familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are conscious of possessing the same or the correspondent excellence in their own characters. In short, there must be a mind, which, while it feels the beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and by right of love appropriates it, can call Goodness its Playfellow; and dares make sport of time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared partner, we feel for aged Viarur the caressing fondness that belongs to the INNocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies as had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty. eLiza. What a soothing—what an elevating idea! cat it raine. If it be not only an idea. Frt le No.

At all events, these qualities which I have enumerated, are rarely found united in a single individual. How much more rare must it be, that two such individuals should meet together in this wide world under circumstances that admit of their union as Husband and Wife. A person may be highly estimable on the whole, nay, amiable as neighbour, friend, housemate—in short, in all the concentric circles of attachmen, save only the last and inmost; and yet from how many causes he estranged from the highest perfection in this? Pride, coldness or fastidiousness of nature, worldly cares, an anxious or ambitious disposition, a passion for display, a sullen temper—one or the other—too often proves • the dead fly in the compost of spices,” and any one is enough to unfit it for the precious balm of unction. For some mighty good sort of people, too, there is not seldon a sort of solemn saturnine, or, if you will, ursine vanity, that keeps itself alive by sucking the paws of its own self-importance. And as this high sense, or rather sensation of their own value is, for the most part, grounded on negative qualities, so they have no better means of preserving the same but by negatives—that is, by not doing or saying any thing, that might be put down for fond, silly, or nonsensical,—or (to use their own phrase) by never forgetting themselves, which some of their acquaintance are uncharitable enough to think the most worthless object they could be employed in reonembering.

* liza (in answer to a whisper from CAthenine).

To a hair! He must have sate for it himself. Save me

from such folks! But thcy are out of the question. Fair. Nd.

True! but the same effect is produced in thousands by the too general insensibility to a very important truth; this, namely, that the Misray of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year, the death of a child, years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily;-in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum total of the unhappiness of a man's life, are easily counted, and distinctly turnleinbered. The mappiness of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions—the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a sinile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the count

less other infinitesimals of pleasureable thought and genial feeling. CAthenine. Well, Sir; you have said quite enough to make me despair of finding a • John Anderson, my jo, John, to totter down the hill of life with. Frienn. Not so | Good men are not, I trust, so much scarcer than good women, but that what another would find in you, you may hope to find in another. But well, however, may that boon be rare, the possession of which would be more than an adequate reward for the rarest virtue. ELIZA. Surely, he who has described it so beautifully, must have possessed it? friend. If he were worthy to have possessed it, and had believingly anticipated and not found it, how bitter the disappointment!

Where was it then, the sociable sprite
That crown'd the Poet's cup and deck'd his dish'
Poor shadow cast from an unsteady wish,
Itself a substance by no other right
But that it intercepted Reason's light;
It dimm'd his eye, it darken'd on his brow,
A peevish mood, a tedious time, I trow!
Thank Heaven! "t is not so now.

O bliss of blissful hours!
The boon of Heaven's decreeing,
While yet in Eden's bowers
Dwelt the First Husband and his sinless Mate!
The one sweet plant, which, piteous Heaven agreeing,
They bore with them through Eden's closing gate!
Of life's gay summer-tide the sovran Rose!
Late autumn's Amaranth, that more fragrant blows
When Passion's flowers all fall or fade;
If this were ever his, in outward being,
Or but his own true love's projected shade,
Now that at length by certain proof he knows,
That whether real or a magic show,
Whate'er it was, it is no longer so;
Though heart be lonesome, Hope laid low,
Yet, Lady! deem him not unblest :
The certainty that struck Hope dead,
Hath left Contentment in her stead :
And that is next to best

THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO.

Of late, in one of those most weary hours,
When life seems emptied of all genial powers,
A dreary mood, which he who ne'er has known
May bless his happy lot, I sate alone;
And, from the numbing spell to win relief,
Call'd on the past for thought of glee or grief.
In vain bereft alike of grief and glee,
I sate and cower'd o'er my own vacancy!
And as I watched the dull continuous ache,
Which, all else slumb'ring, secm'd alone to wake;
O Friend! long wont to notice vet conceal,
And soothe by silence what words cannot heal,
I but half saw that quiet hand of thine
Place on my desk this exquisite design,
Boccaccio's Garden and its faery,
The love, the joyaunce, and the gallantry!
An Idyll, with Boccaccio's spirit warm,
Framed in the silent poesy of form.
Like flocks adown a newly-bathed steep
Emerging from a mist: or like a stream
Of music soft that not dispels the sleep,
But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream,
Gazed by an idle eye with silent might
The picture stole upon my inward sight.
A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest,
As though an infant's finger touch'd my breast.
And one by one (I know not whence) were brought
All spirits of power that most had stirr'd my thought
In selfless boyhood, on a new world tost
Of wonder, and in its own fancies lost;
Or charm'd my youth, that, kindled from above,
Loved ere it loved, and sought a form for love;
Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan
Of manhood, musing what and whence is man!

Wild strain of Scalds, that in the sea-worn caves
Rehearsed their war-spell to the winds and waves;
Or fateful hymn of those prophetic maids,
That call'd on Hertha in deep forest glades;
Or minstrel lay, that cheer'd the baron's feast;
Or rhyme of city pomp, of monk and priest,
Judge, mayor, and many a guild in long array,
To high-church pacing on the great saint's day.
And many a verse which to myself I sang,
That woke the tear, yet stole away the pang,
Of hopes which in lamenting I renew’d.
And last, a matron now, of sober mien,
Yet radiant still and with no earthly sheen,
Whom as a faery child my childhood woo'd
Even in my dawn of thought—Philosophy.
Though then unconscious of herself, pardie,
She bore no other name than poesy;
And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee,
That had but newly left a mother's knee,
Prattled and play'd with bird and flower, and stone,
As if with elfin playfellows well known,
And life reveal'd to innocence alone.

Thanks, gentle artist' now I can descry
Thy fair creation with a mastering eye,
And all awake! And now in fix’d gaze stand,
Now wander through the Eden of thy hand;
Praise the treen arches, on the fountain clear
See fragment shadows of the crossing deer,
And with that serviceable nymph 1 stoop,
The crystal from its restless pool to scoop.
I see no longer I myself am there,
Sit on the ground-sward, and the banquet share.
'T is I, that sweep that lute's love—echoing strings,
And gaze upon the maid who gazing sings:
Or pause and listen to the tinkling bells

From the high tower, and think that there she dwells.

With old Boccaccio's soul I stand possest, And breathe an air like life, that swells my chest.

The brightness of the world, O thou once free,
And always fair, rare land of courtesy
O, Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills!
And famous Arno fed with all their rills;
Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy!
Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine,
The golden corn, the olive, and the vine.
Fair cities, gallant mansions, castles old,
And forests, where beside his leafy hold
The sullen boar hath heard the distant horn,
And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn;
Palladian palace with its storied halls;
Fountains, where Love lies listening to their falls;
Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span,
And Nature makes her happy home with man;
Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed
With its own rill, on its own spangled bed,
And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head,
A minic mourner, that with veil withdrawn
Weeps liquid gems, the presents of the dawn,
Thine all delights, and every muse is thine:
And more than all, the embrace and intertwine
Of all with all in gay and twinkling dance!
"Mid gods of Greece and warriors of romance,

See: Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees
The new-found roll of old Maeonides;
But from his mantle's fold, and near the heart,
Peers Ovid's Holy Book of Love's sweet smart' "

* Boccaccio claimed for himself the glory of having first introdard the works of Homer to his countrymen.

* I know few more striking or more interesting proofs of the overwhelming influence which the study of the Greek and Roman classics exercised on the judgments, feelings, and imaginations of the literati of Europe at the commencement of the restoration of literature, than the passage in the Filocopo of Boccaccio: where the sage instructor, Rachco, as soon as the young prince and the beautiful girl Biancafiore had learned their letters, sets them to study the lioty Book, Ovid's Amr or Lovs. - Incomincio Racheo a mettere is sue officio in essecurioue coa intera sollecitudine. E

THE