"What though my wingèd hours of bliss have been
Like angel visits, few and far between?

Hope's musing mood shall every pang appease

And charm, when pleasures lose the power to please."

In March of the same year, 1808, his "Address to an Early Violet" appeared in the Political Review. On April 17th, 1808, writing to his friend, James Baldwin Brown, of the Inner Temple, he remarks— I have designed and engraved two pieces from Thomson's Seasons' at thy request, and intend to perform others. The plate of the hare is taken from these lines

"

'Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare

Scar'd from the corn, and now to some lone seat
Retired.'

"The horse from the following—

Autumn.

'Oft too the horse, provoked,

O'erleaps the fence, and o'er the field effused,
Darts on the gloomy flood with stedfast eye,
And takes the fountain at redoubled draughts.'

Summer."

"DEAR SISTER,

"EPPING, 3rd of 12th Month, 1807.

"As I have written to my mother, I have not much to communicate to thee. Thou wilt learn from mother, that I have written some poems which have appeared in print. The following is reserved for Spring, which will then appear more congenial to the subject. It is―

TO A VIOLET EARLY IN SPRING.
Hail! lone companion of the rising year,
Why droop thy honours in the misty gale?
Why does thy head refuse the pearly tear
That robes the vernal tresses of the vale?

Is it stern Winter overspreads the plain,
That clothes the mountain in its azure hue?
Art thou a stranger to the pelting rain,

Or shrinks thy bosom from the evening dew?

But cease to mourn : pale Winter's lowering gloom,
Her frowns, her shackles, soon will disappear:

Soon will gay Spring restore thy vivid bloom,
And give new fragrance to the dancing year.

Thus though the night wind wafts my rising sighs,
Soon may my soul wing to its native skies.

"Accept the love of thy affectionate brother,

"J. H. WIFFEN."

IN

CHAPTER II.

AT WOBURN.

"It is the mind that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor :
To some that hath abundance at his will,
Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store;
And other that hath little, asks no more,
But in that little is both rich and wise;
For wisdom is most riches; fools therefore
They are, which fortunes do by vows devise;
Since each unto himself his life may fortunize."

SPENSER.

N the year 1811, at the age of nineteen, J. H. Wiffen left Epping, and returned to Woburn. Here he took a house on the Leighton Road, and opened a school for the sons of Friends. It was a comfortable house, with a pleasant garden at the back, and the view from it, and from the windows on that side, stretched away over a green plain of fields, to the belts of dark pine trees, and the feathery beechen glades of the distant Brickhill woods.

In this responsible position, he won the regard and esteem of his pupils. He worked hard day and night, unceasingly and unremittingly. In the day-time, his energies were devoted to the instruction and oversight of his scholars, whilst far on into the

midnight, and early dawn, his student lamp was constantly burning. He prosecuted his classical studies, and attained considerable proficiency, not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Hebrew, and in the French, Italian, and subsequently the Spanish and Welsh languages.

Yet still, throughout these sterner studies, and amidst the increasing cares of the business of life, Poetry flung over her spell-bound votary, the magic of her divine mantle.

He possessed also great taste for music. He acquired some knowledge of it, and several of his songs were set to music.

He enjoyed mathematics, and drawing had always a great interest for him. Many of his delicate. pencil sketches from Nature, attest the tenderness of his feeling for her beautiful traceries.

To him, with the keen, inner, spiritual eyesight of poetic temperament, the beautiful was everywhere, and the constant feeling of his heart arose in aspiration to Heaven.

"Oh! if so much of beauty doth reveal
Itself in every vein of life and nature,
How beautiful must be the Source itself,
The ever Bright One!"

Tegner.

In 1812 he united with his friends, James Baldwin Brown, Esq., of the Inner Temple, and the Rev. Thomas Raffles, of Liverpool, in publishing a volume entitled "Poems by Three Friends," which was favourably reviewed.

CHAPTER III.

ASPLEY WOOD AND EARLY POEMS.

1819, 1820.

"AONIAN HOURS," "JULIA ALPINula,” “Captive of Stamboul,"

ETC.

"Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward;' it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."-COLERIDGE.

WHO

HO that has wandered in childhood and youth, through the arched recesses and arcadian avenues of Aspley Wood, can ever cease to remember the delight of its beechen groves, and fir-clad heights? What pictures of its rich woodland beauty, remain indelibly stamped by memory, on the mind evermore!

In spring, the moss-covered banks, the greensward white with the wood anemone, golden with primroses, and blue with the fairy bells of the hyacinth,— whilst hidden in dewy recesses of the leafy underwood, lie whole beds of the fragrant lily of the valley. In summer, the festoons of sweet wild woodbine flung hither and thither in perfumed luxuriance, the