purposely paint and praise vice and vicious characters, and seek to make them attractive and imitated, acts advantageously on the mind and especially on the well educated spirit, and most certainly adds to the happiness of life. Luther once said "I would not for any quantity of gold part with the wonderful tales, which I have retained from my earliest youth, or have met with in my progress through life." And Dr. Johnson's grand idea is universally true, "whatever can make the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings!"

Of the above eminent poets Byron and Moore have, not without reason, been charged with injuring, by some of their writings, morality and religion. Moore was much ashamed, in later life, of some of his earlier productions of this kind, and did all he could to suppress them. He is now most generally known from his "Irish Melodies," in which all his intense love for his country is displayed; and which, when he used to sing them, though he had but a poor voice and was an indifferent musician, were always listened to with deepest interest; and the tears, of those who heard them, often testified to the combined power of the poet and the musician. His greatest work is "Lalla Rookh," an Eastern Romance, full of many beautiful passages, and exquisite and truthful pictures of Eastern scenery and imagery. I will read one passage from "Paradise and the Peri," the most pleasing of the poems; it is founded on an Eastern legend. The Peris were erring spirits, who, it was supposed, might be re-admitted into Paradise, if they brought to the eternal gate

"The gift that is most dear to heaven."
"When, o'er the vale of BALBEC winging,
Slowly she sees a child at play,
Among the rosy wild flowers singing,
As rosy and as wild as they;
Chasing, with eager hands and eyes,
The beautiful blue damsel-flies,

That flutter'd round the jasmine stems,
Like winged flowers or flying gems :-
And, near the boy, who tir'd with play
Now nestling 'mid the roses lay,

She saw a wearied man dismount

From his hot steed, and on the brink Of a small imaret's rustic fount

Impatient fling him down to drink. Then swift his haggard brow he turn'd To the fair child, who fearless sat, Though never yet had day-beam burn'd Upon a brow more fierce than that,— Sullenly fierce-a mixture dire, Like thunder-clouds, of gloom and fire; In which the PERI's eye could read Dark tales of many a ruthless deed; The ruin'd maid-the shrine profan'dOaths broken-and the threshold stain'd With blood of guests!-there written, all, Black as the damning drops that fall From the denouncing Angel's pen, Ere Mercy weeps them out again!

Yet tranquil now that man of crime (As if the balmy evening time Soften'd his spirit) look'd and lay,

But, hark! the vesper call to prayer,
As slow the orb of day-light sets,
Is rising sweetly on the air,

From SYRIA's thousand minarets!
The boy has started from the bed

Of flowers, where he had laid his head,

And down upon the fragrant sod

Kneels, with his forehead to the south, Lisping the' eternal name of God From Purity's own cherub mouth, And looking, while his hands and eyes Are lifted to the glowing skies, Like a stray babe of Paradise, Just lighted on that flowery plain,

And seeking for its home again!

Oh! 'twas a sight-that Heav'n—that child

A scene, which might have well beguil'd

Ev'n haughty EBLIS of a sigh,

For glories lost and peace gone by!

And how felt he the wretched Man Reclining there-while memory ran O'er many a year of guilt and strife, Flew o'er the dark flood of his life, Nor found one sunny resting-place, Nor brought him back one branch of grace! "There was a time," he said, in mild, Heart-humbled tones-" thou blessed child! "When, young and haply pure as thou, "I look'd and pray'd like thee-but now-" He hung his head-each nobler aim,

And hope and feeling, which had slept
From boyhood's hour, that instant came
Fresh o'er him, and he wept-he wept!

Blest tears of soul-felt penitence!
In whose benign, redeeming flow
Is felt the first, the only sense

Of guiltless joy that guilt can know.

And now-behold him kneeling there
By the child's side, in humble prayer,
While the same sun-beam shines upon
The guilty and the guiltless one;

And hymns of joy proclaim through Heaven
The triumph of a Soul Forgiven!

'Twas when the golden orb had set,

While on their knees they linger'd yet,

There fell a light more lovely far

Than ever came from sun or star,
Upon the tear that, warm and meek,
Dew'd that repentant sinner's cheek.
To mortal eye this light might seem
A northern flash or meteor beam-
But well th' enraptur'd PERI knew
'Twas a bright smile the Angel threw
From Heaven's gate, to hail that tear,
Her harbinger of glory near !"

The Byron mania, which for a few years was so intense, has happily long since passed away. Silly young men no longer think it necessary to dress à la Byron, nor silly young ladies to talk unmeaningly of his sweet poems. It was a false taste, excited by unreal and accidental causes, quite apart from the actual merit of his writings. He was a lord, an eccentric lord, a noble poet; and there was a romance about all his life, from his school-boy days down to his struggles on behalf of oppressed Greece, in whose service he spent his last years. Some powerful and beautiful passages there are in the most of his writings; but, as poem after poem appeared, the public found that it was but a fresh exhibition, in darkening colors, of the same picture-the working of a morbid misantrophy, of which he was himself the real original. I will read two stanzas, out of perhaps his greatest work, "Childe Harold," and one that excites interest from the descriptions he gives of Italy, and its architecture, paintings, statues, scenery, &c. I select these, because they supply one of the few passages, in which, forgetful of self, he exhibits a strong and right feeling for others. Many of you will know the lines well. They contain a description of the celebrated statue at Rome, which has been named "The Dying Gladiator,"

"I see before me the gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand-his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony;
And his drooped head sinks gradually low-
And through his side the last drops ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now

The arena swims around him-he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not-his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He reck'd not of the life he lost nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay
There were his young Barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday-

All this rush'd with his blood-Shall he expire
And unavenged?-Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!"

Some of my earliest reminiscences are connected with Campbeш; and later in life I met him constantly, both in London and elsewhere. When first as a child I heard him talked about, he had just published his beautiful and pathetic poem of "Gertrude of Wyoming." "The Pleasures of Hope" had preceded it, and had already gained for him a world-wide reputation. "Gertrude of Wyoming" was a tale of transatlantic life, transatlantic, of course I mean, in relation to England; and true and expressive are many of the pictures given of the rich and varied landscape at and about "Wyoming," which was a settlement that had been destroyed by the Indians. It begins,

"On Susquehanna's side fair Wyoming!

Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall,
And roofless homes, a sad remembrance bring
Of what thy gentle people did befall;

Yet thou wert once the loveliest land of all

That see the Atlantic wave their morn restore."

Afterwards the poet, having again mentioned the river, describes the scenery in its neighbourhood;

"Yet wanted not the eye for scope to muse,
Nor vistas open'd by the wandering stream;
Both where at evening Alleghany views,
Through ridges, burning in her western beam,
Lake after lake interminably gleam;

And past those settlers' haunts the eye might roam
Where earth's unliving silence all would seem;
Save where on rocks the beaver built his dome,
Or buffalo remote low'd far from human home.

But silent not that adverse eastern path,
Which saw Aurora's hills th' horizon crown;
There was the river heard in bed of wrath,
(A precipice of foam from mountains brown,)
Like tumults heard from some far distant town;
But softening in approach he left his gloom,
And murmur'd pleasantly, and laid him down
To kiss those easy curving banks of bloom,
That lent the windward air an exquisite perfume."