by the very persons who are to share the money. The trick has been discovered, and " Le Bien Aimé” is no longer like “ Henri Quatre,” except in the eyes of the emigrants who are to pocket the indemnity. He will, I suspect, have to do a great many clever things, before he can work himself up again with the nation. But what of that !- Apropos, there were only four Americans saw the coronation, of whom I was one think of that, and bite thy nails with mortal envy!

I am now satisfied with the glories of this world, and know exactly what is the extent of all the combined powers of the holy alliance of frippery, trumpery, and mummery. I am now ready to go on my grand tour, and shall get through as soon as I can, so as to get back to Paris in February, or as I hope in January, as I expect to get tired of putting my nose into every old pile of stone and mortar. I shall then have nothing to detain me, but a trip to Ireland and Scotland, which I intend shall be a flying one, and then for the good land of liberty and a quiet home.

Yours affectionately.

RECOLLECTIONS.
My youth was happy—I was full

Of joyous leaping spirits :-Earth, ,
In all my dreams, looked beautiful-

My step was joy--my voice was mirth-
My tears were few and transient. Who

Can look upon his earlier years,

And reckon back his joys and fears--
His dreams so false, yet happy, too;

His expectations bright and bland;
His promises, things traced in sand;
His first young love—the only thing
Which can escape Time's withering;
His father's manly tenderness-
His mother's love; and yet repress,
Ay, though he hath not wept for years,

The gush, the flood of blissful tears?
I said my youth was happy-yet

I had some hours of shadowed thought ;

Some hues from darker passions caught ;
Some feelings I may not forget.
I have been wandering, when the sky

Was black with tempest—when the air
Vol. I.

31

Was rent by the loud Thunderer ;
And I have felt that I could die,
To join the dreadful uproar. Storm

Has been at times my passionate,

My ardent love; and I have sate
And wept that I was such a worm,

Having no power a part to bear
With Heaven's avenging minister.

I have had softer feelings : Night
Ilath pour'd her flood of silver light
Into my very soul ; and wings
Have come in my imaginings,
And fann'd the fever of

my

brow.
I do remember even now,
How I have gaz'd, till soul and eye
Were fix'd in deep idolatry!

And I have gaz'd on woman's eye,

And kindled at its hallowed fire ; And felt her fresh breath stealing by,

With tones as sweet as Tubal's lyre.And I have seen her bosom swelling,

To hear the softly whispered vow, As if the soul, in its deep dwelling,

Were all too full for stillness now; And then I felt as every drop

Of my heart's blood were backward rushing, And whelming spirit, life, and hope,

In its most wild tumultuous gushing. Oh! I do worship woman-bright,

High-soul'd and lovely woman—age Grows gay while living in her light;

And youth forgets his heritage From Eden and his Parent's fall,

Deeming love's dream--his Heaven-his all. I never interchang'd with men

My deeper feelings—I have kept My sanctuary closest, when

Their eyes would scan it. They ne'er wept As I would wish to weep—they never

Have felt a longing wish to die ; But feel as they could live for ever

In this world's hollow pageantry—

How can I hold communion ? Still

It sickens at the heart to keep
Its fountain sealed. Its waters will-

Ay, must, or the swell'd heart will breakFlow full and freely. I have felt

As I would give a world to shed
One burning tear; and yet have dwelt

As if I were among the dead,
Myself the only living thing,
Left of a total withering.

And yet there is a pride in feeling

That thoughts are mine they never knew; That though my heart may need their healing,

Grief never will the soul subdue. There is a pride in self-communion

On things men cannot feel nor share-
In soaring on a nobler pinion,

To some bright home of purer air
Where man hath never been. They waken

Such thoughts as these—an energy
A spirit that will not be shaken,

Ere frail mortality shall die.
They make man nobler than his race,

And give expansion, strength, to thought ; The tears they start leave not a trace,

For they are fragrant tears, and fraught With soothing power—they heal and bless The spirit in its loneliness.

I have a nameless feeling, when

I hear sweet music. I can find
No sympathy but silence then-

No kindred eye, or kindred mind,
To give me back my thoughts. Men are

Too tame, too passionless—they deem
My holier feelings singular,

My heart's delirious joys a dream-
Myself, a strange enthusiast—Still
It is a source of pride to me,

To feel my blood tumultuously
Careering at the minstrel's will;
To feel the warm, unbidden tears,

Press gently through the lash; and know, That though they shame my manlier years,

They have a luxury in their flow,

Too high for their conccption. Strange

That minds of an immortal birth,
Form'd through the universe to range,

Should so ignobly cling to earth,
Having no passion, but of sense;
No
eye

for their soul's loveliness ; No hate for their frame's impotence ;

Degraded, slothful, powerless,
Just living, and no more ; like worms,
Wasting the earth their life deforms.
I have met bere and there a heart,

Whose passion-pulses beat like mine;
Some few, who liv'd like me, apart,

And learn'd their feelings to enshrine, Like holy things. I have liv'd years

In one short hour, spent blissfully In their communion-mingling tears,

Till I had been content to die, My spirit was so chasten'd. One

I do remember now-a maid Whose voice came o'er me like a tone

From some lost Peri. I have said How much I worshipped melody ;

And sure I am, that all the strings Mine ear hath ever heard, will die,

Ay, fade from my rememberings,
E’er I forget that tone. We parted,

I fear-for ever; for her cheek,
Save when some thought the life-blood started,

Wore not the fresher hues, which speak
Of life's continuance. Her

Was fraught with too much eloquence ;

Its full, fixed look was too intense, Too passionate—not soon to die.

She must fade soon-Oh! how the flowers, The brightest flowers of earth, do fall!

How young that hollow grave devours Life's fairest hope! How soon that pall, Like Heaven's broad mantle, covereth all!

Roy.

Her eye

CRITIQUE ON CERTAIN PassAGES IN DANTE.

(Continued.) (We again call the attention of amateurs to this critique. In the present instance, the explanation offered is one of the happiest we have ever seen.] GENTLEMEN,

Among the arguments I offered, in my last communication, to support the interpretation I proposed, of the thirtieth line of the first canto of Dante's Inferno, I omitted to call your attention to the thirty-first line:

And lo! not far from the hill's first ascent-* which not only points out the place of the first appearance of the panther, but shows conclusively that Dante had not yet reached the “cominciar dell' erta”—the beginning or foot of the ascent; because the interjection ecco is almost always used to denote the time and place of the first appearance of a new object, or the first occurrence of a new event. If Dante was prevented from going further by the “panther,” when this panther was only “ quasi al cominciar dell' erta," it follows of course that Dante had not yet arrived at the foot of the hill, his progress towards it being intercepted by the panther.I now pass on to another passage, which appears to me to have been always strangely misunderstood. Inf. Cant. III. v. 109, 111.

Caron diinonio, con occhi di bragia

Loro accennando tutte le raccoglie,

Batte col remo qualunque s' adagia. The commentators have uniformly made batte an active verb, and have agreed to consider this last line as meaningthat Charon, impatient at the delay,

Beats soundly with his oar the loitering shades! Let us see how this strange commentary is supported by the context. At verse 71, Dante seeing a great number of souls collecting on the bank of a river, turns to his conductor, saying,

Master, give me to know what souls are these,
And what is that which makes them seem, (for so
Even through this feeble light to me they seem)

In such swift haste to pass from shore to shore.. At verse 111, 117, these souls, which according to the commentators, require the stimulus of Charon's oar, (a long oar

* Ed ecco, quasi al compinciar dell' erta.