enriched with a new
and a singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness of
his quiet song;--but _aerial_ only,--not ethereal; and lowly in its
privacy of light.

A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepentant; helpful to sinless
creatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at
least, if not faithful; content with intimations of immortality such as
may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children,--incurious to see
in the hands the print of the Nails.

A gracious and constant mind; as the herbage of its native hills,
fragrant and pure;--yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and
distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the laurel
wilderness of Tempe,--as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of
Dodona.

* * * * *

[I am obliged to defer the main body of this paper to next
month,--revises penetrating all too late into my lacustrine seclusion;
as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in which the reader
will perhaps kindly correct the consequent misprints, p. 29, l. 20, of
'scarcely' to 'securely,' and p. 31, l. 34, 'full,' with comma, to
'fall,' without one; noticing besides that _Redgauntlet_ has been
omitted in the italicised list, p. 25, l. 16; and that the reference to
note 2 should not be at the word 'imagination,' p. 24, but at the word
'trade,' p. 25, l. 7. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me, from
Jamieson's _Dictionary_, the following satisfactory end to one of my
difficulties:--'Coup the crans.' The language is borrowed from the
'cran,' or trivet on which small pots are placed in cookery, which is
sometimes turned with its feet uppermost by an awkward assistant. Thus
it signifies to be _completely_ upset.]

JOHN RUSKIN.

[BYRON.]

'Parching summer hath no warrant
To consume this crystal well;
Rains, that make each brook a torrent,
Neither sully it, nor swell.'

So was it, year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon and
child Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughed from ledge to pool, and
opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.

But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing
dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale,
Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and
their father's house.

Nor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus