on this occasion, and that, when he addressed himself to the
sober power of Evening, he had thought proper to lay aside the foppery
of rhyme:

"Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some soften'd strain,
Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale,
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As, musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return!"

But whatever were the numbers or the versification of this ode,
the imagery and enthusiasm it contains could not fail of rendering
it delightful. No other of Mr. Collins's odes is more generally
characteristic of his genius. In one place we discover his passion
for visionary beings:

"For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and Elves
Who slept in buds the day,

And many a Nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge,
And sheds the freshening dew, and, lovelier still,
The pensive Pleasures sweet,
Prepare thy shadowy car."

In another we behold his strong bias to melancholy:

"Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene,
Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells,
Whose walls more awful nod
By thy religious gleams."

Then appears his taste for what is wildly grand and magnificent in
nature; when, prevented by storms from enjoying his evening walk, he
wishes for a situation,

"That from the mountain's side
Views wilds and swelling floods;"

And through the whole, his invariable attachment to the expression of
painting:

"----and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil."

It might be a sufficient encomium on this beautiful ode to observe, that
it has been particularly admired by a lady to whom nature has given the
most perfect principles of taste. She has not even complained of the
want of rhyme in it; a circumstance by no means unfavourable to the
cause of lyric blank verse; for surely, if a fair reader can endure an
ode without bells and chimes, the masculine genius may dispense with
them.

THE MANNERS.

AN ODE.

From the subject and sentiments of this ode, it seems not improbable
that the author wrote it about the time when he left the university;
when, weary with the pursuit of academical studies, he no longer
confined himself to the search of theoretical knowledge, but commenced
the scholar of humanity, to study nature in her works, and man in
society.

The following farewell to Science exhibits a ver