Une grotte écartée avoit frappé mes yeux;
Grotte sombre, dis-moi si tu les vis heureux,
M'écriois-je !

Chant 3.

O
say,
what bard, what lover e'er could rove,
Nor feel a rapture 'mid Valclusa's grove?
Deep 'midst the circling hills that hang around,
And hide its source within their dark profound;
Thro' vaulted caves the brook mysterious steals,
And from each eye profane its course conceals.
I love to view the limpid current glide,
And in the black abyss its waters hide!
Here in a bason calm the stream is spread,
And there it thunders o'er a rocky bed;
Against the cliffs it hurls its whit'ning waves,
And down from steep to steep it foams and raves,
Till its wild torrent gains the plain below,

And calms its rage, and plays in milder flow;
Reflecting fair the azure vaulted skies,
In twenty dimpling channels swift it flies,
Wat'ring, as on they wind their mazy folds,
The fairest valley that the sun beholds.
Yet nor that sky, those streams, that lovely vale,
Enchant my soul so much as Petrarch's tale.
Those banks, I cry'd, have heard the bard complain,
While to the gale he pour'd his plaintive strain.

There, while his Laura listen'd to his lay,
He wish'd the west'ring sun awhile to stay:
Or mourn'd her absence thro' the long, long night,
And strain'd his eye to view the dawning light. -
A distant shaded grot attracts my eye;
Saw you their raptures, gloomy cave? I cry.

The extracts which this third book of the Gardens of De Lille has furnished for my readers, must, I should conceive, have placed before them the abilities of the translator for the task he undertook, in a very favourable point of view. They will, therefore, it is probable, regret with me, when they reach the close of this book as given in the latest editions of the poem, that the beautiful, and enthusiasticallywritten, eulogium on the taste and genius of Pope, (as displayed as well in landscape gardening as in poetry), and which now terminates this portion of the work, should not have fallen beneath the notice of our anonymous bard. It is, of all the additions which the Abbé made to the first draught of his poem, the one perhaps most interesting, especially to an English ear, and would, no doubt, have been finished with

the happiest industry of the translator. Enough, however, ere I close my quotations will be given to establish, I trust, the truth of the assertion with which these papers set out; namely, the great occasional felicity of this early and almost forgotten version of Les Jardins, par M. l'Abbé De Lille.

(To be continued.)

No. XV.

A great perturbation in nature! to receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching. Yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds. SHAKSPEARE.

It was late before Shakspeare reached the Hall; for his mind had been so much absorbed by reflections on what had passed between himself and Hubert Gray, that he had become utterly unconscious of the very slow pace by which he was proceeding homewards. He felt rather surprised, therefore, on finding that Montchensey and his daughter had been anxiously awaiting his return, and, after apologising for his inadvertency, and pleading the beauties, of the scenery, and the singular fineness of the evening, as his excuse, and sustaining some raillery on the occasion, which he replied to

with his usual spirit and good humour, he retired, somewhat fatigued, to his chamber.

The same meditations, however, which had accompanied his homeward walk, pursued him to his couch, and even when he had dropped into sleep, a similar association of ideas was present to his imagination. He conceived himself pleading before his sovereign for the life of Hubert, and when, as he believed, he had just obtained the gracious boon he sought, he beheld him the next moment, with the common inconsistency of dreams, hurried to a place of execution. He awoke in a state of perturbation and alarm, and rising in his bed to look around him, for the moon, struggling through a heated and somewhat hazy atmosphere, shed a faint and sickly light into the room, he thought he heard a slight jarring noise, and presently a low and indistinct moaning very near that part of the chamber which he occupied. Concluding these, however, to be merely the result of the confused state of intellect in which his dream had left him, he tried to recompose himself to rest; but a repetition of the same sounds, followed by a deep and heavy-drawn sigh, brought a speedy