thies strongly enlisted in his favor, from the first moment of our acquaintance, and this surrender of sympathy grows more and more unreserved, so long as we cultivate it. There' is a grace which mantles youth, which conceals defects, and magnifies excellencies. The few who become renowned on earth, have for the most part, some external circumstances working in their favor, without which, apparently, they would have been unknown. The errors and sins of the popes, were the strange inheritance, by which Martin Luther became renowned. The French Revolution, with all its horrors and atrocities, had to pass away, and the nation drunken and reeling with its own blood, was glad to give away all her liberties to Buonaparte, provided he could restrain her from destroying herself. It was this that made him. And even our own Washington might have cultivated his farm, and measured the land of his neighbours, unknown to posterity, had not the American Revolution called out his character, and reflected his greatness upon the world. While we allow that such men controlled and guided the circumstances which surrounded them, we cannot but feel that it is to these circumstances in a great

degree, that they owe their celebrity. But when a mind comes forth from the deepest obscurity, with every circumstance untoward, and against it, without one thing to aid it in coming into notice and yet breaking through all this, and by its own inborn energy, and its own unaided power, rising up and compelling notice and throwing off the difficulties which destroy most men, as the war-horse would throw off his market burdens, we cheerfully bestow our admiration and applause.

It was thus with Henry Kirke White. There was humanly speaking no one circumstance which did not seem to say, that he must live and die in obscurity and unknown. His father was a butcher, and destined his son to the same occupation, and actually had him carry the butcher's basket from door to door in his boyhood. In his school days, his instructors gave his parents the comforting assurance that their son was a dunce, whose only renown could be that of being the greatest block-head in their school. His destiny was then changed and he was doomed to be apprenticed to a stocking weaver, as the occupation of his life. But before this, when a mere child, he had

crept unperceived into the kitchen and taught the servants to read, had lampooned his teachers, probably with no measured severity, and had gathered some few flowers, from the hill of Parnassus which, to-day, are as green as on the day of his plucking them. Born and educated amid poverty, in low life, with not one about him who could understand or appreciate his character, with no hand to lift him up, and no voice which could call attention to him, he has challenged, and has received the decision that his name shall stand on the roll of immortality. And if his life might be embodied in a single emblem, perhaps it should be that of a young lion, with an eye that glows and flashes fire, while he is bound with ivy and is led by the hand of one of the Graces. That must be one of God's own and brightest stars, which can send its light down through the fogs and the damps which shut up all others, while to this, men involuntarily turn their eyes. Such a star was Henry, and our chief regret is, that an inscrutable Providence saw fit to allow it to do no more than hang for a short time in the horizon. There must be original greatness in the mind that can thus come into notice,

with no one circumstance in its favor, but the reverse, and it is impossible but these struggles and this victory over difficulties should embalm his name as one that is sacred.

He was born a Poet. Before he was six years old, he used to hang upon the lips of a poor damsel, whose attractions consisted in her being able to sing the simple ballad of the Babes in the Wood. While a mere boy he beautifully commemorates the cir

cumstance.

"Many's the time I've scampered down the glade,
To ask the promised ditty from the maid,
Which well she loved and well she knew to sing,
While we around her formed a little ring:
She told of innocence foredoomed to bleed,
Of wicked guardians bent on bloody deed,
Of little children murdered as they slept;
While at each pause we wrung our hands and
wept."

"Beloved moment! then 'twas first I caught The first foundation of romantic thought,"

"Then first that poesy charmed mine infant ear; I hied me to the thick o'er-arching shade," etc. etc.

It is not strange that childhood's heart should be touched by these ditties. It seems

that they all formed a ring round the maid, and all wrung their little hands and wept, but there was only one among them, who went alone away to the "o'er-arching shade" to meditate and give his soul up to emotion. None but one born a poet would at that early age do that.

Another instance. From the age of six to twelve he was at school, and used to take frequent walks with a playmate. In describing these walks, he says it was one of their amusements,

"To gaze upon the clouds, whose colour'd pride
Was scatter'd thinly o'er the welkin wide,
And tinged with such variety of shade,

To the charm'd soul sublimest thoughts convey'd.
In these what forms romantic did we trace,
While fancy led us o'er the realms of space!
Now we espied the Thunderer in his car,
Leading the embattled Seraphim to war ;
Then stately towers descried, sublimely high,
In Gothic grandeur frowning on the sky;
Or saw, wide-stretching o'er the azure height,
A ridge of glaciers dressed in mural white,
Hugely terrific:"

What child between the ages of six and twelve, has not gazed upon the glorious summer clouds, and seen them in all manner of fantastic shapes, representing almost