of her outward bound voyage, sailing over the quiet sea in a lovely moonlight evening, and the two lovers musing and conversing on the deck. There are great raptures about the beau ty of the ship and the moon,-and pretty characters of the youth and the maiden in the same tone of ecstasy. Just as the sky is kindling with the summer dawn, and the freshness of morning rippling over the placid waters, the vessel strikes on a sunken rock, and goes down almost instantly. This catastrophe is described, we think, with great force and effect ;--allowance being always made for the peculiarities of the school to which the author belongs. He begins with a view of the ship just before the accident.

'Her giant-form

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
Majestically calm, would go

Mid the deep darkness white as snow!
But gently now the small waves glide
Like playful lambs o'er a mountain's side.

So stately her bearing, so proud her array,

The main she will traverse for ever and aye.

Many ports will exult at the gleam of her mast!

---Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour is her last.

Five hundred souls in one instant of dread

Are hurried o'er the deck;

And fast the miserable ship

Becomes a lifeless wreck.

Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock,

Her planks are torn asunder,

And down come her masts with a reeling shock,

And a hideous crash like thunder.

Her sails are draggled in the brine

That gladdened late the skies,

And her pendant that kiss'd the fair moonshine

Down many a fathom lies.

Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues

Gleam'd softly from below,

And flung a warm and sunny flush

O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow,

To the coral rocks are hurrying down

To sleep amid colours as bright as their own.
Oh! many a dream was in the ship

An hour before her death;

And sights of home with sighs disturb'd
The sleepers' long-drawn breath.
Instead of the murmur of the sea
The sailor heard the humming tree
Alive through all its leaves,

The

The hum of the spreading sycamore
That grows before his cottage-door,
And the swallow's song in the eaves.
His arms inclosed a blooming boy,
Who listen'd with tears of sorrow and joy
To the dangers his father had pass'd;
And his wife---by turns she wept and smiled,
As she look'd on the father of her child
Return'd to her heart at last.

---He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll,
And the rush of waters is in his soul.'
Now is the ocean's bosom bare,

Unbroken as the floating air;
The ship hath melted quite away,

p. 32--31.

Like a struggling dream at break of day.
No image meets my wandering eye

But the new-risen sun, and the sunny sky.

Though the night-shades are gone, yet a vapour
Bedims the waves so beautiful;

While a low and melancholy moan

Mourns for the glory that hath flown.' p. 36.

dull

The second canto begins with a very absurd expostulation to the Moon, for having let the good ship be lost after shining so sweetly upon it. Nothing but the singular infatuation which seems to be epidemic on the banks of Winander, could have led a man of Mr Wilson's abilities to write such lines as the following.

Oh vain belief most beauteous as thou art,
Thy heavenly visage hides a cruel heart.'

And a little after,

2

Wilt thou not then thy once-lov'd vessel miss, And wish her happy, now that she is gone? But then, sad moon! too late thy grief will be; Fair as thou art, thou can'st not move the sea. After this wild fit, however, has spent itself, we are conducted to a little sea-beat rock, where the unhappy lover finds himself stretched in horrible solitude; and where, in a sort of entranced slumber, he has a vision of a blissful land, over which he seems to wander with his beloved. On opening his eyes, he finds her actually leaning over him; and, by and by, the ship's pinnace comes floating alongside, with its oars and sails ready for immedi ate service. They embark with holy hope and confidence; and, at the close of evening, reach a shady and solitary shore, where they kneel down and return thanks to Providence.

The third canto is filled almost entirely with the description of this enchanted island, and of the blissful life which these lo

vers lived in its beautiful seclusion; and, certainly, a more glowing picture of Elysium has not often been brought before us, than is contained in these pages: such shades and flowers-and wooded steeps-and painted birds-and sunny bays and cascades --and dewy vales and thickets-and tufted lawns!--The following are but cold and tame citations.

• There, groves that bloom in endless spring
Are rustling to the radiant wing

Of birds, in various plumage bright
As rainbow-hues, or dawning light.
Soft-falling showers of blossoms fair
Float ever on the fragrant air,
Like showers of vernal snow,
And from the fruit-tree, spreading tall,
The richly ripen'd clusters fall
Oft as sea-breezes blow.

The sun and clouds alone possess

The joy of all that loveliness.

How silent lies each shelter'd bay!

No other visitors have they

To their shores of silvery sand,

Than the waves that, murmuring in their glee,

All hurrying in a joyful band

Come dancing from the sea.'

p. 75, 76.

Like fire, strange flowers around them flame,

Sweet, harmless fire, breathed from some magic urn,
The silky gossamer that may not burn,

Too wildly beautiful to bear a name.

And when the Ocean sends a breeze,

To wake the music sleeping in the trees,

Trees scarce they seem to be; for many a flower,
Radiant as dew, or ruby polish'd bright,
Glances on every spray, that bending light
Around the stem, in variegated bows,
Appear like some awakened fountain-shower,
That with the colours of the evening glows.
And towering o'er these beauteous woods,
Gigantic rocks were ever dimly seen,
Breaking with solen grey the tremulous green,
And frowning far in castellated pride;
While, hastening to the Ocean, hoary floods
Sent up a thin and radiant mist between,
Softening the beauty that it could not hide.
Lo! higher still the stately Palm-trees rise,
Checquering the clouds with their unbending stems,
And o'er the clouds amid the dark-blue skies,
1.ifting their rich unfading diadems.

p. 87, 88,

Feb

On the first Sabbath day, they take each other for husband and wife; and five or six years pass over, the reader does not well know how ;-and still we find them enraptured with their flowers and their birds, and their own prayers, songs, and me ditations. All at once a fairy child comes singing down a mountain, in a frock of peacock's feathers-and we find they have lovely daughter.

Sing on! Sing on! It is a lovely air.

Well could thy mother sing it when a maid
Yet strange it is in this wild Indian glade,
To list a tune that breathes of nothing there,
A tune that by his mountain springs,
Beside his slumbering lambkins fair,
The Cambrian shepherd sings.

Up yon steep hill's unbroken side,
Behold the little Fairy glide.

Though free her breath, untired her limb,
For through the air she seems to swim,
Yes oft she stops to look behind
On them below ;---till with the wind
She flies again, and on the hill-top far
Shines like the spirit of the evening star,
N lingers long as if a sight

Hof fear, half-wonder, urged her flight,
In rapid motion, winding still

To break the steepness of the hill,

With leaps, and springs, and outstretch'd arms
More graceful in her vain alarms,
The child outstrips the Ocean gale,
In haste to tell her wondrous tale.
Ho parents' joyful hearts admire,
Of peacock's plumes her glancing tire,
All bright with tiny suns,

And the gleamings of the feathery gold,
That play along each wavy fold

Of her mantle as she runs.

p. 113, 114, 115.

The blessed babe comes to tell of a strange sight she has seen on the sea; and her father soon discovers it to be a ship steering towards their shore.

"How beautiful upon the wave

"The vessel sails, who comes to save!

"Fitting it was that first she shone
"Before the wondering eyes of one,
"So beautiful as thou.

"See how before the wind she goes,

86

Scattering the waves like melting snows!
They cast their eyes around the isle :

39 &c.

But

But what a change is there!
For ever fled that lonely smile
That lay on earth and air,

That made its haunts so still and holy,
Almost for bliss too melancholy,
For life too wildly fair.

Gone--gone is all its loneliness,
And with it much of loveliness.
Into each deep glen's dark recess,
The day-shine pours like rain,
So strong and sudden is the light
Reflected from that wonder bright,
Now tilting o'er the Main.

Soon as the thundering cannon spoke,
The voice of the evening-gun,

The spell of the enchantment broke,

Like dew beneath the sun. p. 118, 119.

The fourth and last canto carries us back to England, and te the woes of the despairing mother, whose daughter had embarked so many years before, in that ill-fated ship, of which no tidings had ever reached her home. After pining in agony for years in her native Wales, she had been drawn by an irresistible impulse to take up her abode in the sea-port from which she had seen her beloved child depart, and to gaze daily on the devouring waters in which she believed her to be entombed The following lines we think are pathetic.

And now that seven long years are flown,
Though spent in anguish and alone,
How short the time appears!
She looks upon the billowy main,
And the parting-day returns again.
Each breaking wave she knows;
And when she listens to the tide,
Her child seems standing by her side;
So like the past it flows.

She starts to hear the city bell;

So toll'd it when they wept farewell!

She thinks the self-same smoke and cloud

The city domes and turrets shroud;
The same keen flash of ruddy fire
Is burning on the lofty spire;

The grove of masts is standing there

Unchanged, with all their ensigns fair;

The same, the stir, the tumult, and the hum,

As from the city to the shore they come. p. 157, 158.

As she is lingering one sunny day on the beach, a shout is raised for the approach of a long expected vessel; and multitudes

hurry