guage could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it. Goldsmith wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of mellow tenderness and elaborate simplicity. He had the harmony of Pope without his quaintness, and his selectness of diction without his coldness and eternal vivacity. And last of all came Cowper, with a style of complete originality; and, for the first time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions, that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the models of English poetry.

But,

In philosophy and prose writing in general the case was nearly parallel. The name of Hume is by far the most considerable which occurs in the period to which we have alluded. though his thinking was English, his style is entirely French: and, being naturally of a cold fancy, there is nothing of that eloquence or richness about him which characterises the writings of Taylor, and Hooker, and Bacon; and continues, with less weight of matter, to please in those of Cowley and Clarendon. Warburton had great powers, and wrote with more force and freedom than the wits to whom he succeeded; but his faculties were perverted by a paltry love of paradox, and rendered useless to mankind by an unlucky choice of subjects, and the arrogance and dogmatism of his temper. Adam Smith was nearly the first who made deeper reasonings and more exact knowledge popular among us; and Junius and Johnson the first who again familiarised us with more glowing and sonorous diction; and made us feel the tameness and poorness of the serious style of Addison and Swift.

This brings us down almost to the present times, in which the revolution in our literature has been accelerated and confirmed by the concurrence of many causes. The agitations of the French Revolution, and the discussions as well as the hopes and terrors to which it gave occasion-the genius of Edmund Burke, and some others of his land of genius-the impression of the new literature of Germany, evidently the original of our lake-school of poetry, and of many innovations in our drama-the rise or revival of a more evangelical spirit in the body of the people-and the vast extension of our political and commercial relations, which

have not only familiarised all ranks of people with distant countries and great undertakings, but have brought knowledge and enterprise home, not merely to the imagination, but to the actual experience of almost every individual. All these, and several other circumstances, have so far improved or excited the character of our nation, as to have created an effectual demand for more profound speculation, and more serious emotion than was dealt in by the writers of the former century, and which, if it has not yet produced a corresponding supply in all branches, has at least had the effect of decrying the commodities that were previously in vogue, as unsuited to the altered condition of the times.

Clouds and Winds.

VARIOUS.

THE season when Autumn is sliding into Winter-the season of alternate sunshine and mist, of blue sky and cloud-has called forth some of the most beautiful imagery of our highest poets. What a charming ode is that of SHELLEY'S "To the Wild West Wind!”

I.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of

Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence

the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet birds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odours plain and hill.

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ;

Yellow, and black, and pale, and Destroyer and preserver, hear, oh,

hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O

thou,

hear!

II.

Who chariotest to their dark wintry Thou on whose stream, 'mid the

bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying

leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy The sea-blooms and the oozy woods, surge, which wear Like the bright hair uplifted from the The sapless foliage of the ocean, know head

Of some fierce Monad, even from
the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm.

Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray
with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves:
Oh, hear!

IV.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated A wave to pant beneath thy power, might and share

free

Of vapours, from whose solid atmo- The impulse of thy strength, only less sphere Black rain, and fire, and hail, will Than thou, O uncontrollable!

If

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over

heaven,

As then, when to outstrip the skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision, I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Quivering within the wave's intenser Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a

Cleave themselves into chasms, while Make me thy lyre, even as the forest

What if my leaves are falling like its Like withered leaves to quicken a new own! birth; The tumults of thy mighty harmonies And, by the incantation of this verse,

Will take from both a deep autumnal Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth,

tone.

mankind!

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Ashes and sparks, my words among spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous Be through my lips to unawakened earth. one!

The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind; Drive my dead thoughts over the If Winter comes, can Spring be far universe behind?

The evening of piled-up clouds is a striking characteristic of the season. Who has described the fantastic forms of such a sky with the fidelity of SHAKSPERE?

Ant. Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish:
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,

A towered citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon 't, that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;
They are black Vesper's pageants.

Eros.

Ay, my lord.

Ant. That which is now a horse, even with a thought,
The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct,

As water is in water.

COLERIDGE looks up "Cloudland" with a happier spirit than that of the fallen Antony.

Oh! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,

To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily-persuaded eyes

Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould

Of a friend's fancy; or, with head bent low,

And cheek aslant, see rivers flow of gold

'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or listening to the tide, with closed sight,

Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand,

By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey

Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.

This, too, is the season of sea-storms.

Our readers will be glad

to make acquaintance with one of the most remarkable of our old quaint poets, who describes with a force which can only be the result of actual experience.

The south and west winds joined, and as they blew,
Waves like a rolling trench before them threw.
Sooner than you read this line did the gale,
Like shot, not feared till felt, our sails assail;
And what at first was called a gust, the same
Hath now a storm's, anon a tempest's name.
Jonas! I pity thee: and curse those men,

Who, when the storm raged most, did wake thee then.
Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil

All offices of death, except to kill.

But when I waked, I saw that I saw not;

I and the sun, which should teach me, had forgot
East, west, day, night; and I could only say,
If the world had lasted now it had been day.
Thousands our noises were, yet we 'mongst all
Could none by his right name but thunder call.
Lightning was all our light, and it rained more
Than if the sun had drunk the sea before.
Some coffin'd in their cabins lie, equally
Grieved that they are not dead, and yet must die;
And as sin-burden'd souls from grave will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabins peep,
And tremblingly ask, What news? and do hear so
As jealous husbands, what they would not know.
Some, sitting on the hatches, would seem there,
With hideous gazing, to fear away Fear;
There note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
Shaked with an ague, and the hold and waist
With a salt dropsy clogged, and our tacklings
Snapping like too high-stretched treble strings,
And from our tattered sails rags drop down so
As from one hanged in chains a year ago;
Even our ordnance, placed for our defence,
Strive to break lose, and 'scape away from thence.