bury's Characteristics, and Hutcheson's Inquiry into our ideas of Beauty and Virtue. The object, as the late Thomas Campbell observed, "was to trace the various pleasures we derive from Nature and Art to their respective principles in the human imagination; and to shew the connection of these principles with the moral dignity of man, and the final purposes of his creation." To the task Akenside brought great talents; so if he failed in giving to the world a perfect production, the defect arose not so much from his lack of ability, as from the intricacy and unsettled bearings of what he undertook to perform. Though unequal as a whole it is still regarded as the finest didactic poem in our language. But here lay Akenside's great strength; and consequently, its noble paragraphs, pregnant with energy, seem to have been dashed off by his pen in the fervour of poetic inspiration. Many of its passages which continue to be used as texts by popular authors must strike the student as possessing singular force and beauty. I have often thought that more similarity may be found between Mark Akenside's verse and Edmund Burke's prose than is generally admitted. Both authors possessed great command of language, hence their diction is not only brilliant but remarkably flexible, and abounding with bursts of vast intellectual power. Probably we should have loved the poet better after all, had it been his habit to think more and read less, because in that case his air in writing had been less classical, and we had received from him a greater amount of originality. In composition, if words are not the offspring of fervid feeling or concentrated thought, they are like arrows shot without an aim, rarely striking the mark: we read on and seek for what in sparing measure we receive. In mature life Akenside re-modelled and re-wrote the Pleasures of Imagination, which, in its altered state, was published after his death, without materially advancing his fame. All lovers of poetry prefer it as it came from the author's hand, when his mind was in the highest degree susceptible of those emotions, under the influence of which almost every work in the loftier departments of genius can alone be brought to a successful termination.

It is not strange in this age, when Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and above all others, Shakspeare are steadily advancing in extended reputation, that Akenside should remain stationary. He has slight claim to that wonderful knowledge of nature by which these men are distinguished, neither does he approach them in creative power, nor grasp of intellect, nor habits of thinking, whether directed to our immortal destiny or the various impulses of human life; and it follows he is by no means a popular poet. Again, on account of his brilliant fancy, and appropriate language, he will be read and appreciated by

all who make English poetry a favourite study. He occupies a niche in our literary temple, from which succeeding generations will not displace him; and it becomes us to hail him in his descent to future time as one of the eminent men of letters who adorned the eighteenth century.

Poetic Epistle

ΤΟ

MISSES ANN AND JANE HEDLEY, BRIDGE END, NEAR

WEST WOODBURN.

"Where Reed upon her margin sees

Sweet Woodburn's cottages and trees."-ROKEBY.

W

HEN the breeze briskly blaws frae the south, And the fields busk their spring time attire, When the cushat coos soft at Reedsmouth, And the whaup whistles shrill at Reidswire,

When the plovers abandon the sea

For the heather on Hareshaw's high fell,
The glossy palm gilds the saugh tree,
And the wild roses bloom in the dell,

When the Lads and the Lasses o' Reed,
For Easter are making display,

And to Corsenside church o'er the mead,
Are tripping all gallant and gay;

When the lav'rock is up in the sky,
Saluting Spring's jocund return,
And the maidens are milking the kye

On the loans o' the bonnie Lislesburn;

When the huswives are laving their webs
By the brink of the murmuring stream,
The snipe's at the syke,-the bee's i' th' byke,
And the muir fowl, he basks in the beam,

When at Earhaugh the fern's waving green,
And the fox gloves at Blackburn's wild linn,
And the fishers they try wi' hackle an' fly,
Frae the clear stream the trouties to win ;

My noisy abode I'll forsake,—

The town's hollow pleasures all spurn,

I'll make my approach in the Chevy's gay coach,
And once more see sweet Otterburne.

Then the weel-kenn'd Brig End I will view,
Through the pastures I'll pensively roam,
To muse on the time and days o' lang syue,
When Reed held my hearth and my home!

In my plain fishers' graith will I come,

With a cap of the seal's softest skin,
And bring in my hand the light limber wand,
Sae fatal to mony a fin.

From Risingham down to auld Tyne,
My line o'er the stream will I waft,
And try if chill age has frozen my rage,
Or eat out the heart of my craft.

Then farewell to thee my dear native vale,
Thy wild woods and breckany braes,

Where the hours flitted by, once as light as my fly,
In my happiest and earliest days!

Elswick Cot, March, 1845.

R. ROXBY.

Collingwood.

"The Collingwoods have borne the name,
Since in the bush the buck was ta'en;
But when the bush shall hold the buck,
Then welcome faith, and farewell luck."

The crest of the Collingwoods is,-A stag at gaze, under an oak tree, proper. The allusion is obscure, and at present difficult to unriddle.-Sharp's Bishoprick Garland.

The Conservatorship of the Tyne.

CCORDING to records of the reigns of William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Henry I. and Henry II. the river Tyne was the established boundary between the county of Northumberland and the bishopric of Durham; and that, from Stanley Burn to Tynemouth, a moiety of the water thereof, on the south, belonged to St. Cuthbert and the see of Dur

ham; that another moiety thereof, on the

north, appertained to the county of Northumberland; and that the third and middle division was free and common: the whole to be measured at high tide. This division was probably made to prevent disputes respecting the fisheries on the river.

Henry II. granted or confirmed to the then bishop of Durham, that ships should be allowed to moor on the south side of the river. But by an agreement made in 1259, between the town of Newcastle and the prior and convent of Durham, it was stipulated that the tenants of the latter at South Shields should bake and brew for themselves only, and not for strangers. In a cause between King Edward I. the burgesses of Newcastle, and the prior of Tynemouth, in 1292, it was decided "that the port within the water of Tyne, from the sea to Hedwin Streams, is the free port of the king and his heirs." In 1306, judgment was given in parliament, that the prior of Tynemouth, who had built a shore at North Shields within the flood mark of this river, should remove it at his own cost.

In 1319, the conservatorship of the river was recognized to be in the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle; a grant made of that power by Edward II. being recalled on their representation. The bishop of Durham, in 1345, obtained a verdict against the king's commissioners, for trespasses done by them in intermeddling in the conservatorship of the south side of the Tyne. Edward III. and Richard II. confirmed to the bishop his moiety of the water of Tyne, with power to load and unload coals and merchandize without hindrance or molestation from the men of Newcastle. But in 1416, there was a dispute between the church of Durham and the men of Newcastle, concerning the holding of markets in South Shields, for fish, bread, and beer.

By an inquisition taken in 1447, the 25th Henry VI. the river Tyne and the soil thereof, from Sparrow Hawk in the sea, to Hedwin Streams, belonged, under the crown, to the corporation of Newcastle, which also received a royal grant of the conservatorship of the river in 1454. On June 30, 1528, Arthur Plantagenet, Vice-admiral under Henry, Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral, made an acknowledgment of admiral jurisdiction granted by King John, and confirmed by succeeding princes, to the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle upon Tyne, on the view and inspection of their several grants and privileges.

In the year 1530, the conservatorship of the river Tyne was confirmed to the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle, by an act of parliament prohibiting the shipping, loading, or unloading of any goods to be sold into or from any ship at any place within the limits of Sparhawk and Hedwin Streams, but only at the town aforesaid, and impowering the mayor, burgesses, and commonalty of that town, and their successors, to pluck down all wears, gores, and engines, that should be made in the river, to the great obstruction of the navigation thereof, between the places aforesaid.

In the year 1547, the soil of the river, from high water mark to the low, was settled upon the corporation of Newcastle; and in 1553, a third part of the river Tyne, and of the bridge over it at Newcastle, was restored, by act of parliament, to Tunstal, bishop of Durham. Queen Elizabeth, in 1589, granted the reversion of the office of the high admiralty of the port and river of Tyne to the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle, which was held by patent by Lord Howard, Lord High Admiral of England, who died January 26, 1618, but