CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBJECT.

"Lulled by the Thrush and wakened by the Lark "Without thee were but a becalmed Bark,

"Whose Helmsman on an Ocean waste and wide "Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside."

And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze,
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image* with a glory round its head:
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows, he makes the shadow, he pursues!

95

*This phenomenon, which the Author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passages of the AIDS to REFLECTION:

"Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music, on different characters, holds equally true of Genius: as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."-AIDS to REFLECTION, p. 220.

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT.

ERE the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be YES: what can No be? to die,

NATURE'S ANSWER.

Is't returned as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear? Think first, what you ARE! Call to mind what you

WERE!

I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,

Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.

Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the Invent'ry; inspect, compare!
Then die-if die you dare!

THE BLOSSOMING

OF THE

SOLITARY DATE TREE.

A LAMENT.

SEEM to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew Writers, an Apologue or Rabbinical Tradition to the following purpose:

While our first parents were yet standing before their offended maker, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or moderator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: "Nay, Lord, in thy justice, for the Man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let Adam remain here all the days of his now mortal life, and enjoy the respite thou mayest grant him, in this thy Paradise which thou gavest to him, and hast planted with every tree pleasant to the sight of man and of delicious fruitage." And the word of the Most High answered Satan : "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend! guilt deep as thine could not be, yet the love of kind not extinguished. But if having done what thou hast done, thou had'st yet the heart of man within thee, and the yearning of the soul for its answering image and completing counterpart, O spirit, desperately wicked! the sentence thou counsellest had been thy own."

VOL. II.

H

The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact mentioned by Linnæus, of a Date-tree in a nobleman's garden which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never produced fruit, till a branch from a Date-tree had been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been transcribed, and which contained the two or three introductory stanzas, is wanting: and the author has in vain taxed his memory to repair the loss. But a rude draught of the poem contains the substance of the stanzas, and the reader is requested to receive it as the substitute. It is not impossible, that some congenial spirit, whose years do not exceed those of the author, at the time the poem was written, may find a pleasure in restoring the Lament to its original integrity by a reduction of the thoughts to the requisite Metre.

S. T. C.

THE BLOSSOMING OF THE SOLITARY

DATE-TREE:

A LAMENT.

1.

BENEATH the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. "What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own." The presence of

a ONE,

The best belov'd, who loveth me the best,

is for the heart, what the supporting air from within is for the hollow globe with its suspended car. Deprive it of this, and all without that would have buoyed it aloft even to the seat of the gods, becomes a burthen and crushes it into flatness.

2.

The finer the sense for the beautiful and the lovely, and the fairer and lovelier the object presented to the sense; the more exquisite the individual's capacity of joy, and the more ample his means and opportunities of enjoyment, the more heavily will he feel the ache of solitariness, the more unsubstantial becomes the feast spread around him. What matters it, whether

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