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claim a full alliance with the lovers of nature, but is as far from the association with great poets-with such men as Milton or Shakspeare, Burns or Elliott, as the glow-worm is with the comet. Poetry is not only the highest art, but, next to religion itself, the most divine principle on earth. It is a religion itself, or rather, forms part and parcel of that of Christ; for its object is to stimulate virtue, abash vice, raise the humble, abase the proud, call forth the most splendid qualities of the soul, and pour love like a river over the earth till it fills every house, and leaves behind it a fertility like that which follows the inundations of the Nile. We do injustice to Shenstone when we place him beside the giants, and thus provokingly display his true proportions.

"The pleasure of Shenstone," continues Johnson, "was all in his eye; he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.

"His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expenses brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat, and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different to fauns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. * He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, in 1763, and was buried by the side of his brother in Halesowen churchyard.

"He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented by his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to all that were within his influence; but if once offended not easily appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses. In his person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner; for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form. His mind was not very

comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated."

Gray visited the Leasowes, and his opinion of Shenstone was very similar to that of Johnson. "I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone's letters. Poor man he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it. His correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote verses too."

I have ascertained the present condition of the Leasowes, through an intelligent friend who visited it the other day at my request. The Leasowes is about six or seven miles distant from Birmingham on the road to Kidderminster, and about four miles from Hagley, in the parish of Halesowen. Arriving at Halesowen, you have to descend a long and steep hill, from the top of which you have a view of the Bromsgrove, Clent, and Dudley hills, which are in the immediate neighbourhood,-Hagley-park being situated on one of the Clent hills,-and of the Clee hills in the distance; these form a boundary between the counties of Hereford and Salop. About half-way down this descent, which is a mile long, you turn to the left down a shady lane; this leads to the Leasowes, and in some degree partakes of the character of the place; winding continually, yet still presenting a beautiful archway of trees, of nearly all descriptions. From this lane you enter the Leasowes; and crossing a bridge, pass on to the lawn. On your left lies a beautiful piece of still water, overshadowed with evergreens, and conveying the idea of infinite depth. This is nearly the lowest part of the grounds, which here begin to ascend towards the house, commanding, not an extensive, but a beautifully condensed prospect. Going round the house to the right, and still ascending, you gain another prospect equally beautiful, yet different, and in both cases must be surprised by the skill which presents to the eye the artificial depth of forest which there strikes it. A canal which has been cut through the valley between the house and Halesowen, so far from injuring the prospect, as many of these things are apt to do, rather improves

it than otherwise, giving a rest to the eye, and shutting out, by its embankment, sundry forges which would otherwise be visible. In order to discover, however, the true spirit of the place, you must cross the lawn at the back of the house, where you are reminded of passages in Shenstone's pastorals.

the scene.

Let us now suppose the grounds lying in the shape of a Y; the house not standing at the top, but near the centre of the fork, and the lowest part of the scene, the stem. The lines forming the fork of the Y are beautifully wooded ravines, or dells, down which flow small streamlets, meeting at the bottom of the hill, and in their progress forming numerous small pools, which may well represent "the fountains all bordered with moss." The walks along the sides of these streams are now neglected, but they still conduct you to the natural beauties of There is one spot which commands the view of the whole grounds, and all the poetry of them. Following the course of one of the streams, you arrive at that part of the scene which was Shenstone's favourite spot; still marked by the remnants of several fallen statues. Still advancing along the brook side, you come to a pool. This may be called the tail or stem of the Y; and at dusk, on a November day, it gives you no bad idea of the Lake of the Dismal Swamp in miniature. Indeed, the feeling on quitting the place is, that you have been well deceived as to the extent of it; so small a space really containing so much variety of scenery.

The Leasowes now belongs to the Attwood family; and a Miss Attwood resides there occasionally. But the whole place bears the impress of desertion and neglect. The house has a dull look; the same heavy spirit broods over the lawns and glades; and it is only when you survey it from a distance, as when approaching Halesowen from Hagley, that the whole presents an aspect of unusual beauty. It is said to be a favourite resort of the members of the Society of Friends, as, halting for tea at Halesowen, on their return from their meetings at Stourbridge to Birmingham, they are fond of a stroll in the Leasowes; no doubt the quiet character of the poetry of Shenstone according well with their own habits.

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"In Severn's vale, a wan and moonstruck boy
Sought by the daisy's side a pensive joy;
Held converse with the sea-birds as they passed,
And strange and dire communion with the blast;
And read in sunbeams, and the starry sky,

The golden language of eternity.

Age saw him, and looked sad; the young men smiled;
And wondering maidens shunned his aspect wild.

But He-the ever kind, the ever wise,

Who sees through fate, with omnipresent eyes,

Hid from the mother, while she blessed her son,

The woes of genius, and of Chatterton."-Ebenezer Elliott.

THE church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, is a beautiful church; some of the biographers of Chatterton have declared that it is the finest parish church in England. Mr. Britton has been almost as enamoured of it as was Chatterton himself. He has. written a complete history of it, and has for years zealously exerted himself to rouse the inhabitants of Bristol to have this

ornament of their city put into thorough repair by subscription, an object in which I am glad to find that he has finally succeeded, and that the perfect restoration, especially of the time-worn exterior, is already commenced under the superintendence of himself and Mr. Brayley.

"Beautiful exceedingly," is St. Mary of Redcliffe; and it is the triumph of this beauty that it has awoke the poet in the soul of one of its lovers, and a poet so extraordinary in the circumstances of his life, in the mere boyhood of his age, in the tragic nature of his death, and, above all, in the proud splendour of his genius; that his passion for this lovely structure, and the facts which have sprung out of it, have flung round St. Mary an everlasting interest, and made it one of the most brilliant monuments of national glory which stand on the bosom of our motherland.

If it had turned out that the Rowley Poems produced to the public by Chatterton had been genuine, and that the fame of so great a poet as Thomas Rowley the priest had been buried for near four hundred years in the iron chest of William Canynge, it would have been a most extraordinary circumstance, that it should have been a boy of fourteen who had discovered them; who had had the taste and discernment to pick them out from amidst the ordinary documents of such a chest, of little interest except to parishioners; to transcribe them, to press them upon the attention of his townsmen, and the literary public, and to have suffered insult, obloquy, and persecution on their account. Had he only raised that great public astonishment, inquiry, quarrel and controversy, amongst the learned and antiquarian of his time, and had been satisfactorily proved to be only the discoverer, introducer, and champion of the merit of these productions, it would have been one of the most remarkable occurrences in the whole history of literature, and the boy Chatterton would have still merited the happy epithet of "the marvellous boy." Had he been allowed, on justly admitted grounds, to have taken only that position which he claimed, that of the discoverer of the Rowley MSS., and the writer of his own acknowledged poems, the occurrence would have stood alone in the annals of letters, and Chatterton must have still remained one of the most

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