MUTUAL LOVE.

H! who the exquisite delight can tell,
The joy which mutual confidence imparts?

Or who can paint the charm unspeakable

Which links in tender bands two faithful hearts?

In vain assail'd by Fortune's envious darts,

Their mitigated woes are sweetly shar'd,

And doubled joy reluctantly departs:

Let but the sympathizing heart be spared,

What sorrow seems not light, what peril is not dared?

Oh! never may Suspicion's gloomy sky

Chill the sweet glow of fondly-trusting Love!
Nor ever may he feel the scowling eye
Of dark Distrust his confidence reprove!
In pleasing error may I rather rove,

With blind reliance on the hand so dear,

Than let cold prudence from my eyes remove

Those sweet delusions, where nor doubt, nor fear,

Nor foul disloyalty, nor cruel change appear.

The noble mind is ever prone to trust ;

Yet love with fond anxiety is join'd;

And timid tenderness is oft unjust;

The coldness which it dreads too prompt to find,

And rack with cruel pain the feeling mind.
Hence rose the gloom which oft o'er Psyche stole,
Lest he she lov'd, unmindful or unkind,
Should, careless, slight Affection's soft control,
Or she long absent lose her influence o'er his soul.

Mary Tighe

VAL

A CURIOUS MAN

VALUES things not by their use or worth, but scarcity. He is very tender and scrupulous of his humour, as fanatics are of their consciences, and both for the most part in trifles. He cares not how unuseful any thing be, so it be but unusual and rare. He collects all the curiosities he can light upon in art or nature, not to inform his own judgment, but to catch the admiration of others, which he believes he has a right to, because the rarities are his own. That which other men neglect he believes they oversee, and stores up trifles as rare discoveries, at least of his own wit and sagacity. He admires subtleties above all things, because the more subtle they are the nearer they are to nothing; and values no art but that which is spun so thin that it is of no use at all. He had rather have an iron chain hung about the neck of a flea than an alderman's of gold, and Homer's Iliad in a nutshell than Alexander's cabinet. He had rather have the twelve apostles on a cherry-stone than those on St. Peter's portico, and would willingly sell Christ again for that numerical piece of coin that Judas took for him. His perpetual dotage upon curiosities at length renders him one of them, and he shews himself as none of the meanest of his rarities. He so much affects singularity, that, rather than follow the fashion that is used by the rest of the world, he will wear Dissenting clothes with odd fantastic devices to distinguish himself from others, like marks set upon cattle. He cares not what pains he throws away upon the meanest trifle, so it be but strange; while some pity and others laugh at his ill-employed industry. He is one of those that valued Epictetus's lamp above the excellent book he writ by it. If he be a bookman, he spends all his time and study upon things that are never to be known. The philosopher's stone and universal medicine cannot possibly miss him. He is wonderfully taken with abstruse knowledge, and had rather handle truth with a pair of tongs wrapt up in mysteries and hieroglyphics than touch it with his hands or see it plainly demonstrated to his senses.

Butler.

CONVERSE WITH NATURE.

O sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.

OF

THE SOUL'S LONGING.

H that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,
And hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar :

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Byron.

Byron.