over have they been by the lips of her who placed them for the perusal of Christopher in his Cave. "POEMS OF MANY YEARS by Richard Monkton Milnes;" the name is not infamiliar, nor yet is it familiar to our ear-thirty years ago and upwards we heard a man of the name of Milnes speak in Parliament in surpassing style-this may not be the same-no-no-for he, if extant, must be as ancient as ourselves and poetry may flow into-but not out of the heart of one who is half-way-down the hill of life. “Tis his son !" Ha! what voice gave that whisper? Wast thine, thou restless wren, that fifty times at least within these two or three hours we have been sitting here, hast been borne leaf-like out or in our cave, and only now been perceived by us to have all the while been occupied-in bringing food to a voracious nestful that will soon exchange the twilight of this cave for that of the umbrage of the many-gladed woods?

Time was we pounced on a book the instant we saw it on the board, like osprey on fish showing its back upon the billow-with a clutch as sure, and maw as ravenous -shrieking over it as we tore it piecemeal. In our sacred hunger no bones of a book made we then-we swallowed it guts and all-and, lighter from the repast, upsoared in circles, and then shot straight as an arrow, "to prey in distant isles." Now we leisurely alight beside it, like an old sick sea-eagle as we are, and mumble at a leaf or two as if with our teeth we had lost our appetite, and our stomach were in sympathy with our gums. Often do we crawl away from our quarry without tasting it-without so much as knowing whether it be fish, flesh, or fowl—and keep sitting disconsolately for hours together on a stone or stump like a mere bunch of feathers. O Audubon! no more shalt thou behold us-a speck in the sun-no more shalt thou hear us-a cry in the cloud.

"Poems of Many Years!" "Tis something to lie here -be assured, O volume! for the lady whom all those mountains love is herself a poet-and no book that is not poetry would she place for chance of perusal by Christopher in his Cave. The still study-the busy parlourthe bedchamber serene-the mirthful drawing-room-are one and all fit places for the perusal of poetry; but fitter

the wood, the grove, the glen-fittest-and already we begin to feel the inspiration-such a cave as this-in the heart of inland peace-yet visited-if we mistake not-by the voice of the sea.

Let us hold converse, then, with this brother in the spirit, whom we may never see in the flesh-and let this pretty pen of ours, plucked from a stockdove's wing, and nibbed by Genevieve, cease its prattling, while we recite to ourselves—ad aperturam libri-one lay to test the worth of all to assure Christopher in his Cave whether Mr. Milnes be or be not a poet.

THE WORTH OF HOURS.

"Believe not that your inner eye
Can ever in just measure try
The worth of hours as they go by:

"For every man's weak self, alas!
Makes him to see them, while they pass
As through a dim or tinted glass:

"But if in earnest care you would
Mete out to each its part of good,
Trust rather to your after-mood.

"Those surely are not fairly spent,

That leave your spirit bowed and bent
In sad unrest and ill content:

"And more, though, free from seeming harm,
You rest from toil of mind or arm,

Or slow retire from Pleasure's charm,

"If then a painful sense comes on
Of something wholly lost and gone,
Vainly enjoyed, or vainly done,-

"Of something from your being's chain
Broke off, nor to be link'd again
By all mere memory can retain,—

"Upon your heart this truth may rise,-
Nothing that altogether dies

Suffices man's just destinies:

Sweet-serious-solemn-wise and good.

'Tis pleasant in a cave to glance, with ever and anor a pausing eye, over a volume like this, of which one by-heart-gotten strain easily persuades us that the rest must be trustworthy to our memory-to glance over it without absolutely reading it, yet all the while feeling the breath, and seeing the glow of its beauty-just as it is pleasant in a room, in like manner, to glance over an array of ladies fair, not one of whom we have looked on long enough to love, yet nothing doubting that had we ever so many hearts we could give them all away among the virgin apparitions.

Or, if this simile do not satisfy, let us tell you that we like to look at a volume as at a valley-discerning not one feature of the scene distinctly, but feeling its spirit as surely as if we distinctly discerned them all-so that, when our dreamy eyes come to settle down upon it, every object occupies the very place we expected to find it in, and is of the very character and kind we thought it to be, only lovelier in their neighbourhood, because now all understood, and forming in themselves a little world where beauty has reduced them all into order, and order is the expression of peace!

Nay, if we still must strive to make clear our meaning, have you never sat in a boat on a lake before known to you but by name, and, unwilling all at once to look steadily on what is nevertheless filling your breast with delight, kept even your hands at times over your eyes, and at others glanced stealthily around, almost as if afraid to lapse into the magical world among whose shadows you were sailing, till, taking courage as it were from the

glimpses of beauty that made themselves be seen whether you would or no-perhaps from some other fairy pinnace passing by meteorous with its cloud of sail-or bird floating away undisturbedly among the reeds, too happy to fly from its own bay where there was every thing to love and nothing to fear-you have at last delivered up your whole soul to the scene, and in one minute have become almost as well acquainted with its character as if you had lived for years on its banks, and have added to the domain of memory, never more to fade, a lovelier vision than imagination's self could have created in the world of dreams!

This comes of soliloquizing criticism on poetry, with a pen plucked from the wing of a stockdove, and nibbed by Genevieve, in a Highland cave. Pardon our prolixityand read

"Youthful hope's religious fire,

When it burns no longer, leaves
Ashes of impure desire

On the altars it deceives;
But the light that fills the past
Sheds a still diviner glow,
Ever farther it is cast

O'er the scenes of Long-ago.

"Many a growth of pain and care,
Cumbering all the present hour,
Yields, when once transplanted there,
Healthy fruit or pleasant flower;
Thoughts that hardly flourish here,
Feelings long have ceased to blow,
Breathe a native atmosphere
In the world of Long-ago.

"On that deep-retiring shore
Frequent pearls of beauty lie,
Where the passion-waves of yore
Fiercely beat and mounted high:
Sorrows that are sorrows still
Lose the bitter taste of wo;
Nothing's altogether ill
In the griefs of Long-ago.

"Tombs where lonely love repines,
Ghastly tenements of tears,
Wear the look of happy shrines
Thro' the golden mist of years:
Death, to those who trust in good,
Vindicates his hardest blow;
Oh! we would not, if we could,
Wake the sleep of Long-ago!

"Tho' the doom of swift decay
Shocks the soul where life is strong,
Tho' for frailer hearts the day
Lingers sad and overlong,-
Still the weight will find a leaven,
Still the spoiler's hand is slow,
While the future has its heaven,

And the past its Long-ago."