combine the applause of contemporaries with the suffrages of the representatives of posterity."

In 1798, Rogers published his Epistle to a Friend, with other Poems, but did not come forward again as a poet till 1812, when he added to a collected edition of his works his somewhat irregular poem of The Vision of Columbus. Two years after, in company with Lord Byron's Lara, appeared his tale of Jacqueline, which, though well received, contributed but little to his reputation; and in 1819 he published his Human Life, which, next to his Pleasures of Memory, is our author's most finished production. The subject was good one; for it was drawn from universal nature, and connected with all those rich associations which increase in attraction as we journey onward in the path of life. It is an epitome of man from the cradle to the grave, and is executed throughout with the poet's wonted care.

In 1822 was published his first part of Italy, which was soon after completed, and in a few years was published in a splendid style, illustrated by numerous engravings. This is his last and longest, but not his best, performance, though there are certainly many beautifully descriptive passages in it,-delightful glimpses of Italian life and scenery, and old traditions; for the poet was an accomplished traveller, a lover of the fair and good, and a worshipper of the classic glories of the past. But it is chiefly as the author of the Pleasures of Memory that he will be known to posterity, though, at the same time, some of his minor poems are among the most pure and exquisite fragments of verse which the poets of this age have produced. In all his works, however, there is everywhere seen a classic and graceful beauty; no slovenly or obscure lines; fine cabinet pictures of soft and mellow lustre; and occasional trains of thought and association that awaken or recall tender and heroic feelings. His diction is clear and polished,-finished with great care and scrupulous nicety; but it must be admitted that he has no forcible or original invention, no deep pathos that thrills the soul, and no kindling energy that fires the imagination.2

Rogers's life was protracted to a very unusual period,-to the 18th of December, 1855, when he was in his ninety-third year. Indeed, his longevity was one of the sources, if not the chief source, of the public interest felt for him in his later life, as during the last twenty or thirty years of it he produced very little. But in his character of a superannuated poet living on the reputation of his past performances, drawing the artists and wits and men of rank of a more modern age around him, and entertaining them with his caustic talk and his reminiscences of the notable persons and events of former days, he

1 "The poet looks on man, and teaches us to look on him, not merely with love, but with reverence; and, mingling a sort of considerate pity for the shortness of his busy little career, and for the disappointments and weaknesses with which it is beset, with a genuine admiration of the great capacities he unfolds, and the high destiny to which he seems to be reserved, works out a very beautiful and engaging picture, both of the affections by which life is endeared, the trials to which it is exposed, and the pure and peaceful enjoy ments with which it may often be filled.”— Edinburgh Review, xxxi. 325.

2 In a review of Rogers's Poems, in the Edinburgh, October, 1813, the writer (who is no less than Sir James Mackintosh) thus remarks:-" Perhaps there is no volume in our

language of which it can be so truly said, as of the present, that it is equally exempt from the frailties of negligence and the vices of affectation. The exquisite polish of style is indeed more admired by the artist than by the people. The gentle and elegant pleasure which it imparts can only be felt by a calm reason, an exercised taste, and a mind free from turbulent passions. But these beauties of execution can exist only in combination with much of the primary beauties of thought and feeling. These are permanent beauties. In poetry, though not in eloquence, it is less to rouse the passions of a moment than to satisfy the taste of all ages; and Rogers has most certainly taken his place among the classical poets of his country."

held a very conspicuous position in the best circles of London society. Few were more agreeable in manners and conversation. From his great wealth he had been enabled to cultivate his favorite tastes, to enrich his house in St. James's Park with some of the finest and rarest pictures, busts, books, and gems, and to entertain his friends with a generous and unostentatious hospitality. His conversation was rich and various, abounding in wit, eloquence, shrewd observation, and interesting personal anecdote; for he had been fami liar with almost every distinguished author, orator, and artist for the last fifty years of his life.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

Twilight's soft dews steal o'er the village green,
With magic tints to harmonize the scene;
Still'd is the hum that through the hamlet broke,
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flock'd to hear the minstrel play,
And games and carols closed the busy day.
Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more
With treasured tales and legendary lore.
All, all are fled; nor mirth nor music flows
To chase the dreams of innocent repose.
All, all are fled! yet still I linger here!
What secret charms this silent spot endear!

Mark yon old mansion, frowning through the trees,
Whose hollow turret woos the whistling breeze.
That casement, arch'd with ivy's brownest shade,
First to these eyes the light of heaven convey'd.

The mouldering gateway strews the grass-grown court,
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport,
When nature pleased, for life itself was new,
And the heart promised what the fancy drew.

Childhood's loved group revisits every scene,
The tangled wood-walk and the tufted green!
Indulgent Memory wakes, and, lo, they live!
Clothed with far softer hues than Light can give;
Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below
To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know;
Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm,
When nature fades and life forgets to charm;
Thee would the Muse invoke!-to thee belong

The sage's precept and the poet's song.
What soften'd views thy magic glass reveals,

When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals!
As when in ocean sinks the orb of day,

Long on the wave reflected lustres play;
Thy temper'd gleams of happiness resign'd
Glance on the darken'd mirror of the mind.

The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses gray,
Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay.
Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn,
Quickening my truant feet across the lawn;
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air,
When the slow dial gave a pause to care.

Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear,
Some little friendship form'd and cherish'd here;
And not the lightest leaf but trembling teems
With golden visions and romantic dreams!

HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS.

Pleasures of Memory.

Thus kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire,
As summer clouds flash forth electric fire.

And hence this spot gives back the joys of youth,
Warm as the life, and with the mirror's truth.
Hence homefelt pleasure prompts the patriot's sigh;
This makes him wish to live and dare to die.
For this young Foscari, whose hapless fate
Venice should blush to hear the Muse relate,
When exile wore his blooming years away,
To sorrow's long soliloquies a prey,

When reason, justice vainly urged his cause,
For this he roused her sanguinary laws;

Glad to return, though hope could grant no more,
And chains and torture hail'd him to the shore.

And hence the charms historic scenes impart; 2
Hence Tiber awes and Avon melts the heart.
Aerial forms in Tempe's classic vale

Glance through the gloom and whisper in the gale;
In wild Vaucluse with love and Laura dwell,
And watch and weep in Eloisa's cell.
'Twas ever thus. As now at Virgil's tomb
We bless the shade and bid the verdure bloom:
So Tully paused, amid the wrecks of Time,3
On the rude stone to trace the truth sublime;
When at his feet, in honor'd dust disclosed,
The immortal sage of Syracuse reposed.
And as he long in sweet delusion hung,
Where once a Plato taught, a Pindar sung,
Who now but meets him musing when he roves
His ruin'd Tusculum's romantic groves?

In Rome's great forum, who but hears him roll
His moral thunders o'er the subject soul?
And hence that calm delight the portrait gives:
We gaze on every feature till it lives!

1 He was suspected of murder, and, at Venice, of our senses, whatever makes the past, the suspicion is good evidence. Neither the in- distant, or the future predominate over the terest of the Doge, his father, nor the in- present, advances us in the dignity of thinking trepidity of conscious innocence, which he ex-beings. Far from me and far from my friends hibited in the dungeon and on the rack, could procure his acquittal. He was banished to the island of Candia for life. But here his resoIntion failed him. At such a distance from home he could not live; and, as it was a criminal offence to solicit the intercession of a foreign prince, in a fit of despair he addressed a letter to the Duke of Milan, and intrusted it to a wretch whose perfidy he knew would occasion his being remanded a prisoner to Venice.

"Whatever withdraws us from the power

be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us, indifferent and unmoved, over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." -JOHNSON.

3" When Cicero was quæstor in Sicily, he discovered the tomb of Archimedes by its mathematical inscription."-Tusc. Quæst. v. 3.

Still the fond lover sees the absent maid:
And the lost friend still lingers in his shade!
Say why the pensive widow loves to weep,
When on her knee she rocks her babe to sleep:
Tremblingly still, she lifts his vail to trace
The father's features in his infant face.
The hoary grandsire smiles the hour away,
Won by the raptures of a game at play;
He bends to meet each artless burst of joy,
Forgets his age, and acts again the boy.

What though the iron school of War erase
Each milder virtue and each softer grace;
What though the fiend's torpedo-touch arrest
Each gentler, finer impulse of the breast;
Still shall this active principle preside,
And wake the tear to Pity's self denied.

The intrepid Swiss, who guards a foreign shore,
Condemn'd to climb his mountain-cliff's no more,
If chance he hears the song so sweetly wild
Which on those cliffs his infant hours beguiled,
Melts at the long-lost scenes that round him rise,
And sinks a martyr to repentant sighs.

Ask not if courts or camps dissolve the charm:
Say why Vespasian1 loved his Sabine farm?

Why great Navarre,2 when France and Freedom bled,
Sought the lone limits of a forest-shed?
When Diocletian's self-corrected mind3
The imperial fasces of a world resign'd,
Say why we trace the labors of his spade,
In calmi Salona's philosophic shade?

Say, when contentious Charles renounced a throne,*
To muse with monks unletter'd and unknown,
What from his soul the parting tribute drew?
What claim'd the sorrows of a last adieu?
The still retreats that soothed his tranquil breast
Ere grandeur dazzled and its cares oppress'd.

The same.

1 Vespasian, according to Suetonius, constantly passed his summers in a small villa near Reate, where he was born, and to which he would never add any embellishment.

2 "That amiable and accomplished monarch, Henry the Fourth of France, made an excursion from his camp, during the long siege of Laon, to dine at a house in the forest of Folambray, where he had often been regaled, when a boy, with fruit, milk, and new cheese, and in revisiting which he promised himself great pleasure."- Mem. de Sully.

8" Diocletian retired into his native province, and there amused himself with building, planting, and gardening. His answer to Maximian 1s deservedly celebrated. He was solicited by that restless old man to reassume the reins of

government and the imperial purple. He rejected the temptation with a smile of pity calmly observing, That if he could show Maxinian the cabbages which he had planted with his own hands at Salona, he should no longer be urged to relinquish the enjoyment of happáness for the pursuit of power.'"-GIBBON.

"When the Emperor Charles V. had exe cuted his memorable resolution, and had set out for the monastery of St. Justus, he stopped a few days at Ghent," says his historian, "to indulge that tender and pleasant melancholy which arises in the mind of every man, in the decline of life, on visiting the place of his nativity, and viewing the scenes and objects familiar to him in his early youth."-Rosi

SON.

CONCLUSION.

Hail, Memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine
From age to age unnumber'd treasures shine!
Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey,
And Place and Time are subject to thy sway!
Thy pleasures most we feel when most alone;
The only pleasures we can call our own.
Lighter than air Hope's summer visions die,
If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky;
If but a beam of sober Reason play,
Lo, Fancy's fairy frost-work melts away!
But can the wiles of Art, the grasp of Power,
Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour?
These, when the trembling spirit wings her flight,
Pour round her path a stream of living light;
And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest,
Where Virtue triumphs and her sons are blest!

HUMAN LIFE.

The lark has sung his carol in the sky,
The bees have humm'd their noontide lullaby;
Still in the vale the village bells ring round,
Still in Llewellyn hall the jests resound;
For now the caudle-cup is circling there,

The same.

Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire
The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years, and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.

Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin;
The ale, now brew'd, in floods of amber shine;
And basking in the chimney's ample blaze,
'Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,
"'Twas on these knees he sat so oft and smiled."

And soon again shall music swell the breeze;
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees
Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung,
And violets scatter'd round; and old and young,
In every cottage-porch, with garlands green,
Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene;
While her dark eyes declining, by his side,
Moves in her virgin vail the gentle bride.

And once, alas! nor in a distant hour,
Another voice shall come from yonder tower;
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen,
And weepings heard where only joy has been;
When, by his children borne, and from his door,
Slowly departing to return no more,

He rests in holy earth with them that went before