that stone he has said "give us this day our daily bread," eat his crust, and then walked away contented down to Cairndow. Just so has it been with you sitting at your appointed place-pretty high up-on the road to the summit of the Biforked Hill. You look up and see Byronthere "sitting where you may not soar," and wish you were a great poet. But you are no more a great poet than an eagle eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip-and will not rest and be thankful that you are a man and a Christian. Nay, you are more, an author of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed to be excellent, better far than the best paragraph in this our Morning Monologue. But you are sick of walking, and nothing will satisfy you but to fly. Be contented, as we are, with feet, and weep not for wings; and let us take comfort together from a cheering quotation from the philosophic Gray

"For they that creep and they that fly,
Just end where they began!"

POETRY BY OUR NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1837.)

AGE is the season of imagination, youth of passion : and having been long young, shall we repine that we are now old? They alone are rich who are full of yearsthe Lords of Time's Treasury are all on the staff of Wisdom; their commissions are enclosed in furrows on their foreheads, and secured to them for life. Fearless of fate, and far above fortune, they hold their heritage by the great charter of nature for behoof of all her children who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for their decease, for every hour dispenses their wealth, and their bounty is not a late bequest but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sanctifies their gifts to gratitude; and their worth is more clearly seen and profoundly felt within the solemn gloom of the grave.

And said we truly that age is the season of the imagination? That youth is the season of passion your own beating and bounding hearts now tell you-your own boiling blood. Intensity is its characteristic; and it burns like a flame of fire, too often but to consume. Expansion of the soul is ours, with all its feelings and all its " thoughts, that wander through eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have wings, for power is given her, beyond the dove or the eagle, and no weariness can touch her on that heavenward flight.

Yet we are all of "the earth earthy," and, young and old alike, must we love and honour our home. Your eyes are bright-ours are dim; but "it is the soul that sees," and this diurnal sphere" is visible through the mist of tears. In that light how more than beautiful-how very holy-even this world appears? All sadness, save of sin,

is then most sacred; and sin itself loses its terrors in re. pentance, which, alas! is seldom perfect but in the near prospect of our graves. Temptation may intercept her within a few feet of her expected rest, nay, dash the dust from her hand that she has gathered from the burial-place to strew on her head; but youth sees flowery fields, and shining rivers far-stretching before her path, and cannot imagine for a moment that among life's golden mountains there is many a Place of Tombs.

But let us speak only of this earth-this world-this life-and is not age the season of imagination? Imagination is Memory imbued with joy or sorrow with creative power over the past, till it becomes the present, and then, on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the Muses; and how divinely indeed they sang around her as she lay in the pensive shade! You know the words of Milton

"Till old experience doth attain

To something like prophetic strain;

and you know, while reading them that Experience is consummate Memory, Imagination wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with Genius, and in its "prophetic strain"-Inspiration.

We would fain lower our tone-and on this theme speak like what we are, one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap now twenty-three feet on level ground (our utmost might be twenty three inches), nevertheless, we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty minutes,"―ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first-worms though we be-we cannot even crawl-disdainful next to that acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig-pretty lambs, we then totter to the terror of our deep-bosomed dams-till the welkin rings with admiration to behold, sans leadingstrings, the weanlings walk-like wildfire then we runfor we have found the use of our feet-like wildgeese then 14

VOL. II.

we fly-for we may not doubt we have wings-in car, ship, balloon, the lords of the earth, sea and sky, and universal nature. The car runs on a post-the ship on a rock—the “air hath bubbles as the water hath”—the balloon is one of them, and bursts like a bladder-and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons or sextons. Where, pray, in all this is there a single symptom or particle of imagination? It is of passion "all compact."

True, this is not a finished picture 'tis but a slight sketch of the season of youth-but paint it as you will, and if faithful to nature you will find passion in plenty, and a dearth of imagination. Nor is the season of youth therefore to be pitied-for passion respires and expires in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent as the unwise lecture, it is mute as a fish and merely gasps. In youth we are creatures-the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly in spite of its severity; for ere long we come to discern through the dust of our own raising, the pinnacles of towers and temples serenely ascending into the skies, high and holy places for rule, for rest, or for religion, where as kings we may reign, as priests minister, or as saints adore.

We do not deny, excellent youth, that to your eyes and ears beautiful and sublime are the sights and words of Nature-and of Art her angel. Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed ours, and deliver thyself up withouten dread, or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, where night for ever dwells-to the glory of skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. Coming and going a thousand and a thousand times, yet, in its familiar beauty, ever new as a dream-let thy soul span the heavens with the rainbow. Ask thy heart in the wilderness if that "thunder, heard remote," be from cloud or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shudder at the shuddering moor, and your flesh creep upon your bones, as the heather seems to creep on the bent, with the awe of a passing earthquake. Let the seamew be thy guide up the glen, if thy delight be in peace profounder than ever sat with her on the lull of summer waves! For the inland loch seems but a vale overflow. ing with wondrous light-and realities they all lookthese trees and pastures, and rocks, and hills, and clouds

-not softened images, as they are, of realities that are almost stern even in their beauty, and in their sublimity overawing;-look at that precipice that dwindles into pebbles the granite blocks that choke up the shore!

Now all this, and a million times more than all this have we too done in our youth, and yet 'tis all nothing to what we do whenever we will it in our age. For almost all that is passion; spiritual passion indeed-and as all emotions are akin, they all work with and into one another's hands, and, however remotely related, recognise, and welcome one another, like Highland cousins, whenever they meet. Imagination is not the faculty to stand aloof from the rest, but gives one hand to Fancy and the other to Feeling, and sets to Passion, who is often so swallowed up in himself as to seem blind to their vis-à-vis, till all at once he hugs all the three, as if he were demented, and as suddenly sporting dos-à-dos-is off on a gollopade by himself right slick away over the mountain-tops.

You still look incredulous and unconvinced of the truth of our position-but it was established in our first three paragraphs-and the rest, though proofs too, are intended merely for illustrations. Age alone understands the language of old Mother Earth-for age alone, from his own experience, can imagine its meanings in trouble or in rest -often mysterious enough even to him in all conscience -but intelligible though inarticulate-nor always inarticulate for though sobs and sighs are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and groans and gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and cries, as if the old Earth were undergoing a violent death-yet many a time and oft, within these few years, have we heard her slowly syllabling words out of the Bible, and as in listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed stars responded to their truth, and, like Mercy visiting Despair, the moon bore it into the heart of the stormy clouds.

And are there, then, have there never been young poets? Many; for passion, so tossed as to leave, perhaps, to give the sufferer power to reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical because creative, and loves to express itself prose or numerous verse," at once its nutriment and relief. Nay, Nature sometimes gifts her children with an

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