Their looks of love how can I see

Nor think, great Sire of Love, on Thee?

Pride enters not yon peaceful room;

But books and arts abound;
Nor there do vain Penates come
To reign-'tis holy ground!
And duly, Lord, when evening brings
Release from toil on balmy wings,
An household band is found
To raise Thy throne, and offer there
The gift Thou lovest, Domestic Prayer.
Within all studies end in Thee;

And when abroad I rove,

There's not a herb, a flower, a tree,

That speaks not of Thy love;
There's not a leaf, that whirled on high
Wanders along the stormy sky,

That hath not words to prove
How like would be my restless lot,
If Grace Divine upheld me not!

Oh! look upon yon glorious scene,
Wood, hill, and wave survey;
Mark every path where God hath been,

And own His wondrous way.

For me I daily come to bless,

Dear landscape, all thy loveliness;

And dare not turn away

Till I have spoken the Psalmist's line,

"These gracious works, dread Lord, are Thine !"

My Home! my Home! I've paused awhile

In many a stranger land,

And seen in all boon nature smile

Beneath her Maker's hand;

But never since calm Reason took

From Fancy's clutch her rhyming book,

A joyful resting planned

Till here the blessed scene I laid,

Here in mine own romantic shade.

My Home! my Home! oh! ever dear

Thy hallowed scenes shall be ;

In joy or grief, in hope or fear,
My spirit clings to thee.

I deem my home an emblem meet
Of that enduring last retreat

From pain and passion free,

Where Peace shall fix her bright abode,
And yield her followers up to God.

To Mr. Barnard, also, I was personally a stranger. So I was to the excellent friend and delightful correspondent, Mr. Archdeacon Wrangham, to whose kindness I owe the possession of his poems. Twice I was about to visit the Archdeacon, and twice Death came between. The first time he invited me to his prebendal residence at Chester, to meet another dear and most valued correspondent and friend, Mrs. Hemans; he even proposed to come as far as Oxford to fetch me. But my mother was already seized by the illness from which she never recovered; and the three friends, of whom I am the only survivor, and of whom none was then old, said all-Another time! None of us foresaw how soon the youngest and the most gifted of the three should die in her Irish home; and the two who remained had little heart to plan joyous meetings. But nine years ago, when my dear father was also taken from me, the good Archdeacon mixed with his condolences an invitation to visit him at Hunmanby. The letter was singularly interesting, telling of his own father's death just after his early Cambridge triumphs, and of the strange and solemn mixture of that great grief with his joy. Singularly enough, with that kind and gracious invitation to the vicarage at Hunmanby came one equally gracious and

kind from the head of my own family, Admiral Osbaldiston Mitford, to visit him and Mrs. Mitford at Hunmanby Hall. I answered both letters by return of post; and before that to my venerable friend reached its destination, he too was dead.

Let me add a less gloomy recollection of this accomplished scholar, who was an eminent book collector. About thirty years ago, one of the cleverest writers of the day having published (as sometimes happens) a very silly book, the Archdeacon hastened to secure it for his library. "What could induce you to purchase that nonsense?" inquired a friend. "Because it is so bad that it is sure to become scarce," was the reply. The prediction has been verified to the letter. should not wonder if that copy were an unique.

I

XVII.

AMERICAN PROSE WRITERS.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

In spite of her apparent barrenness at the late Exhibition-a barrenness which probably resulted mainly from the actual riches of that vast country, its prodigious territory, and its still growing youth-in spite of our susceptibilities—and in spite of her own-America is a great nation, and the Americans are a great people; and if that Fair of the World had been a book fair, as at Leipsic, I suspect that we should have seen our kinsfolk over the water cutting a very good figure with their literary ware.

Certain it is, that when a people, hardly seventy years old, who have still living amongst them men that remember when their republic was a province, can claim for themselves such divines as Dr. Channing, and my friend Professor Norton, the friend of Mrs. Hemans; such an historian as Mr. Prescott; and such an orator as Daniel Webster, they have good right to be proud of their sons of the soil.

To say nothing of these ornaments of our common language, or of the naturalists Wilson and Audubon -are they American ?-they are worth fighting for; or of the travellers, Dana, Stephens, and Willis, who

are certainly transatlantic; or of the fair writers, Mrs. Sigourney and Miss Sedgwick, both my friends; or of the poor Margaret Fuller, drowned so deplorably only the other day, with her husband and her infant, on her own shores (her Italian husband said only the day before leaving Florence that it had been predicted to him that he should die at sea); or of the great historian of Spanish literature, Mr. Ticknor (another friend!); or of a class of writers in which New England is rich-orator-writers, whose eloquence, first addressed to large audiences, is at once diffused and preserved by the press-witness the orations of Mr. Sumner, and the lectures of Mr. Whipple and Mr. Giles; to say nothing of these volumes, which will bear a competition with any of their class in the elder country, let us look at the living novelists, and see if they be of an ordinary stamp.

The author of the "Sketch-book" is almost as much a classic with us as in his own country. That book, indeed, and one or two that succeeded it, were so purely English in style and feeling, that when their success their immense and deserved success-induced the reprint of some drolleries which had for subject New York in its Dutch state, it was difficult to believe that they were by the same author. Since then, Mr Washington Irving, having, happily for literature, filled a diplomatic post in Spain, has put forth other works, half Spanish, half Moorish, equally full of local colour and local history, books as good as history, that almost make us live in the Alhambra, and increase our sympathy with the tasteful and chivalrous people who planned its halls and gardens. Then he returned home; and there he has done for the back-woods and