extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius, and that men should never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains, to expofe vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly cenfure tyranny and oppreffion. His fong ended, the venerable bard precipitated himself from the mountain, and was loft in the river that rolled at its feet. On a rock whose haughty brow Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood; With haggard eyes the poet stood; (Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air ;) "Ruin seize thee, ruthless king! Confusion on thy banners wait; Tho' fanned by conquest's crimson wing, To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, He wound with toilsome march his long array. The memory of the ancient minstrels is always affociated with ideas of liberty and freedom-" The children of fong may not languish in chains;” and this idea is charmingly preferved by Moore in his fong of "The Minstrel Boy," where he tells how— The minstrel fell!-but the foeman's chain For he tore its chords asunder; Thou soul of mirth and bravery! Thy songs were made for the pure and free, There ftill live in England many of the fongs of our fathers -many of thofe which, Mrs. Hemans tells, were The songs their souls rejoiced to hear, When harps were in their hall ; And each proud note made lance and spear The songs that through our valleys green, Sent on from age to age, Like his own river's voice, have been The peasant's heritage. So let it be a light they shed O'er each old fount and grove; A memory of the gentle dead; They bid our streams roll on; Teach them your children round the hearth, When evening fires burn clear; And in the fields of harvest mirth, And on the hills of deer. U So shall each unforgotten word, When far those loved ones roam, Call back the hearts which once it stirred, To childhood's holy home. A graphic picture is given of the laft of the bards in Scott's "Lay of the Laft Minstrel: "— The way was long, the wind was cold, High placed in hall, a welcome guest, He pour'd, to lord and lady gay, The unpremeditated lay: Old times were changed, old manners gone; A stranger fill'd the Stuarts' throne; The bigots of the iron time Had call'd his harmless art a crime. A wandering Harper, scorn'd and poor, |