here we may believe he wandered and held communion with his muse when most impressed with the grandeur of his theme; and the visions which rose before him in his solitary rambles can hardly fail to await on the readers of his breathing verse, less like the voice of heroes perhaps than that of Homer, but as full of the deep, powerful spirit of humanity. The latter half of the Eneid has done that for this interesting district which history strives in vain to do, and like Ilium it chiefly owes to poetry its existence in the memories of men as the cradle of a by-gone civilization.

It is however somewhat to be regretted, perhaps, that Virgil did not adhere to the style in which he composed the first six books of this noble poem. Many critics of acknowledged eminence contend that the interest of the work is considerably less in the latter than in the former part; and, though they may have been mistaken in the causes they assign for this circumstance, few readers probably would be inclined to dispute the general justness of the observation. The fact appears to be that Virgil desired to unite the plans of the Iliad and Odyssey in one poem, and that the materials with which he had to work were far better calculated to enable him to imitate the latter than the former. The wanderings of Ulysses over sea and land were not more fitted to inspire a deeply interesting narrative than those of Æneas; but the war of Troy, and that of Latinus with the Rutuli, a struggle between two petty chiefs of a half-inhabited and not very highly civilised country, were very different subjects for the high-sounding verse and magnificent displays of

heroic fiction. The poet in the latter instance is always in danger of the reader's knowledge of the truth getting the better of his imagination; while, in the former, the judgment is only discontented with the imagination because it may sometimes fail of realizing all the glory of the mighty struggle of which the poet sings.

At any rate, the wanderer among the shades of Gensano will much more readily follow the bard in his mild and tender mood, than in that in which he woke the song of battle. The wide plain over which the winds have free course, seem necessary to the imaging of conflicts between nations :-to people the peaceful valley, the solitary grove, the brow of the sunny hill, with furious combatants, is to do violence to the rules by which even fancy, capricious as she is, consents to be governed.