take the following verses), as a curious proof of the intense feeling connected with the day, that in Edinburgh a Fourth of June Club continued, for many years after King George's death, to meet and dine, and drink to his amiable memory. The feelings of the people regarding the king were highly wrought in the year 1809, when he entered on the fiftieth year of his reign. Statues were erected, poems written in his honour. Here is a curious and clever composition by a (supposed) Norman Nicholson, a shepherd among the Grampian hills, who assumed to have just entered on the fiftieth year of his professional life. The aged king lived, darkly, through ten anniversaries after this, of the same day.

JUBILEE FOR JUBILEE.

From the Grampian hills will the royal ear hear it, And listen to Norman the Shepherd's plain tale? The north wind is blawing, and gently will bear it, Unvarnish'd and honest, o'er hill and o'er dale. When London it reaches, at court, sire, receive it; Like a tale you may read it, or like a sang sing. Poor Norman is easy, but-you may believe itI'm fifty years shepherd, you fifty a king.

Your jubilee, then, wi' my ain I will mingle,

For you and myseľ twa fat lambkins I'll slay; Fresh turf I will lay in a heap on my ingle,

And wi' my auld niebours I'll rant out the day. My pipes that I play'd on lang syne, I will blaw them,

My chanter I'll teach to lilt over the spring; My drones to the tune I will round and round thraw

them :

Oh, fifty years shepherd, and fifty a king!

Strength and beauty He has given,
They are His to take away;
But the heart that well has striven
Is no slave of night or day.

See upon yon mountain-ridges
How the fir-woods, spread between,
Reconcile the snow-clad edges

With the valley's vernal green;
reflection
So the lines of grave

You decipher on my brow Keep my age in glad connection

With the young that flourish now.

Not that now poetic fire

Can along my life-strings run,
As when my Memnonian lyre
Welcomed every rising sun;
Though my heart no more rejoices
In the flashes of my brain,
In the freshness of your

voices

Let me hear my songs again.

Did I love?-let nature witness,
Conscious of my tears and truth.
Do I love?-oh, fatal fitness!
Still requiring youth for youth!
Yet, while thought the bliss remembers,
Áll delight is not gone by;

Warm your spirits o'er my embers,

Friends! and learn to love as I.

O my children! O my

brothers!

If for self I lived too much,
Be my pleasures now for others,

Every passion now be such.

Be the stillness life-destroying
That could make me slow to feel,
To enjoy with your enjoying,
To be zealous with your zeal.
Grant me not, ye reigning Hours,
Virtues that beseem the young-
Vigour for my failing powers,
Music for my faltering tongue:
Let me, cheerful thoughts retaining,
Live awhile, nor fear to die;
Ever new affections gaining,

Such as Heaven might well supply!

R. MONCKTON MILNES.

There was once living in Naples, in the days of Tasso and of Milton, a noble-hearted old man—Manso, Marquis of Villa-of princely character and position, "a venerable friend and patron of the Muses," who most hospitably entertained the poet of "Paradise Lost," when young in years and

new to fame, and at that time on a visit to Naples. The old Italian nobleman and the young English poet were charmed with each other; only the difference of religion a little disturbed the old man, who wrote in Latin this very complimentary epigram on the beautiful and gifted" Angle":

With mind, mien, temper, face, did faith agree, No Angle, but an angel, thou wouldst be.

And Milton responded (also in Latin) with the following learned and prophetic poem addressed to his entertainer :

MANSO.

Once more the Muses to your praise aspire,
O Manso! dear to the Phœbean choir;
Graced by the god, and made his chosen pride,

Since his own Gallus and Mecenas died.

My Muse would throne you, were her power so

great,

With bays and ivy clustering round your state;
Friendship once mingled yours and Tasso's fame,
And stamp'd his deathless pages with your name.

Hail, then! from Clio and your Phœbus, hail! Crown'd be your locks with wreaths that never fail!

Hail, honour'd sire! in homage to your worth, A youth salutes you from the distant north: Nor you this offering of a Muse despise, Who, scarcely nursed beneath her Arctic skies, With hasty step has traced the Hesperian shore, Your towns, your arts, your manners to explore. We too can boast our swans, whose liquid throats Cheer the dull darkness with their dulcet notes; Where silver Thames, in proud diffusion spread, Pours his full flood on Ocean's azure head.

yore,

We too can boast that Tityrus of *
To your gay clime the muse of Britain bore.

Phœbus avows us, and not rude our strain,
Though our night pause beneath the stormy wain ;
We too have vow'd to Phœbus, and of old
Our blushing orchards, and our fields of gold,
If ancient lore be true, have heap'd his shrine,
Brought by the fathers of the Druid line.
(The hoary Druids, in harmonious praise,
Hymn'd the blest gods, and sung heroic lays.)

*

Blest sire! where'er Torquato's victor muse
Her glorious track to fame o'er earth pursues;

*Chaucer, who travelled into Italy, is named Tityrus in Spenser's pastorals.

Where'er extends Marino's* mild renown,

Your name, and worth, and honours shall be known.

In the same car of triumph as you ride,

Still shall you share the plaudit and the pride, Deck'd with their crowns, in all their pomp of

state,

Shall pass with them through fame's eternal gate.
Succeeding times shall say the god of song
Dwelt, with his minstrel maids, your train among,
A willing inmate; not as once, from heaven
By Jove's stern wrath, to serve Admetus driven,†
He press'd with haughty step the regal floor,
Though great Alcides there had trod before.
Indignant still he watch'd the bleating plains,
But oft, to shun the rudeness of the swains,
Tired, would he seek mild Chiron's learned cave
(Which vines o'erhang, and lucid fountains lave,
By Peneus' bank), and there diffusely laid,
Fann'd by soft breezes in the whispering shade,
Would sing, indulgent to his friend's desire,
And cheat his tedious exile with the lyre.
Then rocks would move, the stream forget to flow;
Great Pelion's summits with their forests bow;
Trees, quick with ear, confess the sweet control,
And fawning pards submit their savage soul.

Heaven-loved old man! to gild your natal day Jove, sure, and Phœbus, shot their purest ray With Maia's son; for no less honour'd birth Could suit the soul that grasp'd Torquato's worth.

* Manso was the biographer of his two friends, Torquato Tasso, and Marino.

+ Milton here refers to the fable of Apollo, driven by Jupiter from heaven, and compelled to tend the flocks of Admetus, King of Thessaly.