in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have every where sought, and have found only repulse and disappointment.

Thou demandest what is Love. It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope, beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once, and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood:—this is Love. This is the bond and the sanction which connects not only man with man, but with every thing which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us, which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is probably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mother; this propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature, a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise, the ideal prototype of every thing excellent and lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest particles of which our nature is composed: a mirror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness: a soul within our own soul that describes a circle around its proper Paradise, which pain and sorrow and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensations, thirsting that they should resemble and correspond with it. The discovery of its antitype; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own; an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret, with a frame, whose nerves, like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands: this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which, there is no rest or respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us; we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of Spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which, by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to dances of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man becomes a living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.

This and a fragment, with a character of Mr. Canning, by Sir James Mackintosh, are the transcendentals of the volume; as are the tale—The Half-brothers, by Mr. Banim, with an Ossian-like plate of the heroine; The Sisters of Albano, by Mrs. Shelley—Death of the Laird's Jock, by the author of Waverley—and Ferdinando Eboli, by Mrs. Shelley, with Adelinda, a plate, by Heath, on which we could feast our eyes for a full hour. Next, a sketch, by Theodore Hook, part of which will serve to vary our sheet:—

THE OLD GENTLEMAN.

"To-morrow morning," said my friend, "when you awake, the power will be your own; and so, sir, I wish you a very good night."—"But, sir," said I, anxious to be better assured of the speedy fulfilment of the wish of my heart, (for such indeed it was,) "may I have the honour of knowing your name and address?"—"Ha, ha, ha!" said the old gentleman; "my name and address; ha, ha, ha! my name is pretty familiar to you, young gentleman; and as for my address, I dare say you will find your way to me some day or another, and so, once more, good night."—Saying which, he descended the stairs and quitted the house, leaving me to surmise who my extraordinary visiter could be. I never knew; but I recollect, that after he was gone, I heard one of the old ladies scolding a servant-girl for wasting so many matches in lighting the candles, and making such a terrible smell of brimstone in the house. I was now all anxiety to get to bed, not because I was sleepy, but because it seemed to me as if going to bed would bring me nearer to the time of getting up, when I should be master of the miraculous power which had been promised me. I rang the bell; my servant was still out; it was unusual for him to be absent at so late an hour. I waited until the clock struck eleven, but he came not; and resolving to reprimand him in the morning, I retired to rest. Contrary to my expectation, and, as it seemed to me, to the ordinary course of nature, considering the excitement under which I was labouring, I had scarcely laid my head on my pillow before I dropped into a profound slumber, from which I was only aroused by my servant's entrance to my room. The instant I awoke, I sat up in bed, and began to reflect on what had passed, and for a moment to doubt whether it had not been all a dream. However, it was daylight; the period had arrived when the proof of my newly acquired power might be made.—"Barton," said I to my man, "why were you not at home last night?"—"I had to wait, sir, nearly three hours," he replied, "for an answer to the letter which you sent to Major Sheringham."—"That is not true," said I; and, to my infinite surprise, I appeared to recollect a series of occurrences, of which I never had previously heard, and could have known nothing: "you went to see your sweetheart, Betsy Collyer, at Camberwell, and took her to a tea-garden, and gave her cakes and cider, and saw her home again: you mean to do exactly the same thing on Sunday, and to-morrow you mean to ask me for your quarter's wages, although not due till Monday, in order to buy her a new shawl."—The man stood aghast: it was all true. I was quite as much surprised as the man.—"Sir," said Barton, who had served me for seven years without having once been found fault with, "I see you think me unworthy your confidence; you could not have known this, if you had not watched, and followed, and overheard me and my sweetheart; my character will get me through the world without being looked after. I can stay with you no longer; you will please, sir, to provide yourself with another servant."—"But Barton," said I, "I did not follow or watch you; I—"—"I beg your pardon, sir," he replied; "it is not for me to contradict; but you'll forgive me, sir, I would rather go; I must go."

At this moment I was on the very point of easing his mind, and retaining my faithful servant by a disclosure of my power; but it was yet too new to be parted with; so I affected an anger I did not feel, and told him he might go where he pleased. I had, however, ascertained that the old gentleman had not deceived me in his promises; and, elated with the possession of my extraordinary