praise from the affecting and beautiful lines on Cowper's grave. Had they been anonymous, we should have attributed them to Caroline Bowles.

COWPER'S GRave.

"It is a place where poets crowned
May feel the heart's decaying-
It is a place where happy saints
May weep amid their praying-
Yet let the grief and humbleness,
As low as silence, languish ;
Earth surely now may give her calm
To whom she gave her anguish.

"O poets! from a maniac's tongue
Was poured the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men! this man, in brotherhood,
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groaned inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling!

"And now, what time ye all may read
Through dimming tears his story-
How discord on the music fell,
And darkness on the glory-
And how, when one by one, sweet sounds
And wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face,

Because so broken-hearted

"He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down

In meeker adoration:

Nor ever shall he be in praise,
By wise or good forsaken;

Named softly, as the household name
Of one whom God has taken!

"With sadness that is calm, not gloom,
I learn to think upon him;
With meekness that is gratefulness,

On God whose heaven hath won him

Who suffered once the madness-cloud,
Toward his love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along

Where breath and bird could find him;

"And wrought within his shattered brain, Such quick poetic senses,

As hills have language for, and stars,
Harmonious influences!

The pulse of dew upon the grass,
His own did calmly number;
And silent shadow from the trees
Fell o'er him like a slumber.

"The very world, by God's constraint,
From falsehood's chill removing,
Its women and its inen became
Beside him, true and loving!-
And timid hares were drawn from woods
To share his home caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes
With silvan tendernesses.

"But while, in blindness he remained
Unconscious of the guiding,
And things provided came without
The sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth,
Though frenzy desolated—
Nor man, nor nature satisfy,
When only God created!

"Like a sick child that knoweth not
His mother while she blesses,
And droppeth on his burning brow
The coolness of her kisses;
That turns his fevered eyes around—
'My mother! where's my mother?'
As if such tender words and looks
Could come from any other!

"The fever gone, with leaps of heart
He sees her bending o'er him;
Her face all pale from watchful love,
The unweary love she bore him!
Thus, woke the poet from the dream.
His life's long fever gave him,

Beneath these deep pathetic eyes
Which closed in death, to save him!

"Thus! oh, not thus! no type of earth
Could image that awaking,
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant
Of seraphs, round him breaking-
Or felt the new immortal throb
Of soul from body parted;
But felt those eyes alone, and knew
'My Saviour! not deserted!'

"Deserted! who hath dreamt that when

The cross in darkness rested,

Upon the victim's hidden face

No love was manifested?

What frantic hands outstretched have ever
The atoning drops averted-

What tears have washed them from the soul-
That one should be deserted?

"Deserted! God could separate

From his own essence rather:
And Adam's sins have swept between
The righteous Son and Father-
Yea! once, Immanuel's orphaned cry,
His universe hath shaken-
It went up single, echoless,
'My God, I am forsaken!'

"It went up from the Holy's lips
Amid his lost creation,

That of the lost, no son should use
These words of desolation;

That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope,
Should mar not hope's fruition;
And I, on Cowper's grave, should see
His rapture, in a vision!"

More to the mind than to the eye-or rather to some perception belonging to all the senses-is manifested the change that steals over nature towards the to-fall of the day-such change as is now going on among the mountains, and informs us, who have been taking no heed of time, of the very hour, which we could name within a few minutes as surely as if there were a clock to look at in the

niche above our head. Is that the murmur of insects or of the sea? That hoarser noise, till now inaudible, is of the cataract behind the castle, and it tells of cliffs.

The small loch is smaller in shadow-has lost much of its expression-and ceased almost to be beautiful; but the solemnity of the mountain-ranges, lying far and wide in the blue haze that precedes the twilight, attracts the eyes of a spirit desirous of the calm momently settling deeper and deeper on them all—the uniting calm of earth and heaven.

Strange and sad to say-but it is the truth-seldom during all this long lonely day-only then when writing down a few words concerning them-have we thought of them whom we visited in the castle-last time we were there-and who so soon afterwards were dust! To-night we shall go to the old burial-place, and sit by their tomb.

Like subterranean music the noise of the bagpipe comes from the castle to our cave. That oldest of Celts-no raven can be his contemporary-is now strutting like a turkeycock with his tail up, to and fro on the esplanade-blowing out from below his elbow "The Gathering of the Clans" for the yacht is coming up the loch goose-winged before the wind, and Donald is saluting the advent of his chieftain, on his return from a victorious expedition into the forest against the King of the Red-Deer. And there goes the gong-struck by the Hindu. An hour to dinnertime and we must descend to our toilet-for there is to be a brilliant company this evening at the castle, and we shall show them in full fig a Lowland gentleman of the old school.

Ha! heaven bless thee! and hath our own Genevieve come again to the cave to tend our steps down the dell and across the bridges? A kiss-not on thy lips-but on thy forehead-ample and serene! Ay-let us wreath our arm in thine-and

"Like morning brought by night,”

shall be our entrance into the home of thy fathers.

ITALY AS IT WAS.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1839.)

You tell me, my dear Eusebius, that you wish to deter a young friend from going to Italy; and therefore desire me to put on paper some of those disagreeable incidents, that when I told them to you some years ago, you thought, if published, would keep many a tourist of our comfortloving age, within the more decent bounds of our own counties, or the three kingdoms; though I know not, but that if decency be the measure, one of the three may be omitted. In the first place, Eusebius, I greatly admire your simplicity in imagining that incidents of difficulties, annoyances, or even danger, will deter a young friend from his proposed travel. For, suppose him to be of that extremely indiscreet age at which the law of the land thinks fit to make him his own master, the prospect of encountering them will naturally so excite his youthful spirits, that he will but bid you good-by the sooner. Try the contrary method, and tell him of all the pleasures he will have to enjoy, and the chances are that none will be to his taste, and he will grow cool. There is always a disposition in youth to kick manfully at every obstacle put in its way; however pleasant a toy that which you put in their way might have appeared, before they find it out to be an obstacle, then fire and fury is in them, and the very moon looks pale lest that obstacle be kicked in her very face, so high does the spirit of indignation mount; and if you repeat this, you will surely beget in them pertinacity, which, nolens volens, will make a fool of you, (excuse, dear Eusebius, the personality,) and of themselves too. You had better let them expend their ill-timed and megrim