"How canst thou resist the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votaries yields-- The warbling woodland--the resounding shore-- The pomp of groves--and garniture of fields-- Oh, how canst thou resist, and hope to be forgiven!" But who can or does resist? Not even the robber Moor, who soliloquises so poetically the setting sun. Not "The swain who, journeying homeward from A day's long labour, feels The form of beauty smiling on his soul." Poetry is spread as widely through the human heart as is electricity through all the works of nature. Man can no more help being poetical, than he can new-model his frame. But what is the love--the passion of poetry--but enthusiasm--enthusiasm which converts everything it looks upon into beauty and sublimity? The man is born desert and lonely: and is there no beauty in solitude--no grandeur in expansion? The mountains are highland, wild, heathy, and tempest-beaten: and is there no sublimity in their cliffs, their scarred fronts, and scarred sides? The landscape is covered with wood, or there is at least a pleasing alternation of forest and glade, of peopled levels and wooded hills: and does not the soul nestle softly and lovingly amidst these pleasing varieties? But you are making faces, and there is something like an incipient yawn beginning to travel over your beauteous lips, my dearest madam. Well, I'll have done with advising you to wed the "spirit of poetry," if you wish to be completely happy. You need not write poems, ma'am--that is not necessary; Livy never wrote poetry, and yet he is every inch a poet. Robertson never wrote verse, and yet he is essentially poetical. Witness Mexico and Montezuma. "Am I lying on a bed of roses?"--There, for example, is me _now_--ay, just me--I am every inch a poet! and yet, with the exception of a few things which need not be excepted, I never wrote any poetry:--yet I see you want a story, and you say, am I not reading "The Tales of the Borders, and of Scotland?"--I cry you mercy, and shall give you the results of my enthusiasm.