has doubtless fallen by accident into the will-my name is mentioned in it." It was a letter from my mother, which had got amongst the folds of the will: I had written to her much about Adeline, and the good lady had, in her answer, said, that "this would indeed be a daughter after her own heart.' '—" And will you too call her mother, my Adeline?"—"Take me to her," whispered she; and the warm kiss which I impressed on her cheek was the seal of our union.

་

In a few weeks I carried Adeline home as my wife, and my mother is quite convinced that I have succeeded to a wish in getting myself suited.

Edinburgh Magazine.

LINES

ON A FAVOURITE RETIREMENT.

THIS vale is beautiful; and fair the scene
Of rolling waves and mountains faintly blue
Beyond the beetling crag: the cottage-roof
In green recess of hills retires half-seen
With roses cluster'd, and the wreathing vine.
Aloft the cypress and the sycamore

Wave in the wind; the bow'ring arbute spreads
-A snow of blossoms, and on ev'ry bough
Its vermeil fruitage glitters to the sun.
Yet is there sadness here; wild Solitude
Usurps this pleasant dwelling-place: along
The grass-grown paths the tangled footstep slow
Rustles, and branches droop athwart the way.
There is indeed a sadness: but the sight
Of Desolation, stealing silent round,
Awakes no common feelings as I gaze.
Mother!-thy virgin hours of happiness

These groves have witness'd; and thine eye hath loved
To mark the cypress and the sycamore

Wave in the wind; and therefore am I sad,

That this fair scene should sink in wild'ring waste,
With all its rural garniture of woods,

And its unheeded verdure: fond regrets!

Yet cold the heart that shall disown their pow'r.

Charles A. Elton.

THE ROYAL POET.

ON a soft sunny morning, in the month of May, I made an excursion to Windsor to visit the castle. It is a proud old pile, stretching its irregular walls and massive towers along the brow of a lofty ridge; waving its royal banner in the clouds, and looking down with a lordly air upon the surrounding world. It is a place that I love to visit, for it is full of storied and poetical associations. On this morning, the weather was of that soft vernal kind that calls forth the latent romance of a man's temperament, and makes him quote poetry and dream of beauty. In wandering through the magnificent saloons, and long echoing galleries of the old castle, I felt myself most disposed to linger in the chamber where hang the portraits of the beauties that once flourished in the gay court of Charles the Second.

As I traversed the large green courts, with sunshine beaming on the gray walls, and glancing along the velvet turf, I called to mind the tender, the gallant, but hapless Surrey's account of his loiterings about them in his stripling days, when enamoured of the lady Geraldine.

"With eyes cast up unto the maiden's tower-
With easie sighs, such as men draw in love."

But the most interesting object of my visit was the ancient keep of the castle, where James the First of Scotland, the pride and theme of Scottish poets and historians, was for many years of his youth detained a prisoner of state. It is a huge gray tower, that has stood the brunt of ages, and is still in good preservation. A great flight of steps leads to the interior. In the armoury, a Gothic hall, filled with weapons of various kinds, is

still shown, hanging against the wall, a suit of armour that once belonged to James. From hence a staircase conducts to a suite of apartments of faded magnificence, hung with gobelin tapestry, which formed James's prison.

The whole history of this amiable but unfortunate prince is highly romantic, and too well known to need particular relation. At the ender age of eleven, he was sent from home by his father, Robert III., and destined for the French court, to be reared under the eye of the French monarch, secure from the treachery and danger that surrounded the royal house of Scotland. It was his mishap, in the course of his voyage, to fall into the hands of the English, and he was detained prisoner by Henry IV., notwithstanding that a truce existed between the two countries.

The intelligence of his capture, coming in the train of many sorrows and disasters, proved fatal to his unhappy father. The news, we are told, was brought to him while at supper, and did so overwhelm him with grief, that he was almost ready to give up the ghost into the hands of the servants that attended him. But being carried to his bedchamber, he abstaine 1 from all food, and in three days died of hunger and grief at Rothesay.

James was detained in captivity for eighteen years; but, though deprived of personal liberty, he was treated with the respect due to his rank.

Care was taken to

instruct him in all the branches of useful knowledge cultivated at that period, and to ive him those mental and personal accomplishments deemed proper for a prince.

Perhaps in this respect his imprisonment was an advantage, as it enabled him to apply himself the more exclusively to his improvement, and quietly to imbibe that rich fund of knowledge, and to cherish those elegant tastes, which have given such a lustre to his memory. The picture drawn of him in early life, by the Scottish historians, is highly captivating, and seems rather the description of a hero of romance than a character of real history. He was well learnt, we are told, to “ fight with the sword, to joust, to tournay, to wrestle, to sing

and dance; he was an expert mediciner; right crafty in playing both at lute and harp, and sundry other instruments of music; and was expert in grammar, oratory, and poetry."

With this combination of manly and delicate accomplishments, fitting him to shine both in active and elegant life, and calculated to give him an intense relish for joyous existence, it must have been a severe trial, in an age of bustle and chivalry, to pass the spring time of his years in monotonous captivity.

It was the good fortune of James, however, to be gifted with a powerfully poetic fancy, and to be visited in his prison by the choicest inspirations of the muse.

Some minds corrode and grow inactive, under the loss of personal liberty; others, morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginative in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts; and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody

"Have you not seen the nightingale,

A pilgrim coop'd into a cage,
How doth she chant her wonted tale,
In that her lonely hermitage!
Even there her charming melody doth prove
That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove."

Indeed, it is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is irrepressible, unconfinable; that when the real world is shut out, it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power, can conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions, to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of the dungeon. Such was the world of pomp and pageant that lived round Tasso in his dismal cell at Ferrara, when he conceived the splendid scenes of his Jerusalem; and we may consider the "King's Quair," composed by James during his captivity at Windsor, as another of those beautiful breakings forth of the soul from the restraint and gloom of the prison house.

The subject of the poem is his love for the Lady Jane Beaufort, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. He saw her

accidentally, from the windows of his prison, and fell in love with her in the true spirit of poetry and romance. The poem is a rich effusion of feeling and fancy; full of the descriptive vein which characterizes the poetry of that day, and sobered and sweetened by the most simple and natural reflections. James flourished nearly about the time of Chaucer and Gower, and was evidently an admirer and studier of their writings. Indeed, in one of his stanzas, he acknowledges them as his masters; and in some parts of his poem he seems almost to have borrowed from his prototypes. There are always, however, general features of resemblance in the works of contemporary authors, that are not so much borrowed from each other as from the times. Writers, like bees, toll their sweets in the wide world; they incorporate, with their own conceptions, the anecdotes and thoughts which are current in society, and thus each generation has some features in common, every author some characteristic of the age in which he lived. What gives peculiar value to the poem of James is, that it may be considered a transcript of the royal bard's true feelings, and the story of his real loves and fortunes. It is not often that sovereigns write poetry, or that poets deal in fact. It is gratifying to the pride of a common man to find a monarch thus suing, as it were, for admission into his closet, and seeking to win his favour by administering to his pleasures. It is a proof of the honest equality of intellectual competition, which strips off all the trappings of factitious dignity, brings the candidate down to depend on his own native powers for distinction. It is curious, too, to get at the history of a monarch's heart, and find the simple affections of human nature throbbing under the ermine. But James had learnt to be a poet before he was a king ; he was schooled in adversity, and reared in the company of his own thoughts.

Monarchs have seldom time to parley with their hearts, or meditate their minds into poetry; and had James been brought up amidst the adulation and gaiety of a court, we should never have had such a poem as the Quair. In his first canto, he makes several allusions to his