Visiting Canada, Moore mentions that the captain of the packet in which he crossed "the fresh-water ocean," Lake Ontario, in addition to the other marks of courtesy, begged, on parting with him, to be allowed to decline payment for his passage.

After seeing Niagara Falls, he sailed down the St. Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec, staying for a short time at each of these places.

The visit to Niagara he considered as an era in his life; and the first glimpse he caught of that wonderful cataract gave him a feeling which nothing in this world could ever awaken again. "It was," said he, when writing of it long afterwards, "through an opening among the trees, as we approached the spot where the full view of the Falls was to burst upon us, that I caught this glimpse of the mighty mass of waters folding smoothly over the edge of the precipice; and so overwhelming was the notion it gave me of the awful spectacle I was approaching, that, during the short interval that followed, imagination had far outrun the reality.

I retain in my memory but one other dream—for such do events so long past appear-which can in any respect be associated with the grand vision I have just been describing; and, however different the nature of their appeals to the imagination, I should find it difficult. to say on which occasion I felt most deeply affected, when looking on the Falls of Niagara, or when standing by moonlight among the ruins of the Colosseum." And, again, of Niagara, he writes:-"My whole heart and soul ascended towards the Divinity in a swell of devout admiration which I never before experienced. Oh! bring the atheist here, and he cannot return an atheist. I pity the man who can coldly sit down to write a description of these ineffable wonders. Much more do I pity him

who can submit them to the admeasurement of gallons and yards. It is impossible, by pen or pencil, to convey even a faint idea of their magnificence. Painting is lifeless; and the most burning words of poetry have been lavished upon inferior and ordinary subjects. We must have new combinations of language to describe the Falls of Niagara."

Of it, too, in his POEMS RELATING TO AMERICA, he wrote:

TO THE LADY CHARLOTTE RAWDON.

FROM THE BANKS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.

I dreamt not then, that, e'er the rolling year
Had fill'd its circle, I should wander here
In musing awe; should tread this wondrous world,
See all its store of inland waters hurl'd
In one vast volume down Niagara's steep,
Or calm behold them, in transparent sleep,
Where the blue hills of old Toronto shed
Their evening shadows o'er Ontario's bed;
Should trace the grand Cadaraqui, and glide
Down the white rapids of his lordly tide
Through massy woods, 'mid islets flowering fair,
And blooming glades, where the first sinful pair
For consolation might have weeping trod,
When banish'd from the garden of their God.
Oh, Lady! these are miracles, which man,
Cag'd in the bounds of Europe's pigmy span,
Can scarcely dream of,—which his eye must sce
To know how wonderful this world can be!

But lo,--the last tints of the west decline,
And night falls dewy o'er these banks of pine.
Among the reeds, in which our idle boat
Is rock'd to rest, the wind's complaining note
Dies like a half-breath'd whispering of flutes;

Along the wave the gleaming porpoise shoots,
And I can trace him like a watery star
Down the steep current, till he fades afar
Amid the foaming breakers' silvery light,
Where yon rough rapids sparkle through the night,
Here, as along this shadowy bank I stray,
And the smooth glass-snake, gliding o'er my way,
Shows the dim moonlight through his scaly form,
Fancy, with all the scene's enchantment warm,
Hears in the murmur of the nightly breeze
Some Indian Spirit warble words like these:-
From the land beyond the sea,
Whither happy spirits flee;

Where, transform'd to sacred doves,
Many a blessed Indian roves
Through the air on wing, as white
As those wondrous stones of light,
Which the eye of morning counts
On the Apallachian mounts,—
Hither oft my flight I take
Over Huron's lucid lake,

Where the wave, as clear as dew,
Sleeps beneath the light canoe,
Which, reflected, floating there,
Looks as if it hung in air.

His Odes and Epistles contain descriptive sketches of scenery as remarkable for their fidelity to nature as for their poetical beauty; and of all his poetical records of this tour, none are so exquisitely lovely as the

CANADIAN BOAT-SONG.

WRITTEN ON THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.

Faintly as tolls the evening chime

Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.

Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Ann's our parting hymn.

Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.

Why should we yet our sail unfurl?

There is not a breath the blue wave to curl;
But, when the wind blows off the shore,
Oh! sweetly we'll rest our weary oar.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.

Utawas' tide! this trembling moon

Shall see us float over thy surges soon.
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers,
Oh, grant us cool heavens and favouring airs.
Blow, breezes, blow, the stream runs fast,
The Rapids are near and the daylight's past.

CHAPTER IV.

RETURN TO ENGLAND-DUEL-HIS MARRIAGE-JEFFREY

ROGERS.

Moore's whole absence from England was only a period of fourteen months, and from what he saw in the West, or rather from what he could not find there, of refinement in social life and the aroma of society, his previous ideas of republican government were considerably modified.

Through Lord Moira, in 1806, after his return, he obtained for his father the appointment of a barrackmastership in Dublin, so that his parent was now enabled to leave the counter.

This year, anticipating a home visit to Ireland, he wrote to his mother

"I think in about a fortnight I shall take flight for the bogs.

Darling mother! how happy I shall be to see you!—it will put a new spur on the heel of my heart, which will make life trot, for the time at least, sixteen miles an hour. I trust in heaven that you are recovering, and that I shall find you as you ought to be.-Ever your own, TOM."

Moore's Odes and Epistles, from which we have already given quotations, appeared in 1806. Capt. Basil Hall vouches for the accuracy of Moore's description of Bermuda, saying that it is "the most pleasing and exact" he knows. However, the volume was very severely handled by Jeffrey in The Edinburgh Review, on the score of its occasional questionable morality; and Moore, irritated, foolishly sent him a challenge. The combatants met at Chalk Farm; but just as they were about to fire, the police, who had got information of the affair, stepped in and put a stop to further proceedings. A few days after this the mutual friends of the poet and the critic contrived a meeting between them as if by accident. An explanation took place; Jeffrey acknowledging that he was too severe, and Moore that he was too hot. Moore, afterwards, boasted that, in the most severe of all his critics, he had found the most cordial of his friends; and, in later years, Jeffrey wrote thus of Moore:-"He has long ago redeemed his error; in all his latter works he appears as the eloquent champion of purity, fidelity, and delicacy, not less than of justice, liberty, and honour."

On the ground, where the duel was to have been fought, it was found by the seconds that one of the pistols had no bullet. A report got abroad that Moore and Jeffrey fought with pistols that were unloaded; and Byron sarcastically commemorated the event in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, aiming at Jeffrey, to whom he owed a deep grudge, rather than at Moore. Byron's lines are these: