Islands of the ancients-may remember the wonders told of this enigmatical island. Occasionally it would be visible from their shores, stretching away in the clear bright west, to all appearance substantial like themselves, and still more beautiful. Expeditions would launch forth from the Canaries to explore this land of promise. For a time its sun-gilt peaks and long shadowy promontories would remain distinctly visible; but in proportion as the voyagers approached, peak and promontory would gradually fade away, until nothing would remain but blue sky above, and deep blue water below. Hence this mysterious isle was stigmatised by ancient cosmographers with the name of Aprositus, or the Inaccessible. The failures of numerous expeditions sent in quest of it, both in ancient and modern days, have at length caused its very existence to be called in question, and it has been rashly pronounced a mere optical illusion, like the Fata Morgana of the Straits of Messina, or has been classed with those unsubstantial regions known to mariners as Cape Fly-away, and the coast of Cloudland.

Let us not permit, however, the doubts of worldly-wise sceptics to rob us of the glorious realms owned by happy credulity in days of yore.

Be assured, Ŏ reader of easy faith! thou for whom it is my delight to labour-be assured that such an island actually exists, and has from time to time been revealed to the gaze, and trodden by the feet of favoured mortals. Historians and philosophers may have their doubts, but its existence has been fully attested by that inspired race, the poets; who being gifted with a kind of second-sight, are enabled to discern those mysteries of nature hidden from the eyes of ordinary men. To this gifted race it has ever been a kind of wonder-land. Here once bloomed, and perhaps still blooms, the famous garden of the Hesperides, with its golden fruit. Here, too, the sorceress Armida had her enchanted garden, in which she held the Christian paladin, Rinaldo, in delicious, but inglorious, thraldom, as set forth in the immortal lay of Tasso. It was in this island that Sycorax the witch held sway, when the good Prospero and his infant daughter Miranda were wafted to its shores. Who does not know the tale as told in the magic page of Shakspeare (i.e. in the “Tempest”)? The isle was then

"full of noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not."

The island, in fact, at different times has been under the sway of different powers-genii of earth, and air, and ocean-who

have made it their shadowy abode. Hither have retired many classic, but broken-down, deities, shorn of almost all their attributes, but who once ruled the poetic world. Here Neptune and Amphitrite hold a diminished court-sovereigns in exile. Their ocean-chariot, almost a wreck, lies bottom upward in some sea-beaten cavern; their pursy1 Tritons and haggard' Nereids bask listlessly like seals about the rocks. Sometimes these deities assume, it is said, a shadow of their ancient pomp, and glide in state about a summer sea; and then, as some tall Indiaman lies becalmed with idly-flapping sail, her drowsy crew may hear the mellow note of the Triton's shell swelling upon the ear as the invisible pageant sweeps by.

On the shores of this wondrous isle the kraken2 heaves its unwieldy bulk, and wallows many a rood. Here the sea-serpent, that mighty, but much-contested, reptile, lies coiled up during the intervals of its revelations to the eyes of true believers. Here, even, the Flying Dutchman finds a port, and casts his anchor, and furls his shadowy sail, and takes a brief repose from his eternal cruisings. In the deep bays and harbours of the island lies many a spell-bound ship, long since given up as lost by the ruined merchant. Here, too, its crew, long, long bewailed in vain, lie sleeping from age to age in mossy grottoes, or wander about in pleasing oblivion of all things. Here, in caverns, are garnered up the priceless treasures lost in the ocean. Here sparkles in vain the diamond and flames the carbuncle. Here are piled up rich bales of oriental silks, boxes of pearls, and piles of golden ingots.

(1) The picture of a pursy (i.e. puffy, short-breathed) Triton, and a haggard (i.e. lean and scraggy) Nereid, is extremely comic.

(2) The Kraken is an enormous marine animal, whose appearance in the arctic seas has often been described, but never authenticated-like that of the sea serpent.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.'

1. THE DEATH OF NELSON.

(FROM THE "LIFE OF NELSON," PUBLISHED IN 1813.)

THE death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us; and it seemed as if we had never till then known how deeply we loved and reverenced him. What the country had lost in its great naval hero—the greatest of our own and of all former times-was scarcely taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end. The fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated, but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our shores could again be contemplated. It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him: the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, and public monuments, and posthumous rewards, were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the legislature, and the nation would have alike delighted to honour; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have wakened the church-bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and "old men from the chimneycorner" to look upon Nelson ere they died. The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the

(1) Both the prose and the verse of Southey are tasteful and pure in style; it is probable that the former will survive the latter. "The Doctor" is a compound of Swift and Sterne in form, but inferior in power to the vein of either of those writers. "The Life of Nelson" is thought by some to be Southey's best work.

(2) All which. This expression is one of the slight, but still significant, symptoms of change in the language. A writer would now almost unconsciously say "all that," not all which. Who and which are not only losing their individuality, but are both giving way to that, which is more convenient and equally intelligible,

glory of the British navy, through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; for, while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in

existence.

There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon opening his body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be

said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of the martyr; the most awful, that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England—a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength. Thus it is that the spirits of the great and the wise continue to live and to act after them.

2. A DOUBT CONCERNING THE USES OF
PHILOSOPHY.

(FROM "THE DOCTOR," PUBLISHED IN 1834.)

THE pause was broken by the boy, who said, returning to the subject "I have been thinking, father, that it is not a good thing to be a philosopher."

"And what, my son, has led thee to that thought?"

"What I have read at the end of the Dictionary, father. There was one philosopher that was pounded in a mortar." "That, Daniel," said the father, "could neither have been the philosopher's fault nor his choice."

(1) Security, safety. Security is freedom from anxiety, and is therefore subjective; safety is freedom from causes of anxiety, and is therefore objective. A man may fancy himself secure who is really in the greatest danger. He is safe only when there is no danger.

"But it was because he was a philosopher, my lad,” said Guy, "that he bore it so bravely, and said Beat on: you can only bruise the shell of Anaxarchus!' If he had not been a philosopher, they might have pounded him just the same; but they would never have put him in the Dictionary. Epictetus, in like manner, bore the torments which his wicked master inflicted upon him, without a groan, only saying-Take care, or you will break my leg;' and when the leg was broken, he looked the wretch in the face, and said, 'I told you you would break it.'"

"But," said the youngster, "there was one philosopher who chose to live in a tub; and another, who, that he might never again see anything to withdraw his mind from meditation, put out his eyes by looking on a bright brass basin, such as I cured my warts in."

"He might have been a wise man," said William Dove, "but not wondrous wise; for if he had, he would not have used the basin to put his eyes out. He would have jumped into a quickset hedge, and scratched them out, like the man of our town;' because when he saw his eyes were out, he might then have jumped into another hedge and scratched them in again! The man of our town was the greatest (greater) philosopher of the two."

"And there was one," continued the boy, "who had better have blinded himself at once; for he did nothing else but cry at everything he saw. Was not this being very foolish ?

"I am sure," says William, "it was not being merry and wise."

"There was another who said that hunger was his daily food."

"He must have kept such a table as Duke Humphrey,"2 quoth William. "I should not have liked to dine with him."

"Then there was Crates," said the persevering boy; "he had a good estate, and sold it, and threw the money into the sea, saying, 'Away, ye paltry cares! I will drown you, that you may not drown me.'

(1) In allusion to the well-known nursery rhyme—

There was a man in our town (or "in Thessaly ")

And he was wondrous wise;

He jumpt into a quickset hedge,

And scratched out both his eyes," &c.

(2) "To line with Duke Humphrey," according to the proverb, is to get nothing for dinner.