the road, there is always a more glorious tumult of singing-birds than in any other spot I know. To hear these birds on the one hand, and the gush of the rapid Rotha on the other, when the day is breaking over the waters, is enough to enliven the whole succeeding winter day. The Rotha is here spanned by a bridge, which we must cross if we mean to go round the valley. We leave the highway now, and pass through a gate which makes the winding road half private for the whole time that we are skirting Loughrigg. Under wooded steeps and through copses we go, looking over the flat valley to the green swelling mountains on the other side, whose woods run down the ravines, and hang on the slopes, and peep out where the vales hide between. When I first came, there was a green knoll swelling up out of the meadows, under the opposite hills, with a chapel roof rising behind it, and a row of lowly gray stone cottages near. When I first marked that knoll, I little thought that on it I should build my house, and that it would afford that terrace view which would be the daily delight of my life. But there now stands my graystone old English house, with climbing plants already half covering it, and a terrace wall below, inviting my fruit trees to spread themselves over it. Our road now skirts the Rotha, a stream too clear to fish in, except after heavy rains. There is no beguiling the trout in water as translucent as the air. We do not now cross the little Millar Bridge, by which I am wont to go almost daily to Fox How; but we walk on to Fox How, through whose birch copse we have to pass. Every one knows that Fox How is the abode so beloved by Dr. Arnold-the house he built, and the garden he laid out to be the retreat of his old age. The trees that he planted spread and flourish, his house is almost covered with roses and climbing plants, his younger children are growing up there, and his friends assemble in his home; but he has long been gone. Perhaps there is not one of us that ever passes through that birch copse without vivid thoughts of him. As for me, I usually take my way through the garden, even if I have not time for more than a word at the window, or even for that. We now see the recess of Fairfield, its whole cul-de-sac, finely, unless mists are filling the basin, and curling about the ridges; and Rydal Forest stretches boldly up to the snow line. Lady Le Fleming's large, staring, yellow mansion is a blemish in the glorious view; but a little way back, we saw near it what puts all great mansions out of our heads,-Wordsworth's cottage, a little way up the lower slope of Nab Scar-the blunt end of the Fairfield horseshoe. Of that cottage we must see more hereafter; it does not lie in our road now. After passing four or five dwellings, more or less prettily set down in their gardens, we come to Pelter Bridge, where we cross the Rotha again, and join the mail road. The river still sweeps beside us, among stones and under bending trees, joined here and there by a beck (brook) which has been making waterfalls in the ravines above. When we part company with it, we pass by more and more dwellings, one of the most striking of which, from its exquisite position on a hill-side, is the large gray house built by the brother of Sir Humphry Davy. That gate is near my own. After passing both, and skirting the wall of Mr. Harrison's grounds, we come to the little town of Ambleside. We had better pause at the foot of the hill leading up to the church; for we have more to say of Ambleside than we have room for here. THE CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. BY FRANCES S. OSGOO D. WHEN silent Noon hung o'er the Syrian land, "To Heaven be honour," said he--"while I crush A softer glory--warm with Mercy's ray-- To all the Future's glorious reparation,- So he learned; He learned while he had thought to honour Heaven, SHAKESPEARE'S MINOR POEMS. BY JOHN S. HART. The minor poems of Shakespeare, besides the Sonnets, are the Passionate Pilgrim, the Lover's Complaint, Venus and Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece. To the observer of our literary history one | fitting preparation for higher studies, should object ever stands proudly eminent an object they hereafter be deemed discreet. not unlike the Pyramid of Cheops-which, whether you go up or down the Nile, whether you penetrate its rich valley from the east over the sand-hills of Arabia, or from the west across the trackless desert of Zahara-from whatever quarter you approach-is the first object to strike, the last to recede from the vision. So is it with the object which we have indicated. Whether we approach it travelling backward from the names of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Byron and Scott, or descend towards the same point from Cædmon, Chaucer, Sidney, and Spenser-whether we cross the current of our literature by a transition from that of France or Germany, the Norseland or the South of Europe-from whatever quarter of the literary horizon we direct our gaze towards the point indicated-one name rises spontaneously on every tongue-the greatest name in all English, in all modern, perhaps I may say absolutely, in all literature. Shakespeare may possibly not be read as much now as he once was. The time will come, I believe, when he will be read still less. But he is studied all the more. His fame is steadily in the ascendant. It is confessedly higher now than it was at the beginning of the present century. It has made a perceptible rise even within the last ten years. The Passionate Pilgrim was first published in 1599. It is not, like the other three that have been named, a connected poem, but a name given to a small collection of Sonnets and Songs on various subjects, but mostly of a passionate character. The publisher had evidently found these pieces circulating in manuscript, and proposed to profit by the rising reputation of the author by collecting them into a small volume for sale. He made however many extraordinary mistakes, such indeed as to prove incontestably the surreptitious character of the publication. Several of the pieces in the collection were ascertained afterwards not to be Shakespeare's, but the work of different authors. Some appear elsewhere as parts of other works of Shakespeare's. Others, that do not appear elsewhere, and that may reasonably be accepted as Shakespeare's, are yet not of a character to entitle them to much consideration. On the whole, therefore, the collection is of little value, and need not be farther noticed. There is no The Lover's Complaint was originally published as an appendix to the Sonnets. This In a spirit of affectionate reverence for was the case in the original edition of 1609, the subject, I have in two former papers and in the second edition of 1640. They are offered to the reading public some remarks generally so printed now. This however is suggested by a study of the Sonnets. Before merely an incidental connexion, adopted origiproceeding to a similar study of the Dramas-nally probably for bookselling convenience, without in fact having yet fully settled in my own mind whether I might dare to enter upon ground at once so hallowed and so profanedhallowed, I mean, by the awe-inspiring genius of the author, profaned by the babbling herd of querulous and contending commentators and critics-still standing at respectful and unambitious distance from that which after all constitutes the unchanging and eternal pyramid of Shakespeare's fame, let me pause once more for a space to gather some of the lotos-blossoms and lilies from the fertilizing river at its base. The study of the other Minor Poems may, it is hoped, afford pleasing and instructive topics for remark similar to those suggested by the Sonnets, and will form a and followed since from custom. |