et do I sometimes feel a languishment For skies Italian, and an inward groan To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,

nd half forget what world or worldling meant. appy is ENGLAND, sweet her artless daughters; Enough their simple loveliness for me,

Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging: Yet do I often warmly burn to see

Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing, And float with them about the summer waters'.

eats was, in the truest sense of the word, a There is but a small portion of the public ted with the writings of this young man; yet re full of high imagination and delicate fancy, images were beautiful and more entirely his erhaps, than those of any living writer whate had a fine ear, a tender heart, and at times rce and originality of expression; and notnding all this, he has been suffered to rise and way almost without a notice: the laurel has warded (for the present) to other brows; the aspirants have been allowed to take their on the slippery steps of the Temple of Fame, e has been nearly hidden among the crowd his life, and has at last died, solitary and in , in a foreign land.

= at all times difficult, if not impossible, to >thers into a love of poets and poetry: it is her a matter of feeling, and we must leave to while it hallows his memory) to do justice to putation of Keats. There were many, howeven among the critics, who held his powhigh estimation; and it was well observed Editor of the Edinburgh Review, that there o other author whatever, whose writings would so good a test by which to try the love which ne professed to bear towards poetry. In proof assertion, we need only refer to the beautiful et from the Eve of St. Agnes,' already given

i

in pp. 12-13, and to the following exquisite Ode to
a Nightingale,' which, that we may do ample justice
to the author, we shall quote entire. The poem will
be more striking to the reader, when he understands
that it was written not long before Mr. Keats lef
England, when the author's powerful mind had for
some time past inhabited a sickened and shaking
body, and had suffered deeply from the balefu
effects of the poisoned shafts of critical malignity!
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves has never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And banly the Queen Moon is on her throne

Clustered around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

ave what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
nnot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
t, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
e grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

arkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easy Death, alled him soft names in many a mused rhyme,. To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In antient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:-Do I wake or sleep1?

mia, Isabella and other Poems, by John Keats, p. 113. 1820.

Matthias was, probably, one of the seventy disc ples, and was a constant attendant upon our Lor from the time of his baptism by St. John until h ascension. The gospel and traditions published u der his name are considered spurious.

There are four Ember Weeks in the year, namely after the first Sunday in Lent, after the feast of Per tecost, after the 14th of September, and after th 13th of December. It is enjoined by a canon d the church, 'that Deacons and Ministers be ordained or made, but only on the Sundays immediately fol lowing these Ember feasts.'-(Nelson.)

*27. 1821.-JOHN SCOTT DIED, ÆT. 37,

At Chalk Farm, where he had remained since th fatal duel which took place between him and M. Christie, on the evening of the 16th Feb. He was late known to the literary world, as the Editor 'Baldwin's London Magazine,' to him a fatal pre eminence, which he enjoyed only for a short period Mr. Scott was, for some time, the Editor of th Champion Newspaper; and afterwards publishe his Paris Visited and Revisited,' works of grea power and auspicious promise, and which at onc raised him to a high place among men of talent an genius. He seemed gifted by nature with a vigorou fancy and strong conception; and although th purity of his taste and style might sometimes b questioned, a spirit with which we delighted to sym pathise breathed throughout his writings, while th soundness of his judgment, and the purity of hi principles, stamped a peculiar value on all his com positions. Mr. Scott was obviously a man of a ardent and original mind. His ideas of honou were as lofty as his love of virtue was innate and habitual. But while his talents commanded ad

the qualities of his heart were fitted to e affections of his friends; and no man fairer prospects of rising to distinction orld. Mr. Scott was also the author of se of Mourning,' a poem; of a posthumous itled, Sketches of Manners, &c. in France, nd, and Italy;' and of an excellent Essay h Literature,' printed with the last mention

6

1798. THE FRENCH ENTERED ROME.

ome, the spoiler or the spoil of France, m Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never foreign standard to thy walls advance, ber shall become a mournful river.

when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,

sh them, ye rocks! floods, whelm them, and for ever! leep the idle avalanches so,

topple on the lonely pilgrim's herd?

y doth Eridanus but overflow
easant's harvest from his turbid bed?

re not each barbarous horde a nobler prey?
er Cambyses' host the desert spread
andy ocean, and the sea waves' sway

lled over Pharaoh and his thousands--why,
untains and waters, do ye not as they?
you, ye men! Romans, who dare not die,
ns of the conquerors who overthrew

ose who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
-e the Alps weaker than Thermopyla?
eir passes more alluring to the view

m invader? is it they, or ye,

hat to each host the mountain-gate unbar,

nd leave the march in peace, the passage free?
7, Nature's self detains the victor's car,

nd makes your land impregnable, if earth
Could be so; but alone she will not war,
aids the warrior worthy of his birth
na soil where the mothers bring forth men :
Not so with those whose souls are little worth;
them no fortress can avail;-the den
Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting
Is more secure than walls of adamant, when
e hearts of those within are quivering.

BYRON,

t