but at length they came no more. The last creature I have seen was a pelican, that, more than nine hundred years ago, sat one morning on the sun-dial before the great temple.

'Dreadful has been the curse of life, and more dreadful has it been every day. I would have made a companion of the hyæna; I would have associated with any thing that had life. While watching the winged race, called into existence by the sunbeams, I have felt less wretched; for, like me, they were endued with life; but many centuries have passed away since this small sympathy has been mine. A curse is upon earth and air, as well as upon me; even the insects that used to float in this basin, and with whose imperfect life I have felt some sympathy, have long been extinct. I would have given-but what had I to give? yet had I possessed one blessing, I would have resigned it, to have heard even the cry of a jackal, or the scream of a vulture!

When life in animated beings could no longer be found, I sought life or motion in inanimate things. I have sat on these steps, and listened for centuries to the gushing of that fountain; but it has long ceased to afford this consolation, for see, the water comes drop by drop. I have watched the flowers that grew, watered by its spray, and the weeds that sprung up among the ruins, but they are all withered; and the country around is a desert: these date trees, that afford me sustenance, alone survive. All this is the curse of selfishness, the punishment of longing after length of years. I might have given my sympathy, and died with my kindred; but I refused it, and lo! I have received none for a thousand years. A thousand years have I wandered, the sole tenant of these silent streets: I have seen the tooth of time gnaw the records of perishing men; its triumphs are the sole disturbers of the silence that reigns around, as columns fall to the earth, or dwellings crumble into dust.'

The aged man paused for a moment. It is now only mid-day,' continued he; 'go, walk through the City, meditate on what thou hast heard, and return hither at sunset.'

I went into the City; I entered the habitations that had been tenantless a thousand years. I entered the dwelling of kings, and saw the vacant throne, and the enamelled floor, once swept by the purple of past ages. I stood among the ruins of temples, and stumbled over the mutilated idols that were mingling with the dust of those who had worshipped them; and I gazed on the sun-dial, that time had spared, to be his chronicler.

At sunset, I returned to the garden: the aged man still sat on the marble steps, and seemed to be watching the far horizon: I sat down beside him, and both were silent. The light of day was fast waning; the rosy hues of sunset died away; fainter grew the scene; at length a pale light on the horizon appeared, and grew, till the moon rose slowly up into the wide sky: soon the date tree and the pinnacle of the fountain were tipped with silver: the aged man then arose, and taking the last pebble from the basin, threw it on the ground. One drop of water hung trembling from the fountain; it fell, but none other came; and when I raised my eyes to the countenance of the old man, I saw that his race was ended.

I quitted the garden to enter again upon my journey through the desert; and as I passed the sun-dial, I saw that time had no longer a record in the City of the Desert: the pedestal which supported it had fallen!-Derwent Conway.

CHILDHOOD.

Childhood is like a mirror, catching and reflecting images. One impious or profane thought, uttered by a parent's lips, may operate on the young heart, like the careless spray of water thrown on polished steel, staining it with rust, which no after scouring can efface.

DUST.

No dust affects the eyes so much as gold dust.

PHYSIOGNOMY.

The body is the case or sheath of the mind; yet as naturally it hideth it, so doth it also many times discover it. For although the forehead, eyes, and frame of the countenance do sometimes belie the disposition of the heart; yet most commonly they give true general verdiets. An angry man's brows are bent together, and his eyes sparkle with rage-which, when he is well pleased, look smooth and cheerfully. Envy hath one look; desire another; sorrow yet another; contentment a fourth, To show no passion is too different from all the rest. stoical; to show all is impotent; to show other than we feel is hypocritical.-Bishop Hall.

SIN.

He that falls into it is a man; that grieves at it is a saint; and he that boasts of it is a devil.

FLOWERS.

BY J. KILGOUR.

Companions of infancy! children of spring!
Sweet beds for the butterfly's wandering wing,
That deck the green hill and the forest's dark gloom,
The bower of the maiden, the dust of the tomb !
Ye're food to the bee, the philosopher's theme,
Of sweet dew the cup where the morning's young beam
Drinks sweet-scented diamonds, that clustering cling
To your bright rosy lips, sweetest children of spring!
Companions of infancy! children of spring!
Gently soothed into slumber when eve's fairies sing,
Bright gems, with pure infancy's brows that have blent,
Though silent, ye speak, on love's embassy sent,
True lessons how early life's springtide may cease!
High pictures of purity! emblems of peace!

Deck my loved one's fair bosom, where bright curls swing,
Companions of infancy! children of spring!

Companions of infancy! children of spring!

Ye are seen where the waterfalls thundering ring;
Ye are seen all in beauty where wild torrents swell,
And ye blush at the mischief that's done in their dell;
By the abbey, where hush'd is the hymn's holy chime--
On its ruins that tell of the ravage of time-
There, bright in your beauty, ye clustering hing,
Companions of infancy! children of spring!

THE GOAT.

Few animals, when properly treated, are more useful to man; and though it never can answer to breed the goat in districts which will carry sheep, in rocky and woody countries it is invaluable. The pillow of goats' hair that supported the head of the image with which Michael deceived the messengers of Saul when he sought David's life, will occur to every one; and Pennant thinks

that the variety which furnished it was the goat of ALgora. In the days of wigs, the hair of the commc domestic goat of this country was in high request, and the whitest were made of it. The best hair for this purpose was selected from that which grew on the haunches, where it is longest and thickest. In Pennant's time, a good skin, well haired, was sold for a guinea; though a skin of bad hue, and so yellow as to baffle the barber's skill to bleach, did not fetch above eighteenpence or twe shillings. Goat's hair is at present used in the manufacture of wigs for the members of the bar and the bench. The skin, particularly that of the kid, is of high importance to the glove manufacturer; it is also said to take a dye better than most others. The horns are useful for knife-handles; and the suet, it is alleged, makes candles far superior in whiteness and goodness to those made from that of the sheep or the ox, and, according to Pennant. brings a much greater price in the market. The medical properties of goats' milk and whey have been highly extolled, and the cheese is much valued in some mountainous countries.-Penny Cyclopædia.

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'And chiefly thou, O Spirit! that dost prefer,
Before all temples, the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And mad'st it pregnant; what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low, raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.'

Neither is the mere expression of passion genius. Genius supposes strong passion. But it is not identical with strong passion, nor yet with its mere expression, else any blackguard or bully might set up pretensions to the gift. It is true that passion often uplifts even the vile to something like genius, in other words, rouses them to express their feelings in the language of the imagination. We have heard, indeed, a very competent judge say, that the most powerful eloquence he ever heard was that of an angry carter. But usually passion finds its rude vent in mere gesticulation and blasphemy. It is not thus that the ire of genius bursts forth. Its words come out winged with red lightning and impetuous rage.' They are as beautiful as they are terrible. It is thus that when Byron is angry, and piles on human heads the mountain of his curse,' that 'curse is forgiveness.' It is thus that when Burns is indignant at the pompous pretensions of rank without merit, and wealth without wisdom, these are the words in which that wrath

comes forth

Is there for honest poverty

That hangs his head and a' that,
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hodden gray, and a' that,

Gi'e fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that.'

It is thus that Shakspere represents King Lear, when his soul is injured to madness by his unkind daughters, kneeling down and uttering perhaps the grandest and most daring words ever spoken by uninspired man. Ye Heavens! if ye do love old men-if your sweet sway hallow obedience-if yourselves are old-make it your cause-avenge me on my daughters.' This is indeed the language of passion, but it is of passion sublimed, transfigured, purified of all its dross, approaching in its grandeur and justice to that wrath on which the sun shall never go down, and expressing not the malignity of earth but the 'malison of heaven.'

Far less should genius be confounded with the fumes of physical excitement, though many thus erroneously class and confound it. Its fury is not, to use the words of Milton, the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite.' It is not, he says again, 'to be raised from the fumes of wine, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can command his seraphim to take a live coal from the altar wherewith to touch and purify the lips of his chosen.' Genius is a thing too ethereal to be extracted from any narcotic weed, or liquorous distillation, or any such compound of fire and dirt' as oozes from the pierced poppy. Often indeed has this haughty power condescended to call in such auxiliaries to its aid, but seldom without loss, never without danger, and often with the absolute, slavish, and irremediable subjection of the higher to the inferior influence. Let the case of Coleridge, who, like the Genie in the Arabian tale shut up in the iron pot, though

tamper with such tyrannous enslavers. Burns wrote his earlier and better pieces on the regimen of porridge and milk. Cowper found in tea a sufficient stimulus to his mild but powerful genius. Wordsworth sings of his lake water with a gusto which seems to intimate that it is his favourite beverage. The leading literary men of the present day, though not all practisers of total abstinence, are sober and regular in their habits. And Milton, stateliest of the sons of men, and only a little lower than the angels, found in music an excitement richer and more ravishing than was ever extracted from the blood of the grape.

What then is genius? It is, to recur to a former expression, the musical cry of a strong and loving soul. It is a voice from the depths of the human spirit. It is the utterance, native and irresistible, of one possessed' by an influence which, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth, comes he knows not whence, and goes he knows not whither. It is a fainter degree of that prophetic inspiration which, to the rapt eye of the ancient seer, made the future present and the distant near. The man under its influence is a maker,' working out, in imitation of the great Demiurgic artist, certain creations of his own; he is a 'declarer,' more or less distinctly, of the awful will of the unseen Lawgiver seated within his soul; he is a string to an invisible harper-a pen guided by a superhuman hand-a trumpet filled with a voice which is as the sound of many waters. As in the sea-shell, long separated from its native sea, there yet lingers, or seem to linger, when you apply it to your ear, the distant and far-off murmur of the main, and, in the exquisite words of Landor,

'Pleased, it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there,' so, in the soul of genius, there lingers an echo of that which is vast and infinite. Does it appear that we thus put in a claim in behalf of genius too lofty and verging too nearly on the supernatural? We answer, we are raising genius up toward prophecy; we are not lowering prophecy down toward genius; we are not ascribing to genius the knowledge of the future, or the supreme authority possessed by the oracles of God; we are ascribing to it only a superior knowledge of the present and the past, and representing it as the bright limit between the highest form of the intellectual and the lowest form of the divine; we are doing so in consonance with the spirit of the olden time, when the names of prophet and of poet were the same;' we are doing it in harmony with the beautiful lines in which a modern bard describes the conversation of Coleridge, and his ideas of poetry— 'Among the guests, that often staid, A man there came, fair as a maid, And Peter noted what he said, Standing behind his master's chair. He was a mighty poet and

A subtle-souled psychologist,
All things he seem'd to understand,
Of old or new, at sea or land,

But his own mind, which was a mist.
He spoke of poetry, and how

Divine it was, a light, a love,

A spirit, which like wind doth blow
As it listeth, to and fro;

A dew rain'd down from God above;
A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace;

Heaven's light on earth, truth's purest beam '
And, when he ceased, there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face."

Genius, considered intellectually, is original thought, direct and personal intercourse with the truth and meaning of things; considered morally, it is love of spiritual beauty; considered critically, it is the spirit of a peculiar, eloquent, and musical language. In other words, it makes, it moves, it speaks; it makes new and striking conceptions, it moves the affections and passions of the soul, and it speaks, whether in poetry or prose, in a melodious, metaphorical, and rhythmical speech. Concep

tion is the fuel, passion the flame, language the light of that one grand blaze which we call genius.

We come now to speak shortly of the influences and the pleasures of genius. As it is far from being confined to the production of poetry, as it is the soul of all true and high philosophy, as it has struck out the sparks of all great inventions, as we owe to it not only the Iliad, the Paradise Lost, the Task, the Excursion, the Childe Harold, the Waverley Tales, but the telescope, the mariner's compass, the printing press, the galvanic battery, and the steam-engine, its influences may be said to be co-extensive with the family and the history of man. Galileo slumbers in death, but astronomers, when gazing on the heavens, still feel as if he were beside them. Fanst is but a shadow and a name, but his genius still presides over the press, as it is throwing forth its sheets replete with truth and eloquence. Watt is now, after a long life, at rest, but his genius is working the thousand pistons which are plying in the rivers or on the bosom of the great deep. So with the yet rarer and stranger genius of philosophers and of poets. The blind bard, who on the Chian strand beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea,' still, after thousands of years, is listened to with reverence, and the soul of Homer is born again in every schoolboy who devours him. Plato, down the dark avenue of centuries, still speaks with a tone of authority, and his works, though seldom read at one time by more than twenty persons in the whole earth, 'yet,' says Emerson, for the sake of those few persons, they come duly down to us as if God brought them in his hand.' Shakspeare's dust is in Stratford; his genius is shaking the stages of the world. Scott lies helpless and solitary in Dryburgh; but his works have wings, and where the spot so secret, or the isle so insulated, which they have not visited? To attempt to pourtray the joys its possessors feel were a presumptuous task. But who has not felt the pleasures it imparts-the rapture into which it sometimes elevates-the self-possession into which it sometimes calms-the sublime sorrow, not to be exchanged for a millenium of common delights, into which it often melts-the mirth into which it sometimes kindles? Or if you would see the pleasures of genius, as felt in their most ecstatic form, see Burns striding along the banks of the Nith composing Tam o' Shanter, or rather that poem coming upon him, the tears of joy coursing down his cheeks, and every feature and every tone testifying to the truth of the inspiration; or if you would see them in all their pensive grandeur, behold the same poet in the cold September barn-yard, on the eve commemorative of that on which his 'Mary from his soul was torn,' when from the stack-side he eyed the planet which shone above him like another moon, and poured out his impassioned song 'To Mary in Heaven.' One such example is worth a thousand abstract assertions.

We shall, in our succeeding number, endeavour to refute some of the slanders that have been heaped on genius, and also discuss shortly its duties and responsibilities.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

JOSEPH ADDISON was born at Milston, Wilts, on the 1st of May, 1672. His father was Dr Launcelot Addison, a clergyman of the Church of England of some celebrity, and who had been remarkable for his attachment to the exiled family of the Stuarts. Of Joseph's childhood little is known. He got the rudiments of his education at the schools of Salisbury and Lichfield, and was then sent to the Charter House, where he first became acquainted with Mr, afterwards Sir Richard Steele. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks, do not correspond with the gentleness of his character in riper years. There is one tradition that he was a leader in a barringout; and another, that he ran away from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a

hollow tree, till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. However, we have abundant proof that, whatever his pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit for the university, but carried hither a classical taste and a stock of learning which would have done honour to a master of arts. He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but he had not been many months there, when, through the kindness of Dr Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College, who had been most favourably impressed with some of his Latin verses, he obtained admittance to that institution, then generally reckoned the wealthiest in Europe.

At Magdalene, Addison resided for ten years. He was at first one of those scholars who are called demies; but subsequently he was elected a fellow. His college is still proud of his name; his portrait still hangs in the hall; and strangers are still told that his favourite walk was under the elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. His reputation for learning stood high, and in one department, the composition of Latin verses, his power and proficiency were truly astonishing. His Latin poems were greatly and justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, long before his name had ever been heard by the wits who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury-Lane theatre.

In his twenty-second year he ventured to appear before the public as a writer of English verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to Dryden, who, after many triumphs and many reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of that age. Dryden appears to have been much gratified by the young scholar's praise, and an interchange of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and certainly presented by Congreve to Charles Montagu, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the Commons. Addison next published a translation of part of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King William, complimenting his Majesty on one of his campaigns, and some other pieces, of certainly at the best but negative merit. They were, however, received with applause by the public.

Dryden was now engaged with his translation of Virgil, and obtained from Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In return for this and similar services, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation of the Eneid, complimented his young friend with great liberality, owning he felt afraid that his own performance would not sustain a comparison with the version of the fourth Georgic by the most ingenious Mr Addison of Oxford.' 'After his bees,' added Dryden, 'my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving.'

The time had now arrived when it was necessary for Addison to choose a profession. His father anxiously wished that he should adopt his own, and this he seems to have contemplated himself. Circumstances, however, changed his views. The revolution had altered the whole system of government. Before that event the press had been controlled by censors, and the Parliament had sat only two months in eight years; now the press was free, and Parliament met annually and sat long. At such a juncture, literary and oratorical talents were in great demand, and there was danger that a government which neglected such talents might be subverted by them. Wisely, then, did Montagu and Somers, the Whig leaders, seek to attach such talents to their party by the strongest ties both of interest and gratitude, and amongst other men of high promise, they sought to enlist Addison into their ranks; and they were successful.

It was in the year 1669, when he had just completed his twenty-seventh year, that his course of life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs of the ministry were kindly disposed towards him; and he already was, what he continued through life, a firm though a moderate Whig. The wish of the young poet's great friends was to employ him in the service of the Crown abroad. But an intimate knowledge of French, which Addison did not