ade; and, at a signal given, they start off,
bearing the irrevocable scrolls that give wings to thought, and that
bind or sever hearts for ever. How we hate the Putney and Brentford
stages that draw up in a line after they are gone! Some persons think
the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the
ocean; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that
pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour
the way before them to the Land's End!

In Cowper's time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up; but he has
beautifully described the coming in of the Post-Boy:--

"Hark! 'tis the twanging horn o'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright;--
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
True to his charge, the close packed load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn;
And having dropped the expected bag, pass on.
He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch!
Cold and yet cheerful; messenger of grief
Perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some;
To him indifferent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes and the fall of stocks.
Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charged with amorous sighs of absent swains
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all."

And yet, notwithstanding this, and so many other passages that seem
like the very marrow of our being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper was a
poet!--The Mail-Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy; but I fear it
will hardly bear so poetical a description. The picturesque and dramatic
do not keep pace with the useful and mechanical. The telegraphs that
lately communicated the intelligence of the new revolution to all France
within a few hours, are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less
striking and appalling than the beacon fires (mentioned by Aeschylus,)
which, lighted from hill-top to hill-top, announced the taking of Troy
and the return of Agamemnon.

_Monthly Magazine._

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THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS_.

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