its glorious river; and now of a still shadier hermitage in the vale of Neath; where he might pursue his history, learn Welsh, keep an otter, and teach him to catch a trout for dinner.

I will have (he told his friend, Mr. Bedford,) a toad to catch flies, and it shall be made murder to kill a spider in my domains; then, when you come to visit me, you will see puss on one side, and the otter on the other, both looking for bread and milk, and Margery in her little great chair, and the toad upon the tea-table, and the snake twisting up the leg of the table to look for his share.

But a dispute with a Cambrian landlord about the repairs of a kitchen, dissolved this agreeable dream of a happy family, and the death of his little girl put an end to his doubts about a residence. Bristol was full of painful recollections, and Coleridge was still living at Keswick. Thither he went :

Would that you could see (he wrote to his brother) these lakes and mountains, how wonderful they are! how awful in their beauty! All the poet part of me will be fed and fostered here. I feel already in tune.

He had now lived thirty years, and supposed himself to be growing old:

Not so much by the family Bible, as by all external and outward symptoms. The grey hairs have made their appearance; my eyes are wearing out; my shoes, the very cut of my father's, at which I used to laugh; my limbs not so supple as they were at Brixton in '93; my tongue not so glib; my heart quieter; my hopes, thoughts, and feelings all of the complexion of a sunny autumn evening.

In a letter of nearly the same date, to Mr. Duppa, we stumble upon a pleasant allusion to Hazlitt, who had dropped for a few days into the Lake country, and having painted Coleridge for Sir George Beaumont, was emboldened to try his hand on Wordsworth. The portrait was so dismal, that one of the poet's friends, on looking at it, exclaimed, 'At the gallows, deeply affected by his deserved fate, yet determined to die like a man.' Southey returns more than once to the salutary effects of the scenery upon his mind, and speaks of the best seasons for visiting it; adding, with great beauty of thought, that insettled fine weather there are none of those goings on in heaven,

VOL. XLI. NO. CCXLII.

which at other times give these scenes such an endless variety.' He had not, however, become accustomed to the stern severity of that hilly and tempestuous climate; he thought the white bear had one advantage over a mountain resident, and would gladly have rolled himself up until the end of October, leaving particular directions to be called early on the 1st of May. We have been greatly delighted with one picture which he gives Mr. Bedford; and remember no prose description that surpasses it, unless it be Gray's charming account of sunrise at Southampton :·

I have seen a sight, more dreamy and wonderful than any scenery that Fancy ever yet devised for Faery-land. We had walked down to the lake side; it was a delightful day; the sun shining, and a few white clouds hanging motionless in the sky. The opposite shore of Derwentwater consists of one long mountain, which suddenly terminates in an arch, thus, and through that opening you see a long valley between mountains, and bounded by mountain beyond mountain; to the right of the arch the heights are more varied and of greater elevation. Now, as there was not a breath of air stirring, the surface of the lake was so perfectly still that it became one great mirror, and all its waters disappeared; the whole line of shore was represented as vividly and steadily as it existed in its actual being-the arch, the vale within, the single houses far within the vale, the smoke from their chimneys, the farthest hills, and the shadow and substance joined at their bases so indivisibly, that you could make no separation even in your judgment. As I stood on the shore, heaven and the clouds seemed lying under me. I was looking down into the sky, and the whole range of mountains, having one line of summits under my feet, and another above me, seemed to be suspended between the firmaments. Shut your eyes, and dream of a scene so unnatural and so beautiful. What I have said is most strictly and scrupulously true; but it was one of those happy moments that can seldom occur, for the least breath stirring would have shaken the whole vision, and at once unrealized it. I have before seen a par tial appearance, but never before did, and perhaps never again may, lose sight of the lake entirely; for it literally seemed like an abyss of sky before me, not fog and clouds from a mountain, but the blue heaven spotted with a few fleecy pillows of cloud, that looked as if placed there for angels to rest upon them.-P. 259.

'Homed and housed' at Keswick, the poet lived in a sort of domestic solitude; working upon reviews and graver themes, which he variegated with occasional glasses of port wine, and glimpses of the view before his window. He pourtrays himself with quite a Montaigne simplicity and liveliness. We see him bending over his desk, in the large oddlooking study, dressed in long worsted pantaloons and gaiters, and with a green shade to protect his eyes. The cat, having soon found his room the quietest in the house, gives him her constant company, and sits by his side, and purrs with almost as much melody and rhythm as many lines in Kehama. He had formed a canine, as well as a feline acquaintanceship. Poets, from Pope and Shenstone to Cowper and Miss Mitford, have rejoiced in dogs. Southey had one, a well-bred hound, Dapper by name; affectionate, but a coward. Of deficiency in courage some convincing illustrations are recorded. A porcine apparition shook Dapper's nerves for the day. But other qualities overbalanced the defect. And now the poet closes his book, and sauntering down to the river (Dapper at his heels) which runs at the bottom of the orchard, he throws stones until his arms ache. Not a thought of history or drudging goes with him. He confessed that he never got into any regular train of thought, unless the pen was in his hand. The shade of orchard - trees was for poetry and Madoc.

This great opus, of which numberless intimations meet the reader of the Correspondence, at length reached Keswick in its presentable shape;a beautiful book in quarto, very dear, and having 'Snowdon' spelt wrong throughout. I cannot help feeling,' he wrote, 'that the poem looks like the work of an older man ; that all its lights are evening sunshine.' Madoc did very well; half of the edition having been exhausted in three months. Although late in appearance, it had been among the earliest of his poetical visions, and he entertained the most confident hopes of its lasting fame. He knew its execution to be the finest he had produced.

Compare it (he said) with the Odyssey, not with the Iliad; with King John and

Coriolanus, not Macbeth and the Tempest. The story wants unity, and has, perhaps, too Greek, too stoical, a want of passion; but as far as I can see, with the same eyes wherewith I read Homer, and Shakespear, and Milton, it is a good poem, and must live.'

Perhaps all works - whether of the pen, the pencil, or the chiselrequire patient scrutiny, in proportion to the delicate harmony of their composition. A glance of the eye takes in Tintoret; but a whole day scarcely unfolds the grace of Raffaelle. Sir Walter Scott assured Southey that he had read Madoc three times, and with an increasing sense of its merits. We are, nevertheless, unwilling to admit the high panegyric bestowed on the poem by its author. Taking occasion to mention William Taylor's opinion, that the press had sent out no production equal to Madoc since Paradise Lost, Southey adds,

Indeed this is not exaggerated praise, for unfortunately there is no competition.' This was a bold saying; and bolder than it was wise. In that long interval of more than one hundred and thirty years, our Poetry was enriched with contributions which will be treasured for all time. Milton himself had built a wing to his splendid palace of song; inferior in its architecture, and less sumptuously furnished; but still of grand design and beautiful execution. Dryden had written his exquisite Fables; Pope had in one piece displayed the lustrous gaiety of Ariosto, with chaster graces of fancy and taste; Thomson had dipped his language in the lights of the rainbow; Young had shed abroad the full wisdom of his most thoughtful mind; and Akenside had revived among us the fading bloom of classic colour and outline.

Our remarks upon these volumes have been, of necessity, too rapid, to permit of any close or chronological arrangement. With so large a tract to fly over, we have been obliged to keep almost constantly upon the wing. Dropping down now and then among the corn, we have found a few ears to carry away. To some of the literary notices which are scattered through the poet's letters, reference has already been made. Towards the end of this second volume we meet with two or three

slight sketches, which are not without interest. Mrs. Bare-bald (as he named the ingenious lady of Evenings at Home) had said something uncivil of Lamb, whom he wished to 'singe her flaxen wig with squibs.' Of Coleridge he observes, 'His mind is in a perpetual St. Vitus' Dance,— eternal activity without action:' a most penetrating and happy criticism, which Coleridge unconsciously confirms in the Prospectus of The Friend, when he says:-'I am inclined to believe that this want of perseverance has been produced in the main by an over-activity of thought, modified by a constitutional indolence.' We might enlarge these little sketches from a visit which Southey made to London in the summer of 1804. He dined with Sotheby, the translator of Oberon, whom he liked; and met Price, 'the picturesque man, and Davies Giddy,' whose face he declared 'ought to be perpetuated in marble for the honour of mathematics.' In the autumn of the following year he went to Edinburgh, in the company of Peter Elmsley, and passed a few days with Walter Scott at Ashestiel.

He

tracked the Last Minstrel through his pleasant haunts, and even took spear in hand against the salmon. The Scottish men of letters did not surprise him; he considered them to be fairly represented by the diminutive literatuli. But the country he thought charming - Teviotdale, the Yarrow, the Tweed, and romantic Melrose, won his praise. For Presbyterianism, with its twang and its frost, he had no sympathy. He returned to Keswick while the news of Nelson's death was bursting, in thunder, over England. He wrote to Mr. Bedford, 'What a death is Nelson's! It seems to me one of the characteristics of the sublime, that its whole force is never perceived at once. The more it is contemplated, the deeper is its effect. When this war began I began an ode, which almost I feel now disposed to complete.' And to his brother, 'You will have heard of Nelson's most glorious death. He leaves a name above all former admirals. A volume, or an article, could not have a better conclusion. Southey did something more for Nelson than completing the ode.

T was a gentle, wooded slope, on

Brunswick. An open space broke the dense forest-verdure which mantled the whole land with undulating plumes; and in this isolated patch of clearing was placed a cluster of wigwams, formed of birch-bark, their white cones half hidden in an undergrowth of young cedars and willows; and giving forth, many of them, a thin stream of smoke that lingered in its ascent through the trees of the surrounding groves.

On one side, like a boundless prairie, spread the Gulf of St. Lawrence, unbroken by an island or a wave until it blended with the blue sky that curved serenely over it, in a translucent dome.

The leaves of the ash and maple were beginning to assume their autumnal hues, though as yet this was the only indication of a change in the season; and so fantastic did their

scarlet and yellow leaves appear amidst the green foliage, that they seemed to have been stained artificially with those bright colours.

An Indian song said that the Great Spirit painted them in the night for a sign; and that when the tribes looked upon them they heard his voice, saying, 'Make ready for the hunt, my children. The leaves are done growing, the frost-season is at hand. Make ready the shank-mocassins and snow-shoes, the summertime is done.'

This was an encampment of Richibucto Indians, a branch of the Micmac tribe, whose chief resort was the peninsula of Nova Scotia, or Acadia; and in one of the bark tents, and seated cross-legged on the firboughs, were two men conversing in Canadian patois, which was well known to the natives. One was a Frenchman, short, thin-faced, and slouching, in a surtout of blue cloth,

a red sash and cap, and fringed leggings of elk-skin; the other an Indian, dressed in a loose buckskin tunic, tall, and somewhat aged, but erect and stately as a red pine, with a grave face and shaven to the

crown.

'See!' said the fur-trader, for such the Frenchman was, drawing a bottle from the bosom of his coat and presenting it to his companion, 'Ma-duxkees loves the pouktou-witchk (firewater). Saccapee has brought this to him from Quebec, to let him see he is his friend. My brother is a Micmac, the Micmacs are a brave people. Is it not so ?'

"The Micmacs are brave,' was the calm reply. My brother is generous to-day. Ma-dux-kees is not a Micmac, and he loves not the strong whisky of the Awanooch (French). It is the medicine of a fool.'

'What!' exclaimed the other, with surprise, does my brother disdain the gift? There is not one of his tribe who would get it for less than a beaver-skin, and I offer it to him for nothing.'

The Pale-face is generous to-day,' returned the Indian.

'Ma-dux-kees is a Milicetejek, and drinks water from the brook when he is thirsty: the Great Spirit gives him that also for nothing.'

The trader gave a shrug, replaced the bottle in his breast, lit his pipe and smoked in silence. At length he said,

'Little Moon is absent from my brother's wigwam, therefore Saccapee will open his heart to him. He has an idea. He is rich, but he is alone. Now let Ma-dux-kees give him his daughter for a wife, and he will fill his horn with powder many times. He will even make him the wealthiest of his people. What more can he say? He has a fancy for the young squaw.'

A shade settled on the Indian's brow, and he folded his arms.

The son of the Awanooch asked Little Moon herself, and she said No. Why does he come a second time to make a talk about her? Ma-dux

kees does not want for anything, neither can he give away what is not his. Little Moon is the child of a strange father it is enough!'

The Frenchman muttered a curse between his teeth and rose to depart.

'I see how it is,' he observed, in a jeering tone, the Milicetes let their women talk with white men who are richer than Saccapee. He can tell that by looking at Little Moon's eyes.'

In a moment the Indian was on his feet, his knife out and brandished over the head of the offender; but, checking his anger suddenly by a powerful effort of will, the fierceness vanished from his countenance and the weapon was returned to its sheath.

'Go, dog!' he said, with a look of stern contempt; 'the Milicete kill not those who have smoked peace in their wigwams. They trample their poison-words in the ground.'

Smarting under this reproof, and enraged at the rejection of his suit, the Canadian betook himself to his own camp, situated on the margin of the sea; and ere he reached it he had sworn to be revenged.

Shortly after this, two females joined the Indian. One of these was his wife, a wrinkled but mild-faced squaw, the daughter of the chief of the band; the other was she who formed the subject of the foregoing altercation.

She was a beautiful girl, in the first flower of womanhood; tall, wellformed, and graceful, with a florid tinge in her cheeks, which were as smooth and mellow as a hazel-nut, but of a richer hue. Below the embroidered lappets of her pointed hood her dark hair descended in waving and silky folds, which were gathered at the ends in a knot of scarlet riband, and her eyes were a deep blue.

'My child,' said Ma-dux-kees, in his own language, speaking in soft and endearing accents, as the girl seated herself beside him, 'beware of Saccapee. He has been talking to me about you; and when I refused him, he spoke bad words. There are black thoughts in his heart, so have a care.'

'Did he dare do so, father?' asked Little Moon, with a heightened colour, opening her blue eyes wide upon· Ma-dux-kees. 'But what does it signify?' she added, laughing gaily. The poor Awanooch is lonesome, and wants some one to look after his. beaver-skins. I bear him no malice, though he is crooked in his ways.'

'He shall never show his mocassin in this wigwam again!' exclaimed the elder squaw in a passion.

"If he does, I will throw a fire-brand at him, the skulking weazel! He is always vexing us about Little Moon.' "Never mind, Sau-pa-lose,' observed her spouse, composedly; 'let the Pale-face be, only keep your eyes sharp that no danger lurk near the child, for there is deceitfulness in his heart.'

The Indian was correct in his surmise. A fortnight afterwards, while on its way to the Bay des Chaleurs, the band was entrapped into an ambushment of Mohawks, who, being secreted in a narrow defile, fell upon the Micmacs so suddenly, that the latter were defeated with great loss, and took to flight, leaving two of their number alive in the hands of their hereditary foe.

One of these was a young warrior of note; the other, the beautiful squaw who passed for the daughter of Ma-dux-kees, the Milicete; and her captor was no other than Saccapee the trader, who had insinuated himself into the good graces of the Mohawks, set them on the watch for the Micmac party, and disguised himself with war paint, to preserve his incognito from his quondam associates, while engaged in his treacherous design.

'Little Moon will not look scornfully now on Saccapee,' said the trader, with a scowl. She will be glad very soon to draw water and cut sticks for his fire. He will soon tame down the daughter of that old fool, Ma-dux-kees.'

The captive trembled. She was bound hand and foot and in the power of her rejected suitor; none were near her but enemies, and darkness was gathering in the woods: yet she was not as friendless as she seemed. In the still midnight a sharp blade severed the withes that fastened her limbs together, and in an instant she was free. The figure of a man bent over her; he turned with a quick gesture-quick as thought-and she beheld in the star-light the face of the Micmac prisoner. The girl understood his signs, and, stepping noiselessly after him, passed like a shadow across the sleeping warriors and away into the forest.

Where was the sentinel? Lying with the rest, but not asleep, for he

was stabbed to the heart and scalped with his own knife by the hand of A-moos-kook (the Clear Day), who had broken his bonds, overpowered the Mohawk, and liberated his fellow-prisoner.

Away through swamps and thickets, and over rivers and hills they fled, that solitary pair. But Little Moon had no fear, for A-moos-kook was her friend, and a man of the nicest honour. On the third day they overtook the remnant of the stricken band, who had regained their canoes and descended to the coasts of the sea, and with them were the parents of Little Moon.

'I have brought the light back to the wigwam of Ma-dux-kees,' said the Clear Day; and he departed at once for a distant village of his nation on the isthmus of Acadia.

It was some time before the young maiden recovered from that forced journey, and Sau-pa-lose remarked that she laughed less than formerly, and was often buried in thought.

The Micmacs, after coasting through the grand Lagoons of Tracadie and Tabasintac, ascended the Miramichi, and dividing into small parties, followed separately the numerous branches of that river to select hunting stations for the winter. The family of the Milicete proceeded alone, and penetrated, in their little craft, to the foot of some mountains, where Ma-dux-kees built a snug cabin of pine-logs, and prepared his traps and hunting gear before the falling of the snow.

It was a long and severe winter; so long, indeed, that it seemed as if spring would never return, and that the earth would remain for ever hidden under the snow. The moon in which sugar is made from the maple-tree had arrived; but, though Ma-dux-kees placed his bark vessels under each trunk, and stuck a little spout into it, in readiness to collect the sap, not a drop would run — it was still frozen up at the roots of the tree. Moreover, the game grew scarce, for the country was infested with ravenous wolves that had driven the deer from their yards,' upon which the Indian relied for his spring supply.

'By the blessed hunters of Chiba-a-ki,'* said the Indian, after a