The old minstrels were fond of the marvellous, it is true, but that was only the stirring of the poetic spirit within them—a spirit that is always seeking after the beautiful, the new and the wonderful-after something beyond the bareness of every-day life. They had, like other men, their extravagances; but their hearts were strong in the right-in right true feelings--in the sense of honour, and justice, and humanity. Their heroes did not seek to recommend themselves by dressing, and lounging, and affecting the fine gentlemen-it was only by a self-renouncing course of noble and patriotic action that they could win acceptance. They were always simple, earnest, in love only with nature and truth;-they never attempted to make the worse appear the better reason. Their minds were noble, and their feelings healthful. It may be seen in the "Squire of Low Degree," what sort of men the ladies of those days admired. This, it must be allowed, was a far more rational and better tone of morals and manners than prevails amongst large classes of the present day; and it was by this means that the love of honourable deeds was kept alive from age to age-that it stimulated to high exploits kings and barons. It is to these men and their lays that we owe the great poem of Ariosto, much of that of Tasso, many of the best tales of Boccaccio; from these drew strength and inspiration, Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser; and greater still, Shakspeare and Milton, the crowned kings of the land of poetry. Several of Shakspeare's finest dramas are restorations and amplifications of the lays of those old minstrels; and what does Milton say in recounting the

studies of his youth?-the preparations for that great fame he afterwards achieved! Having imbued himself with classical knowledge—“ Next," he adds, "I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood, so that even those books proved to me so many enticements to the love and steadfast observation of virtue.” And his knowledge of these furnished him with many beautiful allusions, as-

And again,

what resounds

In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond;
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia.

Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
When Agrican, with all his northern powers,
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,

The city of Gallaphrone, from thence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica,

His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,
Both Paynim, and the peers of Charlemagne.

Such were the fruits of the poetic feeling kindled in this country by our old minstrels. The spirit they awakened has grown and spread on every side; and if any one says we might have had the same sages, heroes, and men of science, without poetry, I say no. I Without our poetry, we had been a nation of Dutchmen-slaves to the duties of the day-drudges of

accumulation-blind-worms of the earth, fattening in darkness, seeing nothing of the sun in the heavens-ascending not to the mountain-tops of thought and feeling, whence only the earth itself can be seen in its breadth and true loveliness.

For what is poetry? It is not merely the melody of verse, or the spirit of passion and emotion embodied in verse. It is a revelation from heaven of its own beauty and glory-an atmosphere of heaven, breathed down and diffused through our grosser one, by which we become sensible of the strength of joy in the heart, of the moral greatness of our better nature; of the treasures of past intellect, and the full grandeur and rainbow splendour of human hopes. It is this spirit that is continually lifting us out of the clay of the earth-out of the grossness of our animal condition; to a perception of wider views, intenser being; more generous, glowing and ethereal aspirations. It is like that suffusion of purple and violet light cast down from the evening sun over the mountains, which, however beautiful in themselves, derive a tenfold and heavenly beauty from it. It is not so much a part of ourselves, as the spirit of an eternal and divine world, which moulds and incorporates us into itself, and changes us from what we are to what we are to be.

Let no man fall into the grievous mistake that poetry only lives in verse-nor that it is confined to language at all. It is a far and widely diffused spirit, and lives in all human hearts, more or less, and often in greater affluence than we imagine. It cannot always throw itself into language. Mr. Wordsworth truly says

Oh! many are the poets that are sown
By nature; men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine,

Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.

And another great poet of our time says, that even he could not express all the poetry that lived within him.

I would speak,

But as it is, I live and die unheard,

With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword.

But we hear a great deal of the philosophy of life—the poetry of life is equally real, and far more generally diffused. It is that spirit which mingles itself with all our hopes, affections, sorrows, and even death, and beautifies them all. It mingles itself with the ambition of aspirants in every honourable track-with the emotions of the lover, with the ardour of the hero, till it covers the battle-field pit from his eyes, and shews him only a halo of glory-with the patriotism of the righteous statesman-with all our social attachments and intercourse, and spreads the roses of heaven on the beaten path of our daily life. No human speculation, no human pursuit, no human feeling, which is not utterly selfish and base, but draws fire and force from this spirit-and is borne by its elating influence towards its legitimate end. It is impossible to point out any nation that has become great, or even successful for a time, without it. Of the ancient nations we need not speak-in all, of which we know any thing but the barest facts, poetry, and the intense desire of glory, which cannot exist totally distinct from poetical

feeling, were found. From some of them, what have we not received! The very Saracens, when, under Mahomet, they suddenly overflowed Asia, Africa, and part of Europe, were set on fire by the poetic charms of his new paradise ;-the Teutons, who extinguished the last sparks of the Roman empire, and laid the foundations of the present European kingdoms, were not led hither merely for food-it was Valhalla, and the poetic legends of their Scalds, that armed and animated them. We cannot take away poetry from life, without reducing it to the level of animal stupidity. In our days, stupendous events have passed on the face of the civilized world, and equally extraordinary has been the development of poetic power. A host of great names will be left to posterity, and with them a host of new impulses, that will fill futurity with increase of light and happiness; and as Christianity becomes better understood, as our natures become better understood, as the spirit of love begins to predominate over the spirit of selfishness,—the true poetry of life, and its power, shall be more and more acknowledged. Men will feel, that in aspiring after true honour—in desiring to become benefactors of men-to spread knowledge and intellectual beauty, they are but giving exercise to the divine spirit of poetry which is sent down from heaven to warm and embellish every human heart, though often unseen and unacknowledged; and they will work in the spirit of love and in its enjoyment.

I rose from my rocky seat. The nakedness of the sea-worn hill, the masses of crumbling ruins, seemed to me to be just