Mower, with a fantastical regret for the flowers and grasses that he cuts down. He says: "I am the mower Damon, known Through all the meadows I have mown, On me the morn her dew distils Before her darling daffodils." He declares a profound passion for a possible Juliana, but it is really the wood-moths gleaming on the bark, the vigilant heron in its nest at the top of the ash-tree, the garish eye of the newhatched throstle staring through the hazels, that hold his poetical affections. He is the last of the English romantic poets for several generations, and no one of them all, early or late, has regarded nature with a quicker or more loving attention than he. He is an alien indeed among the men of periwigs and ruffles. THE RESTORATION. We have now reached the year of that event which occupied so many lyres and awakened so many darts and flames in poetic bosoms, namely, the restitution of the monarchy, the return of the exiled Stuart as King Charles the Second. This date, 1660, is usually given in text-books of literature as marking the commencement of the change to the classical style. As well might we call the platform of the railway-station at St Lazare the point of division between England and France. In 1660 the journey was complete, the change was made. Not one of the odes and pæans which welcomed the Stuarts back, but proved, by the internal evidence of each of its lines, that the old order of poetry had given way to the new. Perhaps not in all cases was the panegyrist conscious of his voice; sometimes he may even have supposed himself to greet Charles II. in the accents dear to the court of Charles I. In vain; the new form compelled him, the new order of ideas inspired him. That worthy Conservative woman, the |