He lifted, and with ardent passion kiss'd;
Then cried in agony, on this dear hand,
Once tremblingly alive to Love's soft touch,
I hoped to seal my faith:' This thought awaked
Another sad soliloquy, which they,

Who e'er have loved, will from their hearts supply,
And they who have not will but hear and smile.
And let them smile; but let the scorners learn
There is a solemn luxury in grief

Which they shall never taste; well known to those,
And only those, in Solitude's deep gloom
Who heave the sigh sincerely: Fancy there
Waits the fit moment; and, when Time has calm'd
The first o'erwhelming tempest of their woe,
Piteous she steals upon the mourner's breast
Her precious balm to shed: Oh, it has power,
Has magic power to soften and to sooth,
Thus duly minister'd.

Alcander felt

The charm, yet not till many a lingering moon
Had hung upon her zenith o'er his couch,
And heard his midnight wailings. Does he stray
But near the fated temple, or the bower?
He feels a chilly monitor within

Who bids him pause. Does he at distance view
His grot? 'tis darken'd with Nerina's storm,
E'en at the blaze of noon. Yet there are walks
The lost one never trod; and there are seats
Where he was never happy by her side,
And these he still can sigh in. Here at length,
As if by chance, kind Fancy brought her aid,
When wandering through a grove of sable yew,
Raised by his ancestors: their Sabbath-path
Led through its gloom, what time too dark a stole
Was o'er Religion's decent features drawn

weep,

By puritanic zeal. Long had their boughs
Forgot the shears; the spire, the holy ground
They banish'd by their umbrage. What if here
(Cried the sweet soother, in a whisper soft)
Some open space were form'd, where other shades,
Yet all of solemn sort, cypress and bay
Funereal, pensive birch its languid arms
That droops, with waving willows deem'd to
And shivering aspens mix'd their varied green;
What if yon trunk, shorn of its murky crest,
Reveal'd the sacred fane?' Alcander heard
The charmer; every accent seem'd his own,
So much they touch'd his heart's sad unison.
Yes, yes (he cried), why not behold it all?
That bough removed shows me the very vault
Where my Nerina sleeps, and where, when Heaven
In pity to my plaint the mandate seals,

My dust with hers shall mingle.' Now his hinds,
Call'd to the task, their willing axes wield:
Joyful to see, as witless of the cause,

Their much loved lord his silvan arts resume.
And next, within the centre of the gloom,
A shed of twisting roots and living moss,
With rushes thatch'd, with wattled oziers lined,
He bids them raise: it seem'd a hermit's cell;

9 He bids them raise: it seem'd a Hermit's cell;] If this building is found to be in its right position, structures of the same kind will be thought improperly placed when situated, as they frequently are, on an eminence commanding an extensive prospect. I have either seen or heard of one of this kind, where the builder seemed to be so much convinced of its incongruity that he endeavoured to atone for it by the following ingenious motto:

Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre
Errare, atque viam palanteis quærere vitæ.
Luc. lib. ii, ver. 9,

Yet void of hourglass, skull, and maple dish,
Its mimic garniture: Alcander's taste
Disdains to trick, with emblematic toys,
The place where he and Melancholy mean
To fix Nerina's bust, her genuine bust,
The model of the marble. There he hides,
Close as a miser's gold, the sculptured clay;
And but at early morn and latest eve

Unlocks the simple shrine, and heaves a sigh: Then does he turn, and through the glimmering glade

Cast a long glance upon her house of death;
Then views the bust again, and drops a tear.
Is this idolatry, ye sage ones, say?-

Or, if

Of

ye doubt, go view the numerous train poor and fatherless his care consoles; The sight will tell thee, he that dries their tears Has unseen angels hovering o'er his head, Who leave their heaven to see him shed his own. Here close we, sweet Simplicity! the tale, And with it let us yield to youthful bards That Dorian reed we but awaked to voice When Fancy prompted, and when Leisure smiled; Hopeless of general praise, and well repaid, If they of classic ear, unpall'd by rhyme, [free, Whom changeful pause can please, and numbers Accept our song with candour. They perchance, Led by the Muse to solitude and shade, May turn that art we sing to soothing use,

But it may be said, that real hermitages are frequently found on high mountains: yet there the difficulty of access gives that idea of retirement, not easily to be conveyed by imitations of them in a garden-scene, without much accompanying shade, and that lowness of situation, which occasions a seclusion from all gay objects.

At this ill omen'd hour, when Rapine rides
In titled triumph; when Corruption waves
Her banners broadly in the face of day,
And shows the' indignant world the host of slaves
She turns from Honour's standard. Patient there,
Yet not desponding, shall the sons of Peace
Await the day, when, smarting with his wrongs,
Old England's Genius wakes; when with him
That plain integrity, contempt of gold, [wakes
Disdain of slavery, liberal awe of rule
Which fix'd the rights of people, peers, and prince,
And on them founded the majestic pile
Of British Freedom; bad fair Albion rise
The scourge of tyrants; sovereign of the seas;
And arbitress of empires. Oh, return,
Ye long-lost train of virtues! swift return
To save ('tis Albion prompts your poet's prayer)
Her throne, her altars, and her laureate bowers.

GENERAL POSTSCRIPT.

FEW poems, in the course of their composition, have been laid aside and resumed more casually, or, in consequence, published more leisurely, than the foregoing; on which account, while it does not pretend to the Horatian merit of a nine years scrutiny under the correcting hand of its author, it will not thence, he may perhaps hope, be found to have that demerit which arises from ill connected parts and an indigested plan. For, as a scheme was formed for the whole four books before even the first was written; and as that

scheme has since been pursued with very little if any deviation, it is presumed that the three latter books will be found strictly consonant with the general principles advanced in the former; which, as it contained the principles and ended episodically with a kind of historic deduction of the rise and progress of the art, might have been considered in the light of an entire work, had the succeeding books been never written.

However, as the whole design is at length completed, it may not be amiss to give in this place a short analysis of the several books, in their order, to show their connexion one with another, and to obviate a few objections which have been made to certain parts of each, by some, persons, whose opinions I highly respect; objections which, I flatter myself, might arise from their having examined those parts separately, as the separate publication of the books necessarily led them to do; and which, perhaps, had they seen the whole together, they would not have found of so much importance.

I. The first book, as I have said, contains the general principles of the art, which are shown to be no other than those which constitute beauty in the sister art of landscape painting; beauty which results from a well chosen variety of curves, in contradistinction to that of architecture, which arises from a judicious symmetry of right lines, and which is there shown to have afforded the principle on which that formal disposition of garden ground, which our ancestors borrowed from the French and Dutch, proceeded: a principle never adopted by nature herself, and