Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

If there be anywhere a companion poem to this, it is John Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale." Poor John Keats! he too was called in scorn a "Cockney Poet;" he too was a friend of Leigh Hunt's; he, too, died far from his native country; not indeed like Shelley, by sad mischance, off the coast of Italy, but by slow disease in the very heart of the Eternal City;-died after having done enough to show the world all that it lost in him. No one since Spenser has possessed a more graphic pen. His processions not only live, they move.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

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-ward had sunk :
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy 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.

Oh for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
Oh 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 hast 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 gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty can not 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 train perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I can not see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The 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 bees on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a musèd 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 ancient 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 fairy lands forlorn.

Forlorn the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the Fancy can not 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 hillside; 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 sleep?

A most interesting Life of Keats, by Mr. Monckton Milnes has been recently published. Few works are better worth reading, not only for the sake of the young poet, but for that of his generous benefactors, Sir James Clarke and Mr. Severn. It is well in an age, called perhaps more selfish than it deserves to be, to fall back upon such instances of patient and unostentatious kind

ness.

0*

XXV.

AUTHORS ASSOCIATED WITH PLACES.

CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY.

Standing

BATH is a very elegant and classical-looking city. upon a steep hillside, its regular white buildings rising terrace above terrace, crescent above crescent, glittering in the sun, and charmingly varied by the green trees of its park and gardens; its pretty suburban villas mingling with the beautiful villages that surround it on every side; nothing can exceed the grace and amenity of the picture. Even the railway contributes, by a rare exception, to the effect of the landscape. Very pleasant is Bath to look at. But when contrasted with its old reputation as the favorite resort of the noble and the fair, the Baden-Baden of its day, to which the well came for amusement, and the sick as much for cheerfulness as for cure, it is impossible not to feel that the spirit has departed; that it is a city of memories, the very Pompeii of watering-places. It was a far smaller town in that joyous time, and perhaps the stately streets that rise from the old springs in every direction, may have made it too spacious and too commodious; for fashion is a capricious deity, who loves of all things to be crowded, provided the crowd be fashionable, and does not dislike so much gentle inconvenience as may serve to enhance the comfort and magnificence of her real home.

Whatever be the cause, Bath, like the Italian cities, which it is often said to resemble, is picturesque, silent, and empty. Lodging in Milsom Street, the main artery of the town, where the best shops are congregated, and at an excellent library, always the most frequented among shops, my little maid, a shrewd observer of such matters, declared she knew every carriage that passed, and could count them on her fingers; and I myself, less keen-sighted, did not care to ask her whether she meant the fingers on one hand or on two.

I speak this out of pure regard to truth, since, for my own part, I owe Bath all gratitude. Going thither with health and spirits so shattered by a long illness and a great sorrow, that I could not muster courage to encounter the imaginary dangers of the Box Tunnel, I returned, in the course of a few weeks, so completely restored in mind and body, that when, in the very midst of that same tunnel, the ghost of my departed fear met me in the shape of a story (a story with variations) of the foolish lady who had been so exquisitely silly as to hire a fly to escape from the peril, my fellow-travelers really refused to believe that the person who laughed so heartily at her past folly could possibly have been the real heroine of the legend. So that I suspect I left two traditions behind me in the Box Tunnel, first as a simpleton, then as an impostor.

A place of interesting associations is Bath. The dear friend, whom I principally went to see-one of a privileged few, who carry the lively spirit, the ready indulgence, the quick intelligence of youth, into wise and honored age, might herself almost pass for one of its recollections. She took me to see the house, where, fifty years before, Madame de Genlis had lived, when sent to England, at the very beginning of the Revolution, with Mademoiselle d'Orleans; and described the looks and manners of the quiet, steady pupil, and the flighty governess, as if it had been yesterday. She walked with me through the street where Mrs. Thrale had shone forth in both her phases-the hostess and friend of Dr. Johnson, and Piozzi's slandered, defiant, but not unhappy wife. Miss Burney never depicted her better. And Miss Burney herself she showed forth nearly as well as that clever, conceited, prim, affected, die-away little authoress, who never for one moment (unlucky body!) could forget that she was an authoress-ay, and the authoress of "Cecilia" too, has shown herself to all posterity in that looking-glass, her "Diary." Diary." Then she went through all the past dynasties of the drama-Kembles, Linleys, Ellistons; and last of all she took me to Bathford, to gaze upon Gainsborough's admirable portrait of Quin, which looks just as if he was preparing to sit down to a John Dory.

A place full of associations is Bath. When we had fairly done with the real people, there were great fictions to fall back upon; and I am not sure, true and living human beings as Horace Walpole and Madame d'Arblay have shown themselves in their let