The mother of Sisera is represented listening for the "_wheels of his chariot_." Solomon, in his Song, compares the nose of his beloved to "a tower," which to us appears an eastern exaggeration. If he had said, that her stature was like that of a "tower's," it would have been as poetical as if he had compared her to a tree. "The virtuous Marcia _towers_ above her sex," is an instance of an artificial image to express a _moral_ superiority. But Solomon, it is probable, did not compare his beloved's nose to a "tower" on account of its length, but of its symmetry; and making allowance for eastern hyperbole, and the difficulty of finding a discreet image for a female nose in nature, it is perhaps as good a figure as any other. Art is _not_ inferior to nature for poetical purposes. What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the _art_ and artificial symmetry of their position and movements. A Highlander's plaid, a Mussulman's turban, and a Roman toga, are more poetical than the tattooed or untattooed buttocks of a New Sandwich savage, although they were described by William Wordsworth himself like the "idiot in his glory." I have seen as many mountains as most men, and more fleets than the generality of landsmen; and, to my mind, a large convoy with a few sail of the line to conduct them is as noble and as poetical a prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I prefer the "mast of some great ammiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch fir or the alpine tannen; and think that _more_ poetry _has been_ made out of it. In what does the infinite superiority of "Falconer's Shipwreck" over all other shipwrecks consist? In his admirable application of the terms of his art; in a poet-sailor's description of the sailor's fate. These _very terms_, by his application, make the strength and reality of his poem. Why? because he was a poet, and in the hands of a poet, _art_ will not be found less ornamental than nature. It is precisely in general nature, and in stepping out of his element, that Falconer fails; where he digresses to speak of ancient Greece, and "such branches of learning." In Dyer's Grongar Hill, upon which his fame rests, the very appearance of nature herself is moralised into an artificial image: "Thus is nature's _vesture_ wrought, To instruct our wandering thought; Thus she _dresses green and gay_, To disperse our cares away." And here also we have the telescope; the misuse of which, from Milton, has rendered Mr. Bowles so triumphant over Mr. Campbell:-- "So we mistake the future's face, Eyed through Hope's deluding _glass_." And here a word en passant to Mr. Campbell:-- "As yon summits, soft and fair Clad in colours of the air, Which to those who journey near Barren, brown, and rough appear, Still we tread the same coarse way-- The present's still a cloudy day." Is not this the original of the far-famed--