as he almost lives here, it is fitting I let you know something of him.

The Diary and Letters (7 vols. 1842-46) was twice reprinted in 1890-91; the Early Diary, edited by Annie Raine Ellis, appeared in 1890. See Macaulay's famous Essay, and the editions of Evelina and Cecilia (1893) by Mr Brimley Johnson; Fanny Burney and her Friends (selections from the Diary, edited by Seeley, 1889); Mrs Walford, Twelve English Authoresses (1892).

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), the elder daughter of Mr Nicholas Turner of Stoke House in Surrey, was early remarkable for a playful humour shown in conversation and in prose and verse composition. Having lost her mother at three, she was brought up carelessly though expensively by an aunt, and introduced into society at a very early age. After her father's second marriage, the aunt sought hurriedly to establish Charlotte in life, and in 1765 she was married to Benjamin Smith, son and partner of a rich West India merchant-the husband being twentyone years, the wife fifteen. Smith was careless and extravagant, and his father, dying in 1776, left a will so complicated that lawsuits and embarrassments were the portion of this illstarred pair for all their after-lives. Smith was ultimately forced to sell the greater part of his property, after being for seven months in prison in 1782, when his wife shared his confinement. In 1788, after an unhappy union of twenty-three years, Mrs Smith separated from her husband, and applied herself to her literary occupations with cheerful assiduity, supplying to her eight children the duties of both parents. She had already published Elegiac Sonnets (1784), and translated Prévost's exquisite Manon Lescaut; and now in eight months she completed her novel Emmeline, or The Orphan of the Castle, to which in 1790 succeeded Ethelinde, and in 1792 Celestina. Having adopted the doctrines of the French Revolution, she embodied them in Desmond, a romance which arrayed against her many of her friends and readers. But she regained the public favour by the Old Manor House (1793), the best of her novels. Part of it was written at Eartham, the residence of Hayley, during Cowper's visit to that poetical retreat. 'It was delightful,' says Hayley, 'to hear her read what she had just written, for she read, as she wrote, with simplicity and grace.' Cowper was also astonished at the rapidity and excellence of her composition. Mrs Smith, whose poetry is mostly pathetic in tone, continued her literary labours amidst private and family distress, and wrote a valuable little compendium for children, Conversations, in which she was aided by her sister, Mrs Catharine Ann

Dorset, known for The Peacock at Home' (1807) and other poems.

On the Departure of the Nightingale. Sweet poet of the woods, a long adieu ! Farewell, soft minstrel of the early year! Ah! 'twill be long ere thou shalt sing anew, And pour thy music on the night's dull ear. Whether on spring thy wandering flights await, Or whether silent in our groves you dwell, The pensive Muse shall own thee for her mate, And still protect the song she loves so well. With cautious step the love-lorn youth shall glide Through the lone brake that shades thy mossy nest; And shepherd girls from eyes profane shall hide The gentle bird who sings of pity best: For still thy voice shall soft affections move, And still be dear to sorrow and to love!

English Scenery.

Haunts of my youth! Scenes of fond day-dreams, I behold ye yet! Where 'twas so pleasant by thy northern slopes, To climb the winding sheep-path, aided oft By scattered thorns, whose spiny branches bore Small woolly tufts, spoils of the vagrant lamb, There seeking shelter from the noonday sun: And pleasant, seated on the short soft turf, To look beneath upon the hollow way, While heavily upward moved the labouring wain, And stalking slowly by, the sturdy hind, To ease his panting team, stopped with a stone The grating wheel.

Advancing higher still,

The prospect widens, and the village church
But little o'er the lowly roofs around
Rears its gray belfry and its simple vane ;
Those lowly roofs of thatch are half concealed
By the rude arms of trees, lovely in spring;
When on each bough the rosy tinctured bloom
Sits thick, and promises autumnal plenty.
For even those orchards round the Norman farms,
Which, as their owners marked the promised fruit,
Console them, for the vineyards of the south
Surpass not these.

Where woods of ash and beech,
And partial copses fringe the green hill-foot,
The upland shepherd rears his modest home;
There wanders by a little nameless stream
That from the hill wells forth, bright now, and clear,
Or after rain with chalky mixture gray,
But still refreshing in its shallow course
The cottage garden; most for use designed,
Yet not of beauty destitute. The vine
Mantles the little casement; yet the brier
Drops fragrant dew among the July flowers;
And pansies rayed, and freaked, and mottled pinks,
Grow among balm and rosemary and rue;
There honeysuckles flaunt, and roses blow
Almost uncultured; some with dark-green leaves
Contrast their flowers of pure unsullied white;
Others like velvet robes of regal state
Of richest crimson; while, in thorny moss
Enshrined and cradled, the most lovely wear
The hues of youthful beauty's glowing cheek.
With fond regret I recollect e'en now

In spring and summer, what delight I felt
Among these cottage gardens, and how much
Such artless nosegays, knotted with a rush
By village housewife or her ruddy maid,

Were welcome to me; soon and simply pleased,
An early worshipper at nature's shrine,

I loved her rudest scenes-warrens, and heaths,
And yellow commons, and birch-shaded hollows,
And hedgerows bordering unfrequented lanes,
Bowered with wild roses and the clasping woodbine.
(From Beachy Head.)

Mrs Radcliffe (1764-1823), once called the Salvator Rosa of British novelists, was born in London of respectable parentage, her maiden name being Ann Ward. In her twenty-third year she married William Radcliffe, graduate of Oxford and student of law, afterwards editor and proprietor of a weekly paper, the English Chronicle. Two years after her marriage, in 1789, Mrs Radcliffe published her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, the scene of which she laid in the Scottish Highlands during the remote and warlike times of the feudal barons. This work was immature the authoress had made no attempt to portray national manners or historical events; and the plot was wild and unnatural. Her next effort was more successful. The Sicilian Romance (1790) attracted attention by its romantic adventures and copious descriptions of scenery. Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and even Walpole,' said Sir Walter Scott, though writing upon an imaginative subject, are decidedly prose authors. Mrs Radcliffe has a title to be considered as the first poetess of romantic fiction; that is, if actual rhythm shall not be deemed essential to poetry.' Actual rhythm was also at her command; the novelist scattered verses throughout her works, but they are less poetical than her prose. In 1791 appeared The Romance of the Forest, exhibiting her powers in full maturity. To her scenes of mystery and surprise she now added the delineation of passion, as instanced in the character of La Motte. Like the painter with whom she was compared, she loved to sport with the romantic and terrible-with mountain-forest and lake, the obscure solitude, cloud and storm, wild banditti, ruined castles, and all those half-discovered glimpses or visionary shadows of the supernatural which seem at times to cross our path and haunt and thrill the imagination. This faculty was more strongly shown in Mrs Radcliffe's next romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), by far the most popular of her performances, as no doubt it was the best. In 1794 she made a journey through Holland and western Germany, returning down the Rhine, of which next year she published an account, adding to it observations made during a tour to the lakes of Lancashire, Westmorland, and Cumberland. In 1797 she made her last appearance in fiction. The Mysteries of Udolpho had been purchased by her publisher for what was then considered an enormous summ-£500;

but her new work brought her £800. It was entitled The Italian, and turned upon the tyranny of the Roman Inquisition. Mrs Radcliffe took up the popular notions on this subject without seeking after historical accuracy, and produced a work which, though very unequal in its execution, contains perhaps the most sensational of all her scenes and word-paintings. 'And it is a testimony to the power of her art,' says Professor Raleigh, 'that her fancy first conceived a type of character that subsequently passed from art into life. The man that Lord Byron tried to be was the invention of Mrs Radcliffe ;' notably Schedoni in this story. The opening of the Italian is as follows:

English Travellers in a Neapolitan Church. Within the shade of the portico, a person with folded arms, and eyes directed towards the ground, was pacing behind the pillars the whole extent of the pavement, and was apparently so engaged by his own thoughts as not to observe that strangers were approaching. turned, however, suddenly, as if startled by the sound of steps, and then, without further pausing, glided to a door that opened into the church, and disappeared.

He

There was something too extraordinary in the figure of this man, and too singular in his conduct, to pass unnoticed by the visitors. He was of a tall thin figure, bending forward from the shoulders; of a sallow complexion and harsh features, and had an eye which, as it looked up from the cloak that muffled the lower part of his countenance, seemed expressive of uncommon ferocity, The travellers, on entering the church, looked round for the stranger who had passed thither before them, but he was nowhere to be seen; and through all the shade of the long aisles only one other person appeared. This was a friar of the adjoining convent, who sometimes pointed out to strangers the objects in the church which were most worthy of attention, and who now, with this design, approached the party that had just entered....

When the party had viewed the different shrines, and whatever had been judged worthy of observation, and were returning through an obscure aisle towards the portico, they perceived the person who had appeared upon the steps passing towards a confessional on the left, and as he entered it, one of the party pointed him out to the friar, and inquired who he was. The friar, turning to look after him, did not immediately reply; but on the question being repeated, he inclined his head, as in a kind of obeisance, and calmly replied: 'He is an assassin.'

'An assassin!' exclaimed one of the Englishmen ; an assassin, and at liberty!'

An Italian gentleman who was of the party smiled at the astonishment of his friend.

'He has sought sanctuary here,' replied the friar; 'within these walls he may not be hurt.'

'Do your altars, then, protect a murderer?' said the Englishman.

'He could find shelter nowhere else,' answered the friar meekly. . . .

...

'But observe yonder confessional,' added the Italian, 'that beyond the pillars on the left of the aisle, below a painted window. Have you discovered it? The colours of the glass throw, instead of light, a shade over that

part of the church, which perhaps prevents your distinguishing what I mean.'

The Englishman looked whither his friend pointed, and observed a confessional of oak, or some very dark wood, adjoining the wall, and remarked also that it was the same which the assassin had just entered. It consisted of three compartments covered with a black canopy. In the central division was the chair of the confessor, elevated by several steps above the pavement of the church; and on either hand was a small closet or box, with steps leading up to a grated partition, at which the penitent might kneel, and, concealed from observation, pour into the ear of the confessor the consciousness of crimes that lay heavy on his heart.

'You observe it?' said the Italian.

'I do,' replied the Englishman; it is the same which the assassin has passed into, and I think it one of the most gloomy spots I ever beheld: the view of it is enough to strike a criminal with despair.'

'We in Italy are not so apt to despair,' replied the Italian smilingly.

'Well, but what of this confessional?' inquired the Englishman. 'The assassin entered it.'

'He has no relation with what I am about to mention,' said the Italian; but I wish you to mark the place, because some very extraordinary circumstances belong to it.'

'What are they?' said the Englishman.

'It is now several years since the confession which is connected with them was made at that very confessional,' added the Italian; the view of it, and the sight of this assassin, with your surprise at the liberty which is allowed him, led me to a recollection of the story. When you return to the hotel, I will communicate it to you, if you have no pleasanter way of engaging your time.'

'After I have taken another view of this solemn edifice,' replied the Englishman, and particularly of the confessional you have pointed to my notice.'

While the Englishman glanced his eye over the high roofs and along the solemn perspectives of the Santa del Pianto, he perceived the figure of the assassin stealing from the confessional across the choir, and, shocked on again beholding him, he turned his eyes, and hastily quitted the church.

The friends then separated, and the Englishman, soon after returning to his hotel, received the volume. He read as follows.

After such an opening, who would not go on with the story? Most of Mrs Radcliffe's novels abound in pictures and situations as striking and as well grouped as those of the scenic artist and the playwright. Her latter years were spent in retirement; and it was an attack of the asthma which had long afflicted her that at last proved fatal. A posthumous romance entitled Gaston de Blondeville, containing a memoir of her, was published under the editorial superintendence of Serjeant Talfourd; and her Poems were collected and published in 1834.

Mrs Radcliffe was one of the most popular novelists of her day. Sir Walter Scott himself felt the charm of her 'utopian scenes and manners,' and Crabbe Robinson the diarist preferred her stories to the Waverley Novels-a preference not

6

easy to be understood by the present generation. Her characters to us seem as unreal as the surroundings in which she places them, and one can as little believe in the actuality of Emily and Adeline as in the solidity of the pasteboard castles wherein they are immured by sinister barons whose moustachios are obviously corked. Her heroines are all young Englishwomen trained by Mrs Chapone, who, when they are carried off, tell their ravishers that they can no longer remain here with propriety,' and must ask by what right' they are detained. Even the supernatural machinery which plays so great a part in her books is a mere arrangement of trap-doors and sliding panels, and she is most fatally punctilious in her explanations that there is really nothing after all in her diablerie. Real passion and genuine pathos are as little evident in her pages as a sense of humour, but she shows a very respectable melodramatic skill. Her style, though stilted, is more correct than that of most women novelists of the Victorian period; but her once-admired descriptions have lost their charm. It is noteworthy that she had never been in Italy when the Mysteries of Udolpho was written. Udolpho has many non-Italian features, Gothic castles are not common in Italy, and the name itself has not the form of a normal Italian word. The development of the art of fiction has inevitably antiquated her popularity; and, though Miss Christina Rossetti was a warm admirer, few readers nowadays can endure the weakness of her sentiment and the artificiality of her method. But her work must always remain historically interesting, as marking an important stage in the evolution of the romantic novel. Mr Andrew Lang has recently argued that in Mrs Radcliffe's Sicilian Romance are to be found the genus not only of Byron's Giaour and of Northanger Abbey, but of Jane Eyre-surely an extraordinary progeny. Northanger Abbey was begun on a parody of Mrs Radcliffe, and developed into a real novel of character. So, too, Byron's gloomy, scowling adventurers, with their darkling past, are mere repetitions in rhyme of Mrs Radcliffe's Schedoni. This is so obvious that, in discussing Schedoni, Scott adds parallel passages from Byron's Giaour!

The Castle of Udolpho.

Towards the close of the day, the road wound into a deep valley. Mountains, whose shaggy steeps appeared to be inaccessible, almost surrounded it. To the east, a vista opened, and exhibited the Apennines in their darkest horrors; and the long perspective of retiring summits rising over each other, their ridges clothed with pines, exhibited a stronger image of grandeur than any that Emily had yet seen. The sun had just sunk below the top of the mountains she was descending, whose long shadow stretched athwart the valley; but his sloping rays, shooting through an opening of the cliffs, touched with yellow gleam the summits of the forest that hung upon the opposite steeps, and streamed in full splendour upon the towers and battlements of a castle that spread its extensive ramparts along the brow of a

precipice above. The splendour of these illumined objects was heightened by the contrasted shade which involved the valley below.

'There,' said Montoni, speaking for the first time in several hours, 'is Udolpho.'

Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Montoni's; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the Gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls of dark grey stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From those, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity, and Emily continued to gaze till its clustering towers were alone seen rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade the carriages soon after began to ascend.

The extent and darkness of these tall woods awakened terrific images in her mind, and she almost expected to see banditti start up from under the trees. At length

the carriages emerged upon a heathy rock, and soon after reached the castle gates, where the deep tone of the portal bell, which was struck upon to give notice of their arrival, increased the fearful emotions that had assailed Emily. While they waited till the servant within should come to open the gates, she anxiously surveyed the edifice; but the gloom that overspread it allowed her to distinguish little more than a part of its outline, with the massy walls of the ramparts, and to know that it was vast, ancient, and dreary. From the parts she saw, she judged of the heavy strength and extent of the whole. The gateway before her, leading into the courts, was of gigantic size, and was defended by two round towers, crowned by overhanging turrets embattled, where, instead of banners, now waved long grass and wild plants that had taken root among the mouldering stones, and which seemed to sigh, as the breeze rolled past, over the desolation around them. The towers were united by a curtain, pierced and embattled also, below which appeared the pointed arch of a huge portcullis surmounting the gates; from these the walls of the ramparts extended to other towers, overlooking the precipice, whose shattered outline, appearing on a gleam that lingered in the west, told of the ravages of war. Beyond these, all was lost in the obscurity of

evening.

An Italian Landscape. These excursions sometimes led them to Puzzuoli, Baia, or the woody cliffs of Pausilippo; and as, on their return, they glided along the moonlit bay, the melodies of Italian strains seemed to give enchantment to the scenery of its shore. At this cool hour the voices of the vine-dressers were frequently heard in trio, as they reposed from the labour of the day on some pleasant promontory under the shade of poplars; or the brisk music of the dance from fishermen on the margin of the waves below. The boatmen rested on their oars, while their company listened to voices modulated by sensibility to finer eloquence than is in the power of art

alone to display; and at others, while they observed the airy natural grace which distinguishes the dance of the fishermen and peasants of Naples. Frequently, as they glided round a promontory, whose shaggy masses impended far over the sea, such magic scenes of beauty unfolded, adorned by these dancing groups on the bay beyond, as no pencil could do justice to. The deep clear waters reflected every image of the landscape; the cliffs, branching into wild forms, crowned with groves, whose rough foliage often spread down their steeps in picturesque luxuriance; the ruined villa on some bold point peeping through the trees; peasants' cabins hang. ing on the precipices, and the dancing figures on the strand-all touched with the silvery tint and soft shadows of moonlight. On the other hand, the sea, trembling with a long line of radiance, and shewing in the clear distance the sails of vessels stealing in every direction along its surface, presented a prospect as grand as the landscape was beautiful.

Two of Mrs Radcliffe's books, the Romance of the Forest and the Mysteries of Udolpho, were included in Mrs Barbauld's Library of British Novelists, and Ballantyne's. There are critical estimates in Sir Walter Scott's Biographical Notices of Eminent Novelists, Julia Kavanagh's English Women of Letters (1863), and Professor Raleigh's The English Novel (1894). For Mr Lang on the Sicilian Romance, see Cornhill for July 1900.

Mrs Anne Grant (1755-1838), born in Glasgow, the daughter of Duncan M‘Vicar, an army officer, was with her father in America 1758–68, and accompanied him back to Scotland when in 1773 he was made barrack-master at Fort Augustus; in 1779 she married the Rev. James Grant, minister of Laggan. Left a widow in 1801, she published in 1802 a volume of Poems (1803), and was encouraged to edit for publication her bestknown work, a selection from her own correspondence called Letters from the Mountains (1806). In this and a later work, Superstitions of the Highlanders (1811), she promoted that interest in the Highlands and things Gaelic that had been begun by 'Ossian.' In 1808 she published the Memoirs of an American Lady (Mrs Schuyler, widow of an American colonel), a work which was popular both in Britain and in America. In 1810 she settled in Edinburgh, where she took in boarders; and in 1825, on the initiative of Henry Mackenzie and Sir Walter Scott, she received a pension of £100. See the memoir by her son (1844).

[She should not be confounded with Mrs Eliza beth Grant (c. 1745-1814), author of one popular Scotch song, Roy's Wife of Aldivalloch, who was born near Aberlour, Banffshire, and died at Bath; having been twice married-first to her cousin, Captain James Grant of Carron in Strathspey; and afterwards to Dr Murray, a Bath physician.]

From The Highlander.'

Where yonder ridgy mountains bound the scene,
The narrow opening glens that intervene
Still shelter, in some lowly nook obscure,
One poorer than the rest—where all are poor;
Some widowed matron, hopeless of relief,
Who to her secret breast confines her grief;
Dejected sighs the wintry night away,
And lonely muses all the summer day:

Her gallant sons, who, smit with honour's charms,
Pursued the phantom Fame through war's alarms,
Return no more; stretched on Hindostan's plain,
Or sunk beneath the unfathomable main;
In vain her eyes the watery waste explore
For heroes-fated to return no more!

Let others bless the morning's reddening beam,
Foe to her peace-it breaks the illusive dream
That, in their prime of manly bloom confessed,
Restored the long-lost warriors to her breast;
And as they strove, with smiles of filial love,
Their widowed parent's anguish to remove,
Through her small casement broke the intrusive day,
And chased the pleasing images away!

No time can e'er her banished joys restore,
For ah! a heart once broken heals no more.

Foyers in 1778.

I lost a good conveyance for a letter, and that a letter to Lady Isabella, by going on a grand party of pleasure on the Loch. There was the Governor and his new espoused love, who, by the bye, is very well considering, frank and cheerful, and so forth; and there were the two Miss Campbells of Duntroon, blithe bonnie lasses; and there was the noble Admiral of the lake, and his fair sister; and the Doctor, and another beau, whom you have not the honour to know. We went on board our galley, which is a fine little vessel, with a commodious and elegant cabin. The day was charming, the scene around was in itself sublime and cheerful, enlivened by sunshine and the music of the birds, that answered each other loudly from the woody mountains on each side of the Loch. On leaving the fort, we fired our swivels and displayed our colours. On our arrival opposite Glenmoriston, we repeated this ceremony, and sent out our boat for as many of the family as chose to come on board. The Laird himself, his beautiful daughter, and her admirer obeyed the summons: they dined with us, and then we proceeded to the celebrated Fall of Fyers.

I had seen this wonder before, but never to such advantage. Strangers generally come from the high road, and look down upon it; but the true sublime and beautiful is to be attained by going from the lake by Fyers House, as we did, to look up to it. We landed at the river's mouth, and had to walk up near a mile, through picturesque openings, in a grove of weeping birch, so fresh with the spray of the fall that its odours exhale constantly. We arrived at one of the most singular and romantic scenes the imagination can conceive. At the foot of the rock over which the river falls is a small circular bottom, in which rises, as it were, a little verdant hillock of a triangular form, which one might imagine an altar erected to the impetuous Naiad of this overwhelming stream; this rustic shrine, and the verdant sanctuary in which it stands, are adorned by the hand of nature with a rich profusion of beautiful flowers and luxuriant herbage. No wonder, overhung as it is with gloomy woods and abrupt precipices, no rude blast visits this sacred solitude; while perpetual mists from the cataract that thunders above it keep it for ever fresh with dewy moisture; and the 'showery prism' bends its splendid arch continually over the humid flowers that adorn its entrance. Now do not think me romancing, and I shall account to you in some measure for the formation and fertility of this charming little Delta. Know, then, that the nymph of the Fyers, abundantly

clamorous in summer, becomes in winter a most tremendous fury, sweeping every thing before her with inconceivable violence. The little eminence which rises so oddly in 'nature's softest freshest lap,' was most probably at first a portion of rock forced down by the violence of the wintry torrent, and as the river covers this spot in floods, successive winters might bring down rich soil, which, arrested by the fragment above said, in process of time formed the altar I speak of. Along with this rich sediment left by the subsiding waters, are conveyed the seeds and roots of plants from all the varieties of soil which the torrent has ravaged: hence 'flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose ;' at least I could expect flowers worthy of Paradise in this luxuriant recess. While you stand in this enchanted vale, there is nothing but verdure, music, and tranquillity around you; but if you look to either side, abrupt rocks and unsupported trees growing from their clefts threaten to overwhelm you. Looking back, you see the river foaming through a narrow opening, and thundering and raging over broken crags almost above your heads; looking downwards, you see the same river, after having been collected in a deep basin at your feet, rolling rapidly over steep rocks, like steps of stairs, till at last it winds quietly through the sweet peaceful scene at Fyers House, and loses itself in Loch Ness. Now to what purpose have I taken up my own time and yours with this tedious description, which, after all, gives you no just idea of the place?

When we returned on board, our spirits, being by this time exhausted with walking and wonder, and talking and thunder, and so forth, began to flag. One lady, always delicate and nervous, was seized with a fit, a hysterical one, that frightened us all. I cut her laces, suppressed her struggles, and supported her in my arms during the paroxysm, which lasted near two hours. What you must allow to be very generous in the company, not one of them seemed to envy my place, or made the smallest effort to supplant me in it. We drank tea most sociably, however; landed our Glenmoriston friends, and tried to proceed homeward, but adverse fate had determined we should sup there too, and so arrested us with a dead calm four miles from home. Now midnight approached, and with it gloomy discontent and drowsy insipidity. Our chief took a fit of the fidgets, and began to cry Poh, Poh; his lady took a fit of yawning; his little grandson took a fit of crying, which made his daughter take a fit of anger; the Doctor took a fit of snoring; even the good-natured Admiral took a fit of fretting, because the sailors had taken a fit of drinking. All of a sudden the Miss C.'s took a fit of singing, to the great annoyance of the unharmonious group; when I went to the deck, fell into a fit of meditation, and began to say, 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!' Indeed nothing could be more inspiring; now silvery calmness slumbered on the deep, the moonbeams quivered on the surface of the water, and shed a mild radiance on the trees; the sky was unclouded, and the sound of the distant waterfall alone disturbed the universal stillness. But the general ill humour disturbed my rising rapture, for it was now two o'clock, and nobody cared for poetry or moonlight but myself. Well, we saw the wind would not rise, and so we put out the boat, some growling, others vapid, and the rest half asleep. The gentlemen, however, rowed us home, and left the galley to the drunken sailors.