Yet there is still a brightness in the sky-
A most refulgent and translucent blue :

Still, from the ruin'd tower, the wallflower tells
Mournfully of what midsummer's pride hath been;
And still the mountains heave their ridgy sides
In pastoral greenness. Melancholy time!
Yet full of sweet sad thought; for everything
Is placid, if not joyful, as in Spring,
When Hope was keen, and, with an eagle eye,
Pry'd forward to the glories yet to come.

There cannot be a sweeter hour than this,
Even now, altho' encompass'd with decay,
To him who knows the world wherein he lives,
And all its mournful mutabilities!

There is not on the heavens a single cloud;
There is not in the air a breathing wind;
There is not on the earth a sound of grief ;
Nor in the bosom a repining thought :-
Faith having sought and gained the mastery,
Quiet and contemplation mantle all!

NOTES TO ELEGIAC EFFUSIONS.

1.

Rears he not sumptuous palaces,

As if his faith were built in these ?-P. 59.

MANY years ago, in sauntering through the Abbey burialground of Melrose, the Author was much struck with the following inscription on a small but venerable tombstone

"The Earth walks upon the earth, glistering like gold;
The Earth goeth to the earth sooner than it wold;
The Earth builds upon the earth temples and tow'rs;
But the earth sayeth to the Earth all shall be ours!"

He has since learned that the original appertains to a churchyard in Gloucestershire, from which the above is only a transcription.

2.

Two only have been spared by Death.-P. 59.

"Christians looking on death not only as the sting, but the period and end of sin, the horizon and isthmus between this life and a better, and the death of this world but as the nativity of another, do contentedly submit unto the common necessity, and envy not Enoch nor Elias."-SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S Letter to a Friend.

3.

The Psalmist once his prayer address'd—

"Dove, could I thy pinions borrow.”—P. 80.

"O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and

remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest."-Psalm lv. 6-8.

The same sentiment has afforded a groundwork for a beautiful lyric by Mrs Hemans-"The Wings of the Dove"-of which part of the above quotation is the motto. It was also evidently thrilling through the heart of Keats in these lines from his deep-thoughted "Ode to the Nightingale :

--

4.

Fahm stalk'd muttering thro' the cavern's gloom.-P. 101. Fahm-a deformed and malignant spirit, peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland, and more particularly to the mountains surrounding Glen-Avin. His accustomed visitations to earth are said to be immediately preceding daybreak; and he is accused by the natives of inflicting diseases upon their cattle. If any person happens to cross his track before the sun has shone on it, death is believed to be the inevitable consequence. Popular report also denies vegetation to the spots where witches have held their orgies, or been burned.

5.

'Twas in the smile of "green Aprile."-P. 117.

"Grene Aprile," the favourite appellation of the month by Chaucer, Spenser, Browne, and the older poets.

A prose character, equally impregnated with emerald, is given to its personification, in a curious duodecimo of 1681, entitled "The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet," quoted in Hone's "Every-Day Book," (vol. ii. 517,) by Charles Lamb, in which the fair author, Anne Wooley, thus describes him :—

66 Aprile- -A young man in green, with a garland of myrtle, and hawthorn buds; Winged; in one hand Primroses and Violets, in the other the sign Taurus."

POEMS ON FLOWERS.