with his stentorian murmur and the shrill uproar on both hands of these bacchanals in clover, ycleped grasshoppers, we are positively in danger of losing the supreme satisfaction of hearing ourself. A brief hint apropos, in thy ear, O absolute Abstainer from inebriating beverages, touching a contrary propensity of that determined habitué of dewy lily-bells, the humdrum grasshopper.' In ourself, an attachment to a liquid which thou anathematisest, is too matured a weed to be eradicated--nor are the spectacles yet invented by means of which, with the narrative of a certain marriage in Cana in memory, we could discern the poison lurking in temperate administrations of a certain creature-comfort, whose property it is to make the heart glad. Yet, barring our prejudices, which are ultra in this matter, and conceding that a countenance by the grape made cheerful may be condemnable, and that there may be a chaster virtue in tealeaves, we commend to thy proselytising efforts the grasshopper family, consisting as it does of deilmay-care kind of gentry, who are said by Abraham Cowley and Richard Lovelace (both unexceptionable authorities,) to drink immoderately-and voilà at this moment a debauchee, in whom the poppy is evidently at work, taking double bounds in dissolute despera

tion. Cowley, if our memory be not misty (as it commonly is till our after-dinner tumbler verges a second time towards a vacuum), the aforesaid Abraham denominates the wine consumed in this shameless wight's potations, as Dewy Morning's,' which Dame Nature, illicitly, and with no fear of excisemen before her eyes, pours into yellow-cups and blue-bottles in such extravagant profusion, that every green field is in effect a carte blanche to the thirsty grasshopper. The testimony of Lovelace is still more conclusive, and affirms the dewbibber to be addicted to a novel and rather poetic bonne bouche;-he, Richard Lovelace, deponeth the accused to be drunk every night with a delicious tear!' and finding no palliation for a line of conduct so abandoned, we commit the profligate to the consideration of the tents.

"We have mounted this Green-hill at various paces and in various moods, at intervals since '80, and should esteem it no venial sin to pursue our upward march without turning at this point to admire. Test this Valley-of-the-Test by Cowper's standard of beauty, and the scene approves itself a champion as to its charms, since, daily viewed, it daily pleases. Let the dew have had its dazzling hour with the day beams, and bright Phœbus in his

strength' have routed incipient chills which harbour in the heather a little after dawn, and then let any or all in whom is a heart of love to God's works sit here upon this hillside; and not by dint of devout invocation to Fancy to waft the soul forth on light wings into ether that obliterates the real, but by rapt silent survey of the placid face of this actual landscape, should he or they confess, on the breaking of the spell, how perfectly had been steeped in oblivion the consciousness of mutability-how entirely they felt, now that feeling had returned to them,

'As if the moving time had been

A thing as stedfast as the scene

On which they gazed themselves away.'

6

To more than one artist have we propounded this question, What needs this scene to render it consummate? and the limners, like echoes, have each responded, What!' And many a time too have we thought, that of the accumulated graces gathered in yon amphitheatre 'twould be only considerate to forewarn spring, summer, and autumn travellers, to scenic enchantment susceptive, ere, speeding from the West, they are whirled from the ambush of that highway-line of trees into the scene's sudden glory,

where all Nature's works are perfect and where Man's chiefest work is his best work-an habitation for his GOD! The sheltering hills-see how they throw their circling arms around that lowland loveliness, and how themselves, at base and side and summit, are studded with trees, dense in their foliage as clouds that cradle storms-summer-storms, having red lightnings in their retinue, which burnish their cloudy cradle; for touched is all that leafy pride with the first tint of the golden autumnal dye,—the forest's hectic-flush which beautifies but surely precedes Decay. And-gazing even charmedly-fleetly upon the sense of sight steals languor, from yonder lucid streams which at this eminence are neither heard nor seen to flow, and from the fields that lay out there in most expansive idlesse, and from the prostrate herd infected by the prevailing paresse: and drowsily now upon the ear falls the far-off melody of the invisible lark, who rises from his home with a heart too full of thankful song to abide his nest's limits, and (saving our exhausting self,) pours out the sole articulate annunciation of life in heaven above or on the earth beneath. And the very air and light seem in conspiracy with things below to close our thoughts from every sphere save that in which at this still season

of repose and peace' we are contented dwellers; and. so might the influence operate, and we forget our high inheritance and cease to aspire, were it not for the homily, to the heart, not ear, addressed by yon grey sanctuary, towering beyond all structures secular into the deep, blue, glorious heavens,'-symbolising a nobler house not made with hands, eternal,' which our longing souls look to gain by some bright starry pathway through the bewitching azure;—

6

'Why else so often doth the searching eye

Roam through the scope of sky?'

"Thanks to the priestly influence of yonder holy pile, which recalls us from a state of too-entire contentment with the ravishments of earth to a remembrance of the royalties of heaven;' and again we say, Welcome to uninterrupted enjoyment of his freedom from weak prejudice, is the sturdy soul who smiles in scorn at the doctrine that especial sanctity is in the place where God descends to commune with His contrite ones. O! to our heart of hearts, linked is that shrine, not only by high hopes of glory which kindle highest there, but by indestructible bonds originating with rite of baptism, bridal, burial, and twined about our better thoughts by the invisible