or almost any other than what it is, it would have broken the harmony of the picture; but its breast is of the form of the ocean waves, and the misty hue of its darker plumage is like the blending of the vapoury clouds with the cold blue of the deep sea below. Not only in its colouring, but in the wild gracefulness of its movements, in its shrill cry, in its swift and circling flight, and in the reckless freedom with which it sails above the drear abyss, its dark shadow reflected in the hollow of the concave waters, and its white plumage flashing like a gleam of light, or like the ocean spray, from rock to rock, it assimilates so entirely with the whole character of the scene, that we look upon it as a living atom separated from the troubled and chaotic elements, a personification of the spirit of the storm, a combination of its foam and its darkness, its light and its depth, its swiftness and its profound solemnity.

To the eagle mankind have agreed in assigning a sort of regal character, from the majesty of his bearing, and the proud preeminence he maintains amongst the feathered tribe; from the sublimity of his chosen home, far above the haunts of man and meaner animals, from the self-seclusion in which he holds himself apart from the general association of living and familiar things, and from the beauty and splendour of his sagacious eye, which shrinks not from the dazzling glare of the sun itself. Innumerable are the fables founded upon the peculiar habits of this bird, all tending to exalt him in the scale of moral and intellectual importance; but to the distinction conferred upon him by the ancients when they raised him to a companionship with Jove, is mainly to be attributed the poetical interest with which his character is universally invested. There are many birds whose peculiar haunts and habits render them no less useful to the painter than the poet, by adding to the pictorial effect of his landscape. In the sheet of crystal water which skirts the nobleman's domain, and widens in front of his castellated halls, we see the stately swan; on the shady margin of the quiet stream, imbosomed in a copes-wood forest, the shy water hen; the jackdaw on the old gray steeple of the village church; and a company of rooks winging their social way, wherever the scenery is of a peaceful, culti--the flying fish and the dolphin. The forvated, or rural character. By these means our inimitable Turner delights to give his pictures their highly poetical character. The heron is one of his favorite birds, and when it stands motionless and solitary upon a broken fragment of dark rock, looking down into the clear deep water, with that imperturbable aspect of never-ending melancholy which marks it out as a fit accompaniment of wild and secluded scenery, we feel almost as if the genius of the place were personified before us, and silent, and lonely, and unfrequented as these wilds may be, that there is at least one spirit which finds companionship in their solitude.

But above all other birds, the seagull, as it diversifies the otherwise monotonous aspect of the ocean, is an essential accompaniment to every representation of a sea view. Had the colour of this bird been red or yellow,

Inferior to birds in their pictorial beauty, though scarcely less conducive to poetical interest, are the various tribes of insects that people the earth and animate the air; but before turning our attention to these, it may be well to think for a moment in what manner the poet's imagination is affected by fishes and reptiles. Of the poetry of fishes little can be said. Two kinds only occur to me as being familiar in the language of poetry, and conducive to its figurative charm

mer, in its transient and feeble flight, has been made the subject of some beautiful lines by Moore; and because of the perpetual dangers which await it from innumerable enemies, both in sea and air, it is often adopted as a simile for the helpless and persecuted children of earth; while the dolphin, from the beauty of its form, and the gorgeous colours which are said to be produced by its last agonies, is celebrated in the poet's lay as an emblem of the glory which shines most conspicuously in the hour of death.

-parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new colour, as it gasps away:
The last still loveliest, till,-'tis gone-and all is gray!
BYRON.

יי!

In fearful pre-eminence amongst those animals commonly considered repulsive and

and diffusing poison-the locust, whose plagues are often commemorated—the hornet, to whose stings Milton describes Samson as comparing the accumulated agony of his own restless thoughts-the glow-worm, whose feeble light is like a fairy star, beaming upward from a world upon which all other stars look down-and the cankerworm, whose fatal ravages destroy the bloom of youth, and render void the prodigality of summer-passing over all these and many more, in which we recognise the familiar companions of the poet, we turn our attention to the butterfly and the moth, as being most associated with refined and agreeable ideas.

degraded, is the serpent, whose history is unavoidably associated with the introduction of sin and sorrow into the world. Whether from this association, or from an instinctive horror of its "venomous tooth," it is certain that the serpent is more generally dreaded, and more loathed, even by those who do not fear it, than any other living thing; and yet how beautiful is its sagacious eye, how rich and splendid its colouring, how delicate the tracery of net-work thrown all over its glossy scales, how graceful and easy its meandering movements, as it winds itself in amongst the rustling grass, how much like one of the fairest objects in nature, a clear blue river wandering through a distant valley! Yet all these claims to beauty, which the serpent unquestionably possesses, entitle it the more to the contempt and abhorrence of mankind, by obtaining for it the character of insinuating guile, which the allurements it is recorded to have practised upon our first mother seem fully to confirm. The toad, save for the "precious jewel in his head," can scarcely be called poetical, though not unfrequenty found in verse as a striking similitude for the extreme of ugliness, as well as for a despicable proneness to grovel in what is earthly and most abhorrent to our finer feelings, from its frequenting low, damp, unwholesome places, the banks of stagnant pools, or the nettles and lone grass that wave over the gloomy and untroddening, their airy movements, and ephemeral ground where the dead lie sleeping in their silent rest.

The snail has certainly no strong claims to poetical merit; yet we often find it serving the purpose of simile and illustration, from its tardy movements, and the faculty it has of carrying about its home, into which it shrinks on the first touch of the enemy. And even the lowly worm has some title to the poet's regard, because of its utter degradation, and the circumstance of its being, of all living things, most liable to injury, at the same time that it is one of the least capable of resistance or revenge.

Passing slightly over the multitudinous family of insects, we leave the beetle to his evening flight-the grasshopper, whose merry chirp enlivens the wayside traveller -the bee, perhaps the most poetical of any, from his opposite qualities of collecting honey

The butterfly is like a spiritual attendant upon the poet's path, whether he dreams of it as an emblem of the soul, fluttering around the fair form of Psyche, or beholds it in no less beautiful reality, sporting from flower to flower, and teaching him the highest intellectual lesson—to gather sweets from all.

We are apt in our childhood to delight in the legendary tales of fairy people inhabiting the groves, the gardens, or the fields, and regard with an interest almost superstitious, that mysterious circle of dark green verdure that remains from year to year marking the enchanted spot, where once they were believed to hold their midnight revels. Butterflies, in their exquisite colour

lives, exhibit to the imaginative beholder no slight resemblance to these ideal beings, as they glide through the scented atmosphere of the parterre, nestle in the velvet leaves of the rose, or touch without soiling the snowy bosom of the lily.

The butterfly is also strikingly emblematical of that delicacy which shrinks from communion with all that is rude or base. Touch but its gorgeous wings, and their beauty falls away-immure the woodland wanderer in captivity, and it pines and dies let the breath of the storm pass over it, and in an instant it perishes.

The moth is less splendidly beautiful than the butterfly. It has a graver character, and seeks neither the sunshine nor the flowers of summer; yet it is liable to be destroyed by the same degree of violence. Supported by the same slight thread of life,

any deeply pleasurable sensations, or because during the summer there is such a constant springing up of beauty, such an unceasing supply of vigour in the animal and vegetable world, that our ideas of spring are carried on until the commencement of autumn. There are a still smaller number of individuals who venture to say they love the dark days of winter, because, in order to find our greatest enjoyment in this season, we must possess a fund of almost uninterrupted domestic happiness, and few there are who can boast of this inestimable bless

ing; few indeed who, when thrown entirely upon the resources which their own hearts, their own homes, or their own families af ford, do not sometimes wish to escape, if only to enjoy the refreshment of green fields, free air, and sunny skies.

The good and the happy, the young and the innocent, whose hearts are full of hope, find peculiar gratification in the rich promise of spring, in the growth and perfection of plants, the rejoicing of the animal creation, and the renovated beauty of universal nature. There is within themselves a kind of sympathy, by which they become a part of the harmonious whole, a grateful trust which accords with this promise, a springing up and growth of joyful expectation which keeps pace with the general progress of the natural world, and echoes back a soul-felt response to the voice which tells of happiness. How different in all, except their power over the feelings, are the sympathies which are called forth by the contemplation of autumn! The beauty or rather the bloom of nature, is then passing away, and the gorgeous and splendid hues which not unfrequently adorn the landscape remind us too forcibly of that mournful hectic which is known to be a fatal precursor of decay. Every thing fades around us like our own hopes; summer with her sprightliness has left us, like the friends of our youth; while winter, cold winter, comes apace; alas! too like the chilling prospect that lies before us in the path of life. Thus, imagination multiplies our gloomy associations, and renders autumn the season best beloved by the morbid and cheerless, for very sympathy with its tendency to fade.

other man, the depth and the intensity of the mind's worst malady, tells us that—

"The glance of melancholy is a fearful gift;" and fearful indeed, is that insatiable appropriation to her own gloomy purposes with which melancholy endows her victims. Fearful would it be to read and sinful to write, how melancholy can distort the fairest picture, extract bitterness from all things sweet and lovely, darkness from light, and anguish-unmitigable anguish-from what was benificently intended to beautify and to bless.

Each day, also, has its associations, so nearly resembling those of the seasons, that it will not be necessary to examine in their separate characters the natural divisions of morning, noon, evening, and night. But evening, as being universally allowed to be highly poetical, may justly claim a large share of our attention.

"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad."

These words occur immediately to every poetical mind on the first consideration of this solemn and lovely hour. Indeed, they occur so familiarly, that, if it were possible they could lose their charm, it would already have been destroyed by frequency of repetition. But these two lines contain within themselves a volume of poetic feeling, that will live imperishable and unimpaired, so long as the human mind shall retain its highest and purest conceptions of the nature of real poetry. The very words have a resemblance to the general lull of nature gently sinking into the silence of night— "Now came still evening on;" "twilight gray" presents us with more than a picture

with a feeling-a distinct perception of thin shadows, and white mists gradually blending together; and the last line completely imbodies in a few simple words, our ideas of the all-pervading influence of evening, with its universally tranquillizing, solemn and mysterious power.

The mystery of twilight is not the least charm it possesses to an imaginative and poetic mind. From the earliest records of intelligent beings, we learn that mystery He who knew, perhaps better than any has ever been inconceivably powerful in its