our respect and attachment. But how great was my surprise, to find him possessed of a cast of countenance without a single trait of nobleness about it, a vulgar air, and manners anything but prepossessing. And when he absolutely refused to read my letters, or hear anything I had to say on the subject of my poem, I stood stupified with astonishment, and mentally exclaimed, "Can this indeed be the person Mr. Britton eulogised so warmly in his letters to my friend?" I soon perceived I had made a false estimate of his character, and quitted him with a disgust I did not attempt to conceal.

Thus I undertook a journey of more than sixty miles, to see a man who had held forth to me prospects of the most flattering kind, when at a distance and unknown to him; but who when I visited him with unquestionable testimonials, though he was then squandering hundreds on the worthless that were constantly imposing on his lavish folly, and in ways the most silly and ridiculous, refused to do me the slightest service, or advance the sale of my work.

I remain,

Your constant friend,
SYLVATICUS.

DEAR FRANK,

LETTER CIV.

L Cottage:

PARDON my not having written to you for so long a period. I have had nothing but complaints to utter, and those I am more weary of making than my friends can possibly be of listening to them. 1 am as one worn down with sorrows and misfortune.

My second epic has been now published some months. You say in your last, that you have "read it with intense interest and delight, and that in your opinion it surpasses in sweetness of language, vividness of poetic imagination, and originality, my first production." It may be,-I hope it is so. I have many letters from other friends, which justify and confirm your good opinion of the work. But alas! I labour in the poetic vineyard to no purpose. I toil in vain, while other and more fortunate bards reap an advantageous harvest in the fields of immortal poesy and fame. Not one of the leading reviews has yet noticed in the least this poem. It is in

vain any longer to contend with my fate. I must submit, however reluctant, to my doom of oblivion, anguish, and wretchedness, till death shall kindly put a period at last to my sufferings! I lie on my sleepless pillow night after night, reflecting on my hard lot, till I seem almost choked with the agony of intense feeling.

In addition to my other afflictions, my most worthy and valued friend, Mrs. Fordyce, departed this life about the time my last poem was announced. A memoir of that excellent lady is shortly to be published, at the end of which I am expected to write a few elegiac lines, which I shall do with recollections of the sincerest gratitude, and mingled feelings of pain and pleasure.

I send you a few lines, written on the recent death of a beloved female relative. She is gone and at rest; but I am left amid a wild and boisterous sea, driven by the tempest of my destiny towards the wreck-devoted shores of despair, while Hope's far-distant beacon-light gleams not across the dark billows of calamity, that roll in mountains o'er my sinking bark!

Still I continue,

Yours in truth,

SYLVATICUS.

ELEGY.

I saw her, as in agony she lay

Upon her death-couch.-Gracious heaven! long years Had flown away since last in happy days,

That face of paleness and of sorrow I

Ah me, how changed!

Beheld, with beauty crowned.
The marble brow was there, but O, how wan!
And on it stood the cold and clammy drops
That suffering Nature weeps at every pore,
When soul and body, those companions dear,
Take their eternal parting. Still there strayed
Upon that brow a raven-shining lock,

Half veiling her sweet eye, like a dark cloud
Upon the sunny west, when the evening ray
Struggles to fling its farewell glory forth.

And O, how changed that cheek, o'er which the rose,

The laughing rose of high intelligence,

Spread its vermillion bloom, and sweetly won
The homage of the heart. The ghastly hue
And dimness of a long dark night usurps
That shrine of loveliness, through which the soul
Shone forth in all its immortality

Of energy and thought, as sunbeams dart

Through the deep crimson-blushing clouds of morn.
Her lips, that once were of the rosebud's die
That peeps the green moss through, are paler now
Than the last snowdrop flower. What wreck is here!
O, there is nothing left of beauty's pomp,
Save the full darkness of her star-like eye,
That twinkles feebly o'er the evening cloud

Ere its eternal sitting! O, to me
This change is sudden, sad, and terrible!
As if the western hurricane had passed
Athwart an island paradise, and turned
To desolate ruin all its blooming bowers!
O, as I on thy faded form do gaze,

The thoughts of other days rush o'er my soul:
Thy death-dimmed countenance on me reflects,
Like the pale moon, the shadows of past joys;
When in our early days we walked the groves,
The summer groves, and heard the mountain lark
Pour her sun-
n-lighted music to the morn;
Or listened in the wood-bower's primrose shade,
To notes of thrush or purple-bosomed dove,

When on the ocean marge, at set of

sun,

We wandered hand in hand: while from the waves
Mid their dim caverns came äerial strains
Upon the sea-breeze wild, that seemed the song
Of mermaids on some distant surge-laved rock,
Blessing the beauteous peacefulness that reigned
O'er earth, and sea, and sky.

Then first I dared,

With feeble hand, my new-strung harp to wake;
While on my simple lay thou kindly smilest,
Like star-attended Dian when she flings

Aside her silvery veil and to the song,

The first soft song of the young nightingale,
Her own loved minstrel of the forest, lists.
Ah! in those hours what dreams of happiness
Our warm imaginations pictured forth,

And fondly thought that Time to them would give