, for the purpose of concealing the priests to whom and to their peculiar rites and ceremonies they clung as human nature does cling to that which is unrighteously persecuted, there exists no sort of doubt.—In an old house which my own father took down belonging to that time, a small chamber was discovered, to which there was no entrance except by a trap-door cunningly devised in the oak flooring of a large bed-chamber; and similar places of concealment, sometimes behind a panel, sometimes in a chimney, sometimes in the roof, have come to light in other manorhouses. Now they are nearly all leveled with the ground, these picturesque dwellings of our ancestors; the ancestral trees are following fast; and we who loved to linger round the gray walls or to ramble amid the mossy trunks, are left to remember and to deplore. One, however, still remains among us, thanks to the good taste, the good feeling, and perhaps a little to the abundant wealth of the present proprietor; and that one is luckily the most interesting of all. I speak of Ufton Court, where Arabella Fermor, the Belinda of "The Rape of the Lock," spent her married life; where she dwelt in honor and repute, receiving in the hereditary mansion of the Perkinses the wits of that Augustan age,-Pope, Steele, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke; where she reared four goodly sons, became a widow, and was finally buried in the little village church. There her monument may still be seen among many others of her husband's family, and her name is still shown with laudable pride and interest in that most leveling of books, in whose pages riches and poverty, beauty and deformity, stand side by side-the Parish Register. To this old house I rarely fail to conduct such of my visitors as happen to be poets; and that one who deserves that high title accompanied me thither not very long ago, will be inferred, I think, by most of those who read the verses that conclude this paper. The day was one of those between late May and early June -the May of the old style, the May of the poets; a day of breeze and of sunshine. Our road wound through close woody lanes, fragrant with the pearly flowers of the hawthorn, and the opening leaves of the oak, just disclosing their silky folds of yellowish-brown; then across the village-green, gay with happy children let loose from school; then through the little brook where the road dips so prettily; then beside the trickling rill flowing down the hill as we mounted up, until at last we emerged from the shade of the tall trees and the steep banks of the narrow lane, into the full flood of the sunlight, shining in all its glory upon the broad table-land of Mortimer Common. Never did I see that beautiful spot so beautiful, the fine short turf, exquisite in its tender verdure, was, except in occasional stripes and patches, literally encrusted with the golden-blossomed gorse, loading the air with its heavy odor; bright ponds of clear water reflected the deep blue sky; all around in the distance lay cultivated valleys, woods, churches, villages, towns; and in the foreground one or two groups of old, dark, fantastic firs gave something of a wild rugged relief to a landscape almost too gorgeous. Traversing the common, we plunged again into a labyrinth of lanes. This time, however, we passed between fir plantations, mingled with young birches of green leaf and silver bark, with |