This subject has been treated of in another note. I will here only by way of comment direct attention to the fact that pictures of animals and other productions of nature as seen in conservatories, menageries, museums, etc., would do little for the national mind, nay they would be rather injurious to it, if the imagination were excluded by the presence of the object, more or less out of a state of nature. If it were not that we learn to talk and think of the lion and the eagle, the palm-tree and even the cedar, from the impassioned introduction of them so frequently into Holy Scripture and by great poets,

sky.

How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high
Her way pursuing among scattered clouds,
Where, ever and anon, her head she shrouds
Hidden from view in dense obscurity.
But look, and to the watchful eye
A brightening edge will indicate that soon
We shall behold the struggling Moon
Break forth, - again to walk the clear blue
sky.

EVENING VOLUNTARIES

TO LUCA GIORDANO

1846. 1850

GIORDANO, verily thy Pencil's skill

Hath here portrayed with Nature's happiest grace

The fair Endymion couched on Latmos-hill;
And Dian gazing on the Shepherd's face
In rapture, yet suspending her embrace,

As not unconscious with what power the thrill

Of her most timid touch his sleep would chase,

And, with his sleep, that beauty calm and still.

Oh may this work have found its last retreat Here in a Mountain-bard's secure abode, One to whom, yet a School-boy, Cynthia showed

A face of love which he in love would greet, Fixed, by her smile, upon some rocky seat; Or lured along where greenwood paths he trod.

"WHO BUT IS PLEASED TO WATCH THE "9 MOON ON HIGH

1846. 1850

WHO but is pleased to watch the moon on high

Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds

Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty Renounces, till among the scattered clouds One with its kindling edge declares that

soon

Will reappear before the uplifted eye

A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon,

Pity that such a promise e'er should prove False in the issue, that yon seeming space Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move

(By transit not unlike man's frequent doom) The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.

20

The land as with a funeral pall?
The Rose of England suffers blight,
The flower has drooped, the Isle's delight,
Flower and bud together fall-
A Nation's hopes lie crushed in Claremont's
desolate hall.

AIR - (SOPRANO)
Time a chequered mantle wears; —
Earth awakes from wintry sleep;
Again the Tree a blossom bears-

Cease, Britannia, cease to weep!
Hark to the peals on this bright May morn!
They tell that your future Queen is born. 30

SOPRANO SOLO AND CHORUS

A Guardian Angel fluttered
Above the Babe, unseen;