Its lights and shades, its sunshine and its showers! As at a dream that charmed her vacant hours! Oft may the spirits of the dead descend, There may these gentle guests delight to dwell, Oh thou! with whom my heart was wont to share If thy blest nature now unites above Devout yet cheerful, active yet resigned; Grant me, like thee, whose heart knew no disguise, The sweet remembrance of unblemished youth, The inspiring voice of innocence and truth! Hail, MEMORY, hail! in thy exhaustless mine From age to age unnumbered treasures shine! Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, And place and time are subject to thy sway! Thy pleasures most we feel, when most alone; The only pleasures we can call our own. Lighter than air, hope's summer visions die, If but a fleeting cloud obscure the sky! If but a beam of sober reason play, Lo, fancy's fairy frost-work melts away! But can the wiles of art, the grasp of power, Snatch the rich relics of a well-spent hour? These when the trembling spirit wings her flight, Pour round her path a stream of living light: And gild those pure and perfect realms of rest, Where virtue triumphs, and her sons are blest. END OF THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY. E NOTES ON THE FIRST PART. NOTE 1. Page 17. Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise! WHEN a traveller, who was surveying the ruins of Rome, expressed a desire to procure some relic of its ancient grandeur, Poussin, who attended him, stooped down, and gathered up a handful of earth shining with small grains of porphyry, 'Take this home,' said he, 'for your cabinet; and say boldly, Questa e Roma Antica. NOTE 2. Page 17. The church-yard yews, round which his fathers sleep. Every man, like Gulliver in Lilliput, is fastened to some spot of earth, by the thousand small threads that habit, and association are continually stealing over him. Of these, perhaps, one of the strongest is here alluded to. When the Canadian Indians were once solicited to emi grate, 'What! they replied, shall we say to the bones of our fathers, arise, go with us into a foreign land?' Hist. des Indes, par M. l'Abbe Raynal, vi. 21. NOTE 3. Page 18. So, when he breathed his firm yet fond adieu He wept; but the effort that he made to conceal his tears concurred, with them, to do him honour; he went to the mast head, waving to the canoes as long as they continued in sight. HAWKESWORTH's Voyages, ii. 181. Another very affecting instance of local attachment is related of his fellow-countryman Potaveri, who came to Europe, with M. de Bougainville. See Les Jardins, par M. l'Abbe de Lille, chant ii. NOTE 4. Page 18. So Scotia's queen, &c. Elle se leve sur son lict, & se met a contempler la France encor, et tant qu' elle peut. BRANTOME, tom. i. p. 140. NOTE 5. Page 18. As kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire To an accidental association may be ascribed some of the noblest efforts of human genius. The historian of the decline and fall of the Roman empire first conceived his design among the ruins of the capital; and to the tones of |