But "excess of mental labor in every department of literature-poetry, history, biography, criticism, and philosophy-continued, from year to year, without cessation, bowed his strong spirit at last, and obscured the genius which had so long cast glory upon the literature of the age." For three years before his death, his mind was so far gone that he was not able to recognize those who had been his companions from his youth.' Scarcely could his wife console herself with the poor hope that he recognized even her. He died at his residence in Keswick, on the 21st of March, 1843, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. "In all the relations of life, Mr. Southey was universally allowed, by those who knew him best, to be truly exemplary. His house at the Lakes was open to all who presented themselves with suitable introduction; and there are few persons of any distinction, who have passed through that picturesque region, who have not partaken of his hospitality." He enjoyed a pension of three hundred pounds a year from the government, granted in 1835 by Sir Robert Peel, and left personal property to the amount of twelve thousand pounds, and a very rich and valuable library, all the fruits of his own literary labors.2

mery's Poems; 13, Iceland; 14, French Revolutionists; 15, Count Julian-Calamities of Authors; 16, Manufacturing System and the Poor; 19, Bogue and Bennett's History of the DisBenters; 21, Nicobar Islands-Montgomery's World before the Flood; 22, 23, British Poets; 23, Oriental Memoirs; 24, Lewis and Clark's Travels-Barrè Roberts; 25, Miot's Expedition to Egypt; 25, 26, Life of Wellington; 28, Alfieri; 29, Me. La Roche Jacqueline The Poor; 30, Ali Bey's Travels-Foreign Travellers in England; 31, Parliamentary Reform; 32, Porter's Travels-Rise and Progress of Disaffection; 33, Tonga Islands; 35, Lope de Vega; 37, Evelyn on the Means of Improving the People; 41, Copyright Act; 42, Cemeteries; 43, Monastic Institutions; 45, Life of Marlborough; 46, New Churches; 48, Life of William Huntington, S. S.; 50, Life of Cromwell; 52, Dobrizhoffer; 53, Camoens; 55, Gregorie's Religious Sects; 56, Infidelity; 57, Burnet's Own Times; 59, Dwight's Travels; 62, Hayley-Mrs. Baillie's Lisbon.

Read a most interesting and feeling letter on this painful incident, from Mr. Cottle to the Rev. John Foster, at page 310 of the "Reminiscences."

The following is Coleridge's estimate of Southey:

"Southey stands second to no man, either as an historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist, I look in vain for any writer who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such recondite sources, with so many just and original reflec tions, in a style so lively and poignant, yet so uniformly classical and perspicuous, no one, in short, who has combined so much wisdom with so much wit-so much truth and knowledge with so much life and fancy. His prose is always intelligible, and always entertaining. It is Southey's almost unexampled felicity to possess the best gifts of talent and genius, free from all their characteristic defects. As son, brother, husband, father, master, friend, he moves with firm yet light steps, alike unostentatious, and alike exemplary. As a writer, he has uniformly made his talents subservient to the best interests of humanity, of public virtue, and domestic piety; his cause has ever been the cause of pure religion and of liberty, of national independence, and of national illumination."-Bio. Lit.

To this I may add the following criticism:

"Southey, among all our living poets," says Professor Wilson, “stands aloof, and alone in his glory. For he alone of them all has adventured to illustrate, in poems of magnitude, the different characters, customs, and manners of nations. Joan of Arc' is an English and French story-Thalaba' an Arabian one-Kehama' is Indian-Madoc' Welsh and American-and Roderic' Spanish and Moorish; nor would it be easy to say (setting aside the first, which was a very youthful work) in which of these noble poems Mr. Southey has most successfully performed an achievement entirely beyond the power of any but the highest genius. In Madoc,' and especially in Roderic,' he has relied on the truth of Nature-as it is seen in the history of great national transactions and events. In 'Thalaba' and 'Kehama,' though in them, too, he has brought to bear an almost boundless lore, he follows the leading of fancy and imagination, and walks in a world of wonders. Seldom, if ever, has one and the same poet exhibited such power in such different kinds of poetry; in truth a master, and in fiction a magician. Of all these poems, the conception and the execution are original; in much, faulty and imperfect both, but bearing throughout the impress of highest genius, and breathing a moral charm, in the midst of the wildest, and sometimes even extravagant imeginings, that shall preserve them for ever from oblivion, and embalm them in the spirit of love and of delight."

THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.

It was a summer evening,
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage-door
Was sitting in the sun;

And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round
Which he beside the rivulet,

In playing there, had found;

He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,
"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,

For there's many here about; And often, when I go to plough,

The ploughshare turns them out! For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"
Young Peterkin, he cries:
While little Wilhelmine looks up,
With wonder-waiting eyes;

"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they kill'd each other for."
"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they kill'd each other for,
I could not well make out.
But everybody said," quoth he,
"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;

They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;

So with his wife and child he fled,

Nor had he where to rest his head.

"With fire and sword, the country round
Was wasted far and wide;

And many a childing mother then,
And new-born baby, died;

But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

"They say it was a shocking sight
After the field was won;

For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
And our good prince, Eugene."

"Why, 'twas a very wicked thing!"
Said little Wilhelmine.

"Nay-nay-my little girl," quoth he,
"It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the duke,
Who this great fight did win."

"And what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

THE IMMORTALITY OF LOVE.1

They sin, who tell us love can die:
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity;
In heaven ambition cannot dwell,
Nor avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions of the earth,
They perish where they have their birth;
But love is indestructible;

Its holy flame for ever burneth,

From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times oppress'd,
It here is tried and purified,

Then hath in heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
Oh! when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?

"We must not ridicule a passion which he who never felt, never was happy; and he who laughs at, never deserves to feel-a passion which has caused the change of empires, and the loss of worlds-a passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice."-JOHNSON.

"What higher in her society thou find'st
Attractive, human, rational, love still;
In loving thou dost well, in passion not,
Wherein true love consists not: love refines

The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat

In reason, and is judicious; is the scale

By which to heavenly love thou may'st ascend,

Not sunk in carnal pleasure.”—Paradise Lost, viii. 586.

TO A SPIDER.

Spider! thou need'st not run in fear about
To shun my curious eyes;

I won't humanely crush thy bowels out,
Lest thou shouldst eat the flies;

Nor will I roast thee with a fierce delight,
Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see,
For there is one who might

One day roast me.

Thou'rt welcome to a rhymer sore perplex'd,
The subject of his verse:

There's many a one who on a better text
Perhaps might comment worse;

Then shrink not, old Freemason, from my view,
But quietly, like me, spin out the line;
Do thou thy work pursue,

As I will mine.

Weaver of snares, thou emblemest the ways
Of Satan, sire of lies;

Hell's huge black spider, for mankind he lays
His toils as thou for flies.

When Betty's busy eye runs round the room,
Woe to that nice geometry if seen!
But where is he whose broom

The earth shall clean?

Spider! of old thy flimsy webs were thought,
And 'twas a likeness true,

To emblem laws in which the weak are caught,
But which the strong break through;

And if a victim in thy toils is ta'en,

Like some poor client is that wretched fly;
I'll warrant thee thou'lt drain

His life-blood dry.

And is not thy weak work like human schemes

And care on earth employ'd?

Such are young hopes and Love's delightful dreams,
So easily destroy'd!

So does the statesman, while the avengers sleep,
Self-deem'd secure, his wiles in secret lay;

Soon shall destruction sweep

His work away.

Thou busy laborer! one resemblance more
May yet the verse prolong,

For, spider, thou art like the poet poor,

Whom thou hast help'd in song:

Both busily our needful food to win,

We work, as Nature taught, with ceaseless pains— Thy bowels thou dost spin,

I spin my brains.

THE COMPLAINTS OF THE POOR.

"And wherefore do the poor complain ?" The rich man ask'd of me;

"Come walk abroad with me," I said,
"And I will answer thee."

'Twas evening, and the frozen streets
Were cheerless to behold;

And we were wrapp'd and coated well,
And yet we were a-cold.

We met an old, bareheaded man,
His locks were thin and white;
I ask'd him what he did abroad
In that cold winter's night.

The cold was keen, indeed, he said-
But at home no fire had he;
And therefore he had come abroad
To ask for charity.

We met a young barefooted child,
And she begg'd loud and bold;
I ask'd her what she did abroad
When the wind it blew so cold.
She said her father was at home,
And he lay sick a bed;

And therefore was it she was sent
Abroad to beg for bread.

We saw a woman sitting down
Upon a stone to rest;

She had a baby at her back,

And another at her breast.

I ask'd her why she loiter'd there,

When the night-wind was so chill;
She turn'd her head, and bade the child
That scream'd behind, be still ;-

Then told us that her husband served,
A soldier, far away;

And therefore to her parish she

Was begging back her way.

I turn'd me to the rich man then,
For silently stood he;

"You ask'd me why the poor complain;
And these have answer'd thee!"

AUTUMN SKETCH.

There was not, on that day, a speck to stain
The azure heaven; the blessed sun alone,
In unapproachable divinity,

Career'd, rejoicing in the fields of light.
How beautiful, beneath the bright blue sky,
The billows' heave! one glowing green expanse,