Spenser was, therefore, evidently quite alive to the value of property. If we look at what Doneraile is, a perfect paradise of glorious woods, we may imagine what Kilcolman would have been if, instead of being laid waste with fire and sword by the Irish kerns, and left to become a mere expanse of Irish rack-rent farms and potato grounds, it had been carefully planted, cultivated, and embellished, as the estate of the descendants of one of the proudest names of England. As it is, it stands one more lonely and scathed testimony to the evil fortunes of poets: "The poets who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays!" yet who, themselves, of all men, are still shown by a wise Providence to be "pilgrims and sojourners on the earth, having no abiding city" in it. Their souls have a heaven-aspiring tendency. They can not grasp the earth; it escapes from their hold, and they leave behind them, not castles and domains, but golden foot-prints, which, whoever follows, finds them ever and ever leading him upward to the immortal regions. "For a rich guerdon waits on minds that dare, If aught be in them of immortal seed, And reason governs that audacious flight Which heavenward they direct."--_Wordsworth._ In no situations do we so much as in such as these recall the truth uttered by the meditative poet just quoted: "High is our calling, friend! Creative art-- Whether the instrument of words she use. Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues, Demands the service of a mind and heart, Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part, Heroically fashioned--to infuse Faith in the whispers of the lonely muse, While the whole world seems adverse to desert. And oh! when nature sinks, as oft she may, Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress, Still to be strenuous for the bright reward, And in the soul admit of no decay, Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness-- Great is the glory, for the strife is hard." Let us, then, at this moment, rather endeavor to look at the happiness which Spenser enjoyed here for ten bright years, than at the melancholy _finale_. Here he worked busily and blissfully at his great poem. Forms of glory, of high valor and virtue, of female beauty and goodness, floated richly through his mind. The imperial Gloriana, the heavenly Una, "Whose angel face, As the great eye of Heaven, shinéd bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place;"