Circle me in their dance, and sing such songs As human ear ne'er heard!'"--But cease the strain, Lest Wisdom, and severer Truth, should chide. Next is a sketch of Steep Holms, introducing the following exquisite episode: Dreary; but on its steep There is one native flower--the Piony. She sits companionless, but yet not sad: She has no sister of the summer-field, That may rejoice with her when spring returns. None, that in sympathy, may bend its head, When the bleak winds blow hollow o'er the rock, In autumn's gloom!--So Virtue, a fair flow'r, Blooms on the rock of care, and though unseen, It smiles in cold seclusion, and remote From the world's flaunting fellowship, it wears Like hermit Piety, that smile of peace, In sickness, or in health, in joy or tears, In summer-days, or cold adversity; And still it feels Heav'n's breath, reviving, steal On its lone breast--feels the warm blessedness Of Heaven's own light about it, though its leaves Are wet with ev'ning tears! So smiles this flow'r: And if, perchance, my lay has dwelt too long. Upon one flower which blooms in privacy, I may a pardon find from human hearts, For such was my poor Mother![4] [4] Daughter of Dr. Grey, author of Memoria Technica, &c. rector of Hinton, Northamptonshire, and prebendary of St. Paul's. We pass over some marine sketches, which are worthy of the _Vernet_ of poets, a touching description of the sinking of a packet-boat, and the first sound and sight of the sea--the author's childhood at Uphill Parsonage--his reminiscences of the clock of Wells Cathedral--and some real villatic sketches--a portrait of a _Workhouse Girl_--some caustic remarks on prosing and prig parsons, commentators, and puritanical excrescences of sects--to some unaffected lines on the village school children of Castle-Combe, and their annual festival. This is so charming a picture of rural joy, that we must copy it:--