twenty years afterwards this illness so preyed upon him, that the relief of one hour was embittered by what he dreaded would come the next. His disorder is conjectured by some to have been an internal cancer; by others, with more probability, the black bile, or melancholy. The physicians of those times knew nothing about it; and the people shewed at once their ignorance, and their admiration of the king, by saying that the devil had caused it out of jealousy. It was probably produced by anxiety for the state of his country; but the same thing which wounded him may have helped to keep him up; for he had plenty of business to attend to, and fought with his own hand in fifty-six pitched battles. Now exactly twenty years after, in the forty-fifth year of his age (if our former recollection is right) this disorder totally left him; and his great heart was where it ought to be, in a heaven of health and calmness. XV.-MISTS AND FOGS. FOGs and mists, being nothing but vapours which the cold air will not suffer to evaporate, must sometimes present a gorgeous aspect next the sun. To the eye of an eagle, or whatever other eyes there may be to look down upon them, they may appear like masses of cloudy gold. In fact, they are but clouds unrisen. The city of London, at the time we are writing this article, is literally a city in the clouds. Its inhabitants walk through the same airy heaps which at other times float over their heads in the sky, or minister with glorious faces to the setting sun. We do not say, that any one can "hold a fire in his hand," by thinking on a fine sunset; or that sheer imagination of any sort can make it a very agreeable thing to feel as if one's body were wrapped round with cold wet paper; much less to flounder through gutters, or run against posts. But the mind can often help itself with agreeable images against disagreeable ones; or pitch itself round to the best sides and aspects of them. The solid and fiery ball of the sun, stuck, as it were, in the thick foggy atmosphere; the moon just winning her way through it, into beams; nay, the very candles and gas-lights in the shop windows of a misty evening,-all have, in our eyes, their agreeable varieties of contrast to the surrounding haze. We have even halted, of a dreary autumnal evening, at that open part of the Strand by St. Clement's, and seen the church, which is a poor structure of itself, take an aspect of ghastly grandeur from the dark atmosphere; looking like a tall white mass, mounting up interminably into the night overhead. The poets, who are the common friends that keep up the intercourse between nature and humanity, have in numberless passages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shewn us what grand per sonages they are. most striking. To mention only a few of the When Thetis, in the the Iliad (Lib. I., v. 359) rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist; like the Genius in the Arabian Nights. The reader is to suppose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water; and condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white-footed goddess on the shore. When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the Greek armies, re-appears in consequence of the death of his friend Patroclus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, who are thrown into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to render his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire. (Lib. xviii, v. 205.) He shouts aloud under this preternatural diadem; Minerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with a strange unnatural cry; at which the horses of the Trojan warriors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest captains perish in the crush. A mist was the usual clothing of the gods, when they descended to earth; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has finely given him the same covering, when he passes through the court of Antinous, and suddenly appears before the throne. This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes Æneas issue suddenly from a mist, at the moment when his friends think him lost, and the beautiful queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Milton, but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for instance, goes lurking about Paradise, it is "like a black mist low creeping." If the angels on guard glide about it, upon their gentler errand, it is like fairer vapours: On the ground Gliding meteorous, as evening mist Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel Now behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen demi-gods are assembled in Pandemonium, waiting the return of their "great adventurer" from his search of worlds:" He through the midst unmarked, In show plebeian angel militant Of lowest order, passed; and from the door Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad daylight, are suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo; and he descends from heaven, and lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island. Spenser in a most romantic chapter of the Faery Queene (Book 11.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the Odyssey; but like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the course of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens: but the palmer his companion dissuades him : When suddeinly a grosse fog overspred That all things one, and one as nothing was, Thereat they greatly were dismayd, ne wist It |