rid howl of night-the howl of all those distracted passions is hushed—and the soul, relieved from the sorrow in which it thinks of sin, when an eye or ear-witness to its unhallowed orgies, lifts up its eyes to the stars so bright and beautiful, so silent and so serene-then remembereth she the names, the endowments, the achievements, of the immortal dead. There-largest and most lustrous-that star that "dwells apart"-is the image of Milton! That other, soft-burning, dewy, and almost twinkling star-now seeming to shine out into intenser beauty, and now almost dim, from no obscuring cloud or mist, but as if some internal spirit shaded the light for a moment, even as an angel may veil his countenance with his wings-that is the star of Spenser! And of all the bright people of the skies, to fancy's gaze, thou, most lovely planet, art the very FairyQueen! Therefore, to us, enthusiasts then in poetry-and may that enthusiasm survive even the season" of brightness in the grass and glory in the flower," which has almost now passed away to us, who thought of poets as beings set apart from the world which their lays illumined-how solemn-how sacred-how sublime a delight-deaf and blind to all the sights and sounds of the common day-to look on the very house in which some great poet had been born-lived-or died! Were the house itself gone, and some ordinary pile erected in its stead, still we saw down into the old consecrated foundation! Had the very street been swept away-its name and its dust-still the air was holy-and more beautiful overhead the blue gleam of the sky! And in the midst of all that noisy world of the present, that noisy and miserable world—in the midst of it and pervading it might not even our youthful eye see the spirit of religion? And feel, even when most astounded with sights and sounds of wickedness, that in life there was still a mens divinior— "Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet." Christianity spoke in Sabbath-bells, not "swinging slow with sullen roar," like the curfew of old extinguishing the household fires on all hearths; but, high up in the clearer air, the belfry of tower and spire sent a sweet summons, each over its own region, to families to repair again to the house of God, where the fires of faith, hope, and charity, might be rekindled on the altar of the religion of peace. The sweet solemn faces of old men-of husbands and fathers, and sons and brothers-the fair faces of matrons and virgins-the gladsome faces of children "For piety is sweet to infant minds❞— were seen passing along the sobered streets, whose stones, but a few hours ago, clanked to the mad rushing to and fro of unhallowed feet, while the air, now so still, or murmuring but with happy voices, attuned to the spirit of the day, was lately all astir with rage, riot, and blasphemy! "Such ebb and flow must ever be, Then wherefore should we mourn!" Sweet is the triumph of religion on the Sabbath-day, in some solitary glen, to which come trooping from a hundred braes, all the rural dwellers, disappearing, one small family party after another, into the hushed kirk—now, as the congregation has collected, exhaling to heaven, as a flower-bank exhales its fragrance, the voice of psalms! But there piety has only deepened peace! Here-though yet the voice of the great city will not be hushed-and there is heard ever a suppressed murmur-a sound-a noise-a growl-dissatisfied with the Sabbath-here, the power that descends from the sky upon men's hearts stilling them against their wills into a sanctity so alien to their usual life, is felt to have even a more sublime consecration ! "The still small voice" speaks, in the midst of all that unrepressed stir, the more distinctly, because so unlike the other sounds, with which it mingles not; that there is another life, "not of this noisy world, but silent and divine," is felt from the very disturbances that will not lie at rest; and though hundreds of thousands heed it not, the tolling of that great bell from the cathedral strikes of death and judgment. Yes, England! with all thy sins, thou holdest, with fast devotion, to the faith, for which so many of thy sainted sons did perish in the fires of persecution. The smoke of those fierce faggots is dead-but, as that inspired man prophesied, while he held up his withered hand in the scorching flame-such a fire has been kindled as lights all the land-centuries after his martyred ashes were given to the heedless winds,—and the names of Cranmer and Ridley are reverenced for evermore! High ministrations-solemn services of religion !-in which the Church of England, in its reverential awe, delights-from the first hour in which we participated in the holy rites, they breathed into our being the full, deep, divine spirit of devotion, sanctifying, at burst or close of the organ-peal, the chapel's pillared shade!-How sweetly rose our souls to heaven on the hymn of the young whiterobed choristers!-How sunk they and swelled, rejoiced and saddened, and when the thought of some of our own peculiar sorrows also touched us, how they even wept, over the worship of that beautiful liturgy, composed so scripturally by pious men, to whom the language of the Bible had been familiar almost as their mother tongue! Of the great old English divines, so laden with heavenly erudition, and who had brought all human wisdom and human science to establish and to illustrate the religion of the lowly Jesus, remembrance often crossed us like a shadow, at each wide-murmured response. Apostles of a later time, inspired by their own faith! Yet true still were our hearts to the memory of that simpler service, nor less divine-for blessed ever are all modes of worship in which the human being seeks in sincerity to draw near to God-that simpler service, so well suited to a simpler land, in which we had from infancy been instructed, and which, to preserve in its purity, had our own forefathers bled. In the high cathedral, "Where through the long-drawn isle and fretted vault, we call to mind the low kirk and its psalms. The kirk near the modest manse, in which our boyhood flew away -with its decent pews, little loft, and unambitious pulpit— the friendly faces of the rural congregation-the grave elders sitting in their place of honour-the pious preacher, who to us had been a father!-Oh! many-toned are the voices on the Sabbath, all praising and worshipping God! List-list, in the hush of thy spirit, and all Christian lands are sounding with one various hymn! And then London, ere long, became to us-in all its vastness-even as our very home! For all undisturbed amidst the din, and murmuring internally, each with its own peculiar character of domestic joys, with laughter and with song-how many dwellings for us did open their hospitable doors, and welcome us in, with blessings, beneath their social roofs ! Our presence brought a brighter expression into their partial eyes; our mirth never seemed otherwise than well-timed to them, nor yet did our melancholy-nor failed either to awaken congenial feelings in the breasts of those to whom we were too undeservedly dear-smiles went round the hearth or table circle to our quaint ditty and tale of glee-and the tears have fallen, when in the "parlour twilight" we sang "One of those Scottish tunes so sad and slow," or told some one of those old, pathetic, traditionary stories, that still, cloud-like, keep floating over all the hills of Scotland! Oh! the great pleasure of friendships formed in youth! where chance awakens sympathy, accident kindles affection—and fortune, blind and restless on her revolving wheel, favours, as if she were some serene-eyed and steadfast divinity, the purest passions of the soul! As one friendship was added to another-and base creed it is -most shallow and fantastic-that would confine amity, even in its dearest meaning-for how different is friendship from love-to communicate but with some single chosen one, excluding all our other brethren from approach to the heart-although true it is, that some one, in our greatest bale and our greatest bliss, will be more tenderly, more profoundly, more gratefully embraced than all the rest-as friendship was added to friendship, as family after family, household after household, became each a new part of our enlarged being, how delightful, almost every successive day, to feel ou knowledge growing wider and warmer of the virtues of the character of England! Perhaps some unconscious nationality had been brought with us from our native braes-narrowing our range of feeling, and inclining sometimes to unjust judgments and unkindly thoughts. But all that was poor or bad in that prejudice, soon melted away before the light of bold English eyes, before the music of bold English speech. Sons and daughters of the free! As brothers and as sisters we loved you soon-without suspicion, without reserve, without jealousy, without envy of your many superior and surpassing endowments of nature, and accomplishments of art! For, with all deduction on the score of inevitable human fault and frailty, how high the morals of England, her manners how becoming the children of such a birth! The friends, too, whom in those sacred hours, we had taken to our hearts, linked, along with other more human ties, by the love of literature and poetry—and with whom we had striven to enter "The cave obscure of old Philosophy," and when starry midnight shone serenely over Oxford's towers and temples, sighed-vainly sighed with unsatisfied longings and aspirations, that would not let us rest, to “unsphere the spirit of Plato"-they, too, were often with us in the wide metropolis, where, wide as it is, dear friends cannot almost be for a single day, but by some happy fortune they meet! How grasped-clasped were then our hands and our hearts! How all college recollections-cheerful and full of glee—or high and of a solemn shade-came over us from the silence of those still retreats, in the noise of the restless London! Magdalen, Mertoun, Oriel, ChristChurch, Trinity-how pleasant were your names! Hundreds of morning, meridian, evening, midnight meetings! Each with its own-nor let us fear to declare it beneath those sunny skies-with its blameless, at least not sinful, charm. Now carried on a stream of endless, various, fluctuating converse, with a friend, more earnest, more enthusiastic, more impassioned than ourselves-and |