The pine gives forth its odours, and the lake
Gleams like one ruby, and the soft winds wake,
Till every string of nature's solemn lyre

Is touch'd to answer; its most secret tone

Drawn from each tree, for each hath whispers all its own.
And hark! another murmur on the air,
Not of the hidden rills, or quivering shades!
-That is the cataract's which the breezes bear,
Filling the leafy twilight of the glades
With hollow surge-like sounds, as from the bed
Of the blue mournful seas, that keep the dead:
But they are far!-the low sun here pervades
Dim forest-arches, bathing with red gold
Their stems, till each is made a marvel to behold.
Gorgeous, yet full of gloom!-In such an hour,
The vesper-melody of dying bells

Wanders through Spain, from each grey convent's tower
O'er shining rivers pour'd, and olive-dells,

By every peasant heard, and muleteer,

And hamlet, round my home :-and I am here,

Living again through all my life's farewells,

In these vast woods, where farewell ne'er was spoken,
And sole I lift to Heaven a sad heart-yet unbroken!

In such an hour are told the hermit's beads;
With the white sail the seaman's hymn floats by:
Peace be with all! whate'er their varying creeds,
With all that send up holy thoughts on high!
Come to me, boy!-by Guadalquivir's vines,
By every stream of Spain, as day declines,
Man's prayers are mingled in the rosy sky.
-We, too, will pray; nor yet unheard, my child!
Of Him whose voice we hear at eve amidst the wild.

At eve?-oh! through all hours!-From dark dreams oft
Awakening, I look forth, and learn the might

Of solitude, while thou art breathing soft,

And low, my lov'd one! on the breast of night:
I look forth on the stars-the shadowy sleep

Of forests--and the lake, whose gloomy deep

Sends up red sparkles to the fire-flies' light.

A lonely world!—ev'n fearful to man's thought,

But for His presence felt, whom here my soul hath sought."

As a whole, this poem will be read with delight. It may not astonish, but it will charm; it may not attract the lovers of passion and whirlwind, of Sapphic fury or fearful mystery in poetry, but it will be enjoyed by the pure in heart, by the lovers of the tranquil, and moral, and beautiful; by those who are possessed of true and genuine feeling and if our readers do not join us in this sentiment, upon their perusal of it, they may be possessed of taste, but it is of a kind very inferior to what we give them credit for.

The shorter pieces, at the end of this volume, have many of them embellished our pages. Respecting them there can be but one opinion;-they are among the sweetest things in the circuit of our later poetry. Rich as the additions to it have been, and exhaustless as its resources seem to be, poetical talent in the female sex was never seen before in equal variety and excellence. The applause which would in past time have been shown to such a female pen, is now increased and scattered over a larger surface, and become less marked perhaps in its action upon the individual; but is better bestowed, and of a quality, from the present state of knowledge, far superior to what it has ever been before. From this cause it is that we would infer such a writer as Mrs. Hemans has not added tenfold to that interest for which the public already owns itself so deeply in her debt.

SPECIMENS OF A DICTIONARY OF LOVE AND BEAUTY.

"I tell thee, love is nature's second sua,

Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
And as, without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to men; so, without love,
All beauties bred in women are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried:

For love informs them, as the sun does colours.
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruit and flowers,
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse."

We have been several times requested by our readers to write upon more subjects of a similar purport and equal interest with those of the "Criticism on Female Beauty." If they had said "articles as well written," there would be no difficulty. We trust we have

"Five hundred as good as they."

But subjects of equal interest with Female Beauty, it is not so easy to find. Could the reader point them out? Does he not feel the difficulty to be the greater, the more he wishes it were less? If we could think of any subject as well calculated to "come home to men's business and bosoms," we should be glad to take it up. Or if we could all change natures for a time, by dint of imagination, with birds, or fishes, or spirits, and discover what it is that enchants those creatures the most, we might run through a series of master-subjects, and be delighted accordingly. There was a bird this instant, as we dipped our pen in the ink, who set a bough dancing at our study-window-a bough of a green-gage tree, covered with blossoms, and looking filled with sunshine. Why could we not pitch ourselves into the bird's nature, like the king in the Eastern tale, and learn, and help others to learn, all the pleasure it took in that dancing bough and the exuberant blossoms? O to be able to relate stories of the healthy and happy fish in the sea, rejoicing with easy mastery in their Atlantic billows, or touched with sunshine through the lucid Mediterranean; little golden creatures, that we have seen in a gulf of the sea, as in a basin in a parlour-window; or gambols of young whales, as full of tricks as kittens, making a toy of the ship to play at hide and seek under! As to spirits, we could say a good deal about them, and hope to do so, being very conversant with them and their beauties; but, as we must own at the same time, that we know nothing about them more beautiful, or even more spiritual, than the look from a kind eye, we give up all hope of surpassing our former subject by the help of their wings, however angelical. Were a soul to look out of a window from Heaven, it could hardly be more a soul, than when it opens its present earthly casement, and beams upon us with a morning tenderness.

But though it would be difficult to find a subject of equal interest, there are many of an interest kindred to it, and thousands that may be brought to bear upon it; and of these we have only to hope that our readers may be as willing to hear, as we are to discourse. Their wish

has reminded us of a plan that was once put in our heads by a thing no less uninspiring than a dictionary; which was, to run the circle of loves and graces, and all noble matters connected with them, manly as well as womanly, in the same alphabetical order: not but that the apparent formality of the mode presented itself as an objection; but the great advantage of such a plan is this, that you can say as much or as little on every subject as you please, and while you write whole articles on some (to speak after our Magazine fashion), are not bound to omit others for their want of equal importance. Besides, it is a pleasure to conquer formality, and turn it to a genial account. Or you may take the order of a dictionary for that of a procession; and we do not think that people would less crowd to the windows, and be glad to see the triumph, if all the Adonises and the Abelards and Eloises went first, with their respective Ankles and Address, (for we propose not to blink any question, which a due delicacy may discuss), and all the Bouflers, and Bocages, the Books, Bowers, and Cleopatras, followed.

The reader might gather our design from this exordium, without further preface; but there are three points, on which it will be proper to say a word or two before we begin. The first is, that in proposing to treat, more or less, on all subjects that tend to inspirit and ennoble a just admiration of the sexes for one another, we shall do it so far, and so far only, as it suggests observations that appear to us not altogether common-place. On the subject of Abelard and Eloisa, for example, it) is not our intention to repeat a story which all the world are acquainted with, but to touch upon matters that have escaped their notice, or but slightly and insufficiently obtained it. In the next place, we call our present article a specimen, and shall continue the same title for two or three papers, in order that the subject may be dropped, or carried on, as it shall turn out to suit the interest of our pages. Last, not least, we use the word Beauty in its universal sense, moral as well as physical, including in it not only the visible ideas of colour and proportion, and the expression that gives value to both, but beauty of spirit and disposition, the shapeliness of mind, a gallant bearing, which is to soul what carriage is to the body; all, in short, which greatly desires good, and would bestow it; all, which tends to make a person of one sex an object of admiration and affection to the other. If we could express this tendency briefly, we would make out of it a title for our papers. As it is, we are willing to avail ourselves of a pleasant and attractive word, generally used in a more confined sense, but strictly warrantable; and we hope, before we have done, to help the enlargement of it a little in susceptible minds. To understand it well were to double at once their power to enjoy, and their security against being deluded. For the seducer is a poor imitator. To know justly even the pleasures he undertakes to speak of, is to know him for a fool. If we had not been warned by former encyclopedists and lexicographers, who revel in future O's and S's, to which they never arrive, we should refer to an excellent non-written article of ours under the head of Seduction, where we mean to have that matter out with him.

We conclude our introduction in the words of him, who of all writers, ancient and modern, has painted the greatest number of gallant men and delightful women, and whose pretty epilogue-speaker we venture to send out for us in their name:

"I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this work as pleases you; and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women, that between you and the women the work may please."

A.

"I love my love with an A," quoth the fair Cockney, "because he's andsome." In like manner, but with an ardour more informed, we love our dictionary with an A, because it is alphabetical. We can never fancy any dictionary, even a biographical one, without this letter by itself at the head of it; and have always wished, that, in addition to the French family of the name of O, some philologist of their nation, who had an estate to give to a younger son, had entitled it A, purely to furnish us with a leader for the biographies. Monsieur d'A should marry one of the Demoiselles d'O, and give rise to an alphabetical generation.

Bring forth initials only."

"Henceforward

The importance of initials in other respects, no lover will deny. Let benches and trees proclaim it; and window-panes, and lockets, and valentines, and sanded floors, and kitchen-ceilings, and worked purses, and something that Emily is now tracing at her desk there, while she ought to be writing to her aunt,-and the honest arm (no gentleman will despise it) of Dick of Liverpool.

But what admonished us to begin our work in this manner (and should it ever make its appearance as a book, the initial should be flourished accordingly, and make a royal capital) was the crowned A in the brooch of the Prioress, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

"Full fetise was her cloak, as I was ware;

Of small coral about her arm she bare

A pair of bedès, gauded all with green,

And thereon hung a brooch of gold full sheen,
On which was first ywritten a crowned A,
And after, Amor vincit omnia."

By the way, what a pretty majestic couplet is this, with its flowing line followed by the pause at after:

"On which was first ywritten a crowned A,
And after,-Amor vincit omnia."

Chaucer's modulation is not among the least of his beauties; nor is there any passage in his writings, in which it is more delicately turned, than in this description of the Prioress. As she will make a good leader for our train, and we are loth to let her pass too quickly, we will touch upon the rest of it. It is she that tells the beautiful story of the little boy, that went through Jewry singing Alma Redemptoris.

"The sweeteness hath his heart pierced so
Of Christis mother, that to her to pray
He cannot stint of praying by the way."

Alas! the sweetness of motherliness and of infancy hath pierced the heart of our gentle prioress, and her lips will not be always as red and July.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXVII.

E

smiling as they are now in her youth, unless she can manage to reconcile her "conscience and tender heart" with the manners of less mortified priories than her own.

"There was also a nun, a prioress,

That of her smiling was full simple and coy;
Her greatest oath was but by Saint Eloy ;
And she was clepèd Madame Eglantine."

Then follows a good-natured banter of the poet's upon the mode of singing the service in nunneries, their boarding-school French, and, what appears to have been no great part of politeness in those days, the importance they attached to nicety of behaviour at dinner. But his prioress, who, notwithstanding her rank, is young, has not yet been spoiled by these sophistications. Eloisa, before she held the same office at Argenteuil, could not have been more natural and sprightly; though her sympathies would have run less exclusively upon mice and lapdogs. For,

Sikerly she was of great disport,

And full pleasant, and amiable of port,
And pained her to counterfeiten cheer
Of court, and been estately of manère,
And to ben holden digne of reverence.
But for to speaken of her conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde weep, if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, if it were dead, or bled.
Of small houndès had she, that she fed
With roasted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread;
But sore wept she, if one of them were dead,
Or if men smote it with a yard smart:

And all was conscience and tender heart."

This last line has become a favourite quotation. The poet proceeds to say, that she was finely grown, and concludes with the lines about the crowned A and the motto; which are to let us understand, that there was more love in her heart than she was aware of. The device, though taken from Ovid, is meant to be religious. It was the custom in those times, with an instinct of universality not so absurd as it appears, and which we still retain in the education of youth, though we laugh at this particular mode of it, to mingle sacred writers with profane. conquers all things, quoth Ovid. Love conquers all things, repeats the fair nun; and raises her eyes to heaven, swimming with all the pieties of heaven and earth.

Love

Devices are pretty things. We have often thought it a pity that every body does not adopt one. It would be something to go upon; a visible principle; another tie upon our behaviour, or encouragement to our aspirations; a conscience in a seal, like those of which we read in Arabian tales, and which pressed and gave warning to the hands that wore them. We hope to return to this subject. What we introduced it here for, was principally to notice the baldness of invention which struck us the other day in a list of modern devices for seals, and to protest against one motto, in particular, unthinkingly or enormously adopted. It is a cage with a bird flying out, and the words, Qui me neglige, me perd. The allusion may be to attachments in general; but