ERRATA.

Page 72, 6th line of note, for "lastest" read "latest.

,, 159, 3rd line from top, for "Fornia" read" Forneia."

,, 239, 5th line from top, for "Magnus Sitrie" read "Magnus Sitric."

OVERS are given to Poetry."-So says Shakspeare, with that truthfulness that pervades all his representations of human thought or action, and with that pithiness and conciseness that make his sayings so well remembered and so often quoted.

Much of what can be said in an introduction to songs of the affections is expressed in this one short sentence, "lovers are given to poetry."-No wonder then in the abundance of love-songs:-seeing that all mankind must love;-must pass through that fever of the heart incidental to their existence, and in

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that fever rave in rhyme. No wonder such songs have had a favourable acceptance, seeing that all womankind catch the sweet infection; and, in the fever state, would listen to the wildest ravings of the lover with more delight than to the sublimest sentences of the sage.

Nor is it only then that the love-song holds its influence over us; it partakes of the quality (pardon the comparison, ladies,) of that scourge, the smallpox :-it leaves its mark behind it. That fever infuses a life-long influence into our blood;-in after years we look back with tender recollection on the time when our hearts first beat to the measure of some amatory rhymes; and the pulsations of "sober sixty" under the spell of memory sympathize with those of boyhood.

Who ever forgot that indescribable sensation which pervades our whole being when the heart is first conscious of love? It is as if the ripened bud of existence had but just burst, and the flower of life had opened. As the egg contains a hidden life, to be revealed only by the fond wings that enfold it, so the heart has a dormant existence within it, that we know not of, till the brooding wing of love awakes it.

And what a waking!—

"Oh, who would not welcome that moment's returning,

When passion first waked a new life thro' his frame;
And his soul, like the wood, that grows precious in burning,
Gave out all its sweets to love's exquisite flame?"

But other love than that which so potently affects our nature is graciously granted to us-love, which, if less dominant and entrancing in its nature, is purer and more enduring :—the love of the parent for the child, and the child for the parent; and such love has not been silent in the region of song. But this love, after all, is but secondary, and depends for its existence on the master-passion first alluded to; for without that there would be neither parents nor children. Hence, love is not only the agency ordained by Heaven to carry out its creative will, but also the prolific source of poetry.

Let the humblest rhymer say, what first moved him to "lisp in numbers"—or perhaps to stammer ?-we venture to answer for him, "'love."

Even the poet, who may, in after life, have achieved high things and won the laurel crown, looks back with a tenderness, that still moves him, to his first address to the "girl of his soul."-Let Moore speak in eloquent evidence.