But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blowr Through verdurous blooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalméd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a muséd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain,-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hillside; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:-do I wake, or sleep?

PERMANENCE OF BEAUTY1

A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness, but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore on every morrow are we wreathing

1 The Opening of Endymion.

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarken'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils,
With the green world they live in; and clear rills,
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such, too, is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,

Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

SATURN AND THEA,1

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin sand large footmarks went
No further than to where his feet had strayed,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;
While his bowed head seemed listening to the earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seemed no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one, who with a kindred hand
Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low

1 What easy, finished, statuesque beauty picture of Saturn and Thea!"-CHAMBERS'S and classic expression are displayed in this Cyc. Eng. Lit.

With reverence, though to one who knew it not.
She was a goddess of the infant world;

By her in stature the tall Amazon

Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en Achilles by the hair, and bent his neck,

Or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel.

Her face was large as that of Memphian sphynx,
Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,

When sages looked to Egypt for their lore.
But, oh, how unlike marble was that face!
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self!
There was a listening fear in her regard,
As if calamity had but begun;

As if the vanward clouds of evil days
Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear
Was, with its stored thunder, laboring up.
One hand she pressed upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain;
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear

Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenor and deep organ tone;

Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in these like accents,-oh, how frail,
To that large utterance of the early gods!-
"Saturn, look up! though wherefore, poor old king?
I have no comfort for thee, no, not one:

I cannot say, 'Oh, wherefore sleepest thou?'
For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth

Knows thee not thus afflicted for a god;
And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre passed, and all the air
Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O moments big as years!
All, as ye pass, swell out the monstrous truth,
And press it so upon our weary griefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn, sleep on! Oh, thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep.”

As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charméd by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave;
So came these words and went.

VICESIMUS KNOX, 1752–1821.

VICESIMUS KNOX, son of the Rev. Vicesimus Knox, was born on the 8th of December, 1752. After completing the usual course of preparatory study, he entered St. John's College, Oxford. While here, and before he took his bachelor's degree, he wrote and published anonymously many of those Essays which have chiefly contributed to his fame. They were very much admired, and a second edition was soon called for, which was greatly enlarged and to which he prefixed his name, under the title of Essays, Moral and Literary. These essays are written in a forcible and elegant style, formed on the purest classical models, and contain very valuable directions for the cultivation of the understanding, and the conduct of life; and what recommends them still more is the rich fund of classical and miscellaneous entertainment they afford.1

From college, after having regularly taken the degrees of bachelor and master of arts, Mr. Knox was elected, in 1778, to succeed his father as headmaster of Tunbridge School. He held this post of honor and usefulness for thirty-three years, or till 1811, when he in turn was succeeded by his son. His next publication was a work entitled Liberal Education, or a Practical Treatise on the Methods of acquiring Useful and Polite Learning. This was well received, was soon republished in our country, and was translated into the French. In 1788 he published a series of miscellaneous papers, under the title of Winter Evenings, which, though not equal, on the whole, to the Essays, abound in fine writing and excellent moral instruction. After The Winter Evenings appeared Letters to a Young Nobleman; Christian Philosophy, in two vols.; Considerations on the Lord's Supper, in one vol.; and a pamphlet On the National Importance of Classical Education. He also published, for the use of his school, expurgated editions of Horace and Juvenal, and that series of selections from the works of the best English authors, well known as Elegant Extracts and Elegant Epistles. After a life of great usefulness and industry, he died at Tunbridge, on the 6th of September, 1821. His literary reputation was deservedly great; but, what is still better, his whole character was a model of Christian virtue, and all his works are calculated to improve the heart as well as inform the mind.

ON THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS.

I am not in the number of those politicians who estimate national good merely by extent of territory, richness of revenue, and commercial importance. I rather think that pure religion, good morals, fine taste, solid literature, and all those things which, while they contribute to elevate human nature, contribute

1 Few publications have been more popular, and more deservedly so, than these instructive Essays, which have passed through Exteen editions. The subjects on which Dr. Knox has expatiated in these volumes are Bumerous and well chosen, and they uniformly possess a direct tendency either to improve the head or amend the heart. To per

sons of every description, but especially to young persons, the essays of our author are invaluable: their first praise is, that they recommend, in a most fascinating manner, all that is good and great; and, secondly, they are in a high degree calculated to form the taste and excite a spirit of literary enthusiasm."-DRAKE'S Essays, vol. v. 365.

also to render private life dignified and comfortable, constitute that true national good to which politics, war, and commerce are but subordinate and instrumental. Indeed, one cannot always say so much in their praise; for, after all the noise which they make in the world, they are often injurious to every thing for which society appears, in the eye of reason, to have been originally instituted.

Under this conviction, I cannot help thinking that such writers as an Addison and a Steele have caused a greater degree of national good than a Marlborough and a Walpole. They have successfully recommended such qualities as adorn human nature, and such as tend also, in their direct consequences, to give grandeur and stability to empire. For, in truth, it is personal merit and private virtue which can alone preserve a free country in a prosperous state and indeed render its prosperity desirable. How are men really the better for national prosperity when, as a nation grows rich, its morals are corrupted, mutual confidence lost, and debauchery and excess of all kinds pursued with such general and unceasing ardor as seduces the mind to a state of abject slavery and impotence? If I am born in a country where my mind and body are almost sure to be corrupted by the influence of universal example, and my soul deadened in all its nobler energies, what avails it that the country extends its dominion beyond the Atlantic and the Ganges? It had been better for me that I had not been born, than born in such a country.

Moralists, therefore, who have the art to convey their instruction successfully, are the most valuable patriots and the truest benefactors to their country. And among these I place in the highest rank, because of the more extensive diffusion of their labors, the successful writers of periodical lucubrations.

Among these, the Tatler is the first in the order of time who will claim attention. For those which preceded were entirely political and controversial, and soon sunk into oblivion when the violence of party which produced them had subsided. But the general purpose of the Tatler, as Steele himself declares, was to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and ostentation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, discourse, and behavior.

The general state of conversation and of literary improvement among those who called themselves gentlemen, at the time in which the Tatler was written, was low and contemptible. The men who, from their rank, fortune, and appearance, claimed the title of gentlemen, affected a contempt for learning, and seemed to consider ignorance as a mark of gentility. The Tatler gradually opened their understandings, and furnished matter for improving conversation.