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frightened, andtherefore pays no attention to her's. These differences, however apparently, are not really trivial. The mere versifier knows not how to create them. The Poet knows their importance; how much they will inspirit his portraits, and distinguish them from each other. In the progress of this episode the Nereid looses her veil (we may conclude the wind had fallen) and we meet the following description of a very graceful operation, that of a lovely female combing her lavish tresses:

O'er her fair brow her pearly comb unfurls
Her beryl locks, and parts the waving curls;
Each tangled braid, with glist'ning teeth unbinds,
And with the floating treasure musks the winds.

This is not a repetition of the employment of the dew-born Venus, in the second Canto. She had recently emerged, and therefore her hair must necessarily hang uncurled, and she is in the attitude of wringing the water from her golden tresses; ' than which no position can be more favourable to female symmetry.

Doctor Darwin's poem paints every attitude and employment which, in either sex, can be rendered elegant. No author ever had a mind more keenly awakened to grace in all its vaneties, or could more exquisitely paint it.

That perception, and that talent, the, in his class of composition, peerless Richardson possessed in an equal degree. No prose-writer ever was, or perhaps ever will be, so great a painter; and to that power what a constellation of other endowments contributed to immortalize the pages of Clarissa and Grandison! Novels no longer, but English Classics, translated into every European language, and in all foreign countries considered as some of the noblest efforts of British Genius.

But the Darwinian Nereid has been left a little before her time; other circumstances attend her, too poetic to remain unnoticed. Her song "thrills the waves ;" and the shadowy Forms of Night gleam on the margin of the shore, "with pointed ears," to denote the act of listening. Perhaps that characteristic had been better omitted, since it belongs to brute, not to human animals, and is at war with the imaginary grace of these twilight forms. The Moon pauses, and the Stars shoot from their spheres to listen. That last circumstance is evidently from Shakspear's allegory in The Midsummer Night's Dream, alluding to the conspiracies formed in favour of the imprisoned Queen of Scotland, by the Duke of Norfolk, and other noblemen of the court of Elizabeth. This is the allegory:

I saw a Mermaid on a Dolphin's back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious sounds,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the Sea-Maid's music.

That he might guard against the displeasure of Elizabeth for this sally, it is immediately followed by as high an allegoric compliment paid to herself.

On the poet's dismissal of the Nereid, the death of Mrs. French of Derby, is introduced as a subject of sorrow to the Water-Nymphs of its river. The picture of Milcena, is very lovely, straying with her infants on the banks of the Derwent, and pondering, with scientific eye, the insects and plants on the shores of that stream. There is a tender strain of morality in this passage; but the annexed epitaph on Mrs. French, however beautiful as poetry, is by no means fit for its originally purposed situation, a tombstone in the great church at Derby. The author of these memoirs is ignorant whether, or not, it is there inscribed. "Clouds "of silver, and Beauty pleading for her husband's

errors at the throne of God," may form a very poetical, but it is a very heathenish resurrection.

The mention of Brindley, the father of commercial Canals, has propriety as well as happiness. Similitude for their course, to the sinuous track

of a serpent, produces a fine picture of a gliding animal of that species, and it is succeeded by these supremely happy lines:

So, with strong arm, immortal Brindley leads
His long canals, and parts the velvet meads;
Winding in lucid lines, the watery mass
Mines the firm rock, or loads the deep morass;
With rising locks a thousand hills alarms,
Flings o'er a thousand streams its silver arms;
Feeds the long vale, the nodding woodland laves,
And Plenty, Arts, and Commerce, freight the waves.
Nymphs, who erewhile on Brindley's early bier,

On snow-white bosoms shower'd th' incessant tear,
Adorn his tomb !....Oh, raise the marble bust,
Proclaim his honors, and protect his dust!
With urns inverted, round the sacred shrine
Their ozier wreaths let weeping Naiads twine,
While on the top mechanic Genius stands,
Counts the fleet waves, and balances the sands!

There is a note to this passage, which urges the duty of erecting a monument to Brindley in Lichfield Cathedral. Certainly it would be to the credit of those who should subscribe to raise it, since the county of Stafford has been so materially benefited by his successful plans; but in the above eulogium, Dr. Darwin has given him a more enduring memorial than stone or marble could bestow.

The mechanism of the pump is next described with curious ingenuity. Common as is the machine, it is not unworthy of a place in this splendid composition, as being, after the sinking of wells, the earliest of those inventions, which, in situations of exterior aridness, gave ready accession to water. This familiar object is illustrated by a picture of Maternal Beauty administering sustenance to her infant. To that succeeds an energetic reproof, and pathetic admonition to mothers in affluent life, whom indolence or dissipation, seduces to the unnatural neglect of that delightful duty. For an infant slumbering on the maternal bosom which has nourished him, there is the following allegoric simile, of no common elegance:

Thus, charm'd to sweet repose, when twilight hours

Shed their soft influence on celestial bowers,

The cherub, Innocence, with smile divine,

Shuts his white wings, and sleeps on Beauty's shrine.

The Ode to Morning, in Elfrida, contains a nearly resembling image; thus,

Away, ye Elves, away,

Shrink at ambrosial morning's living ray!

That living ray, whose power benign

Unfolds this scene of glory to our eye,

Where, thron'd in artless majesty,

The cherub Beauty sits on Nature's rustic shrine.