JOHN WILSON.

PROFESSOR WILSON, long the distinguished occupant of the chair of moral philosopy in the university of Edinburgh, earned his first laurels by his poetry. He was born on the 18th of May, 1785, in the town of Paisley, where his father had carried on business, and attained to opulence as a manufacturer. At the age of thirteen, the poet was entered of Glasgow University, whence in 1804, he was transferred to Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he carried off the Newdigate prize from a vast number of competitors for the best English poem of fifty lines. Mr. Wilson was distinguished in these youthful years by his fine athletic frame, and a face at once handsome and expressive of genius. A noted capacity for knowledge and remarkable literary powers were at the same time united to a predilection for gymnastic exercises and rural sports. After four years' residence at Oxford, the poet purchased a small but beautiful estate, named Elleray, on the banks of the lake Windermere, where he went to reside. He married-built a house-kept a yacht-enjoyed himself among the magnificent scenery of the lakes-wrote poetry-and cultivated the society of Wordsworth. These must have been happy days. With youth, robust health, fortune, and an exhaustless imagination, Wilson must, in such a spot, have been blest even up to the dreams of a poet. Some reverses, however, came, and, after entering himself of the Scottish bar he sought and obtained his moral philosophy chair. He connected himself also with 'Blackwood's Magazine,' and in this miscellany poured forth the riches of his fancy, learning, and taste-displaying also the peculiarities of his sanguine and impetuous temperament. The most valuable of these contributions were collected and published (1842) in three volumes, under the title of 'The Recreations of Christopher North.' The criticisms on poetry from the pen of Wilson are often highly eloquent, and conceived in a truly kindred spirit. A series of papers on Spenser and Homer are equally remarkable for their discrimination and imaginative luxuriance. In reference to these 'golden spoils' of criticism, Mr. Hallam characterised the professor as a living writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius, whose eloquence is as the rush mighty waters.' The poetical works of Wilson consist of the 'Isle of Palms' (1812), the City of the Plague' (1816), and several smaller pieces. The broad humour and satire of some of his prose papers form a contrast to the delicacy and tenderness of his acknowledged writings particularly his poetry. He has an outer and an inner mar. -one shrewd, bitter, observant, and full of untamed energy; the other calm, graceful, and meditative-'all conscience and tender heart.' He deals generally in extremes, and the prevailing defect of his poetry is its uniform sweetness and feminine softness of character. ́ Almost the only passions,' says Jeffrey, 'with which his poetry is conversant, are the gentler sympathies of our nature-tender com

passion, confiding affection, and guiltless sorrow. From all these
there results, along with most touching and tranquillising sweet-
ness, a certain monotony and languor, which, to those who read
poetry for amusement merely, will be apt to appear like dullness,
and must be felt as a defect by all who have been used to the variety,
rapidity, and energy of the popular poetry of the day.' Some of the
scenes in the City of the Plague' are, however, exquisitely drawn,
and his descriptions of lake and mountain scenery, though idealised
by his imagination, are not unworthy of Wordsworth.
The prose
descriptions of Wilson have obscured his poetical, because in the
former he gives the reins to his fancy, and, while preserving the
general outline and distinctive features of the landscape, adds a
number of subsidiary charms and attractions. In 1851, Mr. Wilson
was granted a pension of £300 per annum; his health had then
failed, and he died in Edinburgh on the 3d of April 1854. A com-
plete collection of his works was published by his son-in-law, Pro-
fessor Ferrier, of St. Andrews, in twelve volumes (1855-58).

A Home Among the Mountains.—From 'City of the Plague.'
MAGDALENE and ISABEL.

MAGDALENE. How bright and fair that afternoon returns
When last we parted! Even now I feel

Its dewy freshness in my soul! Sweet breeze!

That hymning like a spirit up the lake,
Came through the tall pines on yon little isle
Across to us upon the vernal shore

With a kind friendly greeting. Frankfort blest
The unseen musician floating through the air,
And, smiling, said: Wild harper of the hill!
So mayst thou play thy ditty when once more
This lake I do revisit.' As he spoke

Away died the music in the firmament,
And unto silence left our parting hour.
No breeze will ever steal from nature's heart
So sweet again to me.

It cannot be unhappy.

What'er my doom
God hath given me

The boon of resignation: I could die,

Though doubtless human fears would cross my soul,
Calmly even now; yet if it be ordained

That I return unto my native valley,

And live with Frankfort there, why should I fear

To say I might be happy-happier far

Than I deserve to be. Sweet Rydal Lake!

Am I again to visit thee? to hear

Thy glad waves murmuring all around my soul?
ISABEL. Methinks I see us in a cheerful group
Walking along the margin of the bay,

Where our lone summer-house

MAGD. Sweet mossy cell!

So cool-so shady-silent and composed!
A constant evening full of gentle dreams!
Where joy was felt like sadness, and our grief
A melancholy pleasant to be borne.

Hath the green linnet built her nest this spring

In her own rose-bush near the quiet door?
Bright solitary bird! she oft will miss

Her human friends: our orchard now must be

A wilderness of sweets, by none beloved.

ISA. One blessed week would soon restore its beauty,
Were we at home. Nature can work no wrong.

The very weeds how lovely! the confusion

Doth speak of breezes, sunshine, and the dew.

MAGD. I hear the murmuring of a thousand bees
In that bright odorous honeysuckle wall
That once inclosed the happiest family
That ever lived beneath the blessed skies.
Where is that family now? O Isabel,
I feel my soul descending to the grave,
And all these loveliest rural images

Fade, like waves breaking on a dreary shore!

ISA. Even now I see a stream of sunshine bathing
The bright moss-roses round our parlour window !
Oh, were we sitting in that room once more!

MAGD. "Twould seem inhuman to be happy there,
And both my parents dead. How could I walk
On what I used to call my father's walk,
He in his grave! or look upon that tree,
Each year so full of blossoms or of fruit,
Planted by my mother, and her holy name
Graven on its stem by mine own infant hands!
To a Sleeping Child.'

From Lines,
Art thou a thing of mortal birth,
Whose happy home is on our earth?
Does human blood with life imbue
Those wandering veins of heavenly blue
That stray along thy forehead fair,
Lost 'mid a gleam of golden hair?
Oh, can that light and airy breath
Steal from a being doomed to death;
Those features to the grave be sent
In sleep thus mutely eloquent?
Or art thou, what thy form would seem,
The phantom of a blessed dream?
Oh that my spirit's eye could see
Whence burst those gleams of ecstasy!
That light of dreaming soul appears
To play from thoughts above thy years.
Thou smil'st as if thy soul were soaring
To heaven, and heaven's God adoring!
And who can tell what visions high
May bless an infant's sleeping eye!
What brighter throne can brightness find
To reign on than an infant's mind,
Ere sin destroy or error dim
The glory of the seraphim?
Oh, vision fair, that I could be
Again as young, as pure as thee!

Vain wish! the rainbow's radiant form
May view, but cannot brave the storm:
Years can bedim the gorgeous dyes
That paint the bird of Paradise.
And years, so fate hath ordered, roll
Clouds o'er the summer of the soul...

Fair was that face as break of dawn,
When o'er its beauty sleep was drawn
Like a thin veil that half-concealed
The light of soul, and half-revealed.
While thy hushed heart with visions
wrought,

Each trembling eyelash moved with
thought,

And things we dream, but ne'er can
speak,

Like clouds came floating o'er thy cheek,
Such summer-clouds as travel light,
When the soul's heaven lies calm and
bright;

Till thou awok'st-then to thine eye
Thy whole heart leapt in ecstacy!
And lovely is that heart of thine,
Or sure these eyes could never shine
With such a wild, yet bashful glee,
Gay, half-o'ercome timidity!

From Address to a Wild Deer.'

Magnificent creature! so stately and bright!
In the pride of thy spirit pursuing thy flight;
For what hath the child of the desert to dread,
Wafting up his own mountains that far-beaming head;

Or borne like a whirlwind down on the vale?
Hail! king of the wild and the beautiful!-hail!
Hail! idol divine!-whom nature hath borne

O'er a hundred hill-tops since the mists of the morn,

Whom the pilgrim lone wandering on mountain and moor,
As the vision glides by him, may blameless adore:
For the joy of the happy, the strength of the free,
Are spread in a garment of glory o'er thee.

Up! up to yon cliff! like a king to his throne !
O'er the black silent forest piled lofty and lone-
A throne which the eagle is glad to resign
Unto footsteps so fleet and so fearless as thine.
There the bright heather springs up in love of thy breast.
Lo! the clouds in the depths of the sky are at rest;
And the race of the wild winds is o'er on the hill!
In the hush of the mountains, ye antlers, lie still!—
Though your branches now toss in the storm of delight,
Like the arms of the pine on yon shelterless height,
One moment-thou bright apparition-delay!
Then melt o'er the crags, like the sun from the day.

His voyage is c'er-as if struck by a spell,
He motionless stands in the hush of the dell;
There softly and slowly sinks down on his breast,
In the midst of his pastime enamoured of rest.
A stream in a clear pool that endeth its race—
A dancing ray chained to one sunshiny place-
A cloud by the winds to calm solitude driven-
A hurricane dead in the silence of heaven.

Fit couch of repose for a pilgrim like thee:
Magnificent prison inclosing the free;
With rock wall-encircled-with precipice crowned-
Which, awoke by the sun, thou canst clear at a bound.
'Mid the fern and the heather kind nature doth keep
One bright spot of green for her favourite's sleep;
And close to that covert, as clear to the skies
When their blue depths are cloudless, a little lake lies,
Where the creature at rest can his image behold,
Loking up through the radiance as bright and as bold."

Yes! fierce looks thy nature e'en hushed in repose-
In the depths of thy desert regardless of foes,
Thy bold antlers call on the hunter afar,
With a haughty defiance to come to the war.
No outrage is war to a creature like thee;
The bugle-horn fills thy wild spirit with glee,
As thou bearest thy neck on the wings of the wind,
And the laggardly gaze-hound is toiling behind.
In the beams of thy forehead, that glitter with death-
In feet that draw power from the touch of the heath-
In the wide raging torrent that lends thee its roar-
In the cliff that, once trod, must be trodden no more-
Thy trust-mid the dangers that threaten thy reign:
But what if the stag on the mountain be slain?
On the brink of the rock-lo! he standeth at bay,
Like a victor that falls at the close of the day-
While the hunter and hound in their terror retreat
From the death that is sparned from his furious feet;
And his last cry of anger comes back from the skies,
As nature's fierce son in the wilderness dies.

Burial-ground in the Highlands.

MRS. HEMANS.

MRS. HEMANS (Felicia Dorothea Browne) was born at Liverpool on the 25th September 1793. Her father was a merchant; but, experiencing some reverses, he removed with his family to Wales, and there the young poetess imbibed that love of nature which is displayed in all her works. In her fifteenth year she ventured on publication. Her first volume was far from successful; but she persevered, and in 1812 published another, entitled 'The Domestic