The exulting Main, in giant mirth
And joyous unison with Earth,
Tossed high, in ecstasy, his spray.
But Rapture lulled itself to rest
When Phoebus Paradise had blest,
And Eden donned her night-array;
Then hushed grew Ocean, placid Sleep
In starlit slumber stilled the Deep.

'Twas an exquisite hour, that reign of Night,
So blissful and dreamy in its delight

That Earth might have longed for none other light;
Yet silence seemed a state forlorn

When, from the roseate East, the Morn
Roused, and redecked, that vernal scene

To vivid joy, in sparkling sheen ;
Till Eden wore so glad a smile,
It might e'en seraphim beguile.

C.-The notion of the stars being daughters of the moon, would hardly pass unscathed by the goodhumoured satire of your logical friend, I should think; nor would you escape censure from le beau sexe, for the imputation of vanity conveyed under a figure (you will excuse my candour,) rather difficult of digestion.

E-When I " showed" to the quaint comrade of my youth this "wandering"* of my old age, he fixed on that identical figure for jocular criticism, remarking, "Your making the moon a mother of the stars suggests the application of a popular phrase to comets, if you include them in the number of Luna's children; and nothing can be easier to conceive, than the virtuous astonishment of the better-behaved members of the starry family at the wild ways of their erratic sisters. I fancy I see the pale and prudish planets, looking at a comet in its disorderly courses, like a maid from the backwoods beholding the passing of a rail-train— half-frighted, half-amazed; and senses so rarified as yours are, might, I dare say, hear the cold virgins, as the blazing comet swept rudely by them, making inquiries as to the moon-mother's knowledge of its whereabouts." And then I was ungratefully attacked by the bairn whose rearing I have superintended from babyhood, (and whose quibble you curiously re-echo,) touching the offensive insinuation of vanity aux dames. But I am able to repel your accusation, that the figure is outré, unless you similarly impeach great

*"O! where have I been all this time?—how tended, That none, for pity, show'd me how I wandered?" Beaumont and Fletcher,

Milton: for in his paraphrase of the hundred and thirty-sixth psalm, he mentions with the Creator's works,

"The horned moon that shines by night,
Among her spangled sisters bright:"

and when you consider how, with "inaudible and noiseless step" she moves and watches, with more than a sister's patience, through the long night-hours, and enters (no respecter of persons, like her GOD!) through the tiniest lattice, so it be cleanly and uncurtained, and in sweet stealth advances till she kiss the face of the sleeping, leaving him bright dreams as her blessing; and how she passes away again, but lingeringly-oh! very lingeringly, to shine on other slumbers, until that dazzling "god who brings the Day, mounts up," and dissipates the visionary spellin its silvery structure too etherial to exist in the red, rapturous riot of the rousing Morn:-all this assiduity and solicitude of Madame la Lune, Sir Censor, you will admit to be more maternal than sisterly; so, unless your hardihood would cast a stone at John Milton, retract the charge of monstrosity in my describing the moon as a mother-of many lovely daughters.

C-Mrs. Hemans would have made a glowing picture of the Garden, before the arch-tempter had

wrought his work there, and ere our father trembled at the voice of GOD. The scene is better suited for the description of an imaginative and noble-natured woman, than it is for man; for although woman is, with man, "fallen from her high estate," inasmuch as she is exempted far more than man from the knowledge of evil, and is far more conversant with "whatsoever things are pure," her qualifications to imagine a condition of innocence, are manifestly superior to his. In her Despondency and Aspiration, the highly-gifted Mrs. Hemans has poured out a torrent of brilliant conceptions-a guarantee of her power to have made a most luxuriant and living landscape of Eden, in the flush of its first perfection.

E. When I read that Poem, I considered that, resplendent as is its language, great must have been the injury inflicted on her thoughts, by subjection to the procès-verbal necessary before the presentation of an Idea to the public. But-tolerate this one last remark-who may calculate the crippling effect of reducing to words the imagery of the wonderful and mighty mind of MILTON? Is it debatable, think you, -would it be by any one contested, that the author of the Paradise Lost, having no equal in the sublimity of his conceptions, had ever an equal sufferer

from the deficiencies of language adequate to their incorporation and expression-though Speech to him was like a deep-toned shell, struck by a prophet's hand; he was omnipotent over numbers. But the mean mind in motion is still meaner when it records that motion. Language and speech may communicate much that stirs within; they may interpret ideas whose outlines are defined-conceptions which dwell within compass: but when the imagination hurries into the far depths of a starry sky, or dives into the stirless mysteries of its own being, or rises in conjecture to the sphere of its ultimate destiny-then Thought is lost in the chaos of its own creations. For speech, potent prerogative as it is, hath no part in the subtler and intenser emotions which prevail, when the soul holdeth holy-day beyond the barriers of earth, and feels (heavenliest perception!) its affinity with a kingdom and kindred higher and holier than itself. But this rare, stirring sense of royalty has no audible articulation, nor may the after-mind, subdued and sunken, translate its visionary creation:-all that survives the deluge of divine light is known but as the shadowy phantasms of a dream-as a bright and beautiful illusion, which a breath destroyed!

* Gray's Ode-The Death of Hoel.