liest and happiest years were passed. I would describe the avenue of mossy elms which led to it, its many regular smooth-cropped walks, the square pigeon-house (sure appurtenance to an ancient mansion), and more than all, that pleasant south alcove, upon whose walls the name of many a kind and excellent friend was registered; yea, and many a pencilled rhyme of passing sweetness. However, I know not, if once I ventured upon this theme, where I should conclude; so I must content myself with referring all whom it may concern to the Memoirs of that true Sylvanus, John Evelyn, for a bona fide plan of an ancient garden; and to my Lord Bacon's Essay on Gardens, if they wish to see the beau-ideal of such a place:-the description of his garden is quite poetical. Where shall we find a more beautiful passage than the following, unless it be perchance the Duke's first speech in Twelfth Night? It would almost persuade one that the heart which conceived such thoughts could know no wickedness:-" And because the breath of flowers is farre sweeter in the aire (where it comes and goes like the warbling of musicke) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers and plants which. doe best perfume the aire." I always envy what Cowper calls "the occupations of a retired gentleman in his garden." Most certainly, a gardener is a happy man. He is a labourer in the primitive trade. His is not an occupation of mere daily drudgery, like the wretched mechanic's, whose labours pass through his rapid hands, and are seen no more. He has a family around him, fair, beautiful, and flourishing, whose growth and welfare he watches over with a parent's love. He has friends, old friends, who have long been his faithful companions. For the many members of his vegetable family he feels all the varieties of human sympathy. The stout and sturdy oak excites his veneration and respect; he honours it for its bold endurance of the storms, and the unyielding hardiness of its frame. The graceful Acacia is the woman of the grove. But chiefly over his flowers does the rapture of a gardener's heart pour itself forth. He is their father-to him they owe their birth-he has fostered and cherished them-he has watched their crisp leaves bursting from the soil, and has protected their tender infancy from the insect and the worm-he is attached to them by the unknown gratitude which they owe him, and when in their full maturity they expand into their summer beauty, and pour out their exquisite perfume, to gaze on them, and to inhale their sweetness, is his "exceeding great reward." Unlike a mortal progeny, in them the hopes which he has formed, are seldom disappointed; generation succeeds generation, each fresh and blooming as the former. Trust me, a gardener is a very happy man. R. VALENTINE WRITING. By a most singular arrangement, the day in which a Christian bishop suffered martyrdom 1500 years ago, has been for a long course of time commemorated by the effusions of earthly love and fancy. Not one of the saints' days in our calendar, we may safely say, has been so honoured by the Muses. Little dreamed the emperor Valerianus, when he gave the order which doomed this persecuted individual to the block, that he was bestowing a name upon a day to be held in a pleasant memory by youthful swains and blushing damsels-a day in which the spirit of martyrdom has little place, unless indeed the Muse may be doomed to act the part of the deceased saint, which, I believe, is pretty often the case. The day, however, and its occupation, have been somehow long settled, and it is really a pleasant one. It is a day to make a poet feel himself somebody. The little children crowd about him in full dependence on his power of expressing in appropriate language their babyloves. And perhaps some full-grown youth, of greater modesty than ordinary, whose poetical spirit hardly keeps pace with the ardour of his passion, may put in his claim to the like indulgence. It is even possible that the discreet poet may be entrusted with secrets of yet more overpowering importance; and his may be the pleasant lot of touching the flinty heart of some yet insensible swain, by affecting representations of long-concealed maiden tenderness. What a proud and happy man is the bard then! He walks, and he has a right to walk, with a head more erect than usual, conscious that he bears about with him a hundred secrets, in revealing the least of which he might bring whole armies of lads and lasses, grave fathers, mothers and aunts, upon him, exulting, however, in the reflection that there is a power in alliance with him which will effectually enable him to elude discovery. If he be of a malevolent disposition, it might, perhaps, gratify him to witness the torturing anxiety of the lover for whom he has penned a sonnet (which he has been obliged to transcribe and alter at least a dozen times before it was sufficiently tender) under the uncertainty of the fair one's having received it at all, or at any rate having given it a favourable reception. And if it should happen (such things have been) that the fair one herself, ignorant that her counsel has been previously engaged on the other side, should call in his aid and require him to weave an appropriate answer to his own rhymes,-how gratifying, how pleasant to the vanity of the man and the poet! Not but that in these degenerate days he feels his consequence greatly diminished, when every eighth man is an "universal genius," when people are not content with being their own doctors, lawyers, and barbers, but "every man" must be "his own" poet too. It is a certain fact (at least "we have the best authority" for so stating) that young ladies and gentlemen at boarding-schools are regularly taught to make verses; and it would be a great shame indeed if Valentine's day found them unfurnished with appropriate rhymes. As I am free to confess, that in my time I have penned many Valentines, and after my reputation was established have been professionally cousulted on many more, in which it was thought a little criticism if not alteration might be advisable, I have in my possession a consider able stock of original poems of this sort; and from among them have selected a few which some of your readers may, perhaps, mentally compare to the addresses of love-sick Troubadours to their ladies. Now to tell the whole truth, it is part of my theory on the subject of Valentine writing, that the style of those worthies most befits compositions meet for an admirer to offer and for a lady's ear to listen to; and I am for considering this most ancient feast as a faint image of those principles of gallantry which graced the southern revelries in the bright reign of love and song. I see in the merry circle that gathers on this happy eve many faces calculated to form a most respectable Cour d'amour, and to determine perplexed "passages of love," particularly those of other people. The sitting is not held sous l'ormel to be sure, but that is because our gala-day is in February, not on bright May-day, whose genial influence we can only counterfeit by a smiling fire. The poet lauds his mistress as devoutly and delicately; and though the chill of the season sometimes operates unfavourably on the ardour of his fancy, yet he sings with greater freedom from our throwing around him a veil of conventional incognito, while we still leave him sufficiently unmasked to receive, sooner or later, the smile of his mistress, a reward quite as great as any golden violet awarded by the academy of the Gai Saber. To return to my subject:-Let me not forfeit my claim to the confidence of the young ladies and gentlemen of the present day,-a confidence of which I am exceedingly jealous. I can assure them, that of the pieces I send you there is not one which will now hurt the feelings of a single individual. I have so carefully selected them, that I may venture to subjoin critical remarks, which once I dared not have uttered to the winds. Yet to my mind each poem brings a crowd of recollections, which no doubt greatly heightens its interest as I transcribe; I wish my readers could follow me in those feelings. The first I shall send you is pretty, yet it is a little babyish or so ; and I should suspect it to be written by a young lady only just sixteen, from the juvenility of the expressions and the clink of the verse. It is the hour of morning's prime, It is the time of early love When suns but faintly shine; The cold snows on the meadows lie, Yet here and there in yonder sky A gleam of light is seen. So Love, young Love, 'mid storms and snow Darts forth a light divine; So darker days the brightness show Of thine, St. Valentine! The next is from a gentleman of course, and is much more in the Troubadour style; yet I should greatly doubt whether the lady who received this had any just grounds for reliance on her lover's sincerity. It is too laboured and lofty to be the offspring of real passion; and was, I believe, written by a person who thought more of himself than of his mistress. My love is lovely in her smile of light,— Beautiful smile! that, like the sun in May, Makes the sweet landscape look more purely bright— Wait on her steps, and chase my cares away. My love is lovely in her awful frown, Dashing the intoxicating cup from me, Which else my thought too soon had deem'd my own, But loveliest is my love, when spirit shaken So the relenting snows, long bound by frost, Free and uncheck'd, no more their motion cross'd, So mingled be our hearts, sweet Valentine! The next is of so threatening a kind that I think I have understood the poor wight, who with a mixture of feigned bravery and real cowardice, penned it, and who well knowing that his mistress suspected him, did not venture to appear before her till the month of May following. I hope I shall not be thought to break my pledge of secrecy when I hint he was very favourably received, considering the offence given. I must sigh-for thy joy is my sadness; I must weep-for my grief is thy gladness; Of the bitter revenge of despair! The next is from a poor melancholy witling, who really loved love, because it added to his stock of romantic musings. If his lady had smiled upon him, it would infallibly have broken the charm, and his heart also. But from this catastrophe he was happily delivered. He has not unaptly portrayed his feelings in these lines, and therefore I select them from among a dozen more appropriate to the occasion. Poor Primrose! that through covering snow Why fairer than the Rose art thou? Must she not charge the cup with ill And has not Love, by fortune's blast, And more than conqueror proved,―at last No brighter joy hath Heaven to give, It is said that the sweet air of "Rousseau's Dream," to which all our poets, now-a-days, have a song, was first imported into this country twenty-two years ago, and that the first English words ever written to it were in the form of a serenade from a lover to his betrothed on the morning of Valentine's day. If this be true, my readers will, no doubt, thank me for laying before them a copy of these lines. Health to thee, mine own sweet lady! Round thy path new spells to cast. Blessed be thine early morning! Not to thee, all undeceiving, B. SONNET.-FRANCESCO REDI. "Era 'l mio animo rozzo e selvaggio." My mind was like a rugged soil that lay But ah! fell Jealousy's untimely storm |