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is formed between the passions and vices of maturer life, and the calm and simple happiness of the springtime of our years; and, striving to forget the intermediate stages of guilt and folly, we fix our eyes with a deep yet melancholy delight on that portion of our being when the breath of Heaven seemed to blow around us with hope and rapture on its wings, and awakened in our youthful hearts the purest love of nature and of nature's God. We may, indeed, adopt the language of one whose peace of mind was unhappily altogether limited to the brief period of his childhood, and, addressing the aged of the earth, exclaim

Tell me, ye hoary few, who glide along,
The feeble Veterans of some former throng;

Whose friends, like Autumn leaves by tempests whirl'd,
Are swept for ever from this busy world;
Revolve the fleeting moments of your youth,

While Care, as yet, withheld her venom'd tooth:
Say, if Remembrance days like these endears,
Beyond the rapture of succeeding years?
Say, can Ambition's fever'd dream bestow
So sweet a balm, to soothe your hours of woe?
Can treasures, hoarded for some thankless son,
Can royal smiles, or wreaths by slaughter won,
Can stars, or ermine, man's maturer toys,
(For glittering baubles are not left to boys)

Recall one scene, so much beloved to view,

As those, when youth her garland twined for you?
Ah, no! amidst the gloomy calm of age,
You turn with faltering hand life's varied page,
Peruse the record of your days on earth,
Unsullied only where it marks your birth;
Still, lingering, pause above each chequer'd leaf,
And blot with tears the sable lines of grief;
Where Passion o'er the theme her mantle threw,
Or weeping Virtues sigh'd a faint adieu;
But bless the scroll which fairer words adorn,
Traced by the rosy finger of the Morn ;
When Friendship bow'd before the shrine of Truth,
And Love, without his pinions, smiled on Youth.

BYRON.

There is yet, to those who rest their hopes upon a better world, another consolation from the return of Spring, which he, alas! whose lines I have just now quoted, there is reason to be apprehensive never knew. For not only is the renewal of the year associated in their minds with the spring of life, when all was comparative purity and joy, but they are led by an analogy the most strict and satisfactory to look onwards to that changeless Spring which beams beyond the confines of mortality, to that resurrection of the body from the insensate mansions of the grave, which will not only restore us to the society of those whom best we loved on

earth, but will place us in the immediate presence of One in whom "there is no variableness nor shadow of turning," and who, on the renovation of our being, has assured to us an ever-during exemption from vicissitude and decay.

Such are a few of the many moral analogies which the return of spring is fitted to suggest to youth, and manhood, and old age; but should we pass beyond this field of similitude, various, and almost innumerable, are the associations which the mornings of this delightful season might usher to the mind; and among these, none, after due precedence has been given to topics of a weightier nature, can in these volumes more appropriately find a place than those which are blended with a cursory retrospection of the favourite studies of our juvenile days, and, by a further closely-connected analogy, with the infancy or day-spring of our country's literature, and the simple, but impressive and romantic features of former times.

It will be the business, therefore, of the following papers, after slightly touching on the first of these topics, as forming not unfrequently the very cast and colour of our subsequent literary career, to select from the ample stores of English history and

biography a picture illustrative of a portion of our days of yore, as well in a domestic as a public light; to offer a few critical remarks on three or four of the earliest and most eminent cultivators of our lan

guage and literature, as well as to bring forward one or two neglected poets who have, towards the close of the last century, endeavoured to recall the attention of the public to topics connected with our elder annals and poesy; in doing which, I shall gladly seize every opportunity which the subject will admit, for the introduction of short but, I trust, interesting sketches of the character, costume, and incidents of times long gone by, the youth and spring-tide, as it were, of our national existence.

I close this first number of my work with a metrical delineation of some of the sentiments and imagery which have already been given in the humbler garb of prose, merely adding, that the second of the following sonnets was suggested since the earlier part of this paper was written, by the unexpected and lamented death of a beloved brother.

SONNET.

REMINISCENCES OF SPRING.

Alas! for those whose life at opening morn
No type hath shown of Nature's smiling spring,

Whose childhood, spreading its light azure wing,
Hath felt rude blight, and droop'd at once forlorn!
For oh, how sweet, whilst vernal breezes borne
From bud and flower their gladsome odours fling,
Of early and of happy days to sing,

When all was fresh, and joy without a thorn:
And sweeter still, if mid life's closing hours,
When time hath turn'd our once dark tresses gray,
Loved children bloom around the parent bowers,
Laughing and blithe and innocently gay,
Eager to blend their buoyant thoughts with ours,
And chase the sorrows of the world away!

SONNET.

A SECOND AND GREATER SPRING.

Our spring of life! How sweet, how passing sweet,
Together did we spend that season dear,

My brother! And since, for many a year,
How seldom hath it been our chance to meet!
And now hath Death, insatiable and fleet,

Thy course arresting in its bright career,
Placed thee lamented on a timeless bier,
And seal'd our parting in this world complete!
Yet shall we meet again, I fondly trust,

Where pain and grief shall know no second birth,
To hail that greater spring which waits the just,
Mid friends beloved on this dim speck of earth,
And where, near streams that vital freshness give,
The pure in heart shall see their God and live!

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