"How soft the music of those village bells,

Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where mem'ry slept. Wherever I have
heard

A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its
pains.

Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,

That in a few short moments I retrace (As in a map the voyager his course) The winding of my way."

Cowper had heard the chimes ringing in more than forty new years, when he wrote these beautiful verses, and had experienced the melancholy truth of Pope's remark, that every year carries something dear away with it; yet not destroying or defacing, but only removing it into a softer and more soothing twilight. Poussin's charming picture of a Tomb in Arcadia, is only the past year put into an allegory. And if so, this is the hour to read it in; when, in the happy words of a late naturalist, the repose of wearied nature seems to mark the decline and termination of existence in many things that animated the green and joyous months of summer. The rare note of a bird is feeble and melancholy, and no insect hums in the field; the breeze passes

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCIII.