Save where, along the line of bending shore, A summer feeling; even the insect swarms Seem'd now as if it had no cause to mourn Smiled in the joyful sunshine: they partook THE TEMPEST. 'Tis pleasant, by the cheerful hearth, to hear Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep, And pause at times, and feel that we are safe; Then listen to the perilous tale again, And, with an eager and suspended soul, Woo Terror to delight us:-but to hear The roaring of the raging elementsTo know all human skill, all human strength Avail not-to look round, and only see The mountain-wave, incumbent with its weight Of bursting waters o'er the reeling barkO God! this is indeed a dreadful thing! And he who hath endured the horror, once, Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm Howl round his home, but he remembers it, And thinks upon the suffering mariner!" FOR A MONUMENT AT OXFORD. Here Latimer and Ridley in the flames Congenial virtue. But, if thou hast swerved THE OLD MAN'S COMFORTS, AND HOW HE GAINED THEM. "You are old, Father William," the young man cried; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man! "In the days of my youth," Father William replied, You are old, Father William," the young man cried, And yet you lament not the days that are gone; "In the days of my youth," Father William replied, I thought of the future, whatever I did, That I never might grieve for the past." "You are old, Father William," the young man cried, You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death; "I am cheerful, young man," Father William replied; In the days of my youth I remember'd my God! REMEMBRANCE. The remembrance of youth is a sigh.—ALI. Man hath a weary pilgrimage, As through the world he wends; With heaviness he casts his eye And still remembers with a sigh The days that are no more. To school the little exile goes, Torn from his mother's arms What then shall soothe his earliest woes, From hard control and tyrant rules, And tears will struggle in his eye, Youth comes; the toils and cares of life Where shall the tired and harass'd heart Then is not Youth, as Fancy tells, Maturer Manhood now arrives, And other thoughts come on; Its idle hopes are o'er; Yet Age remembers with a sigh The days that are no more. THE TRUE MISSION OF ENGLAND. Train up thy children, England! in the ways Thy bulwarks where, but in their breasts? Shall not their numbers therefore be thy wealth, If, in this flourishing land, There should be dwellings where the new-born babe Doth bring unto its parents' soul no joy! Where squalid Poverty And on her wither'd knees Gives it the scanty food of discontent! Queen of the Seas! enlarge thyself; And send thy swarms abroad! But with more precious gifts than Greece, or Tyre, And, crowning all, the dearest boon of Heaven, Queen of the Seas! enlarge The place of thy pavilion. Let them stretch Thy cords, make strong thy stakes. Train up thy children, England, in the ways Of righteousness, and feed them with the bread Thy stirring enterprise, Thy liberal polity, thy gospel light! Reclaim the savage! O thou Ocean Queen! He who hath bless'd thine arms Will bless thee in these holy works of Peace! As a prose writer, no author of the nineteenth century has written upon so many and various subjects; and all his writings are marked by an easy flowing style, extensive reading, and a vein of poetical feeling that runs through the whole, whether critical, historical, or political. Besides his numerous contributions to the "Quarterly Review," mentioned in the note on page 406, he has published the following: "History of Brazil," three volumes; "History of the Peninsular War," two volumes; "Book of the Church;" "Life of Lord Nelson;""Letters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella," three volumes,-a series of observations on English manners and the prospects of England; "Letters from Spain and Portugal," two volumes; "Omniana," a collection of critical remarks and curious quotations; "The Doctor," five volumes,-"a work partly fictitious, but abounding in admirable description and quaint fanciful delineation of character;" "Pro gress and Prospects of Society," two volumes; "Essays, Moral and Political," two volumes; "Lives of Uneducated Poets;" "Life of Cowper," and an edition of his works, in fifteen volumes. These, and other minor prose works, are proofs alike of his wonderful, untiring industry, and of the easy and admirable English style, of which he was so consummate a master.1 FIELD PREACHING-WESLEY. "I wonder at those," says Wesley, "who talk of the indecency of field preaching. The highest indecency is in St. Paul's Church, where a considerable part of the congregation are asleep, or talking, or looking about, not minding a word the preacher says. On the other hand, there is the highest decency in a church-yard or field, where the whole congregation behave and look as if they saw the Judge of all, and heard Him speaking from heaven." Sometimes, when he had finished the discourse and pronounced the blessing, not a person offered to move the charm was upon them still; and every man, woman, and child remained where they were, till he set the example of leaving the ground. One day many of his hearers were seated upon a long wall, built, as is common in the northern counties, of loose stones. In the middle of the sermon it fell with them. "I never saw, heard, nor read of such a thing before," he says. "The whole wall, and the persons sitting upon it, sunk down together, none of them screaming out, and very few altering their posture, and not one was hurt at all; but they appeared sitting at the bottom, just as they sat at the top. Nor was there any interruption either of my speaking or of the attention of the hearers." The situations in which he preached sometimes contributed to the impression, and he himself perceived, that natural influences operated upon the multitude, like the pomp and circumstance of Romish The following very beautiful letter is in answer to a letter from Cottle expressing his regret that, on retiring from the bookselling business, he had not returned to Southey the copyrights of his early works. It is hard to say to which of the parties such a letter is most creditable: "MY DEAR COTTLE:-What you say of my copyrights affects me very much. Dear Cottle, set your heart at rest on that subject. It ought to be at rest. They were yours: fairly bought and fairly sold. You bought them on the chance of their success, which no London bookseller would have done; and had they not been bought, they could not have been published at all. Nay, if you had not published Joan of Arc,' the poem would never have existed, nor should I, in all probability, ever have obtained that reputation which is the capital on which I subsist, nor that power which enables me to support it. "But this is not all. Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have forgotten those true and most essential acts of friendship which you showed me when I stood most in need of them? Your house was my house when I had no other. The very money with which I bought my wedding-ring, and paid my marriage fees, was supplied by you. It was with your sisters that I left my Edith during my six months' absence; and, for the six months after my return, it was from you that I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, till I was enabled to live by other means. It is not the settling of our cash account that can cancel obligations like these. You are in the habit of preserving your letters,-and if you are not, I would entreat you to preserve this, that it might be seen hereafter. Sure I am, that there never was a more generous nor a kinder heart than yours; and you will believe me when I add that there does not live that man upon earth whom I remember with more gratitude and more affection. My heart throbs, and my eyes burn with these recollections. Good night, my dear old friend and benefactor. ROBERT SOU THEY." |