my readers old friends who took lodgings in their memories 'long
time ago.' In reference to them, I would only remark their peculiar
adaptedness to popular taste, the keen discrimination, the nice
tact, or, to use one of Sir James Mackintosh's happy expressions,
the 'FEELosophy' with which the poet has interlaced them with the
heart-strings of a nation.

"'A Rock in the Wilderness' is an ode that any poet might be proud
to own. It is much in the style of Campbell--chaste, devotional,
'beautiful exceedingly.' I know nothing of the kind more musically
sweet than the serenade ''Tis now the promised hour'--the first
line in especial--


'The fountains serenade the flowers,
Upon their silver lute--
And nestled in their leafy bowers,
The forest birds are mute.'


"Many an absent lover must have blessed our lyrist for giving voice
to his own yearning affection, half sad with that delicate jealousy
which is no wrong to the loved one, in the song 'When other friends
are round thee.'

"'The Bacchanal'--if our language boasts a lovelier ballad than this,
it has never met my eye. The story of the winning, the betraying
and the breaking of a woman's heart, was never told more touchingly.
'The Dismissed' is in a peculiar vein of rich and quiet humor. I
would commend it to the entire class of rejected lovers as