"What though my course be rugged and uneven,

To prickly moors and dusty ways confined,

Yet, hearing thee and others of thy kind
As full of gladness and as free of heaven,
I o'er the earth will go plodding on

By myself, cheerfully, till the day is done."

If Wordsworth have superiority then, it consists in greater matu rity and dignity of sentiment.

While reading Shelley, we must surrender ourselves without reserve to the magnetic power of genius; we must not expect to be satisfied, but rest content with being stimulated. He alone who can resign his soul in unquestioning simplicity to the des cant of the nightingale or the absorption of the sea-side, may hope to receive from the mind of a Shelley the suggestions which, to those who know how to receive, he can so liberally impart. I cannot leave Shelley without quoting two or three stanzas, in which he speaks of himself, and which are full of his peculiar beauties and peculiar faults.

With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,

Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey.
A pard-like Spirit, beautiful and swift-

A love in desolation masked; a power

Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,

A breaking billow; even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower

The killing sun smiles brightly; on a check

The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

His head was bound with pansics overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear, topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew,

Vibrated as the ever-beating heart

Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew

He came the last, neglected and apart;

A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart."

Shelley is no longer "neglected," but I believe his works have never been republished in this country, and therefore these extracts may be new to most readers.

Ifriend.

Byron naturally in our hall of imagery takes place next his Both are noble poetic shapes, both mournful in their beauty. The radiant gentleness of Shelley's brow and eye delight us, but there are marks of suffering on that delicate cheek and about that sweet mouth; while a sorrowful indignation curls too strongly the lip, lightens too fiercely in the eye, of Byron.

The unfortunate Byron, (unfortunate I call him, because "mind and destiny are but two names for one idea,") has long been at rest; the adoration and the hatred of which he was the object, are both dying out. His poems have done their work; a strong personal interest no longer gives them a factitious charm,

and they are beginning to find their proper level. Their value is two-fold-immortal and eternal, as records of thoughts and feelings which must be immortally and eternally interesting to the mind of individual man; historical, because they are the most complete chronicle of a particular set of impulses in the public mind.

How much of the first sort of value the poems of Byron pos sess, posterity must decide, and the verdict can only be ascer tained by degrees; I, for one, should say not much. There are many beautiful pictures; infinite wit, but too local and tempo1 rary in its range to be greatly prized beyond his own time; little originality; but much vigor, both of thought and expression; with a deep, even a passionate love of the beautiful and grand. I have often thought, in relation to him, of Wordsworth's descrip

tion of

"A youth to whom was given

So much of Earth, so much of Heaven,

And such impetuous blood."

"Whatever in those climes he found, Irregular in sight or sound,

Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seemed allied.
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of nature wrought,
Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent,
The stars had feelings which they sent
Into those gorgeous bowers.

And in his worst pursuits, I ween,
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent;