But you may still sit and play with similes, Loose types of things through all degrees. In this wood-path, where the violets cluster so thick under the elm, it is curious to watch the play of leaves on the grass. When the sun shines, and not even a summer breath ruffles the boughs, the images of trees lie unbroken. The sharp, irregular outline of each leaf is reflected. But the faintest breeze breaks the shadow. The wing of a bird drives another shade over it; the heedless moth-a fly-a gnat, disperses it. We see the same accidents in the trees of fancy and taste. They fling their soft images of bloom over the sequestered walks of thought; but the slightest things-the breath of envy, the twinkle of popularity-disorder their beauty. Waller, for a moment, obscures Milton; Walpole buzzes down the sweet warble of Thomson. The shadow gives a parallel for a life as well as a genius. That man fleeth like a shadow and never continueth in one stay, is among the most touching lessons of Holy Scripture. Our kindred, not less than our own recollections, illustrate the Prophet and the Psalmist: We cast a longer shadow in the sun! And now a charm, and now a grave is won. I am pleased to trace out the resemblance in my summer rambles; and when I see myself climbing the silver beech, and losing my head in the top branches, a moral is not wanting. But there is another and livelier comparison. Sometimes I walk up to the park-paling, and endeavour to look my own shadow in the face; but it is gone, and the robin, The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast, which sat on the top and seemed to sing to it, is vanished also. Here is a simile full of purifying truth. I remember, with good Arthur Warwick, "that all our pleasures are shadows, thrown by prosperous sunlight along our journey, and ever deceiving and flying us most, when most we follow them." The vapoury form on the mossy paling, with the robin singing on its head, is only the emblem of some empty dream, walking through life by our side, with Hope carolling above it, and disappearing when Reflection draws near, and looks at it with calm and earnest eye. And, while I moralize, the sun is sinking fast, From ev'ry herb and every spiry blade, MAY 4th.-Read a discourse of John Smith, whom Coleridge calls not the least star in the constellation of Cambridge men, the contemporaries of Taylor. Smith was a native of Achurch, near Oundle, Northamptonshire. He was a pupil of Whichcot, at Emanuel, and died before he had completed his thirty-third year. Bishop Patrick, who knew him well, and preached his funeral sermon, exclaimed, in the fervour of his admiration-"What a man would he have been, if he had lived as long as I have done." He declared that Smith "spake of God and religion as he never heard man speak." We notice in his thoughts a calm largeness of idea, that is very impressive. For example;-"All those discourses which have been written for the soul's heraldry, will not blazon it so well to us as itself will do. When we turn our eyes in upon it, it will soon tell us its own royal pedigree and noble extraction, by those sacred hieroglyphics which it bears upon itself." Again:-"And because all those scattered rays of beauty and loveliness which we behold spread up and down, all the world over, are only the emanations of that inexhaustible light which is above, therefore should we love them all in that, and climb up always by those sunbeams unto the Eternal Father of Light." This thought is in the Platonic spirit of Spenser. And with equal nobleness of language he portrays the defaced condition of the human mind; its splendour darkened, and the handwriting of the Creator almost worn out. "These principles of divine truth which were first engraven on man's heart with the finger of God, are now, as the characters of some ancient monument, less clear and legible than at first." Coleridge, in the third volume of his Literary Remains, observes of the theological school of Smith-" Instead of the subservience of the body to the mind, (the favourite language of our Sydneys and Miltons) we hear nothing at present but of health, good digestion, pleasurable state of general feeling, and the like." MAY 5th.-A country clergyman, Mr. Nowell, has lately published some pleasing corrections of the zoology of our poets. The subject is attractive. Perhaps natural history, in its varieties of field, hedge, and woodland, is the element of decorative knowledge in which the poetical mind is most deficient. Even Thomson mistook the nature of the gad-fly, and spoke of its attack as collective, instead of solitary; Lord Byron compared Napoleon at Waterloo to the eagle, " tearing with bloody beak the fatal plain." The illustration of Reinagle led him to amend the description, because all birds of prey begin the assault with their talons. Milton, having later lights of science, seems to have been incorrecter than Shakspere. Mr. Nowell selects his sketch of the ant The parsimonious emmet provident Of future Ray, in 1691, gave the earliest refutation of this error. But our chief debt is due to Huber. The ant is known to be almost entirely carnivorous; without skill to build garners, or store them with food. Nor is the winter-magazine necessary for the support of the insect, because the depth of its nest protects it from the weather, and severe frost renders it torpid. In another passage, by adopting the common opinion, Milton and Spenser C |