not to their mythology. Those of Gay are generally considered the most graphic and natural; the customs introduced being wholly English; yet even these are for the most part, mere travesties on Virgil. In his Spell, thus Hobnelia sings, while "using up" an apple:

I pare this pippin round and round again,
My shepherd's name to flourish on the plain.
I fling th' unbroken paring o'er my head,
Upon the grass a perfect L is read;
Yet on my heart a fairer L is seen
Than what the paring makes upon

the green.

With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around.

This pippin shall another trial make.
See, from the core two kernels brown I take;
This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn;
And Boobyclod on t'other side is borne.
But Boobyclod soon drops upon the ground,
A certain token that his love's unsound;
While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last ;-
Oh, were his lips to mine but joined so fast!

With my sharp heel I three times mark the ground,
And turn me thrice around, around, around.

That the ceremonies here described are not fictitious, but drawn from actual observation of the poet in his day, is evident from their being still in vogue. Not, however, are they confined to shepherds nowadays, but observed in the most refined society. At a large party of young folks, this winter, in the house of my friend L, at which it was my rare privilege to be present, not as a frolicksome guest forsooth, but, as besuited my years, as a quiet looker-on, the same manœuvres punctiliously gone through with, I witnessed, as above described; barring only the turning round on the heel. Indeed some other conjurations I saw that evening performed, by means of counting the seeds of a dissected apple and determining from their number, whether high or low, the impending happiness or misery of individuals of different sexes; all of which serves to to show that the natural poetry of the fruit is not utterly unfelt. But what a perversion of its promptings! what a misunderstanding of its meaning! How can the language of love and beauty be discovered in an apple after all its loveliness and beautifulness have been pared off and its fair proportions cut up into quarters! Verily

we are living in a country and, I fear, an age, given up to analysis and dissections. How few of us nowadays have any eyes for organisms or the rounded completenesss of a whole!

Far be it from me to say that the poetry of apples is now utterly unappreciated by any individual. Every true descriptive poet, in his private walks, feels its influence, even though he may have had no occasion to mention it in his public works. Who, for instance, would say that Cowper in his rambles was not touched by its sweet appeals from the trees, though he does not tell us this expressly in his poems? How, indeed, could he be otherwise than affected: steeped as he was in classic lore, and his very muse being nature?

Nature, in all the various shapes she wears,
Frowning in storms, or breathing gentle airs,
The snowy robe her wintry state assumes,
Her summer heats, her fruits, and her perfumes:
All, all alike transport the glowing bard,
Success in rhyme, his glory and reward.
O Nature! whose Elysian scenes disclose

His bright perfections, at whose word they rose,

Next to that power who formed thee, and sustains,
Be thou the great inspirer of my strains.

Thompson, too, was certainly under its influence, as, indeed, under that of all fruits:

Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves;

To where the lemon, and the piercing lime,

With the deep orange, glowing through the green,
Their lighter glories blend. Lay me reclined
Beneath the spreading tamarind that shakes,
Fann'd by the breeze, its fever-cooling-fruit.

Thus he sings in the heat of the summer. Let us hear him also in the Autumn:

Hence from the busy joy-resounding fields,

In cheerful error let us tread the maze
Of autumn, unconfined; and taste revived
The breath of orchard big with bending fruit.
Obedient to the breeze and beating ray,

From the deep-loaded bough, a mellow shower
Incessant melts away.

There is poetry for you, both ocular and nasal. I own that, on one occasion, he is represented as having been spied under circum

stances somewhat suspicious. Beneath a peach-tree, know he is described as having been seen, standing "more fat than bard beseems," with his hands thrown behind his back, being too lazy to lift them up, and his mouth elevated, and applied to the sunny side of a peach that was still attached to its bough; but, although other things are added, it has always struck me that, in all likelihood, he was doing nothing more than kissing it. Leigh Hunt, too, though unfamiliar with the country, yet, from reading classics, is passionately fond of apples, in a proper sense; and Tennyson, in his translations and paraphrases, alludes to them sometimes even more beautifully than the ancients.

In the earliest ages the practical and poetical were thoroughly interfused and blended. Then, works on theology, science, history, and even law were often written in verse. In the present stage of advanced letters, however, this is not the case. While the poetical has generally retained its garb of verse, the practical has gradually and appropriately assumed that of prose. My complaint is, however, that mankind also have divided themselves into two corresponding but most disproportionate classes; a few confining themselves nowadays to aesthetics, while the whole mass are taken up with merely what is useful. They do not remember that their intellectual and moral, as well as their physical parts must be fed. Pastorals are now defunct. Men and women are more pleased with excitement and bustle, than with quietude and repose. Hurled abroad in cars and steamboats, their object seems to be to arrive at the practical and productive as being the all essential. For aesthetics, or what is beautiful, or sublime, in nature and art, they have no eyes. For "the breezy call of incense-breathing morn," they have no noses. With artificial scents and savors of rich ragouts, they appear to be better pleased. Their sympathies are all on the side of edibles. Indeed, some noses, nowadays, of my acquaintance, have lost for etherials all relish whatever, and are no longer presented with such by their too indulgent owners. With the tangible and the titillating, are they rather served and delighted as contained in finely pulverized tobacco. How far short do such fall of the poets's olfactories, which are all awake to nature's breezes, and so finely strung that, touched with fragrance from abroad as with. music, they call up before his imagination ideal scenes more beautiful than those in Araby the blest.

ART. V. THE PRISONER OF LAZARE;

Or, How the World Awards Honor.

BY ROB'T P. NEVIN.

NAY, lay the page aside, John,

Nor heed the treacherous tale,
That deeds, which most accrue to fame,
May best for fame avail.

To live in story is not all,

For story sets at rest,

That they live best who least adorn,

And least who merit best.

Staunch men of worth have been, John,
With men of emptier mould,
Though those be writ in lines obscure,
And these in lettered gold.

But not the glare, which vests a name,
Confirms the claim implied;

Stars, seeming least, are mightiest,

And nearer heaven beside.

Now heed, while I relate, John,
And mark the lesson well,-
Yon tottering cripple, ghast and gray,

Will witness, what I tell.

Go, where he leans upon his crutch,

Salute his fading ear,

And learn, if such a chance e'er fell,
Be known in his career.

There lived upon a time, John,

A man wide known of men,

A HERO-many such have been,
And oft will be again.

With armed might he held his march,

Traversing to and forth

The sunny lands of southern climes,

And snow-fields of the north.

And still, his standard waved, John,
Triumphant where he passed;

For, though contending zeal might strive, 'Twas forced to yield at last.

In vain devoted breasts opposed

A bulwark firm and true,

With ruthless hand and reckless blade,
He hewed his passage through.

The blood, that warmed the hearts, John,
Of such as you and I,

In reeking gushes bathed the soil,
Empurpled with its dye.

The homes of happy ones were spoiled,
Towns stormed and seized a prey,
And cities of a thousand years
Made ashes in a day.

No pestilential scourge, John,

No plague far-dealing harm,

E'er wrought the tithe of ill that crowned The havoc of his arm.

And all, for what?-that vain applause

Might ring in after time;

As though the incense of our breath
Could sanctify the crime!

Now, further heed, I pray, John;
There was, when terror reigned,

And murder stalked at will abroad,
Unhindered, unrestrained,
Within the proud metropolis

That owned the horrid sway,
A man, devoted 'mid the mass,
Ordained to die, one day.

Arraigned, adjudged, condemned, John, And spotless of offence,

Though ruling law, then most contemned, Spoke purest innocence,