delightful thoughts of home and former times. At that period, when life was new and hope young, my feelings would sometimes run into verse: it is no wonder they did so on this occasion. I present you with the stanzas, as a faithful picture of my feelings, without any profession of modesty, any deprecation of criticism, or any suggestions that their faults may be attributed to the youth of the writer.

TO A TREE,

On seeing it come into Leaf in the centre of the Metropolis.

Where London's massive temples rise,

And dusky houses bound the view;
Where art puts on her gayest guise,
While murky vapours in the skies
Veil nature's simple blue;

Where morning never sheds her fires,
Save to bedeck the towers with gold
Or flash her radiance on the spires;
Where evening's warmest blush expires
Unnoticed and untold;

I met thee there in budding pride,
A lonely beauty in the scene;
For ah! 'tis long since at thy side
Spring saw the daisy opening wide,

Or violet's humbler mien.

And ne'er did finch or throstle make

Within thy shade his downy nest;
His song of love did ne'er awake,
Or, hopping lightly on thee, shake
The dew-drops from thy crest.

Methinks thy form ill suits that place,

Thy root strikes through ungenial ground; Thou wouldst have waved with nobler grace Where textile forests interlace,

And freshness breathes around.

But when I saw thee, nature's child!
A spark of joy thou didst relume
Within my breast; with transport wild
Fair fancy waved her wand, and smiled
Athwart the opening gloom.

I saw entranced my native home,

My native fields thick strewn with flowers,

The shaggy rock, the cascade's foam,
The wild woods where I used to roam,

And amaranthine bowers.

My cares, my griefs, were all forgot,

And peace resumed her mild command;

Hope from thy branches told my lot,

That I should see again that spot,
And tread that smiling land.

Thus, 'midst a world of adverse gloom,
Religion rears her heavenly form;
She strikes a radiance through the tomb,
The glances of her eye illume,

And gild fate's gathering storm.

C

She points to scenes beyond the sky,
That live when worlds shall pass away,
Far glimmering on the mortal eye,
Where we shall dwell in ecstacy,

And bask in boundless day.

I love, I confess, to run over these passages of my youth, to fling myself back into days gone by, and thus to renew something of what the poet finely terms "the tender bloom of heart." Since those days, I have seen something more of the world: I have visited many grand and beautiful scenes of nature; I have expatiated over the charms of Windermere, and been struck with the sublimities of Borrowdale. I have gazed up from the foot of Mont Blanc, and climbed to the summit of Etna; I have seen the Andes frowning with tempests; I have heard the roaring of the German Ocean, and been tossed by the storms of the Atlantic; I have

Travell'd by the deep Saint Lawrence' tide,

And by Niagara's cataract of foam;"

and yet such is the universal power of nature, that I can still enjoy the scenes which charmed my infant eye, tame and sober as they comparatively are, without perceiving that they lose

any thing of their effect by a contrast with the grandest of her works. Indeed, nothing appears to me more unfortunate for the purpose of enjoyment, than an exclusive taste in natural scenery. There is beauty in every variety of it; there is always something to admire, be the scene and the season what they may. With what pleasure I have frequently gazed on the flat extent of a barren common, covered with the brown heath of early spring, and presenting an almost uniform surface! Yet the fresh breeze blowing over it, the bright blue sky shining above it, and a cloud-shadow partially resting upon it in the distance, have combined to invest it with positive beauty. And in the twilight, the sombre uniformity of the waste, with the mild lustre of the western sky just beyond it, exhibiting long lines of pale clouds, with a back-ground of delicate azure, and deepening by contrast the gloom of the darkening landscape, has almost risen into sublimity.

Farewell.

F. R.

LETTER III.

Disappointments in a Literary Career-Modern CriticismAnxieties of an unpractised Writer-First Attempt of a young Poet to enter the Temple of Fame.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

There is one circumstance in modern literature which I often think of with pain: it is, that a number of delicate and sensitive minds, full of ardent aspirations after excellence, romantic notions and anticipations of fame and honours, are necessarily overwhelmed with disappointment in their literary career. I say necessarily, on several accounts. In the first place, there are many men of undoubted genius, who, from the peculiar structure of their minds, cannot put their conceptions into a popular form; there are others again, whose estimate of their own talents, formed perhaps from their capability of enjoying, with great zest, the masterly productions of others, is much too high; there are others who meet with adverse circumstances, ill-natured criticisms, or other checks and discouragements, trifling in appearance, but causes of powerful