pius; the column of Arcadius at Constantinople; or the various fragments, which adorn the memory of a country, whose splendour is attested by its tombs, monuments and ruins, without sympathy and melancholy? When a traveller was attended by POUSSIN over the ruins of Rome a city now but a monument of itself!-Poussin is said to have gathered in his hand a small quantity of earth, in which were a few grains of porphyry: "place these particles in your cabinet," said he, “ and tell those, who see them, Questa è Roma antica." With what solemn rapture did BRUCE view the ruins, which arrested his attention in Africa!-And few writers have described their emotions, with more glow of feeling, than SONNINI, when he beheld the fragments of what once constituted the city of Thebes ;-than SHAW, while surveying the ruins of Barbary ;-and Dyer, when delineating the various fragments of ancient Rome.

No poet, ancient or modern, has described the effect of ruins on the imagination with greater grace, or with more solemn colouring, than the author of the Fleece, Grongar Hill, and the Ruins of Rome. How beautiful and how impressive is the passage, "Behold that heap of mouldering urns, &c." Equally graphical is that beginning, "Fall'n, fall'n, a silent heap ;"-while the contrast, exhibited in that passage of the Fleece, which relates to the siege of Damascus, is inferior to nothing, on a similar subject, in the whole range of descriptive poetry.

Lives of the Painters-art. Poussin.

The author of "The Pleasures of Memory," too, has a fine graphic simile :

As the stern grandeur of a Gothic tower
Awes us less deeply in its morning hour,
Than when the shades of time serenely fall,
On every broken arch and ivied wall;
The tender images we love to trace,

Steal from each year a melancholy grace.

Another poet, comparatively unknown, has beautifully connected ruins with the memory of a bad action. It is a passage not often surpassed in these days of tinsel and affectation.

From the sympathy, to which we have alluded, arises the awe, which pervades every one, while contemplating the ruins of a once great and mighty city; and which renders them far more attractive to all the best feelings of our nature, than if, by a magic wand, those ruins could be gathered together, and once

more display themselves in all the method of the Doric rule, the symmetry of Ionic form, or all the splendour of Corinthian architraves. For, to the eye of taste, the ivied tower, the fragments of an embattled castle, and the ruins of a triumphal arch, are more congenial, than all the palaces of Moscow, or all the verandas of Venice.

A temple, in possession of regular symmetry, is beautiful; when broken into parts, it is picturesque: when falling into ruins it is sublime. For, as patience is the greatest of friends to the unfortunate, so is time the greatest of friends to the lover of landscape. It resolves the noblest works of art into the most affecting ornaments of created things.

The fall of empires, with which the death of great characters is so immediately associated, possesses a prescriptive title, as it were, to all our sympathy; forming, at once, a magnificent, yet melancholy spectacle; and awakening in the mind all the grandeur of solitude. Who would not be delighted to make a pilgrimage to the east to see the columns of Persepolis, and the still more magnificent ruins of Palmyra? Where awe springs, as it were, personified from the fragments, and proclaims instructive lessons from the vicissitudes of fortune.

In the midst of all these evidences of change, one consolation remains:-arising from the reflection, that though the affairs of men and of empires change from year to year, yet Nature still remains the same. Lizards still bask beneath the pyramids; swans still glide upon the Euphrates; roses still delight the night

ingales of Persia: and flowers still adorn the wilder

ness of St. John.

II.

des

How often, my dear Lelius, have I heard you cant, with melancholy pleasure, on the ruins of Melrose abbey, and of Cadzow castle. And how often have we surveyed, with kindred rapture, the remnants of what once constituted the castles of Carisbrooke, Chepstow and Tenby; the towers of Ragland, Pembroke and Caerphili; the picturesque fragments of Druslyn and Dinevawr, in the vale of Towey; the walls of Oystermouth, rising over the bay of Swansea; and those belonging to the Earl of Bulkely, near the unequalled bay of Beaumaris!--Equally solemn and affecting have been our emotions, at beholding the sacred walls of Glastonbury and Strata Florida:ruins, which have so strongly reminded us of Ossian's description of those of Balclutha; and of a similar passage of the Lebeid, where the poet says " desolate are the mansions of the fair, the stations in Minia, where they rested, and those, where they fixed their abode! Wild are the hills of Coul, and deserted is the summit of Rijaans." Scenes which, presenting emblems of mourning mortality, still the tempests of the mind; awaken all the best sympathies of the heart; and quell, for a time, each tumult of the passions.

In contemplating these awful remains of former ages, how much more solemn and affecting are our emotions, when we view them with reference to the events, which they have witnessed!-When we behold the grand towers, rising over the Conway, is

it possible not to be struck with admiration? But when we call to mind the many midnight murders, they have been witness to, how is our admiration tempered with sensations, partaking of terror!

III.

How different are our feelings, when we survey the consecrated ruins of NETLEY and LLANTONY, the unrivalled abbey of TINTERN, or the Cistercian arches of VALLE CRUCIS! The first situated near the Southampton water: the second in a sombre and sequestered valley: the third surrounded by woods and mountains, on the banks of the Wye: and the fourth in a deep romantic vale, encompassed on all sides by towering rocks and mountains, which render it worthy the pen of Dyer, the harp of Taliesin, and the touch of Wou

vermanns.

You, my Lelius, even in the scenes of active life, have never ceased to associate happiness with those lovely and romantic ruins!-Ruins, which in connexion with the vale, in which they are situated, proclaim that harmony of character, which it is my pleasure and my pride, to hope subsists between us. Years have passed over our heads, since we bathed in the river, that flows along the bottom of that valley! Many a storm has passed over my head, since that time, so innocent and so happy;-while you, on the other hand, have pursued your way to riches and to honour. The management of men's affairs, so open and so easy, as it appears to those, who see where others only see, is nevertheless beyond the reach of human intellect: whatever some may choose to thin