numbered with "The Prophets Old." Though thy head is silvered, Time clothes himself in gray when his topmost deeds of wisest strength are to be done, and, in the language of another daring Singer, to whom, like this Robin, our new world has given birth, we would address thee on this dreadful pause betwixt Sublimity and Death:

"Then let the sunset fall and flush Life's Dial!
No matter how the years may smite my frame,
And cast a piteous blank upon my eyes
That seek in vain the old, accustomed stars,
Which skies hold over blue Winandermere,
Be sure that I a crownéd Bard will sing,
Until within the murmuring barque of verse
My Spirit bears majestically away,
Charming to golden hues the gulf of death-
Well knowing that upon my honored grave,
Beside the widowed lakes that wail for me,
Haply the dust of four great worlds will fall
And mingle-thither brought by Pilgrim's feet."

Byron stands in singular contrast with Wordsworth. Of Wordsworth's calm, slumberous, Oceanic mind, Earth is populous with Similitudes; but of Byron our Mother furnishes no Anti-type. We know of no sentient natural thing upon her broad placid bosom which symbolizes him—and unless we adopt the old Greek Fancy, and embody the distortions of Human action and passion in scenes like those in which

the half horsy people, Centaurs hight, Fought with the bloudie Lapithies at bord,"

we are utterly at a loss to conceive how he is to be illustrated. We might create some monstrous cross of the dull, filthy, ravin-hearted Vulture upon the beamy, bounding Lark, and thereby make a tame "similitude" of him to the apprehension of the shadow-substanced Citizens of "Faery"! But to the Common World Wordsworth has quietly and fitly designated his hybrid entity, when he says:

We cannot dwell longer in the atmosphere of Him who tortured music through his whole dissonant volcanic life into singing-that

"Our life is a false nature-'tis not in

The harmony of things-this hard decree,

This uneradicable taint of sin

This boundless Upas," &c.

We do not recognize him among "God's Prophets," who eternally cant of

"The immedicable soul with heart-aches ever new."

There is an equal difficulty in finding any distinct Antitype of Coleridge—though not for the same cause. His mag. nificent Genius hangs upon the Times like some clouded mystic Fantasy.

"Up from the lake a shape of golden dew,
Between two rocks athwart the rising moon,
Dances i'the wind where eagle never flew."

Though there is a Bird-as yet unknown and unclassified of Naturalists-we heard of, and saw a single specimen of, in Mexico, which fully expresses him. It is of a very splen did plumage and most miraculous powers of song, and the superstitious natives hold it in great veneration. It haunts the deep groves about the old Catholic Missions, and they say is often heard to imitate from its hidden coverts the strains and voices of the Nuns singing their Aves to the Virgin. We heard it singing one night, and shall never forget the wild unearthly mellowness of that song

can alone stand as Anti-type of the weird melodist of Chris tabel and the Ancient Mariner.

The same difficulty presents itself with regard to the gorgeous metaphysical Genius of Old Spenser. We shall have to find his Anti-type in that peopled realm of majestic shadows where he lived. We see

"A Bird all white, well feathered on each wing,
Hereout up to the throne of God did flie,
And all the way most pleasaunt notes did sing,
Whilst in the smoak she unto heaven did stie."

And are we not satisfied-filled to the fulness of repletion -with the beauty of the "Similitude ?" But we have already sufficiently extended our recreations in this sunny latitude of charming thought. There are very many Similitudes of equal appropriateness and loveliness which present themselves. These are the chiefest. As for the smaller flock, we will only say in the quaint simile of Spenser:

"The Nightingale is Sovereigne of song:

Before him sits the titmouse, silent bee."

Here we dismiss this, to us, inexpressibly delightful theme.

"So let it glide, like a bright-footed dream,
Out of the chambers of our daily life!"

CHAPTER VIII.

DROLLERIES OF THE WOODS.

THE BLUE JAY.

JAY! Jay! Jay! Hilloa!-What's to pay? What shrill clamor breaks upon the silence of the dark woods, like a watchman's rattle, sudden on the midnight—Jay! Ja-a-a-ay ! in prolonged and angry shriek answers the alarm, from a thicket near at hand. Jay! sharp and shrill, takes up the cry yet from the distance, until far and wide the woods reecho with the clang of the gathering guardians of the wild!

The intruder stands mute in astonishment, at this unlookedfor outbreak. They come! they come! They gather yet more fiercely about him. See there! a saucy fellow has descended, limb by limb, a tree close by, screaming yet louder as he comes more near, with crest erect, spread tail, and sharp, fierce eyes, and with snapping beak, seems ready to devour the unoffending stranger in his wrath. With many an antic pirouette, it peers into his face, and turning to its noisy fellows, now gathered close behind to back its valorous charge, shrieks the report of its inquisition, to urge their tardy courage on.

"What ho! my friends, am I a robber or a thief!" the bewildered hunter may remonstrate. But the answer is in yet fiercer cries, until they dance above his head in a fantastic ecstasy of fierceness, and yell their deafening gibes and taunts into his ears. Patience has bounds: one shot

into their midst-ha! ha!-what a scurrying! Silence instantaneous, and how profound!

Whither have the brave and clamorous champions of the old wood fled? Gone! gone!-not a blue coat or a braggart top-knot to be seen-ah me! It is a deceitful world, and valor is a most deceitful virtue.

The Blue Jay is the very Falstaff of heroes, and Jack was never more ready-aye faith, than Jay-to fight nine knights in Buckram-green, and with his dinted sword to make loud boasts thereof. But our knave has fun in him as well; therefore we can afford him seeming pardon, for never Merry Andrew took a kick so well. It almost seems a sin to be so serious with him, and yet the fellow has enough of ugly mischief in him too. His long list of accomplishments, beginning at braggart and poltroon, may most properly be wound up with dandy and thief. He is that very Prince of dandies that, in olden times, was generally called Popinjay, and which has been modernized into Grammont, Brummel, or D'Orsay. He is certainly the most felicitous specimen of the exquisite that ever wore plumes, whether borrowed or not. The natural inference would be, that they were borrowed from his inveterate propensity for pilfering from his neighbors, but that the beauty of the plumage which really belongs to him, relieves him from the imputation of any such necessity.

See him, of a fine Spring morning, in love-making time! -and oh! ye comely gallants, ye swash-buckler knights, that haunt about the environs of gay Dan Cupid's court, away with your swelling airs, you fanfaronade of mincing courtesies, and dainty terms-ye are all eclipsed-away! The transcendent graces of yon blue-plumed Euphuist of the acorn tree, doth so utterly surpass ye all, that your diminished heads were best hidden now, in very shame. See him raise up and down upon the mossy limb, his gay crest bent in quick and frequent salutation, while a rich, round, thril ling love-note, rolls liquidly from off his honeyed tongue.