scending was the Kyffhaus, and all the cottages with the gardens and grass-plats were quite familiar to him. Some children too, in answer to the question of a traveller riding by, called the village Sittendorf.

Again he shook his head, and made his way through the village to his own hut. It looked sorely decayed; and before it lay a strange child in a ragged frock, by the side of a half-starved hound, who snarled between his teeth while his old master called him by his name. He went through the opening, which a door had once closed, into the hut, and found all there so desolate and ruinous that he reeled like a drunken man out at the back-door, and called for his wife and children, but no one heard him, and no voice answered.

A crowd of women and children soon collected to look at the strange man with the long iron-grey beard, and all beset him with the question, "Whom did he want?" To have to ask others for his own house and wife and children, and perhaps for himself too, seemed so strange, that to get rid of their enquiries he named the first person that occurred to him," Kurt Steffew!" said he. Most held their tongues and stared at him, but at last an aged woman said, "He has lived for these twelve years beyond Saxonberg; you will not reach him today." "Velten Meier, then !"-" God bless him!" said an old grandmother on crutches, "he has been bed-ridden and never left the house these fifteen years.'

Claus began now to recognise some of his old neighbours, though they appeared to have aged very suddenly, but his appetite for asking any more questions was gone. And now a young woman, who seemed the image of his wife, made her way, bustling through the gaping crowd, with a child in her arms. "What is your name?" said he, starting. "Mary."-" And your father's?"—" God bless him, Peter Claus! It is now twenty years ago since we sought him day and night on the Kyffhaus mountain. His flock came back without him. I was then seven years old."

"I am Peter

The Goatherd could contain himself no longer. Claus," said he, "and no other!" as he seized the child from his daughter's arm, and kissed it. All stood petrified with astonishment, till first one voice, and then another, cried "Yes, it is Peter Claus ! Welcome neighbour, welcome home, after twenty years absence!"

The originality and simplicity of these tales recommend them strongly to our notice, but we are inclined to go further, and to assign to many of them a higher literary value, as almost the only records of ancient manners and opinions, and as furnishing very often important historic information. Many of them strongly and accurately characterize a period when religion was just assuming her empire over barbaric tribes; when despotism, as far as it could extend its rule, was pitiless, and curbed by no checks except those it received from a proud spirit of lawless independence, which drove individuals to defy attack in the impregnable fortifications of rocks and precipices. They afford frequent and valuable glimpses of truth to the enquirer

after the remains of the mythology of our heathen ancestors; and we can see no reason why the Thracian or Italian traditions which Homer or Livy occasionally embody, should be valued and, as it were, consecrated in classic memory, while these relics of a corresponding æra of expiring barbarism should be neglected or despised.

It is usually said, that the Teutonic and Scandinavian Sagas are peculiarly sombre-that they tell only

"Of forests and enchantments drear."

Their colouring is certainly deep, but we doubt whether there is any thing more in this than always belongs to such a stage of society, and whether the same features have not characterized the traditions of all countries and ages similarly circumstanced.

In regions overspread with dark and gloomy forests, scarcely penetrable by the light of heaven-where yawning precipices and towering crags are filled with the caves of wild beasts and freebooters-can society, (so far as it exists) its institutions, or literature, be expected to be of a different cast?

Where, on the contrary, the face of heaven smiles, and cultivation teems; where splendid cities rise, and the heart of man is light and secure from danger, the character of popular literature is widely different; but this state is one of progression, arrived at only by long and painful steps.

It is not Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, or Ireland alone, where woods and mountains have been peopled with goblins and plunderers, with mischievous dwarfs and lordly giants. Greece and Italy had their day too of darkness, and were once the scenes of terror and lawless aggression on the part of the strong, and these gave birth to such legends as those of the Minotaur, Fauns, Giants, Centaurs, Medea, Pelops, and Circe, of the thief-taking Hercules, of Harpies, of Pan, Cacus, and a hundred other worthies of very similar propensities to those which characterize the spirits of the Hartz forest. The bears, the wolves, and the banditti, have, however, long since vanished from the wilds of the North, and this alteration in the face of nature and society, soon produced the same effect as similar revolutions in the South. When the rays of the sun began to penetrate their mountain shades, a milder spirit soon illumined the productions of their imagination, and in the tales of this advanced period, the Goatherd drives his flock in security, he roams in freedom over his native mountains, with only now and then a special interposition of satanic or goblin inAuence to disturb his pursuits, or bewilder his imagination.

T.

POETS OF RURAL LIFE.-COWPER.

THERE is scarcely a poet of any note in the annals of litera ture who has not expressed his enthusiastic admiration for the rural life. Yet a very small proportion of our bards have resided in the country, and, with few exceptions, we can scarcely name a set of men less apparently satisfied with seclusion, or whose practice has appeared more decidedly at variance with profession. We do not find fault with them for their conformity to their real notions of enjoyment; on the contrary, we think the world has gained much by it. But there is no occasion for any deception in the matter, and accordingly we find it is daily becoming a more simple and natural thing, if we may so speak, to be a poet. With all our admiration for departed genius, and, in individual instances, for its vast attainments, we cannot be insensible to this great charm of our modern poetry. We have done with poetical priestcraft. We see in our bards a race of men, not set apart, like Druids, for holy and solemn purposes, but mingling in our avocations, giving and collecting sweets from the social as well as from the solitary scene; men who feel keenly, and imagine promptly; men whom we are little inclined to take for our guides," spiritual or temporal," but who nevertheless do sometimes quicken both body and soul: and while we think ourselves indebted to them for much that makes the rugged prospect of life look beautiful, we hold that the advantages of our communion are strictly mutual. Now and then a poetical Pope, or, if it pleases our readers better, a literary arch-druid, will start up, and plead for the almostforgotten supremacy of the bard; but we, meanwhile, like not such extorted homage, and are better pleased with those wholesome, sweet, and life-cheering strains, which are evidently the product of minds kept in exercise by constant communion with their fellows, than with the lonely and mystical musings of the solitary dreamer. The retired poet is not, generally speaking, an agreeable character. We have no sympathy with a being who, while pretending to a more than ordinary relish for natural, seems to have little perception of social, beauty. Give us the bard who can bring to our fire-sides the light and warmth of his genius; who can place in new and beautiful colours the circumstances of our daily lives; whose heart seems to be touched with human kindness. With all this, reason and experience tell us, may be joined a most exuberant imagination and a refined taste. Indeed, it is remarkable, that poetical genius has generally thriven much better in society than in solitude. Even our best descriptive poets have seldom been secluded men. Nothing, it will readily be acknowledged, can be more exquisite than some of Shakspeare's descriptions:

yet he did not spend his days and years in musing on the world of natural beauty. In accordance with this, we may observe that all his sweet and refreshing descriptions come in, in the way of digression: he pauses amid the hurry and business of action, to rest us with Lorenzo and Jessica in "the sweet moonlight;" and even while leading us along in the rapid career of ambition, he brings before our eyes, in lovely contrast, a view of the peaceful beauties of nature. None but a quick observer could have done this: but a habit of ready observation is chiefly to be acquired in active life; and hence it is, we think, that social habits are favourable to the improvement of the poetical character. It has been said, however, that retirement is desirable, not only or chiefly as it acquaints the poet with nature, but as it acquaints him with himself. This is very true; and we perfectly agree with Mr. Wordsworth ;—

"Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes,

He is a slave, the meanest we can meet.'

However, the poet who trusts to meditation upon his own mind alone for improvement, will, we fear, find himself in the predicament of the religionist, who relies, for his spiritual progress, on solitariness and self-watching. Both disdain the aliment upon which mind and heart are fed, and both are in imminent danger of starvation. Both also are liable to fall into that great error, the darling child of solitude, an overweening sense of self-importance, and a contempt of their brethren of mankind. In the little poem from which we have above quoted, we find much to censure. The man who can thus deliberately set at nought the advantages of communion with his fellows, who can remark upon the scandalous, trifling, and unprofitable discourse of some, leaving us to infer that such, and no better, is to be met with in the world, may find hearers to whom he can descant,

"Of personal themes, and such as he loves best,

Matters wherein right voluble he is;"

but can hardly expect to find listening ears, admiring eyes, and applauding tongues in every circle. We are apt to reckon the religious bigotry of Cowper the worst blemish of the Task. That bigotry, however, had in it nothing personal; and we can far better tolerate the timid Christian, when we see him shrinking from a world, whose practices he has learnt to conceive as evil, than we can bear with the man whose assumed superiority is that of intellect, not of principle. But of all people, the poet,

* Wordsworth's Poems, vol. ii. "I am not one," &c.

"To him

perhaps, has the least excuse for being a dogmatist. all that is interesting or amiable in human character, all that excites or engages our benevolent affections: all the truths which make the heart feel better and more happy--all these supply materials out of which he forms and peoples a world of his own, where no inconveniencies damp our enjoyments, where no shades darken our prospects.' His object is, to catch the fleeting ideas of grandeur and of beauty, from whatever sources derived, by whatever objects suggested; to fix them, and embody them for himself, for us, and for ages to come. Perish the criticism that would damp the ardour of his research! and perish the odious spirit of sectarianism, that would throw a shade over the glories of poetical liberty!

We have thus prefaced the few remarks we intend to make upon the poems of Cowper, in order to preclude the idea that our partialites are, generally, in favour of retirement as the nurse of poetical talent, an idea to which our fervent admiration for the Bard of Weston might possibly lead. We think the case of Cowper, however, a peculiar one. From the constitution of his mind it appears that his life must either have been that which it really was, or a scene of excessive misery. All speculations, therefore, upon what he might have been under different circumstances, are cruelly misplaced. We regard him as one whose lot was cast for him without revoke; and we think of him as a poet who had nothing to do with systems, whose peculiarities were those of his own mind, and who wrote simply as he felt or imagined. Every one must allow that in spirit he was far from a dogmatist. His gentle and affectionate heart taught him the value of those social pleasures from which he felt himself for ever excluded:--hence there is not the smallest particle of the leaven of selfishness in his censures of the vices of society; not one word from whence we can reasonably infer that the poet was retaliating upon the world the wrongs which he had received. The character of Cowper's mind, though acute and penetrating, was not, doubtless, very enlarged. He was too timid a Christian to be a good metaphysician, and has written nothing which it requires any stretch of the faculties fully to comprehend. In this respect, indeed, he differs widely from Mr. Wordsworth, who, though often too mystical for the common run of poetical readers, is far better acquainted with the human mind. Mr. Wordsworth, however, when he stoops from his highest and most successful flights, is sure to affront common readers by being over trite and obvious. Not so Cowper.

* Dugald Stewart.