young and dissipated heir, who, without one trait of pity or remorse, resigns to the axe what his fathers had so highly cherished and revered; and he hastens to apostrophize those, who feel inclined to follow the ruinous example, in terms which, if poetry could make its way to hearts thus callous to all sympathy with some of the best associations of the human mind, might in all probability avert the fatal stroke. It is an appeal which, in sweetness, tenderness and moral feeling, rivals the pathetic strains of Moschus, and it is one which I am happy in being able to remark, has suffered no deterioration in passing through the hands of our anonymous translator:

--

Ah! par ces bois sacrés, dont le feuillage sombre
Aux danses du hameau prêta souvent son ombre;
Par ces dômes touffus qui couvroient vos ayeux,
Profanes, respectez ces troncs réligieux !
Et quand l'âge leur laisse une tige robuste,
Gardez-vous d'attenter à leur vieillesse auguste.
Trop tôt le jour viendra que ces bois languissans,
Pour céder leur empire à de plus jeunes plants,
Tomberont sous le fer, et de leur tête altière
Verront l'antique honneur flétri dans la poussière.—

Croissez, hâtez votre ombre, et repeuplez ces

champs,

Vous, jeunes arbrisseaux ; et vous, arbres mourans, Consolez-vous. Témoins de la foiblesse humaine, Vous avez vu périr et Corneille et Turenne :

Vous comptez cent printems, hélas! et nos beaux

jours

S'envolent les premiers, s'envolent pour toujours.
Heureux donc qui jouit d'un bois formé par l'age;
Mais plus heureux celui qui créa son bocage!
Ces arbres, dont le tems prépare la beauté,
Il dit comme Cyrus: "C'est moi qui les plantai."
Chant 2.

Oh! by those shades, beneath whose ev'ning bow'rs
The village dancers tripp'd the frolic hours;
By those deep tufts, that shroud your father's tombs,
Spare, ye profane, their venerable glooms!
To violate their sacred age, beware,

Which e'en the awestruck hand of time doth spare.
Too soon, alas! to fate their strength must yield,
Too soon shall younger trees usurp the field!
The axe will fall; on earth's cold bosom laid,
Defiled with dust, their tresses fair shall fade.
Ye saplins, rise, and crowd the empty space,
Ye dying trees, forgive your dire disgrace!

The fate of short-lived, hapless man recall,
For you have seen the brave, the learned fall;
Corneille, Turenne, now sleep in dust; on you
A hundred springs have shed their balmy dew;
But man's best days, alas! are soonest fled,
And those once gone, to ev'ry joy he's dead!
Bless'd is the man whose trees for years have stood:
More bless'd whose happier hands create a wood.
He cries with Cyrus, as their shades disclose,
"'Twas I who planted all those stately rows."

One of the most pleasing characteristics, indeed, of the didactic poetry of De Lille, is the vein of pensive tenderness, and touching morality which pervades, endears, and hallows, as it were, almost every page. It is thus that on the topic of plantations, whilst inculcating precepts for the choice and distribution of tints, so as to call forth the most striking effects of harmony, variety, and contrast, he adverts to the many-coloured woods of Autumn in a strain of melancholy enthusiasm which must find an echo in every bosom that has learnt to feel for sorrow and for suffering. It is fortunately one of those passages to which all imaginable justice

has been done by our translator, who, as the reader will immediately perceive, has in one or two instances availed himself, with the happiest taste, of a very admirable sketch in the Seasons of our amiable Thomson.

Remarquez-les surtout, lorsque la pâle automne, Près de la voir flétrir, embellit sa couronne. Que de variété, que de pompe et d'eclat! Le pourpre, l'orange, l'opale, l'incarnat, De leurs riches couleurs étalent l'abondance. Hélas! tout cet éclat marque leur décadence. Tel est le sort commun. Bientôt les Aquilons Des dépouilles des bois vont joncher les vallons; De moment en moment la feuille sur la terre, En tombant, interrompt le rêveur solitaire. Mais ces ruines même ont pour moi des attraits. Là, si mon cœur nourrit quelques profonds regrets, Si quelque souvenir vient rouvrir ma blessure; J'aime à mêler mon deuil au deuil de la nature. De ces bois desséchés, de ces rameaux flétris, Seul, errant, je me plais à fouler les débris.

Chant 2.

Mark too, what time in many-colour'd bow'rs, Pale Autumn wreathes his latest, loveliest flow'rs;

The rich luxuriance mark of ev'ry view,
The mild and modest tint, the splendid hue,
The temper'd harmony of various shades!
Alas! their beauty blooms at once and fades.
Such is the lot of all: and now each gale
Bleak-whistling robs the groves, and strews the vale;
While oft, who strays beneath in pensive mood,
Starts at the leaf, that rustles from the wood.
But, ah! my soul enjoys the dying year,

I drop the sadly-sympathizing tear,

When Nature mourns; and in my woe-worn heart, When memory probes some wound with double

smart,

Oh! how I love the with'ring waste to tread,
When all the verdure of the year is fled!

From this sweet but sombre picture of the dying year, from the deep recesses of the forest, whose sea of foliage is sounding to the storm, our author turns with the happiest effect of contrast to luxuriate amid the blooming world of shrubs and flowers. He has managed the transition with the most delicate art, and to this skilful interchange and opposition of subject, which is kept up throughout the entire poem, much of the impressiveness and fascination of the work is to be attributed.