And, basking in her sweetest charms,
Lose every grief in that triumphant hour.
If Morpheus, thus thou'lt cheat the gloomy night,
For thy embrace I'll fly day's garish light,
Nor ever wish to wake while dreams like this inspire!

HUGH DELMORE.

* * * * *


ON IDLENESS.

(_For the Mirror_.)


It has been somewhere asserted, that "no one is idle who can do any
thing. It is conscious inability, or the sense of repeated failures,
that prevents us from undertaking, or deters us from the prosecution
of any work." In answer to this it may be said, that men of very great
natural genius are in general exempt from a love of idleness, because,
being pushed forward, as it were, and excited to action by that _vis
vivida_, which is continually stirring within them, the first effort,
the original impetus, proceeds not altogether from their own voluntary
exertion, and because the pleasure which they, above all others,
experience in the exercise of their faculties, is an ample
compensation for the labour which that exercise requires. Accordingly,
we find that the best writers of every age have generally, though not
always, been the most voluminous. Not to mention a host of ancients, I
might instance many of our own country as illustrious examples of this