After refreshing myself with some excellent ale, I recrossed the Thames to Hampton church-yard, which is finely situated on a rising bank of the river, and contains a most ancient Gothic church and a great number of marble monuments. It serves as a thorough-fare for those, who go to the church or the ferry. The church, like most others of its antiquity and architecture, stands in the midst of the church-yard or burying-ground, and is surrounded up to its very walls and doors by monuments great and small. The grave-yard appears cheerful instead of gloomy, being much frequented by the villagers, and intersected by well-worn footpaths, which cross it in every direction. It was at this time almost as much crowded by the living as the dead. A higli wooden settee placed nearly in the centre of the church-yard, and looking across and up the Thames, afforded me a restingplace, while I was contemplating the multitude around and beneath me.

From Hampton I proceeded along a beautiful road with a smooth, clear sidewalk to Hampton Court, where there is a fine old palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, and presented by him to Henry VIII. It is very extensive, a quadrangle having been added in the reign of William III. under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren. The interior is very royal and very interesting. The first room, or guard chamber, so called, contains arms for a thousand men, arranged with great taste and kept in the best order. The most remarkable among them were some Dutch bonnets of steel used in William's time, and some Dutch knives. After this, followed the presence-chainbers, audience-chambers, drawing-rooms, bed-chambers, dinning-rooms, beauty-room, closets, &c. there being in general one of each for the king, and one for his queen. Many valuable paintings are distributed among them. A picture of Charles I. by Vandyck and the Cartoons of Raffaelle are the most celebrated. These represent, 1. The miraculous draft of fishes ; 2. The charge to Peter; 3. Peter and John healing the lame at the gate of the temple ; 4. Death of Ananias ;

5. Elymas the sorcerer struck with blindness ; 6. The sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas by the people of Lystra; 7. Paul preaching at Athens. The Gallery which contains these pictures is much frequented by artists for the purpose of studying and copying these celebrated models. Engravings of them are also offered for sale, with the condition of sending them to any part of the world. The wings of this palace are occupied by several noble ladies, who enjoy this privilege either by hereditary right or by the special favour of the king. Its situation on the north bank of the Thames, though not commanding, is extremely agreeable; and the pleasure gardens contain beautiful sculptures, and some natural objects of great curiosity and interest. Among these are “ the maze," and "the vine," the most fruitful in Europe. It has

in one season produced 2272 bunches, weighing eighteen hundred pounds. It was planted in 1769, and the trunk is about thirteen inches in circumference.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

THE DESOLATE CITY.

I had a vision.-
A city lay before me, desolate,
And yet not all decayed. A summer sun
Shone on it from a most etherial sky,
And the soft winds threw o'er it such a balm,
One would have thought it was a sepulchre,
And this the incense offered to the manes
of the departed.

In the light it lay
Peacefully, as if all its thousands took
Their afternoon's repose, and soon would wake
To the loud joy of evening. There it lay,
A city of magnificent palaces,
And churches, towering more like things of Heaven,
The glorious fabrics, fancy builds in clouds,
And shapes on loftiest mountains bright their domes
Threw back the living ray, and proudly stood
Many a statue, looking like the forms
Of spirits hovering in mid air. Tall trees,
Cypress and plane, waved over many a hill
Cumbered with ancient ruins-broken arches,
And tottering columns-vaults, where never came
The blessed beam of day, but only lamps
Shedding a funeral light, were kindled there,
And gave to the bright frescoes on the walls,
And the pale statues in their far recesses,
A dim religious awe. Rudely they lay,
Scarce marking out to the inquisitive eye
Tbeir earliest outline. But as desolate
Slumbered the newer city, though its walls
Were yet unbroken, and its towering domes
Had never stooped to ruin. All was still ;
Hardly the faiptest sound of living thing
Moved through the mighty solitude—and yet
All wore the face of beauty. Not a cloud
Hung in the lofty sky, that seemed to rise
In twofold majesty, so bright and pure,
It seemed indeed a crystalline sphere—and there
The sun rode onward in his conquering march
Serenely glorious. From the mountain heights

Tinged with the blue of heaven, to the wide sea
Glassed with as pure a blue, one desolate plain
Spread out, and over it the fairest sky
Bent round and blessed it. Life was teeming there
In all its lower forms, a wilderness
Of rank luxuriance; flowers, and purpling vines
Matted with deepest foliage, hid the ruins,
And gave the semblance of a tangled wood
To piles, that once were loudly eloquent
With the glad cry of thousands. There were gardens
Round stateliest villas, full of graceful statues,
And temples reared to woodland deities;
And they were overcrowded with the excess
Of beauty. All that most is coveted
Beneath a colder sky, grew wantonly
And richly there. Myrtles and citrons filled
The air with fragrance. From the tufted elm,
Bent with its own too massy foliage, bung
Clusters of sunny grapes in frosted purple,
Drinking in spirit from the glowing air,
And dropping generous dews. The very wind
Seemed there a lover, and his easy wings
Fanned the gay bowers, as if in fond delay
He bent o'er loveliest things, too beautiful
Ever to know decay. The silent air
Floating as softly as a cloud of roses,
Dropped from Idalia in a dewy shower,
The air itself seemed like the breath of Heaven
Filling the groves of Eden. Yet these walls
Are desolate-not a trace of living man
Is found amid these glorious works of man,
And nature's fairer glories.

Why should be
Be absent from the festival of life,
The holiday of nature ? Why not come
To add to the sweet sounds of winds and waters
Of winds uttering Æolian melodies
To the bright, listening flowers, and waters falling
Most musical from marble fountains wreathed
With clustering ivy, like a poet's brow-
Why comes he not to add his higher strains,
And be the interpreter of lower things,
In intellectual worship, at the throne
Of the Beneficent Power, that gave to them
Their pride and beauty ? -“In these palaces,
These awful temples, these religious caves,
These hoary ruins, and these twilight groves
Teeming with life and love,-a secret plague
Dwells, and the unwary foot, that ventures here,
Returns not.Fly! To linger here is death."

P.

TO GEXEVIEVE.

l'll rob the hyacinth and rose,
I'll search the cowslip's fragrant cell,
Nor spare the breath that daily blows
Her incense from the asphodel.
And these shall breathe thy gentle name,
Sweet Naiad of the sacred stream,
Where, musing, first I caught the flame,
That Passion kindles in his dream.
Thy soul of Music broke the spell,
Tbat bound my lyre's neglected strings;
Attuned its silent echo's shell,
And loosed again his airy wings.
Ah ! long had beauty's eyes in vain
Diffused their radiant light divine;
Alas, it never woke a strain,
Till inspiration beamed from thine.
Thus vainly did the stars at night
O'er Memnon's lyre their watch prolong,
When nought but bright Aurora's light
Could wake its silence into song!

D.

TO THE ARNO.

Bright stream! how calm upon thy waters rest
The hues of evening, when th' empurpled West

Droops its soft wing upon thy floods ;

And the dark waving of thy woods
Deepens the shadows on thy tranquil breast.
And when the mountains catch, upon their heights,
The last faint blush of glory, and the lights

Of heaven twinkle in the sky;

How sweet the cicăda's lone cry Mourns through thy woods in Autumn's mellow nights. Ilow lovely are thy shores when on the air, O’er the rich vineyards stealing from afar,

The vintner's careless cheering soars,

Lingering amid thy olive bowers ;
And bright in heaven burns the evening star!
Flow on, thou classic stream, thy verdant shore;
Will live within our hearts till life is o'er !

Still will fond memory think of thee,

Thou pride of blooming Tuscany,
And sigh to look upon thy stream once more !

F. M.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Rothelan; a Romance of the English Histories. By the author of "Annals of tite

Parish," " Ringan Gilhaize," The Spaewise," fc. New-York. 1925. 2. vols. 12mo.

The author of this book is pretty well known to the reading community, by his works at least, if not by his name, and he has acquired a certain degree of currency among novel readers, which, when the number and merits of his competitors are considered, is indicative of some share of merit. One or two of his works have acquired a considerable popularity; others have been received with some cordiality for relations' sake, and a few have been barely tolerated. Rothelan, we apprehend, will come into the second class, possibly into the third, certainly not into the first. The story is not put together in a manner to command an interest; the characters, although in situations to demand sympathy, do not seem to have the faculty of exciting it; in short, a languid air prevails over the whole production, and although this is sometimes relieved by touches of vivacity and spirit, the impression left upon the whole is not very favourable. It is but justice to say, that its general merits are much obscured by a quantity of miserable trash, which the author introduces about the “ book of beauty,” as he is pleased to style it, recovered from the “gorgeous hermitage of Fonthill," a book which, as he says, is bound up with a back of opal, covers of lapis lazuli, invisible hinges of adamant, and nine clasps of gold representing the nine muscs; with a deal more of such affected stuff. This occurring at the very outset of the work, and repeated in regular doses through the whole, has perhaps rendered us a little fastidious and captious, and less disposed to do justice to that which really deserves commendation. It was very unwise in this writer to attempt a new history of the surrender of Calais, which he has succeeded in making so eminently dull and uninteresting, that one would hardly suppose it the same event, in the account of which we have been accustomed to be so much interested.

The most striking and efficient part of the work is that, which gives a description of the plague in London. We quote the account of the arrival of the ship in which it was imported.

“She hath had a hard voyage,' rejoined Rothelan : look how dishevelled she is in the cordage. Some of her top-sails too hanging in rags; and I can see, as it were, strips of green moss down the seams of the others. They have surely been long unbanded.'

“ Adonijah continued looking towards the ship, and appeared thoughtful and touched with care, as he said

Her voyage bath been very long-all the way from the land of Egypt, but she was in Italy as she came, and her course hath been in the sunny days and with the gracious gales of the summer; yet is she like a thing of antiquity, for those signs of waste and decay are as if Oblivion were on board. They have not come of the winds nor of the waves.'

66 • The crowd on the shores,' added the lady, 'grows silent as she passes.'

" There are many persons abroad,' sail Rothclan,