greater number. There are about twenty pictures by Murillo, the most remarkable of which is Christ and Saint John. The forms and faces of these two figures are given with the most striking truth and excellence. The back-ground represents a verdant and flowery plain, through which the Jordan is seen winding. There is also another remarkable picture of a Dead Christ, supported by two Angels, by Loes de Morales, a master whose works are very rare. There are four pictures indicative of the Life of Christ, by Juan de Valdes Leal; some scenes from the Old Testament, by Pedro de Orrente, &c. In a word, to go minutely through the collection of this spirited and tasteful merchant would furnish forth a volume, for he seems to have neglected none of the great schools, national or foreign. He has, amongst others, some fine pictures of Wouvermans and other French masters. We cannot conclude this brief notice without expressing our respect for the character of a man who devotes the profits of his industry to so elegant and intellectual a gratification; and we most sincerely wish him and his pictures a safe delivery from the magnanimous Angoulême and his band of deliverers. His morning and evening prayer should be-From such liberators, libera nos, Domine. D. S.

ANCIENT SONG OF A GREEK EXILE.

WHERE is the Summer, with her golden sun?
-That festal glory hath not pass'd from earth!
For me alone the laughing day is done;

-Where is the Summer, with her voice of mirth?
-Far in my own bright land!

Where are the Fauns, whose flute-notes breathe and die
On the green hills? the founts, from sparry caves,
Through the wild places bearing melody?

The soft reeds whispering o'er the river-waves?
-Far in my own bright land!

Where are the temples, through the dim wood shining,

The virgin-dances, and the choral strains?

Where the sweet sisters of my youth, entwining
The fresh rose-garlands for their sylvan fanes?
-Far in my own brght land!

Where are the vineyards, with their joyous throngs,
The red grapes pressing when the foliage fades?
The lyres, the wreaths, the lovely Dorian songs,
And the pine-forests, and the olive-shades?

-Far in my own bright land!

Where are the haunted grots, the laurel-bowers,
The Dryad's footsteps, and the minstrel's dreams?
-Oh! that my life were as a southern flower's!
I might not languish then by these chill streams,
-Far from my own bright and!

H.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.

WHEN we begin to feel the influence of age, when the boasted era of experience arrives, and we have a "moist eye, a dry hand, and a yellow cheek," it is wonderful with what pretension of contempt we are wont to treat the younger part of the community. We assume airs of severity before it, and seem to take a pride in gibing it. We put on the mantle of wisdom because we have no other left in our wardrobe fitting to our circumstances; and with as much importance and more selfishness than we ever before experienced, we assume the functions of legislators on the strength of our vicinity to second childishness. There is a little art in acting thus. Time has taken away every thing by which we can exercise an influence, save this reputation of wisdom; and to do ourselves justice, we know how to make the most of it. We thus contrive to keep up a degree of respect when our grey hairs would otherwise excite pity. We see that age is a state of neglect unless an impression of sageness accompanies it, and we cling to our last anchor to avoid shipwreck, on the shoals of forgetfulness. Without "heat, affection, limb, or bounty," we cannot brook neglect. Some, but comparatively a very few, have stored their minds with intellectual wealth, and improved them by the observation of years

"Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.”

To venerate such is just and proper; it was to an old person of this character, no doubt, that the feeling of the Spartans was directed when they stood up in the theatre at Athens. But that those who have never profited by experience should put on the appearance of having done so to gain a respect to which they are not entitled, instead of the sympathy due to incapacity and decay, is rather hard upon the rising generation. The majority, too, of aged people assume the stoic, and pretend a scorn for the warm temper, sanguine feelings, intrepid integrity, and open manners of youth. They snub, and wound, and stifle, its generous emotions, often preaching the vanities of life only because they can no longer share in them. They seldom reflect on their own youth, but imagine that age and imbecility form the only state of existence in which man is to be imitated and admired. But it is perhaps wrong to cavil with erroneous notions where error is consolatory-where there are no vivid pleasures to be enjoyed, and the future prospect offers nothing but increase of decay and greater enfeeblement of the senses. Still it becomes those to reflect, who preserve the power of reflection, that early recollections are a source of the purest pleasure, and that they who live upon the memory of the past should not undervalue the brightest part of it.

I knew one aged person who loved youth for the pleasure he derived in his old age from the remembrance of his own youthful sensations. Seventy years had passed over his head, and, unlike Justice Shallow, he had little gratification in recounting the mere frolics of boyhood: if he alluded to them at all it was when he had cheered his old veins with a glass of claret, and a youthy impulse shone forth from a loophole of the grey tenement that enclosed it. He would now and then talk at such times of the " bona robas," and the "midnight chimes," and the "wildness of his youth;" but it was rather from the love he bore to

the recollection of the vivid sensations of that day-spring of life, than to the frolics themselves. At other times, in his hours of loneliness amid the isolation of age, he mentioned only his sensations, and would talk with delight of the smell of a flower when he was young, and the remembrance of the lively affection of the senses which he never experienced afterwards. These reminiscences of early life would have made him unhappy, had not his philosophy resigned him to the inevitable laws of our common nature. His years were green to the last. He was beloved by the young, in whom he would find mementos of emotions which he had forgotten, and watch impressions, once his own, that the lapse of years had obliterated from his mind. He was no cynic-no obtuse preacher of the folly of every state of life except age -no cruel damper of youthful hope, because he could not partake in its expectations-no severe censurer of its aberrations, under the assumed garb of wisdom, chilling the warm glow of generous hearts, and extinguishing, with a hard time-worn brow knit into a frown, the sparkles of lively and joyous spirits,-peace to his manes!

It is delightful to fling a glance back to our early years, and recall our boyish actions glittering with the light of hope and the sanguine expectations of incipient being. But the remembrance of our sensations when we were full of elasticity, when life was new and every sense and relish keen, when the eye saw nothing but a world of beauty and glory around, every object glittering in golden resplendency—is the most agreeable thing of all. The recollection of boyish actions gives small gratification to persons of mature years, except for what may, perchance, be associated with them. But youthful sensations experienced when the age of enjoyment was most keen, and the senses exquisitely susceptible, furnish delightful recollections, that cling around some of us in the last stage of life like the principle of being itself. How do we recollect the exquisite taste of a particular fruit or dish to have been then-how delicious a cool draught from the running stream! A landscape, a particular tree, a field, how much better defined and delightfully coloured then than they ever appeared afterwards. Objects, too, were then of greater magnitude and consequence to us. We examined every thing more narrowly and in detail. As we advanced farther in life, we regarded them more in collective numbers. Single objects which afforded us pleasure, had the power of attaching the heart not possessed by a multiplicity. To the youth a little comparative space is a universe. The parental house is an edifice of magnitude, however small its superfices may be in reality; the garden is vast, and the meadow seems of unbounded extent; a mile is the measure of an immense distance, and the blue hills at the boundary of the horizon appear the limits of a world. Having had no opportunity of making a comparison with objects really extended, the present visible is his universe, and his perceptions, readily including even the minutest that he sees, impress them clearly on the memory. When the world becomes known, it is looked at in larger portions, and cannot be grasped in detail. We only see and retain masses, and consequently a less vivid but more general picture of things; and we rarely again feel that interest in insignificant objects which we felt in boyhood, unless they are connected with some contingent circumstance that gives them importance. It is not the common regret we feel in retrospection, that

alone attaches us so strongly to the scenes and sensations of youth; there is the superior attachment we naturally have for individualitywe cannot love a multitude as we love one, and our affection is divided and confused on mingling in the great world. There was a single tree opposite the door of my father's house: I remember even now how every limb branched off, and that I thought no tree could be finer or larger. I loved its shade-I played under it for years; but when I visited it after my first absence for a few months from home, though I recognised it with intense interest, it appeared lessened in size; it was an object I loved, but as a tree it no longer attracted wonder at its dimensions; during my absence I had travelled in a forest of much larger trees, and the pleasure and well defined image in my mind's eye which I owed to the singleness of this object I never again experienced in observing another.

Can I ever forget the sunny side of the wood, where I used to linger away my holidays among the falling leaves of the trees in autumn! I can recall the very smell of the sear foliage to recollection, and the sound of the dashing water is even now in my ear. The rustling of the boughs, the sparkling of the stream, the gnarled trunks of the old oaks around, long since levelled by the ave, left impressions only to be obliterated by death. The pleasure I then felt was undefinable, but I was satisfied to enjoy without caring whence my enjoyment arose. The old church-yard and its yew-trees, where I sacrilegiously enjoyed my pastimes among the dead, and the ivied tower, the belfry of which I frequently ascended, and wondered at the skill which could form such ponderous masses as the bells and lift them so high,-these were objects that, on Sundays particularly, often filled my mind, upon viewing them, with a sensation that cannot be put into language. It was not joy, but a soothing tranquil delight, that made me forget for an instant I had any desire in the world unsatisfied. I have often thought since, that this state of mind must have approached pretty closely to happiness. As we passed the church-way path to the old Gothic porch on Sundays, I used to spell the inscriptions on the tombs, and wonder at the length of a life that exceeded sixty or seventy years, for days then passed slower than weeks pass now. I visited, the other day, the school-room where I had been once the drudge of a system of learning, the end of which I could not understand, and where, as was then the fashion, every method taken seemed intended to disgust the scholar with those studies he should be taught to love. I saw my name cut in the desk, I looked again on my old seat; but my youthful recollections of the worse than eastern slavery I there endured, made me regard what I saw with a feeling of peculiar distaste. If one thing more than another prevent my desiring the days of my youth to return, it is the horror I feel for the despotism of the pedagogue. For years after I left school I looked at the classics with disgust. I remembered the heart-burnings, the tears, and the pains, the monkish method of teaching, now almost wholly confined to our public schools, had caused me. It was long before I could take up a Horace, much less enjoy its perusal. It was not thus with the places I visited during the short space of cessation from task and toil that the week allowed. The meadow, where in true joviality of heart I had leaped, and raced, and played-this recalled the contentedness of mind, and the overflowing tide of delight I once experienced,

when, climbing the stile which led into it, I left behind me the book and the task. How the sunshine of the youthful breast burst forth upon me, and the gushing spirit of unreined and innocent exhilaration braced every fibre, and rushed through every vein. The sun has never shone so brilliantly since. How fragrant were the flowers. How deep the azure of the sky! How vivid were the hues of nature! How intense the short-lived sensations of pain and pleasure! How generous were all impulses! How confiding, open, and upright all actions! "Inhumanity to the distressed, and insolence to the fallen," those besetting sins of manhood, how utterly strangers to the heart! How little of sordid interests, and how much of intrepid honesty, was then displayed! These sensations experienced in youth, and recalled in afterlife, if deemed the fruit of inexperience, and inimical to the perfidious courtesies of society, should at least make us concede that we have exhausted some part of our stock of virtue and principle since-that we have been losers in some points by the lapse of time, if we have been gainers in others, more in harmony with conventional interests and views, and, we may add, with conventional vices.

The sensations peculiar to youth, being the result of impulse rather than reflection, have the advantage over those of manhood, however the pride of reason may give the latter the superiority. In manhood there is always a burden of thought bearing on the wheels of enjoyment. In manhood, too, we have the misfortune of seeing the wrecks of early associations scattered every where around us. Youth can see nothing of this. It can take no review of antecedent pleasures or pains that become such a source of melancholy emotion in mature years. It has never sauntered through the rooms of a building, and recalled early days spent under its roof. I remember my feelings on an occasion of this sort, when I was like a traveller on the plain of Babylon, wondering where all that had once been to me so great and mighty, then was-in what gulph the sounds of merriment that once reverberated from the walls, the master, the domestic, the aged, and the young, had disappeared. Our early recollections are pleasing to us because they look not on the morrow. Alas! what did that morrow leave when it became merged in the past! I have lately traversed the village in which I was born, without discovering a face that I knew. Houses have been demolished, fronts altered, tenements built, trees rooted up, and alterations effected, that made me feel a stranger amid the home of my fathers. The old-fashioned and roomy house where my infant years had been watched by parental affection, had been long uninhabited, it was in decay the storm beat through its fractured windows and it was partly roofless. The garden and its old elms, and the cherished feelings of many a happy hour, lay a weedy waste

Amid thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their echoes with unvaried cries;
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mould'ring wall!

But the picture it presented in my youth, exhibits it as true and vivid as ever. It is hung up in memory in all its freshness, and time cannot dilapidate its image. It is now become an essence that defies the mutability of material things. It is fixed in ethereal colours on the tablets of the mind, and lives within the domain of spirit, within the circumference of which the universal spoiler possesses no sovereignty.