Jews stole insensibly into the kingdom, where they have ever since maintained their footing, and no doubt contributed their fair proportion to the national wealth.

SCENERY AND POETRY. Now tell it not in Scotland, lest the cockneys of the Canongate rejoice; but give me, dear N., before all the barren suburbs in the world (bits of mountains included), the green pastures and gentle eminences round about glorious London. There we have fields : there one can walk on real positive turf: there one can get trees that are of no use, and get under trees, and get among trees; and have hedges, stiles, field-paths, sheep, and oxen, and other pastoral amenities.

Sometimes walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms on hillocks green ;
While the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land;
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale. How pleasant it is to read one of our poets in a foreign country! I pass from page to page, as I used from meadow to meadow, not omitting to enjoy the style by the way.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
While the landscape round it measures ;

Russet lawns and fallows gray.
Observe the colouring !

Where the nibbling flocks do stray.
Mark the nicety!

Mountains,
Mountains ! what does he mean by that ?

Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest.

Genoa pitched in the vale of Thames! He must have seen Genoa by a sort of unnatural second sight. I beg you to look upon this as an impertinent vision, foreign to the subject, or only brought in to show the beauty of the rest by force of contrast.

Meadows trim with daisies pied.
There he comes home again.

Shallow brooks and rivers wide :
Towers and tattlementa it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where, perhaps, some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes :
Hard by a cottage chimney stokes

From betwixt two aged oaks. Complete justice is never done to a fine passage in a poet, if you do not know the one that preceded it : just as a new key in a musician demands a comparison with that of the previous air. How admirably contrasted, and yet with the properest and mellowest gradation, is the richness and elevation of this passage about the tufted trees, and the high-born beauty in their turrets with the “ two aged oaks," and the peasant's habitation that smokes between them ! Alas, there are no such oaks here, and no such tufted trees! Do you remember our picnics on the grass in the Hampstead fields ? Do you remember our books, our lounges, our trios, our crowns of field flowers for heads, “not our own ?” Do you recollect that strange centaur of a squire who came riding in his meadows with a monster of a footman behind him, and could not help being delighted at seeing our dinner trespassing on his premises ?

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade!

Ah, fields beloved in vain !
Where once my careless childhood strayed,

A stranger yet to pain !
I feel the gales that from you blow
A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul they seem to soothe,
And, redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring.

And yet the fields are not “beloved in vain :" neither was my childhood a stranger to suffering. My life has had strong lights and shades upon it from its commencement; but upon the whole I am grateful; and the pleasures I have enjoyed make me love even the memory of some of the pains.

“A dram of sweet is worth a pound of sour.” How could Gray say that his fields were “ beloved in vain," when the sight of them, in pain or melancholy, could still please him in this manner; and when he cultivated flowers in his cottage window to the last? Nature is never beloved in vain. Shakespere, after running the whole round of humanity, went to live and die in his native fields. Rousseau's botany never forsook him. The oaks are firm friends, and we can love the most blooming of roses in our old age.

Leigh Hunt.

There is a troublesome humour some men have, that if they may not lead they will not follow; but had rather a thing were never done than not done their own way, though otherwise very desirable. This comes of an overfulness of ourselves, and shows we are more concerned for praise than the success of what we think a good thing.

Dr. T. Fuller.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sound of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit Jessica, look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion, like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubin:
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But while this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Merchant of Venice.

SATAN CAST FORTH FROM HEAVEN. Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view, Nor the deep tract of hell ; say first, what cause Moved our grand parents in that happy state, Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off From their Creator, and transgress His will For one restraint, lords of the world besides ? Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile, Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host Of rebel angels ; by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers He trusted to have equalled the Most High, If he opposed ; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in heaven, and battle proud, With vain attempt.

Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition ; there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded though immortal. But his doom Reserved him to more wrath ; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him.

Round he throws his baleful eyes, That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. At once, as far as angels ken, he views The dismal situation waste and wild ;

A dungeon horrible on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed ; yet from those flames No light; but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell ; hope never comes, That comes to all ; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. Such place Eternal Justice had prepared For those rebellious; here their prison ordained In utter darkness, and their portion set As far removed from God and light of heaven As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. O, how unlike the place from whence they fell ! " There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, He soon discerns; and weltering by his side One next himself in power, and next in crime, Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub. To whom the Arch-Enemy, And thence in heaven called Satan, with bold words Breaking the horrid silence, thus began : “ If thou beest he; but O, how fallen! how changed From him who, in the happy realms of light, Clothed with transcendent brightness, did'st outshine Myriads though bright! If he, whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise, Joined with me once, now misery hath joined In equal ruin ! Into what pit thou seest, From what height fallen ; so much the stronger proved He with his thunder ; and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those, Nor what the potent victor in his rage Can else inflict, do I repent or change, Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind, And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,