"Seldom have the benign effects of the passion been more felicitously painted than in the 'Seasons of Love'; and what simple tenderness is contained in the ballad of 'We were boys together.' Every word in that beautiful melody comes home to the heart of him whose early days have been happy. God help those in whom this poem awakens no fond remembrances!--those whose memories it does not get wandering up the stream of life, toward its source; beholding at every step the sun smiling more brightly, the heavens assuming a deeper hue, the grass a fresher green, and the flowers a sweeter perfume. How wondrous are not its effects upon ourselves! The wrinkles have disappeared from our brow, and the years from our shoulder, and the marks of the branding-iron of experience from our heart; and again we are a careless child, gathering primroses, and chasing butterflies, and drinking spring-water from out the hollow of our hands. Around us are the hedges 'with golden gorse bright blossoming, as none blossom now-a-day.' We have heard of death, but we know not what it is; and the word CHANGE has no meaning for us; and summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest, has each its unutterable joys. Alas! we can never remain long in this happy dream-land. Nevertheless, we have profited greatly by the journey. The cowslips and violets gathered by us in childhood, shall be potent in the hour of temptation; and the cap of rushes woven for us by kind hands in days gone by, shall be a surer defence than a helmet of steel in the hour of battle. No, no; we will never disgrace our antecedents. "There is one quality in his songs to which we can not but direct attention--and this is their almost feminine purity. The propensities have had their laureates; and genius, alas! has often defiled its angel wings by contact with the sensual and the impure; but Morris has never attempted to robe vice in beauty; and as has been well remarked, his lays can bring to the cheek of purity no blush save that of pleasure." The following letter, from the pen of Grace Greenwood, is a lady's tribute to the genius of the poet:-- "I have read of late, with renewed pleasure and higher appreciation, the songs and ballads of our genial-hearted countryman, Morris. I had previously worried myself by a course of rather dry reading, and his poetry, tender, musical, fresh, and natural, came to me like spring's first sunshine, the song of her first birds, the breath of her first violets. "What a contrast is this pleasant volume to the soul-racking "Festus," which has been one of my recent passions. That remarkable work has passages of great beauty and power, linked in unnatural marriage with much that is poor and weak. It is like a stately ruined palace, 'Mingling its marble with the dust of Rome;'