A gentle hill its side inclines,

Lovely in England's fadeless green, To meet the quiet stream which winds Through this romantic scene

As silently and sweetly still

As when, at evening, on that hill,

While summer's wind blew soft and low, Seated by gallant Hotspur's side, His Katherine was a happy bride, A thousand years ago.

I wandered through the lofty halls
Trod by the Percys of old fame,
And traced upon the chapel walls
Each high, heroic name,

From him who once his standard set
Where now, o'er mosque and minaret,

Glitter the Sultan's crescent moons, To him who, when a younger son, Fought for King George at Lexington, A major of dragoons.

That last half-stanza, it has dashed
From my warm lip the sparkling cup;
The light that o'er my eyebeam flashed,
The power that bore my spirit up
Above this bank-note world, is gone;
And Alnwick 's but a market town,
And this, alas! its market day,

And beasts and borderers throng the way;
Oxen and bleating lambs in lots,
Northumbrian boors and plaided Scots,
Men in the coal and cattle line;
From Teviot's bard and hero land,
From royal Berwick's beach of sand,
From Wooller, Morpeth, Hexham, and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

These are not the romantic times
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes,

So dazzling to the dreaming boy;
Ours are the days of fact, not fable,
Of knights, but not of the round table,
Of Bailie Jarvie, not Rob Roy ;
"T is what "Our President," Monroe,
Has called "the era of good feeling";
The Highlander, the bitterest foe
To modern laws, has felt their blow,
Consented to be taxed, and vote,
And put on pantaloons and coat,

And leave off cattle-stealing:
Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,

The Douglass in red herrings;
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace, and park, and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.

The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre-blow is given

For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven, By Europe's craven chivalry.

You'll ask if yet the Percy lives

In the armed pomp of feudal state?
The present representatives

Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate,"
Are some half-dozen serving-men
In the drab coat of William Penn;

A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke nature's aristocracy;
And one, half

groom, half seneschal, Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall, From donjon keep to turret wall, For ten-and-sixpence sterling.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

THE FISHER'S COTTAGE. WE sat by the fisher's cottage, And looked at the stormy tide; The evening mist came rising, And floating far and wide.

One by one in the lighthouse

The lamps shone out on high;
And far on the dim horizon
A ship went sailing by.

We spoke of storm and shipwreck,
Of sailors, and how they live;
Of journeys 'twixt sky and water,
And the sorrows and joys they give.

We spoke of distant countries,
In regions strange and fair,
And of the wondrous beings

And curious customs there;

Of perfumed lamps on the Ganges,
Which are launched in the twilight hour;
And the dark and silent Brahmins,

Who worship the lotos flower.

Of the wretched dwarfs of Lapland,
Broad-headed, wide-mouthed, and small,-
Who crouch round their oil-fires, cooking,
And chatter and scream and bawl.

While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand
To winnow fragrance round the smiling land.
But small the bliss that sense alone bestows,
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows.
In florid beauty groves and fields appear,
Man seems the only growth that dwindles here.
Contrasted faults through all his manners reign;
Though poor, luxurious; though submissive, vain;
Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet untrue;
And e'en in penance planning sins anew.
All evils here contaminate the mind,
That opulence departed leaves behind;
For wealth was theirs; not far removed the date
When commerce proudly flourished through the
state;

At her command the palace learnt to rise,
Again the long-fallen column sought the skies;
The canvas glowed beyond e'en Nature warm,
The pregnant quarry teemed with human form.
Till, more unsteady than the southern gale,
Commerce on other shores displayed her sail;
While naught remained of all that riches gave,
But towns unmanned, and lords without a slave:
And late the nation found with fruitless skill
Its former strength was but plethoric ill.

Yet still the loss of wealth is here supplied
By arts, the splendid wrecks of former pride;
From these the feeble heart and long-fallen mind
An easy compensation seem to find.
Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp arrayed,
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade ;
Processions formed for piety and love,
A mistress or a saint in every grove.

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled,
The sports of children satisfy the child;
Each nobler aim, represt by long control,
Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul;
While low delights succeeding fast behind,
In happier meanness occupy the mind;
As in those domes where Cæsars once bore sway,
Defaced by time and tottering in decay,
There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,
The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed,
And, wondering man could want the larger pile,
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile.

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey, Where rougher climes a nobler race display, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansion

tread,

And force a churlish soil for scanty bread;
No product here the barren hills afford,
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
Yet still, e'en here, content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm,

Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,

He sees his little lot the lot of all;
Sees no contiguous palace rear its head
To shame the meanness of his humble shed,
No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal
To make him loathe his vegetable meal;
But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes;
With patient angle trolls the finny deep,
Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep;
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,
And drags the struggling savage into day.
At night returning, every labor sped,
He sits him down the monarch of a shed:
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board;
And haply too some pilgrim, thither led,
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.

ITALY.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

O ITALY, how beautiful thou art!

-

Yet I could weep, - for thou art lying, alas!
Low in the dust; and they who come admire thee
As we admire the beautiful in death.
Thine was a dangerous gift, the gift of beauty.
Would thou hadst less, or wert as once thou wast,
Inspiring awe in those who now enslave thee!
But why despair? Twice hast thou lived already,
Twice shone among the nations of the world,
As the sun shines among the lesser lights
Of heaven; and shalt again. The hour shall come,
When they who think to bind the ethereal spirit,
Who, like the eagle cowering o'er his prey,
Watch with quick eye, and strike and strike again
If but a sinew vibrate, shall confess
Their wisdom folly.

VENICE.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

THERE is a glorious City in the Sea. The Sea is in the broad, the narrow streets, Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed Clings to the marble of her palaces. No track of men, no footsteps to and fro, Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the Sea, Invisible; and from the land we went, As to a floating City, - steering in, And gliding up her streets as in a dream,