ath we be not disunited." "Thou too, my
wife--for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in
heaven--thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was
a gentle and gracious summer night--so clear, that the shepherds on the
hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there at
earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among
the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to
heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world.

AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY.

Ours is a poetical age; but has it produced one Great Poem? Not one.

Just look at them for a moment. There is "The Pleasures of Memory"--an
elegant, graceful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, which it does
one's eyes good to gaze on--one's ears good to listen to--one's very
fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove
paper. Never will "The Pleasures of Memory" be forgotten till the world
is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem? About as much so as an
ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple
with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection--in the
shape of a cone--and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a
sky-piercer. You take it at a hop--and pursue your journey. Yet it
endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs and the sunshine, love
the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and
delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature.

Then there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If
so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most
skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with
the materials of human life--homespun indeed; but though often coarse,
always strong--and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently
exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay--hold up the product
of his loom between your eye and the light, and it glows and glimmers
like the peacock's back or the breast of the rainbow. Sometimes it seems
to be but of the "hodden grey;" when sunbeam or shadow smites it, and
lo! it is burnished like the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger
ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St Paul's.

Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No
wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they possess the
sacred gift of b