all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and revelled with her,-they have wooed her in her most secret haunts, they have watched her minutest caprices. A spray could not tremble in the breeze -a leaf could not rustle to the ground—a diamond drop could not patter in the stream- -a fragrance could not exhale from the humble violet, nor a daisy unfold its crimson tints to the morning; but it has been noticed by these impassioned and delicate observers, and wrought up into some beautiful morality. The effect of this devotion of elegant minds to rural occupations has been wonderful on the face of the country. A great part of the island is rather level, and would be monotonous, were it not for the charms of culture: but it is studded and gemmed, as it were, with castles and palaces, and embroidered with parks and gardens. It does not abound in grand and sublime prospects, but rather in little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet. Every antique farm-house and mossgrown cottage is a picture: and as the roads are continually winding, and the view is shut in by groves and hedges, the eye is delighted by a continual succession of small landscapes of captivating loveliness. The great charm, however, of English scenery is the moral feeling that seems to pervade it. It is associated in the mind with ideas of order, of quiet, of sober well established principles, of hoary usage and reverend custom. Every thing seems to be the growth of ages of regular and peaceful existence. The old church of remote architecture, with its low massive portal; its gothic tower; its windows rich with tracery and painted glass, in scrupulous preservation; its stately monuments of warriors and worthies of the olden time, ancestors of the present lords of the soil; its tombstones, recording successive generations of sturdy yeomanry, whose progeny still plough the same fields, and kneel at the same altar-The parsonage, a quaint irregular pile, partly antiquated, but repaired and altered in the tastes of various ages and occupants-The stile and footpath leading from the churchyard, across pleasant fields, and along shady hedgerows, according to an immemorial right of way-The neighbouring village, with its venerable cottages, its public green sheltered by trees, under which the forefathers of the present race have sported-The antique family mansion, standing apart in some little rural domain, but looking down with a protecting air on the surrounding scene All these common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled security, and hereditary transmission of homebred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation. It is a pleasing sight of a Sunday morning, when the bell is sending its sober melody across the quiet fields, to behold the peasantry in their best finery, with ruddy faces and modest cheerfulness, thronging tranquilly along the green lanes to church; but it is still more pleasing to see them in the evenings, gathering about their cottage doors, and ap pearing to exult in the humble comforts and embellishments which their own hands have spread around them. It is this sweet home-feeling, this settled repose of affection in the domestic scene, that is, after all, the parent of the steadiest virtues and purest enjoyments; and I cannot close these desultory remarks better, than by quoting the words of a modern English poet, who has depicted it with remarkable felicity: Through each gradation, from the castled hall, Down to the cottaged vale, and straw-roof'd shed; All that desire would fly for through the earth; Smiles, though 'tis looking only at the sky (a). (a) From a Poem on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, A. M. |