TO CHARLES ELTON, Esq.,

ON HIS BEAUTIFUL POEM, LAMENTING THE LOSS OF HIS TWO SONS, Drowned.

BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, ESQ.

ELTON! whose Genius Virtue leads along
Where the pure passions sing no siren song,
Nor past'ral pipe allures o'er flowery lea,

But the dim shore, dark isle, and mournful

sea,

There too my eyes, not heedless, follow thee.

Neither the suns, nor storms of rolling years, Dry up the springs, or change the course of

tears;

Sorrow will mark her stated days,

Sacred as those religion claims for praise.
No less above our reason than our will

We may contend, but she must conquer still. For those who cease to grieve, we grieve the most,

Nor hear that Heaven has gain'd what Earth has lost.

AN ADVENTURE

IN

THE MOUNTAIN S.

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

In the year 1825, a traveller was wandering through those delicious valleys, which are formed by the various lateral branches springing from the great chain of the mighty mountains that separate France from Spain: the beauties of nature were dear, but not unfamiliar to his eyes; and, as the carriage rolled on towards Pierrefitte, those feelings of joy and enthusiasm, that revelling of the mind, that expansion of the heart which waits upon our happier days, came back, for a time, upon one who had known some sorrows in life, but had not lost a sympathy with all that is bright, and lovely, and excellent on earth.

He gazed on those grand mountains; and

the innumerable lights and shades that flitted, softened, but not dimmed, over their varied brows, and called up many a fanciful, but not altogether unreal association, showing bright poetical resemblances between the hourly changes in external nature, and the everaltering fate and unsteadfast condition of man. He drank in, too, that atmosphere of liquid gold, which renders the Pyrenees a land peculiar and apart in its transcendant beauty; and there was a balmy refreshment in that magic draught, which calmed and soothed the sorrows of his heart.

There is a period of misfortune, when grief, in its first state of irritation, shrinks from all that would allay its sharpness; and when the softening and consoling aspect of nature, the musical voice of the early year, the delicious breath of the pure air, the radiant smile of earth's spring face, are shunned either as dissonant to the melancholy music of our own hearts, or as giving but wild and broken snatches of that perfect melody which we can never more listen to entire. But that period had passed by with the traveller of whom we speak his

sorrows had been bitter; and they were neither removed nor lessened: the weight was equally heavy, but the heart had become habituated to its burden; and, as a wise and rational man, aware that, understood properly, and pursued honourably, "to enjoy is to obey," he sought, by every worthy means, to divert his thoughts from painful memories, and to find new enjoyments, or revive the zest of those that were deadened.

As we shall have to refer more than once to the state of his mind, although the events we are about to tell have little to do therewith, we will briefly explain the cause of sorrows, in regard to which we shall make no mystery. He had been a younger brother of a noble English family; and, placed as an attaché to a foreign mission, had committed that neverunpunished sin of falling in love with a girl, well born, but as poor as himself. He had thought she was worthy of his attachment, and had dreamed and decorated as all young men do, when first and passionate love takes possession of their hearts; but he had been wise enough to say no word of the feelings

that were busy in his bosom to her who had excited them, till, at length, appointed secretary of legation to another court, he had returned to England with better hopes.

Still marriage was, for the time, impossible; but when, with youth, health, interest, and hope to befriend him, he saw her again in their native land, and had good reason to believe that the love which she could not now help seeing, was returned ;—when the liquid lustre of the beaming eye, the varying colour of the cheek, the timid flickering smile upon the lips, and the quick-coming breath, when the name of love was mentioned—all told him, that at some happy future hour, that gentle, affectionate, sincere, kind being, that lovely and beloved girl, might be his: it was hard to shut up the words, which were to bear the secret of his heart, within the prison of his bosom, and only let them beckon forth the tale from the unguarded window of the eye.

Still he waged long warfare with himself; and, as many a young man does, kept his own counsel till one hour more would have gained