Of their own parent spring;-and others too
Of foreign birth, the cultured garden's joy,
Planted by that old shepherd in his mirth,
Here smile like strangers in a novel scene.
Lo! a tall rose-tree with its clustering bloom,
Brightening the mossy wall on which it leans
Its arching beauty, to my gladsome heart
Seems, with its smiles of lonely loveliness,
Like some fair virgin at the humble door
Of her dear mountain-cot, standing to greet
The way-bewildered traveller.

But my soul

Long pleased to linger by this silent cave,
Nursing its wild and playful fantasies,
Pants for a loftier pleasure, and forsakes,
Though surely with no cold ingratitude,

The flowers and verdure round the sparkling well.
A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,
And it must be obey'd: Yon ledge of rocks,
Like a wild staircase over Hardknot's brow,
Is ready for my footsteps, and even now,
Wastwater blackens far beneath my feet,
She the storm-loving Lake.

Sweet Fount !-Farewell!

IHE PASI.

How wild and dim this Life appears!

One long, deep, heavy sigh!

When o'er our eyes, half-closed in tears,

The images of former years

Are faintly glimmering by!

And still forgotten while they go,

As on the sea-beach wave on wave

Dissolves at once in snow.

Upon the blue and silent sky

The amber-clouds one moment lie,
And like a dream are gone!

Though beautiful the moon-beams play,
On the lake's bosom bright as they,
And the soul intensely loves their stay,
Soon as the radiance melts away
We scarce believe it shone !

Heaven-airs amid the harp-strings dwell,
And we wish they ne'er may fade-
They cease and the soul is a silent cell,
Where music never played.

Dream follows dream through the long night-hours,

Each lovelier than the last—

But ere the breath of morning flowers,

That gorgeous world flies past.

And many a sweet angelic cheek,

Whose smiles of love and kindness speak,

Glides by us on this earth

While in a day we cannot tell

Where shone the face we loved so well

In sadness or in mirth.

TO A SLEEPING CHILD.

ART thou a thing of mortal birth,
Whose happy home is on our earth?
Does human blood with life embue,
Those wandering veins of heavenly blue,
That stray along thy forehead fair,
Lost 'mid a gleam of golden hair?
Oh! can that light and airy breath
Steal from a being doomed to death;
Those features to the grave be sent
In sleep thus mutely eloquent;

Or, art thou, what thy form would seem,
The phantom of a blessed dream?

A human shape I feel thou art,

I feel it at my beating heart,

Those tremors both of soul and sense
Awoke by infant innocence!

Though dear the forms by fancy wove,
We love them with a transient love;
Thoughts from the living world intrude
Even on her deepest solitude:
But, lovely child! thy magic stole
At once into my inmost soul,
With feelings as thy beauty fair,
And left no other vision there.

To me thy parents are unknown;
Glad would they be their child to own!
And well they must have loved before,
If since thy birth they loved not more.
Thou art a branch of noble stem,
And seeing thee I figure them.
What many a childless one would give,
If thou in their still home wouldst live!
Though in thy face no family-line
Might sweetly say, "This babe is mine!"
In time thou wouldst become the same
As their own child,-all but the name!

WILLIAM EDMONDSTONE AYTOUN.

PROF. AYTOUN, editor of "Blackwood's Magazine," and author of "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," is a member of the Edinburgh bar, but has never, we believe, devoted himself to any extent to the severer duties of his profession. Some five or six years ago he succeeded Mr. Moir as professor of literature and belles-lettres in the University of Edinburgh, where his lectures-full of pith, energy, and distinguished by fine literary taste-are in great vogue. Professor Aytoun has been for some years one of the chief contributors to "Blackwood's Magazine," and few numbers appear from which his hand is absent. At the time of the railway mania, he flung off a series of papers-the first entitled, "How we got up the Glen Mutchkin Railway," descriptive of the doings in the Capel Court of Edinburgh and Glasgow-papers which, for broad, vigorous humor, and felicitous setting forth of genuine Scottish character, are almost unrivalled. Under the nom de guerre of Augustus Dunshunner, then first adopted-the professor frequently contributes pieces of off-hand criticism on books and men to "Blackwood," taking especial delight in showing up what he conceives to be the weak points of the Manchester school; and humorous though the general tone of the papers be, hesitates not to dash headlong at piles of statistics intended to prop up the fallen causes of protection. Mr. Aytoun's politics, as may be inferred from his sole work, published in independent form, the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," are high tory, or rather they amount to a sort of poetic and theoretical Jacobitism.