be equalled by another, "Grave, but not gloomy." Get a copy of The Young Lady's Book, for it is a perennial-a manual of many innocent and useful arts;—and when you have mistressed all that it gives instructions about, why, then in feminine accomplishments you may almost take your place side by side on the same sofa with our own Theodora.

In conclusion of this little rambling article, let us beseech the Editors of those Annuals, which time and space prevented us from comprehending in the Review in our December Number, not for one moment to dream that we intended any slight to them, or to their works. In proof of the contrary, we now disclose our determination to speak of their next Christmas Presents-first in order. Meanwhile, be our Public assured, that The Gem is indeed a gem of the first water,—“of purest ray serene;" that The Winter's Wreath is beautiful, with its evergreens and its Christmas roses, and fit to adorn the brows of the Lancashire witches; that The Bijou may grace the most elegant drawing-room, the most ornamental library in England; and that The Comic Annual is out of all sight the most witty in all our "Neighbour Hood," so distinguished for wit. As for the four Juvenile Annuals, they run in beautiful quaternion. Mrs Watts's is all that might have been expected from a poet's wife, and breathes throughout a true maternal spirit which, above all other emotions, "the high and tender muses love." Mr Hall seems equally happy in a spouse whose taste and feeling are often coloured by the hues of genius. Mr Shoberl has, we hope, children of his own growing up into boyhood and girlhood, for so amiable and enlightened a man deserves a happy household, ringing with merry voices from morn to dewy eve. As for Thomas Roscoe, his little book will be loved even for his father's sake, who, in his honoured old age, must enjoy the purest of all delights in contemplating the virtues and genius of his sons. Thomas Roscoe, we know, possesses in private life the love and esteem of many friends; and his powers as a writer have made a most favourable impression on the public mind. The Landscape Annual, edited by him, is indeed a most splendid work-and better than splendid; for in it the exquisite genius of Prout has pencilled to the eye and to the imagination many of the noblest scenes in nature and in art; and the written illustrations are worthy of the son of the author of Leo and Lorenzo.

DAYS DEPARTED, OR BANWELL HILL.

[FEBRUARY 1830.

DESCRIPTIVE Poetry is either the most dull or the most delightful thing in the united kingdoms of Art and Nature. To write it well you must see with your eyes shut-no such easy operation. But to enable you to see with your eyes shut, you must begin with seeing with your eyes open-an operation, also, of much greater difficulty than is generally imagined -and indeed not to be well performed by one man in a thousand. Seeing with your eyes open is a very complicated concern—as it obviously must be, when perhaps fifty churchspires, and as many more barns, some millions of trees, and haystacks innumerable, hills and plains without end, not to mention some scores of cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, are all impressed-tiny images-on each retina,-which tiny images the mind must see as in reflection within these miraculous mirrors. She is apt to get confused amidst that bewildering conglomeration-to mistake one object for another-to displace and disarrange to the destruction of all harmonies and proportions—and finally to get, if not stone—at least, what is perhaps worse, sand-blind. The moment she opens her mouth to discourse of these her perceptions, the old lady is apt to wax so confused, that you unjustly suspect her of a bad habit; and as soon as she winks, or shuts her eyes, begins prosing away from memory, till you lose all belief in the existence of the external world. Chaos is come againand old John Nox introduces you to Somnus. The poem falls out of your hand-for we shall suppose a poem-a composing draft of a Descriptive Poem to have been in it—but not till

1 Days Departed, or Banwell Hill; a Lay of the Severn Sea: including the Tale of the Maid of Cornwall, or Spectre and Prayer-Book. By the Rev. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.

you have swallowed sufficient of one dose to produce another doze that threatens to last till doomsday.

We really cannot take it upon ourselves to say what is the best mode of composition for a gentleman or lady of poetical propensities to adopt with respect to a Descriptive Poemwhether to sketch it, and lay the colours on-absolutely to finish it off entirely-in the open air, sitting under the shade of an elm, or an umbrella; or from a mere outline, drawn sub dio, to work up the picture to perfect beauty, in a room with one window, looking into a back-court inhabited by a couple of cockless hens, innocent of cackle. Both modes are dangerous-full of peril. In the one, some great Gothic Cathedral is apt to get into the foreground, to the exclusion of the whole county; in the other, the scenery too often retires away back by much too far into the distance--the groves look small, and the rivers sing small-and all nature is like a drowned rat.

'The truth is-and it will out-that the Poet alone sees this world. Nor does it make the slightest difference to him whether his eyes are open or shut-in or out-bright as stars, or "with dim suffusion veiled "-provided only the Iris of each "particular orb" has, through tears of love and joy, been permitted for some twenty years, or thereabouts, to span heaven and earth, like seeing rainbows. All the imagery it ever knows has been gathered up by the perceiving soul during that period of time-afterwards 'tis the divining soul that works-and it matters not then whether the material organ be covered with day or with night. Milton saw without eyes more of the beauty and sublimity of the heavens than any man has ever done since with eyes-except perhaps Wordsworth;—and were Wordsworth to lose his eyes—which heaven forbid-still would he

"Walk in glory and in joy,

Following his soul upon the mountain-side."

The sole cause of all this power possessed by the Poet over Nature, is the spirit of delight, the sense of beauty, in which, from the dawning of moral and intellectual thought, he has gazed upon all her aspects. He has always felt towards her 66 as a lover or a child"—she hath ever been his mother-his sister—his bride-his wife-all in one wonderful Living

Charm breathed over the shapings of his brain and the yearnings of his blood;-and no wonder that all her sights dwell for ever and ever in the fountains of his eyes, and all her sounds in the fountains of his ears-for what are these fountains but the depths and recesses of his own happy yet everagitated heart?

A Poet, then, at all times, whether he will or not, commerces with the skies, and with the seas, and with the earth, in a language of silent symbols; and when he lays it aside, and longs to tell correctly of what he sees and feels to his brethren of mankind not so gifted by God, though then he must adopt their own language, the only one they understand, yet from his lips it becomes, while still human, an angelic speech. Ay-even their homeliest phrases-their everyday expressions-in which they speak of life's dullest goings-on and most unimpassioned procedure-seem kindled as by a coal from heaven, and prose brightens into poetry. True, that the poet selects all his words-but he selects them in a spirit of inspiration, which is a discriminating spirit—as well as a moving and creating spirit. All that is unfit for his high and holy purpose, of itself fades away; and out of all that is fit, genius, true to nature, chooses whatever is fittestout of the good-the best. Not with a finer, surer instinct flies the bee from flower to flower-touching but for a moment, like a shadow, on the bloom where no honey is-and where that ambrosia lies, piercing with passion into the rose's heart. Poetical language, indeed-who may tell what it is? What else can it be but poetry itself? And what is poetry—we know not-though our heart leaps up when we behold" it -even as at sight of a Something in the sky-faint at first as a tinging dream, cloud-born-but growing gradually out of the darkness of the showery sky-child of the sun-dying almost as soon as born-yet seeming to be a creature—a being a living thing that might endure for ever-and not a mere apparition, too, too soon deserting the earth and the heaven it has momentarily glorified with a-Rainbow!

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But is Poetry indeed thus evanescent? Yes-in the Poet's soul. For it is produced upon the shadowy and showery background of the imagination, by genius shining upon it sunlike ; that visionary world fades away, and leaves him "shorn of his beams," like a common man in this common world; but words

once uttered may live for ever-in that lies their superiority over clouds; and thus poetry-when printed by Bensley or Ballantyne becomes a stationary world of rainbows. And there are ways-sacred ways which religion teaches of preserving in the spirit of men who read Poetry-even till their dying day-that self-same ecstasy with which Noah and his children first beheld the Arch of Promise.

There was a long period of our poetry, during which poets paid, apparently, little or no devotion to external Nature; when she may be said to have lain dead. Perhaps we poets

too

of this age pay her-we must not say too much homage—but too much tribute-as if she exacted it—whereas it ought all to be a free-will offering, spontaneous as the flower-growth of the hills. It is possible to be religious overmuch at her shrine to deal in long prayers, and longer sermons, forgetting to draw the practical conclusions. Without knowing it, we may become formalists in our worship; nay, even hypocrites; for all moods of mind are partly hypocritical that are not thoroughly sincere and truth abhors exaggeration. True passion is often sparing of words; compressedly eloquent; not doting upon and fondling mere forms, but carrying its object by storm-spirit by spirit—a conflict—a catastropheand peace. There is rather too long a courtshipprotracted a wooing of Nature now by shilly-shallying bards; they do not sufficiently insist on Her, their bride, naming the nuptial day; some of them would not for the world run away with her to Gretna-Green. They get too philosophical-too Platonic; amicitia seems their watchword rather than amor; and the consequence is, that Nature is justified in jilting them, and privately espousing a mate of more flesh and bloodPassion, who not only pops the question, but insinuates a suit of saffron, and takes the crescent honeymoon by the horns. Nature does not relish too metaphysical a suitor; she abhors all that is gross, but still loves something in a tangible shape; no cloud herself, she hates being embraced by a cloud; and her chaste nuptials, warm as they are chaste, must be celebrated after our human fashion, not spiritually and no more, but with genial embraces, beneath the moon and stars, else how, pray, could she ever be-Mother Earth? Unfruitful communion else, and the fairyland of Poetry would soon be depopulated. But observe-that if true poets are sometimes rather too