wide round of British literature that so faithfully describes the mood which, regularly as the evening came, and after I had buried myself in the thick woods, or reached some bosky recess of the river bank, used to come stealing over me, and in which I have felt my heart and intellect as thoroughly in keeping with the scene and hour as the still woodland pool beside me, whose surface reflected in the calm every tree and rock that rose around it, and every hue of the heavens above. And yet the mood, though sweet, was also, as the poet expresses it, a pensive one: it was steeped in the happy melancholy sung so truthfully by an elder bard, who also must have entered deeply into the feeling. "When I goe musing all alone, Thinking of divers things foreknowne-- When I builde castles in the air, Voide of sorrow and voide of care, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet-- Methinks the time runs very fleet; All my joyes to this are follie;-- None soe sweet as melanchollie. "When to myself I sit and smile, With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brook side or wood soe green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, A thousand pleasures doe me blesse, And crowne my soul with happiness All my joyes to this are follie;-- None soe sweet as melanchollie." When I remember how my happiness was enhanced by every little bird that burst out into sudden song among the trees, and then as suddenly became silent, or by every bright-scaled fish that went darting through the topaz-coloured depths of the water, or rose for a moment over its calm surface--how the blue sheets of hyacinths that carpeted the openings in the wood delighted me, and every golden-tinted cloud that gleamed over the setting sun, and threw its bright flush on the river, seemed to inform the heart of a heaven beyond--I marvel, in looking over the scraps of verse produced at the time, to find how little of the sentiment in which I so luxuriated, or of the nature which I so enjoyed, found their way into them. But what Wordsworth well terms "the accomplishment of verse," given to but few, is as distinct from the poetic faculty vouchsafed to many, as the ability of relishing exquisite music is distinct from the power of producing it. Nay, there are cases in which the "faculty" may be very high, and yet the "accomplishment" comparatively low, or altogether wanting. I have been told by the late Dr. Chalmers, whose Astronomical Discourses form one of the finest philosophical poems in any language, that he never succeeded in achieving a readable stanza; and Dr. Thomas Brown, whose metaphysics glow with poetry, might, though he produced whole volumes of verse, have said nearly the same thing of himself. But, like the Metaphysician, who would scarce have published his verses unless he had thought them good ones, my rhymes pleased me at this period, and for some time after,