from despair. Over buried beauty, that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves, they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget much they ought to remember-all profounder thoughtswhile gazing on the epitaph of letters or of flowers. "Tis a vision to their senses, with which Imagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that the deception prospers; for what if Love could bid the burial-ground give up or disclose its dead? Or if Love's eyes saw through dust as through air? What if this planet-which men call Earth-were at all times seen and felt to be a cemetery circling round the sun that feeds it with death, and not a globe of green animated with life-even as the dewdrop on the rose's leaf is animated with millions of invisible creatures, wantoning in bliss born of the sunshine and the vernal prime?

Are we sermonizing overmuch in this our L'ENVOY to these our misnamed RECREATIONS? Even a sermon is not always useless; the few concluding sentences are sometimes luminous, like stars rising on a dull twilight; the little flower that attracted Park's eyes when he was fainting in the desert, was to him beauteous as the rose of Sharon; there is solemnity in the shadow of quiet trees on a noisy road; a churchyard may be felt even in a village fair; a face of sorrow passes by us in our gaiety, neither unfelt nor unremembered in its uncomplaining calm; and sweet from some still house in city stir is

"The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise."

have been born among such Births-to have lived among such Lives-to be buried among such Graves. O great glory to have seen such Stars rising one after another larger and more lustrous-at times, when dilated with delight, more like Moons than Stars-like Seraphs hovering over the earth they loved, though seeming so high up in heaven!

To whom now may the young enthusiast turn as to Beings of the same kind with himself, but of a higher order, and therefore with a love that fears no sin in its idolatry? The young enthusiast may turn to some of the living, but he will think more of others who are gone. The dead know not of his love, and he can hold no communion with the grave. But Poets never die-immortal in their works, the Library is the world of spirits; there they dwell, the same as in the flesh, when by meditation most cleansed and purified-yet with some holy change it seems-a change not in them but in us, who are stilled by the stillness, and attribute something supernatural to the Living Dead.

Since first this Golden Pen of ours-given us by one who meant it but for a memorialbegan, many years ago, to let drop on paper a few careless words, what quires so distainedsome pages, let us hope, with durable inkhave accumulated on our hands! Some haughty ones have chosen to say rather, how many | leaves have been wafted away to wither? But not a few of the gifted-near and afar-have called on us with other voices-reminding us that long ago we were elected, on sight of our credentials-not indeed without a few black We daresay you are a very modest person; balls-into the Brotherhood. The shelf marked but we are all given to self-glorification, pri- with our initials exhibits some half-dozen vate men and public, individuals and nations; volumes only, and has room for scores. It and every one Era and Ego has been prouder may not be easily found in that vast Library; than another of its respective achievements. To but, humble member as we are, we feel it now hear the Present Generation speak, such an elderly gentleman as the Past Generation to be a point of honour to make an occasional contribution to the Club. So here is the FIRST begins to suspect that his personal origin lies SERIES of what we have chosen to call our hid in the darkness of antiquity; and worsethat he is of the Pechs. Now, we offer to back RECREATIONS. There have been much recastthe Past Generation against the Present Genera- lieved by us to have been wrought with no ing and remoulding-many alterations, betion, at any feat the Present Generation chooses, unskilful spirit of change-cruel, we confess, and give the long odds. Say Poetry. Well, to our feelings, rejections of numerous lucuwe bring to the scratch a few champions-brations to their father dear-and if we may such as, Beattie, Cowper, Crabbe, Rogers, use such words, not a few creations, in the Bowles, Burns, Baillie, Campbell, Graham, Montgomery, Scott, Southey, Coleridge, Words- same genial spirit in which we worked of old worth, Hunt, Hogg, Shelley, Keates, Pollok, is better than praise. -not always unrewarded by sympathy, which Cunningham, Bloomfield, Clare, and-risum teneatis amici-Ourselves.

All with waistcoats of red and breeches of blue,

And mighty long tails that come swingeing through." And at sight of the cavalcade-for each poet is on his Pegasus-the champions of the Present Generation, accoutred in corduroy kilts and top-boots, and on animals which "well do we know, but dare not name," wheel to the right about with "one dismal universal bray," brandishing their wooden sabres, till, frenzied by their own trumpeters, they charge madly a palisade in their own rear, and as dismounted cavalry make good their retreat. This in their strategics is called a drawn battle.

Heroes, alive or dead, of the Past Generaion, we bid you hail! Exceeding happiness to

For kindness shown when kindness was most needed-for sympathy and affection-yea, love itself-for grief and pity not misplaced, though bestowed in a mistaken belief of our condition, forlorn indeed, but not wholly forlorn-for solace and encouragement sent to us from afar, from cities and solitudes, and from beyond seas and oceans, from brethren who never saw our face, and never may see it, we owe a debt of everlasting gratitude; and life itself must leave our heart, that beats not now as it used to beat, but with dismal trepidation, before it forget, or cease to remember as clearly as now it hears them, every one of the many words that came sweetly and solemnly to us from the Great and Good. Joy and sorrow make up the lot of our mortal estate, and by

sympathy with them, we acknowledge our | death pass over us while we stand for the last brotherhood with all our kind. We do far time together on the sea-shore, and see the ship more. The strength that is untasked, lends with all her sails about to voyage away to the itself to divide the load under which another is uttermost parts of the earth? Or do we shudbowed; and the calamity that lies on the heads der at the thought of mutability in all created of men is lightened, while those who at the things-and know that ere a few suns shall have time are not called to bear, are yet willing to brightened the path of the swift vessel on the involve themselves in the sorrow of a brother. sea, we shall be dimly remembered-at last So soothed by such sympathy may a poor forgotten-and all those days, months, and mortal be, that the wretch almost upbraids years that once seemed eternal, swallowed up himself for transient gleams of gladness, as in everlasting oblivion! if he were false to the sorrow which he sighs to think he ought to have cherished more sa-credly within his miserable heart.

With us all ambitious desires some years ago expired. Far rather would we read than write now-a-days-far rather than read, sit with shut eyes and no book in the room-far rather than so sit, walk about alone any where "Beneath the umbrage deep

That shades the silent world of memory." Shall we live? or "like beasts and common people die?" There is something harsh and grating in the collocation of these words of the Melancholy Cowley;" yet he meant no harm, for he was a kind, good creature as ever was born, and a true genius. He there has expressed concisely, but too abruptly, the mere fact of their falling alike and together into oblivion. Far better Gray's exquisite words,

One word embraces all these pages of ours Memorials. Friends are lost to us by removal for then even the dearest are often ut..terly forgotten. But let something that once was theirs suddenly meet our eyes, and in a moment, returning from the region of the rising or the setting sun, the friend of our youth seems at our side, unchanged his voice and his smile; or dearer to our eyes than ever, because of some affecting change wrought on face and figure by climate and by years. Let it be but his name written with his own hand on the title-page of a book; or a few syllables on the margin of a favourite passage which long ago we have read together, "when life itself was new, and poetry overflowed the whole world; or a lock of her hair in whose eyes we first knew the meaning of the word "depth." And if death had stretched out the absence into the dim arms of eternity-and removed the distance away into that bourne from which no traveller returns-the absence and the distance of her on whose forehead once hung the relic Posthumous Fame! Proud words-yet may we adore what heart may abide the beauty they be uttered in an humble spirit. The comof the ghost that doth sometimes at midnight mon lot of man is, after death-oblivion. Yet appear at our sleepless bed, and with pale up-genius, however small its sphere, if conversant lifted arms waft over us at once a blessing and .a farewell!

"On some fond breast the parting soul relies!" The reliance is firm and sure; the "fond breast" is faithful to its trust, and dying, transmits it to another; till after two or three transmissions-holy all, but fainter and dimmerthe pious tradition dies, and all memorial of the love and the delight, the pity and the sor row, is swallowed up in vacant night.

with the conditions of the human heart, may vivify with indestructible life some happy delineations, that shall continue to be held dear by successive sorrowers in this vale of tears. If the name of the delineator continue to have something sacred in its sound-obscure to the many as it may be, or non-existent-the hope of such posthumous fame is sufficient to one who overrates not his own endowments. And as the hope has its root in love and sympathy, he who by his writings has inspired towards himself, when in life, some of these feelings in the hearts of not a few who never saw his face, seems to be justified in believing that even after final obliteration of Hic jacet from his tombstone, his memory will be regarded with something of the same affection in his RE

Why so sad a word-Farewell? We should not weep in wishing welfare, nor sully felicity with tears. But we do weep because evil lies lurking in wait over all the earth for the innocent and the good, the happy and the beautiful; and, when guarded no more by our eyes, it seems as if the demon would leap out upon his prey. Or is it because we are so selfish that we cannot bear the thought of losing the sight of the happiness of a beloved object, and are troubled with a strange jealousy of beings unknown to us, and for ever to be unknown, about to be taken into the very heart, perhaps, of the friend from whom we are parting, and to whom in that fear we give almost a sullen farewell? Or does the shadow of MAINS.

THE END.