"So now my summer task is ended, Mary, "With thy beloved name, thou child of love and light. "No longer where the woods to frame a bower It is worthy of remark, that these lines form the introduction to a work in which the poet concentrated all the powers of his genius. The merits of this work have nothing to do with the fact, that it was the richest offering he had to lay upon the shrine of affection, and that that offering was dedicated to his wife. The late amiable Bishop of Calcutta, a less exceptionable poet, and a less eccentric genius, has left us a beautiful and affecting tribute to affection, under the same pure and sacred form; and the woman who could inspire these lines ought to have been satisfied for the rest of her life, never to receive the incense of less hal lowed praise. "If thou wert by my side, my love! "How fast would evening fail "If thou, my love! wert by my side, "I miss thee at the dawning ray, "I miss thee when by Gunga's stream "But most beneath the moon's pale beam "I spread my books, my pencil try, Thy prayers ascend for me. "Then on then on! where duty leads, "Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright, they say, "Across the dark blue sea, "But ne'er were hearts so light and gay, "As then shall meet in thee!" If the language of a pure and dignified attachment, proved by long trial, refined by suffering, clothed in humility, and wholly divested of weakness or selfishness, was ever wrung out by the power of affliction from the inmost recesses of an elevated and virtuous mind, it is in the words of Mrs. Hutchinson, where she speaks of the love of her lamented husband. "There is only this to be recorded, that never was there a passion more ardent and lesse idolatrous; he loved her better than his life, with inexpressible tendernesse and kindnesse, had a most high obliging esteeme of her, yet still considered honour, religion, and duty above her, nor ever suffered the intrusion of such a dotage as should blind him from marking her imperfections: these he looked upon with an indulgent eie, which did not abate his love and esteeme of her, while it augmented his care to blot out all those spotts which might make her appeare lesse worthy of that respect he payed her; and thus indeed he soon made her more equall to him than he found her; for she was a very faithfull mirror, reflecting truly, though but dimly, his own glories upon him, so long as he was present; but she that was nothing before his inspection gave her a faire figure, when he was removed, was only filled with a darke mist, and never could again take in any delightfull object, nor return any shining representation. The greatest excellencie she had was the power of apprehending, and the virtue of loving his : soe as his shadow she waited on him every where, till he was taken into that region of light, which admitts of none, and then she vanished into nothing. 'Twas not her face that he loved, her honour and her virtue were his mistresses, and these (like Pigmalion's) images of his own making, for he polished and gave form to what he found with all the roughnesse of the quarrie about it; but meeting with a compliant subject for his owne wise government, he found as much satisfaction as he gave, and never had occasion to number his marriage among his infelicities." This beautiful illustration of love combines all that is essential to the most ardent, as well as the most ennobling sentiment, and wants nothing but metre to entitle it to a high place in the scale of poetical merit. There remains one important observation to be made on the subject of love, that it marks the progress of national civilization, and the improvement or the deterioration of public morals. Love, above all other passions, is capable of producing the greatest happiness, or the greatest misery; of being the most refined, or the most degraded. It may be associated with the highest virtue, or made the companion of the lowest vice. Where a nation or a community is the most licentious, love is the least respected. Where deference is paid to moral laws, and religious duties, love is regarded as the bond of domestic union, the charm which diffuses a secret, but holy influence over our domestic enjoyments. In patriarchal times, when men were dispersed over the face of the earth in separate families or tribes, love dwelt among them like a patient handmaid, ministering to their private comfort, but wholly uninfluential in directing their important movements. In the days of chivalry, when men, following the standard of false glory, maintained their possessions by force of arms, and sacrificed ease, honesty, or life, to the laws of honour, and the adventures of knight-errantry, love was worshipped as a goddess, whose inspiration endowed her votaries with superhuman power, and whose protection was a shield of adamant. And thus, through the different changes of national character and customs, love adapts itself to all, luxuriating in the indulgence of artificial life, or sharing the drudgery of corporeal toil. Even in individuals, it is not going too far to say, that low notions of the nature and attributes of love, bespeak a vitiated mind, and show, like the "trail of the serpent," in the garden of Eden, that the principle of evil has been there. There is in its elevated nature, a character of constancy, truth, and dignity, which constitutes the essence of its being, and no pure eye can behold it robbed of these, without sorrow and indignation. It is this faculty of adaptation to all circum |