was sudden, but not unexpected, and they knew not that the hand of death was upon her, although her eyes soon became brighter and brighter, they thought, than they had ever been before. But forehead, cheeks, lips, neck, and breast, were all as white, and to the quivering hands that touched them, almost as cold as snow. Ineffable was the

bliss in those radiant eyes; but the breath of words was frozen, and that hymn was almost her last farewell. Some few words she spake-and named the hour and day she wished to be buried. Her lips could then just faintly return the kiss and no more-a film came over the now dim blue of her eyes-the father listened for her breathand then the mother took his place, and leaned her ear to the unbreathing mouth, long deluding herself with its lifelike smile; but a sudden darkness in the room, and a sudden stillness, most dreadful both, convinced their unbelieving hearts at last, that it was death.

All the parish, it may be said, attended her funeralfor none stayed away from the kirk that Sabbath—though many a voice was unable to join in the psalm. The little grave was soon filled up-and you hardly knew that the turf had been disturbed beneath which she lay. The afternoon service consisted but of a prayer-for he who ministered, had loved her with love unspeakable-and though an old gray-haired man, all the time he prayed he wept. In the sobbing kirk her parents were sitting-but no one looked at them-and when the congregation rose to go, there they remained sitting—and an hour afterwards, came out again into the open air, and parting with their pastor at the gate, walked away to their hut, overshadowed with the blessing of a thousand prayers!

And did her parents, soon after she was buried, die of broken hearts, or pine away disconsolately to their graves? Think not that they, who were Christians indeed, could be guilty of such ingratitude. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away-blessed be the name of the Lord!" were the first words they had spoke by that bedside; during many, many long years of weal or wo, duly every morning and night, these same blessed words did they utter when on their knees together in prayer—and many a

thousand times besides, when they were apart, she in her silent hut, and he on the hill-neither of them unhappy in their solitude, though never again, perhaps, was his countenance so cheerful as of yore-and though often suddenly amidst mirth or sunshine, her eyes were seen to overflow ! Happy had they been-as we mortal beings ever can be happy-during many pleasant years of wedded life before she had been born. And happy were they-on to the verge of old age-after she had here ceased to be! Their Bible had indeed been an idle book-the Bible that belonged to the holy child,"-and idle all their kirk-goings with "the holy child," through the Sabbath calm-had those intermediate seven years not left a power of bliss behind them, triumphant over death and the grave!

Poetry, one might imagine, must be full of beautiful snowscenes. If so, they have almost all dissolved-melted away from our memory-as the snow-scenes in nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's Winter, of course, we do not include in our obliviousness-and from Cowper's Task we might quote many a most picturesque description -none more so in poetry. But have frost and snow been done justice to by many poets? They have by twoSouthey and Coleridge, of whose most poetical compositions respectively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner," in some future rhapsodical mood, we may speak. Thomson's genius does not very, very often-though oftendelight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature-like that of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale-and to dash objects off sweepingly by bold strokes-such, indeed, as have almost always marked the genius of the mighty masters of the lyre, and the rainbow. Cowper sets nature before your eyes-Thomson before your imagination. Which do you prefer? Both. assured that poets had pored night and day upon nature— in all her aspects-and that she had revealed herself equally to both. But they, in their religion, delighted in different modes of worship-and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mind, we love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are almost a Task-and sometimes the Task is out of Season.

Be

There is a delightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard of Olney-glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam. Cowper paints treesThomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Barampooter-Cowper, in many no very wondrous lines brightens up one bend of a stream, or awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to antithesis-a deceptive style of criticism-and see how Thomson sings of snow. Why-in the following lines, almost-though not quite as well as Christopher North in his Winter Rhapsody :

"The cherish'd fields

Put on their tender robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current."

Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature of an occular spectrum.

Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet "brown," where all that is motionless is white :

"The foodless wilds

Pour forth their brown inhabitants."

That one word proves the poet. Does it not?

The entire description from which these two sentences are selected by memory, a critic you may always trust to, is admirable except in one or two places where Thomson seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic, and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceased to be perfectly natural. Thus,

"Drooping, the ox

Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil."

The image of the ox is as good as possible. We see him, and could paint him in oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his " demanding the fruit of all his toils,"-to which

we freely acknowledge the worthy animal was well entitled-sounds as it is here expressed-rather fantastical. Call it doubtful-for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment. Again,

"The bleating kind

Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glittering earth,
With looks of dumb despair."

The second line is perfect-but the Ettrick Shepherd agreed with us one night at Ambrose's-that the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreed with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own feeling in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds,

"Then sad dispersed,

Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow." For as they disperse, they do look very sad-and no doubt are so—but had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and uniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging-but whole flocks had perished.

You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines that occur soon after, and which are a glorious example of the sweeping style of description which, we said above, characterized the genius of this sublime poet :

"From the bellowing east,

In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing
Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains
At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks,
Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills,
The billowy tempest whelms; till upwards urged
The valley to a shining mountain swells,

Tipt with a wreath high-curling in the sky."

Well might the bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, address them in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast. "Shepherds,"

says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely by filling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up

"Far off its coming groaned,"

and the poet was inspired. Had he not been so, he had not cried, "Baffle the raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurd expression. We, there fore, trust you are inspired-and if so, why, it must have been with reading our rhapsody.

Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet. People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems.

A linetwo words-may show that they are the Muses' sons. How exquisitely does Burns picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change!

"The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam,

Crept gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!"

Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit of perception
-or conception-or memory-or whatever else
to call it; for our part, we call it genius,-

"An icy-gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool
Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career
Arrests the bickering stream."

you choose

And afterwards, having frozen the entire stream into a crystal pavement," how gloriously doth he conclude thus:

"The whole imprison'd river growls below.”

Here again, how pleasant to see the peculiar genius of Cowper contrasted with that of Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting-for the most part-in tranquil images -for his life was past amidst tranquil nature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power. Cowper says,

VOL. II.

"On the flood,

Indurated and fix'd, the snowy weight
Lies undissolved, while silently beneath,
And unperceived, the current steals away."
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