of Steam that we can travel from one place to another with greater speed than our ancestors, but if we go over the same ground with greater rapidity, is it quite certain that we travel with much lighter hearts or more elevated minds? And of what utility is anything in the world of matter or of spirit, except in proportion as it bears a remote or immediate reference to the heart and mind of man?

Poetry can supply us with neither sailing ships nor steamers, nor rail-roads, nor patent umbrellas, nor water-proof India-rubber garments; but it can give us elevated conceptions, and make us relish with a double zest, those unutterably lovely and glorious objects, with which the great Creator of the universe has surrounded us on every side. The clear bright mirror of a gifted poet's soul, when it reflects the sun, and the moon, and the stars, the richly painted fields and the radiant rivers, communicates to the mass of his fellow-creatures a far deeper sense of nature's loveliness than they obtain through their own mere fleshly vision. The herd of literal-minded men pass by the miracles of God's own hand with less observation than they bestow upon the meanest productions of human art. But every true poet can exclaim with Wordsworth

To me the meanest, simplest, flowers that blow,

Do raise up thoughts that lie too deep for tears.

Nor of any genuine lover of poetry can it be said that "nature never found the way into his heart," or that

In vain through every changeful year,

Did nature lead him as before;

A primrose by a river's brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.

God did not mean us to be indifferent to the unspeakable charms that he has scattered around us with so lavish a hand; and, well has it been said, that Poets are Nature's priests; for

they in an especial manner, impress upon their fellow-men the necessity of cultivating a due sense of the goodness of that mighty and beneficent Being, who has still suffered the earth we tread on to retain so much of the air of Paradise.

Blessings be with them-and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler hopes and nobler cares-
The POETS, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight in endless lays !

It is they who teach us when "sensual pleasures cloy,"
To fill the languid pulse with finer joy.

It is they who appeal to us with so much earnestness and power to quit occasionally the grovelling and sordid cares of life for a sacred communion with Nature, and who bid us look with a reverential eye upon her countless glories. It is they who revive in the man of the world a due sense of his original and nobler nature, and make him ashamed of wholly sacrificing to sordid pursuits those higher and more innocent delights which God has granted to those who are willing to admire the productions of his hand. It is they who ask him—

O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields !
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,

And all that echoes to the song of even,

All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,

And all the dread magnificence of heaven

Oh! how canst thou renounce and hope to be forgiven?

Perhaps there are few minds raised above the coldest and coarsest considerations, that have not received in occasional distresses a holy consolation breathed from the face of nature; and certainly every worthy reader of poetry must have felt his sensibilities and his taste increased by a familiarity with descriptions from the pen of those who

Have looked on nature with a poet's eye.

There is a part of a stanza in Thomson's "Castle of Indolence that so strongly expresses the independent pleasure derived from Nature in despite of Fortune, that it has assuredly been repeated by thousands of fine-minded enthusiasts, with a most cordial concurrence of sentiment, and with irrepressible delight.

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny ;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace;

The woods and lawns by living streams at eve.

And is that art useless which makes us so peculiarly alive to the charms of Nature? But it is not the external universe alone that the poet brings to the else too sluggish observation of mankind. He not only shows us the wonders of God in material things and in the lower world, but he lifts up the curtain of the far more mysterious and mighty mechanism of the human heart, and reads us the most beautiful and impressive moral lessons ;— he charms us with the fairest examples of virtue, or frightens us from sin by painting it in its truest colours. Hamlet and Lear, and Macbeth and Othello, and Timon of Athens, are pictures of humanity that assist us to understand our inner nature, and that yield us more positive instruction than the finest moral lecture that philosopher ever uttered.

And is poetry then-the question cannot be too often repeated -an idle and useless amusement? Let us look at true poetry from what point of view we please, and we need not hesitate to pronounce that the Utilitarians who can speak of it with contempt, must be utterly ignorant of its nature. To confound it with mere verse is a piece of silliness and a deficiency of insight, that in this boasted age of education ought to be considered inexcusable in a school-boy. When Thomas Campbell characterized the life of Sir Philip Sydney as poetry put into action, and when Byron in a fine enthusiasm called the stars the poetry of heaven,

these eminent writers had other notions of the nature of poetry than Jeremy Bentham and Mr. Mill. If the Utilitarians openly professed a natural antipathy to all that is beautiful or sublime, their opposition to poetry would be more intelligible for there is nothing in the wide universe that is either beautiful or sublime, that is not poetical. When we elevate ourselves above the literal, the mean, and the sordid, we enter the pure atmosphere of poetry. But they who love the ground cannot be expected to appreciate the advantages of a more etherial region.

THE END.

ERRATA

VOL. I.

In the last line page 59, for "scatteerd" read scattered.

In the 17th line from the top of page 131, for "much simplicity" read much of the simplicity.

VOL. II.

In the 3rd line from the top of page 33 insert the word with after the word remonstrated.

In the 17th line from the top of page 35, for "attributed the whole series to him"

read supposed the whole series to be addressed to him.

In the last line but one on page 91, for "after" read in.

In the ninth line of the first sonnet on page 134, for "nor" read or.

In the 3rd line of 3rd stanza page 185, for "rebels” read revels.

In the 7th line of the second sonnet on page 188, for "like" read on.

In the foot-note page 223, for " character" read characters, and for "his" read their.