In vain with love our bosoms glow, Can all our tears, can all our sighs, New lustre to those charms impart? Can cheeks, where living roses blow, Where nature spreads her richest dyes, Require the borrow’d gloss of art? Speak not of fate:--ah! change the theme, And talk of odours, talk of wine, Talk of the flowers that round us bloom:-- ’Tis all a cloud, ’tis all a dream: To love and joy thy thoughts confine, Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom. Beauty has such resistless power, That ev’n the chaste Egyptian dame Sigh’d for the blooming Hebrew boy; For her how fatal was the hour, When to the banks of Nilus came A youth so lovely and so coy! But ah, sweet maid! my counsel hear,-- (Youth shall attend when those advise Whom long experience renders sage) While music charms the ravish’d ear; While sparkling cups delight our eyes, Be gay; and scorn the frowns of age. What cruel answer have I heard! And yet, by heaven, I love thee still: Can aught be cruel from thy lip? Yet say, how fell that bitter word From lips which streams of sweetness fill, Which nought but drops of honey sip? Go boldly forth, my simple lay, Whose accents flow with artless ease, Like orient pearls at random strung: Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say; But O! far sweeter, if they please, The nymph for whom these notes are sung. * * * * * “OUR LIVES AND PROPERTIES.” BY MR. WILLIAM HUTTON, F. A. S. S. If we survey this little world, vast in our idea, but small compared to immensity, we shall find it crusted over with property, fixed and movable. Upon this crusty world subsist animals of various kinds; one of which, something short of six feet, moves erect, seems the only one without a tail, and takes the lead in the command of this property. Fond of power, and conscious that possessions give it, he is ever attempting, by force, fraud, or laudable means, to arrive at both. _Fixed_ property bears a value according to its situation; 10,000 acres in a place like London, and its environs, would be an immense fortune, such as no man ever possessed; while 10,000, in some parts of the globe, though well covered with timber, would not be worth a shilling--no king to govern, no subject to submit, no market to exhibit property, no property to exhibit; instead of striving to get possession, he would, if cast on the spot, strive to get away. Thus assemblages of people mark a place with value.