fallen. He was a mighty Prophet sitting on his grave, which gaped and took him in before the full burthen of his inspiration had been sung. Therefore should he be dealt with in charity, which forgiveth and hopeth much.

Every thorough student of Shelley smiles at his ravings against Religion, because he perceives that, simply, they are monomaniac. He had dwelt upon the fixed idea of its abuses, which he so keenly deplored until he had come to place them for the thing itself; while he had, in reality— calling it by another name to himself-taken more of its essence into his heart than many who have born a better name. That all his morality-apart from those vagaries with regard to social organization and perfectability which he, in common with Coleridge, Southey, and other bright and true souls, was misled by in early life-was of a Christian spirit, is perfectly transparent; though he was unconscious of this himself.

He was working his way up through clouds of error, made splendid by his genius, to the clearer atmosphere of Faithglimpses of which he had already been visited by through the rifts. Had he lived, we have no question, he would have mounted to a realization of Faith, and calmly settled with folded wings upon the "Rock of Ages.'

We see indications, towards the last, that he might have even reached the opposite extreme of high Conservatism in Christianity. Students who cannot get beyond the "notes to Queen Mab," in their appreciation of Shelley as a Man and a Poet, had better have had nothing to do with him. His works are dangerous play-things for children of any age!

But we have not room-in the repletion of a philosophic mood-to say all in this connection we should be glad to say about Shelley. This we intend to make a future occasion to do. We have seen that never were Bird and Poet so mated. Let but the impulse of some holy, even though miscalculated, purpose be presented-of some deed of loyal chivalry to Her he knew as Truth, come to him in the humble walks he chose, and

"The low-roosted lark

From its thatched pallet roused"

never sprang up on sublimer flights than did this Poet,

With all this flashing wonder of his far and graceful winging, yet is that shrill delight we hear-showering a rain of melody, while soaring he still sings the voice of our humanity, mellow and rich with old familiar tones. Still we are overcome, as by a summer cloud," with admiration of this most chaste and sacred enthusiasm, which seems to be mounting, on its own joy, to shake the earth-dews from its pinions off into their old fountains up to the sky!

Ah, what a charming symbol is it, of the wild, unconquerable might of Love! Though its cradle and its common home is on the base glebe, yet its exultations will not be weighed down and tamed-but must as well mount to gladden all above-linking, in "subtle silvery sweetness" the dust-trodden with the starry fields! Shelley most beauti fully characterizes that marvellous and indefinable sympathy between the Earth and the Human Poetry-which we have been endeavoring to illustrate-in one of the concluding stanzas to the Skylark!

"Better than all measures,

Of delighful sound;
Better than all treasures,

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground."

But, ah, wo is me! Weep now, Urania-thou eldest muse -for him! That harmony paused

We have not space for a further extension of these Similes. We will only glance at a few others. There is no English Bird which furnishes a good type of Keats—this Country affords, though, a perfect one in the Brown Thrush, or, as it was most beautifully, though technically termed, "Orpheus Rufus." It is inferior to the King of Song in the infinite variety, the triumphant energy and force of its minstrelsy. But we are constantly reminded of the poetry of Keats, in the deep liquid rush of its strains and the keen intense melody of each particular note. Like him, it is a plain, humble Bird, hiding in the low thickets, and only coming forth to sing. Then it mounts upon the topmost pinnacle of the highest tree, that all the world may know of it-for now it has forgotten its timid humility-all its heart is big with the melodious prophecy of sound. Its mood of worship is upon it, and what cares it, or knows, that a proud, cruel world lies at its feet, and that it is only mounting to where every shaft may reach it. Death and fear are no more to it now-it must sing-and forth goes the rapt hymn. It has become now

Wondrous, but coming unconscious, out of its own heart. Then, to we favored Human listeners,

"O blessed bird, the earth we pace

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, faery place,

That is fit home for thee."

It is one of those strange coincidences we have before no ticed that Keats, without ever having heard his Prototype,

should have yet produced the most exact and singularly minute characterization of its peculiar song

-My sense was filled

With that new blissful golden melody.

A living death was in each gush of sounds,
Each family of rapturous hurried notes
That fell, one after one, yet all at once,

Like pearl-beads dropping sudden from their string,
And then another, then another strain," &c.

The very collocation of the words themselves, produces upon the ear the effect of a remote resemblance. Alas, poor Keats! The savage Archers reached him on his airy perch, and cut short, forever, those miraculous strains. But though now he be "in his far Rome grave," among "the sleepers in the oblivious valley," yet must the echoes he has waked live in still reverberations musical, through all the enchanted caves of human thought. They are deathless, for in him

"Language was a perpetual Orphic song

Which ruled with Dædal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms."

But concerning Wordsworth

"Once have I marked thee happyest guest,

In all this covert of the blest.

Hail to THEE far above the rest

In joy of voice and pinion!

A life, a presence, like the air,

Scattering thy gladness without care,

Too blest with any one to pair;

Thyself thine own enjoyment!"

The poet thus furnishes us to hand an exquisite characterization of himself in the choir of this "covert of the Blest," through whose shades we thus tardily "linger listen. ing." But which shall be prototype to him?

"Art thou the Bird whom man loves best,
The pious Bird with the scarlet breast,
Our little English Robin?"

On the highways, in the by-ways, from the green lanes, the hedge-rows and the gardens, by the lintel near the hearthstone, summer in and winter out, under sunshine, under clouds, happy, calm and musical, ever—

"A life, a Presence like the air;"

over merry England and the world will Robin and the Poet go together,

"Scattering gladness without care."

But the "Little English Robin" does not furnish a sufficient Anti-type to the higher powers of song which distinguish Wordsworth, as well as these gentler graces. Our American Robin, which belongs to the Shaksperian family of "The Turdinæ," which includes the Mocking Bird and the Song Thrush, is, in a better sense, his Anti-type.

This Bird is as well a social familiar, and builds its woven nest upon the limb that leans nearest the homestead walls. Many a time have we seen it, about dusk, catch the fire-flies within ten feet of the door-sill-as if it swallowed the weird light to feed and go flashing through the tender magic of its vesper hymn! And ah! who-that has heard that vesper hymn, beneath the last golden pauses of the twilight, swell out as if it took the plaintive echo, of a saddened Human heart for key-note, and set it in gradations up through the soft notes of Hope to the shrilly clamors of a Joy set free, chastened by the memory of prison bars-will fail to understand how the American Robin is the true Anti-type of Wordsworth!

But with thee, venerable and most venerated melodist! "Sunset is on the dial," and soon we may expect thee to be