Was it a vision, or a waking-dream?

Fled is that music? Do I wake or sleep?

18“ Ode to a Nightingale.”—This poem was written in a house at the foot of Highgate Hill, on the border of the fields looking towards Hampstead. The poet had then his mortal illness upon him, and knew it. Never was the voice of death sweeter.

19"Charm'd magic casements," &c.-This beats Claude's Enchanted Castle, and the story of King Beder in the Arabian Nights. You do not know what the house is, or where, nor who the bird. Perhaps a king himself. But you see the window, open on the perilous sea, and hear the voice from out the trees in which it is nested, sending its warble over the foam. The whole is at once vague and particular, full of mysterious life. You see nobody, though something is heard; and you know not what of beauty or wickedness is to come over that sea. Perhaps it was suggested by some fairy tale. I remember nothing of it in the dream-like wildness of things in Palmerin of England, a book which is full of colour and home landscapes, ending with a noble and affecting scene of war; and of which Keats was very fond.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been,

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold :

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told,

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene,
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific 20-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.21

20" He stared at the Pacific," &c.-" Stared" has been thought by some too violent, but it is precisely the word required by the occasion. The Spaniard was too original and ardent a man either to look, or to affect to look, coldly superior to it. His " eagle eyes" are from life, as may be seen by Titian's portrait of him.

The public are indebted to Mr. Charles Knight for a cheap reprint of the Homer of Chapman.

21" Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”—A most fit line to conclude our volume. We leave the reader standing upon it, with all the illimitable world of thought and feeling before him, to which his imagination will have been brought, while journeying through these "realms of gold."

London:

Printed by STEWART and MURRAY,

Old Bailey.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL.

OBSERVATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. Made during a recent residence at the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. By SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, Bart., F.R.S, &c. In one volume, royal 4to. Illustrated by numerous Plates.

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WIT AND HUMOUR.

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"The Oxford Graduate is a bold revolutionist in art. A very Luther in artcriticism. He has asserted and established the claims of Landscape-painting to a much higher rank than it hitherto enjoyed. . . . The second volume of this remarkable work rises above the first. Indeed, we question if any but a high order of mind will embrace the full grandeur of its design, or follow the masterly analysis by which its propositions are elucidated The author approaches his task in a deep religious spirit. He does not so much criticise or argue, as expound. He considers Art to be a solemn interpretation of Nature The more one reads the book the more it fascinates."-English Gentleman.

...

"The author now comes forward with additional force, and, we must hope, with still higher effect on the public taste. He directs his attention in the present

volume from the individual artists, to the art itself."-Britannia.