without reforming themselves, complain of the badness of the times: the language, it is true, is simple and unadorned, but on that account, perhaps, only the more forcible and striking.

Why slander we the times?
What crimes

Have days and years, that we
Thus charge on them iniquity?
If we would rightly scan,

'Tis not the times are bad, but man.

If thy desire it be

To see

The times prove good, be thou
But such thyself, and surely know
That all thy days to thee

Shall, spite of mischief, happy be.

The third on Hope is entitled, from its very subject, to a more poetical treatment, and it accordingly meets with it in the following very beautiful lines:

Bear up:

Yet still bear up: no bark did e'er
By stooping to the storm of fear
Escape the tempest's wrath!-

Hope, tho' slow she be, and late,
Yet outruns swift time and fate;
And aforehand loves to be
With most remote futurity.
Hope is comfort in distress;
Hope is in misfortune bliss:
Hope in sorrow is delight;
Hope is day in darkest night:
Hope casts her anchor upward, where
No storm durst ever domineer.

Trust Hope, and be

Assured that she

Will bid thee welcome to security.

Against the violence of the tempest, indeed, which raged on all sides around him during a series of the most turbulent years which this country ever experienced, our poet possessed another resource, which, next to religion, has been found most efficient in reconciling man to the numerous evils which await him in this sublunary state; for we learn from the history of his life, that the affection of his friends and the love of his family were with him under all his afflictions and trials.

To this, in fact, the poems I am now noticing

bear testimony, in almost every page; for they speak of friendship and domestic enjoyment in language whose sincerity will scarcely admit of a doubt. He who was entitled from experience to record the first of these blessings in the subsequent terms, could not, under any circumstances, be deemed an unfortunate man:

Parental kindness, cold may grow,
And filial duty cease to glow;
Ev'n matrimonial fervor may

Be chill, and faint, and die away :
But Friendship's resolute heat
With loyalty's eternal pulse doth beat.

But there is no production in the volume before me which so undisguisedly and decidedly unveils to us the amiable character of our bard, and the happiness which he felt by his own fire-side, as the second of two poems entitled "Home." There is an earnestness, a naïveté, in the language of this little piece, which must steal into every heart, and which brings before us, infinitely better than a more polished and elaborate diction would do, a distinct and glowing picture of the comforts which were wont to

cheer his humble roof. I know not, indeed, where, in so short a compass, can be found, throughout the whole range of English poetry, so warm and heart-felt an expression of domestic ease and relaxation.

Home's home, altho' it reached be
Thro' wet and dirt and night; tho' heartily
I welcomed was, yet something still,
Methinks, was wanting to fulfil

Content's odd appetite: no cheer,

Say I, so good as that which meets me here,

Here, here at home: not that my board
I find with quainter, richer dainties stor❜d;
No, my high welcome all in this

Cheap simple word presented is,
My Home; a word so dearly sweet,
That all variety in it I meet.

When I'm abroad, my joys are so,

And therefore they to me seem strangers too:
I may salute them lovingly,

But must not too familiar be;

Some ceremonious points there are

Which me from pleasure's careless freedom bar.

But Home, sweet Home, releaseth me From anxious joys, into the liberty

Of unsolicitous delight;

Which howsoever mean and slight,

By being absolutely free

Enthrones me in Contentment's monarchy.

To this poem on the blessings of his own fire-side, the last which I purpose selecting from the works of Dr. Beaumont, I shall now annex, as in some degree accordant with the subject of homefelt happiness, here so strikingly illustrated, a few Sonnets from my own pen, the offspring of feelings and circumstances of no unusual occurrence in the routine of social and domestic life.