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, Whose friends, like Autumn leaves by tempests whirl'd, While Care, as yet, withheld her venom'd tooth: Recall one scene, so much beloved to view, As those, when youth her garland twined for you? 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 language 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 Whose childhood, spreading its light azure wing, When all was fresh, and joy without a thorn: SONNET. A SECOND AND GREATER SPRING. Our spring of life! How sweet, how passing sweet, My brother! And since, for many a year, Thy course arresting in its bright career, Where pain and grief shall know no second birth, |