Her wheel at rest, the matron thrills no more
With treasured tales and legendary lore.
All, all are fled; nor mirth nor music flows
To chase the dreams of innocent repose.
All, all are fled! yet still I linger here!
What secret charms this silent spot endear!

2. Mark yon old mansion, frowning through the trees,
Whose hollow turret wooes the whistling breeze.
That casement arched with ivy's brownest shade,
First to these eyes the light of heaven conveyed.
The mouldering gateway strews the grass-grown court,
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport,
When nature pleased, for life itself was new,
And the heart promised what the fancy drew.

3.

4.

5.

Childhood's loved group revisits every scene, The tangled wood-walk and the tufted green! Indulgent Memory wakes, and lo, they live! Clothed with far softer hues than Light can give; Thou first, best friend that Heaven assigns below To soothe and sweeten all the cares we know; Whose glad suggestions still each vain alarm, When nature fades and life forgets to charm ; Thee would the Muse invoke!-to thee belong The sage's precept and the poet's song.

What softened views thy magic glass reveals,
When o'er the landscape Time's meek twilight steals!
As when in ocean sinks the orb of day,

Long on the wave reflected lustres play;
Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned,
Glance on the darkened mirror of the mind.

The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses gray, Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay;

Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn,
Quickening my truant feet across the lawn;
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air,
When the slow dial gave a pause to care.

Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear,
Some little friendship formed and cherished here,
And not the lightest leaf, but trembling teems
With golden visions and romantic dreams!

66

Hazlitt called Rogers " a very lady-like poet," but Lord Jeffrey, the great Edinburgh critic, speaks of the banker's verses in a kindlier spirit. 'They do not indeed stir the spirits like the strong lines of Byron," he says, "nor make our hearts dance within us like the inspiring strains of Scott; but they come over us with a bewitching softness that, in certain moods, is still more delightful, and soothe the troubled spirits with a refreshing sense of truth, purity, and elegance." Some of Rogers's most animated lines are found in his poem entitled Italy, where he narrates a legend of one of the Orsini palaces, concerning the mysterious. disappearance and death, on her wedding-day, of a beautiful girl whose name was

III.-Ginevra.

1. She was an only child; from infancy
The joy, the pride of an indulgent sire.
Her mother dying of the gift she gave,
That precious gift, what else remained to him?
The young Ginevra was his all in life,
Still as she grew, forever in his sight;
And in her fifteenth year became a bride,
Marrying an only son, Francesco Doria,

Her playmate from her birth, and her first love.

2. Just as she looks there in her bridal dress, She was all gentleness, all gayety,

Her pranks the favorite theme of every tongue. But now the day was come, the day, the hour; Now, frowning, smiling, for the hundredth time, The nurse, that ancient lady, preached decorum ; And, in the lustre of her youth, she gave

Her hand, with her heart in it, to Francesco.

3. Great was the joy; but at the bridal feast, When all sat down, the bride was wanting there. Nor was she to be found! Her father cried, ""Tis but to make a trial of our love!"

4.

And filled his glass to all; but his hand shook,
And soon from guest to guest the panic spread.
'Twas but that instant she had left Francesco,
Laughing, and looking back, and flying still,
Her ivory tooth imprinted on his finger.
But now, alas! she was not to be found;
Nor from that hour could anything be guessed
But that she was not!

Weary of his life,
Francesco flew to Venice, and forthwith
Flung it away in battle with the Turk.
Orsini lived; and long might'st thou have seen
An old man wandering as in quest of something,
Something he could not find-he knew not what.
When he was gone, the house remained awhile
Silent and tenantless,-then went to strangers.

5. Full fifty years were past, and all forgot,
When on an idle day, a day of search
'Mid the old lumber in the gallery,

That mouldering chest was noticed; and 'twas said
By one as young, as thoughtless as Ginevra,
"Why not remove it from its lurking-place?"
'Twas done as soon as said; but on the way

It burst, it fell; and lo, a skeleton,

6.

With here and there a pearl, an emerald stone,
A golden clasp, clasping a shred of gold!
All else had perished-save a nuptial ring,
And a small seal, her mother's legacy,

Engraven with a name, the name of both,
"Ginevra."

There then had she found a grave!
Within that chest had she concealed herself,
Fluttering with joy, the happiest of the happy;
When a spring-lock, that lay in ambush there,
Fastened her down forever!

There are several traditional stories of the same character as the foregoing, one of which, by Thomas Haynes Bayley, is the song entitled The Mistletoe Bough.

CHAPTER XXVIII.-MISCELLANEOUS.-JEAN PAUL RICHTER.

[Jean Paul Richter, popularly known as JEAN PAUL, a German author, born in 1763, died in 1825. His voluminous writings abound in a bewildering variety of playful, witty, pathetic, childlike, and sublime thoughts, and are pervaded by a high moral tone. The celebrated British author and German scholar, Thomas Carlyle, characterizes Jean Paul in the following manner:-]

I.-Richter and his Writings.

1. Richter has been called an intellectual Colossus; and in truth it is still somewhat in this light that we view him. His faculties are all of gigantic mould; cumbrous, awkward in their movements; large and splendid rather than harmonious and beautiful; yet joined in living union, and of force and compass altogether extraordinary.

2. He has an intellect vehement, rugged, irresistible; crushing in pieces the hardest problems; piercing into the

most hidden combinations of things, and grasping the most distant; an imagination vague, sombre, splendid, or appalling; brooding over the abysses of Being; wandering through Infinitude, and summoning before us, in its dim religious light, shapes of brilliancy, solemnity, or terror; a fancy of exuberance literally unexampled; for it pours its treasures with a lavishness which knows no limit, hanging, like the sun, a jewel on every grass-blade, and sowing the earth at large with orient pearl.

3. Of writings which, though with many reservations, we have praised so much, our hesitating readers may demand some specimen. To unbelievers, unhappily, we have none of a convincing sort to give. Ask us not to represent the Peruvian forests by three twigs plucked from them; or the cataracts of the Nile by a handful of its water! To those, meanwhile, who will look on twigs as mere dissevered things, and a handful of water as only so many drops, we present the following. It is a summer Sunday night; Jean Paul is taking leave of the Hukelum Parson and his wife; like him we have long laughed at them or wept for them; like him, also, we are sad to part from them.

II.-Sunday Night.—A Revery.

1. We were all of us too deeply moved. We at last tore ourselves asunder from repeated embraces; my friend retired with the soul whom he loves. I remained behind, alone with the Night.

2. And I walked without aim through woods, through valleys, and over brooks, and through sleeping villages, to enjoy the great Night, like a Day. I walked, and still looked, like the magnet, to the region of midnight, to strengthen my heart at the gleaming twilight, at this upstretched aurora of a morning beneath our feet. White night-butterflies flitted, white blossoms fluttered, white stars fell, and the white snow-powder hung silvery in the