cure for his deep sorrow, but all in vain. Then he longs bitterly for oblivion-to forget all the joys that are hopelessly passed away. His wish is granted. A spirit appears, and offers a goblet of Lethe water to his lips. He drinks eagerly, and forgets all the past. He is free from the load of grief, which pierced him with a thousand memories of lost happiness, never to return. But he soon discovers how dear has been the purchase. He has now lost all power of sympathy with his fellow men. He cannot mourn with the mourner, he cannot rejoice in their joys. His presence in their banquets is like that of a spectre. His mind prays on itself, and is seared with a self-consuming torture. He longs once more for memory, and the gift is at length restored. With a softened melancholy, he revisits his forgotten home once more, then leaves it for ever, to seek for happiness in some distant clime. He visits fair Italy, and ancient Egypt; the merchant city of Tyre, the fallen mistress of the East, old Babylon, and Palmyra, the city of palm-trees, and wonder of the desert. At length he comes to another country

́ A land of snow-clad mountains, sunny hills,

Green vales, and fruitful plains, and flowery rills.'

Here, in the good land of promise, he meets with a friend, who gives him shelter, and slakes his thirsty spirit with the waters of life. He mourns no longer in desolate hopelessness. But when his end draws near, he recounts his early course to this friend of his bosom, and then parts for his last pilgrimage, to reach the tomb of his Evadne, on the coast of Troas, and there to mingle his remains, in death, with hers, whose loss he had mourned with such hopeless sorrow.

The opening of the poem describes the early life of

the wanderer, with the thoughtless joy of his youthful happiness, in "the land of the cypress and vine," before he had known the touch of grief. It is a description of graceful and sunny brightness :—

"The glorious sunshine of the land of song
Beamed o'er my early years: and made them seem
Fleetly and joyously to flow along,

As flow the wavelets of a flower-lipped stream,
Glancing in playfulness from stone to stone,
And brightening each with lustre not its own.

Yes, they were gay with many a rosy joy :
For many a radiant dream of hope and love,
Which sorrow might not break nor care destroy,
A circle of delight around me wove.

The silver links, which bound my heart to gladness,
Were long, ere severed by the hand of sadness.

My house was, where the blue Egèan sea
Murmured of pleasure to the sun-lit shore ;
Where, from the scented lime and myrtle-tree,
Each breeze upon its wing sweet odours bore.
And, underneath the sheltering plane that grew
Beside our threshold, many a glowing hue,

Of violet, purple, rosy red, and green,
Of glossy bay, or silvery olive, blent

In bright confusion: while, half hid, half seen,
The clustered grape and golden orange sent

Their brilliance through the veiling leaves; and met
The last look of the sun, before he set."

Every line, in these stanzas, has a rich and graceful beauty, that enhances the effect of the whole. It is a lovely picture of quiet happiness, but the happiness of a heathen. It reminds us what rich elements of delight are to be found in the splendour and beauty of all outward things; and yet leaves a secret feeling behind, which grows deeper and deeper as we follow the course of the poem, how empty and uncertain that happiness must be, which has its source only in "the splendour of the grass, the glory of the flower." The "wavelets of a flower-lipped stream" embody in one beautiful picture the spirit of the whole. At the first hasty glance, all seems to bloom with pleasant fragrance, and sparkle a pure light—a very picture of simple joyousness. But soon we reflect that the wavelet must be lost in darkness, and never return to sparkle in the sunbeams again; that the flowers will wither before the autumn, and be buried under countless leaves of the forest, withered and sere as themselves. A secret foreboding visits us, amidst all this bright colouring; and neither the Ægean waves, nor the purple and glowing colours of that sunny bower, can free our thoughts from these dim shadows of coming sorrow and decay.

Thus it is ever with true poetry. In its lightest mood, it must still lead our thoughts onward, with a warning of the grave, and a secret prophecy of a coming resurrection. The creature, however fair and lovely, however adorned by the gay colouring of fancy, is still subject to vanity. It does not now reveal to us, as once it did in Paradise, the presence of God; and hence the spirit yearns for a higher happiness than flower-lipped streams, or blue Ægean waves, can ever supply. Poets, who content themselves with mere descriptions of nature, have lost the master-key of the human heart. Its

deepest chords will not awake, unless under a mightier influence. It is an Eolian harp, which does not answer fully to the breath of spring, but murmurs to the lightest touch of the winds of autumn, that speak of sorrow and death, as they sweep over our fallen world. Those who would waken its full music, must have known, in sorrow, the fellowship of the cross, and have risen, through the valley of death, to the hope of a blessed immortality.

(To be continued.)

Let us carry ourselves back in spirit, to the mysterious Week, the teeming Work-days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eyes of the inspired historian of the heavens and the earth, in the days that the Lord made the earth and the heavens.' And who that hath watched their ways with an understanding heart, could as the vision evolving, still advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee; the home-building, wedded and divorceless swallow; and above all the manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the husbandfolk that fold in their tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, and the virgin sisters, with the holy instincts of maternal love, detached, and in self-less purity-and not say to himself, Behold the shadow of approaching humanity, the sun rising from behind, in the kindling morn of creation! Thus all lower natures find their highest good, in semblances and seekings of that which is higher and better. Coleridge. Aids to Reflection.

THE PSALMIST'S REVELATION OF THE

TIMES OF RESTITUTION,

PARALLEL PREDICTIONS OF THE SPIRIT.

The millennial reign of the King of Kings.