a kind of melancholy in this young man, hitherto of ameliorating effect on his nature, but now giving intensity to his sense of solitude and separation. Again and again we met, and every time his face presented a more soured and anxious expression, like that of a worldly man whose affairs go worse and worse; for so, indeed, it was with his one affair of life-love. For though more than one letter had arrived from Margery she had not said much about him to her father. His answers were sharp, short, and peevish, his person neglected, and whole carriage recklessly listless. It may be asked what new can be said on subjects so exhausted by writers as love and absence? but the same may be inquired on every passion; imposing a veto for ever henceforth on all tragic epic sentimental composition. But is novelty the sole source of pleasure in nature? If not, why insist on it in a sort of writing whose only ambition it is to imitate nature, to become, however, a faint, a feeble, yet a faithful echo of her voice in the heart? In such humble narrative the new, the startling, seems to me a demerit; it breaks the moral truth. Whatever thrills the true chord in the heart must be a repetition of what has touched it before in reality; if it be altogether new, it is spurious, and that chord will not respond to it.

But is the "sacred source of sympathetic tears" indeed exhausted, or exhausted of its powers to delight? I would answer "no more than is this noble river in my eye, this moment, long and far as it has flowed, and many as are the romantic landscapes it has created in that flow. Ever flowing yet ever fresh, a powerful passion, though old as the heart of man, which is its source, is infinite in its aspects as that ancient Wye, for ever, down from its spring in the hollow bosom of the mountain; ancient as Pumlumon, as the world itself; yet, in its beauty and freshness, the same as when glittering to the new born sun on the world's birthday. The sun and the river together have, indeed, been procreating whole generations of landscapes, ages ago, ere my late waking eyes opened, and Shakspeare and resistless passion, by their conjunction, have been beautifying the region of that passion for ten thousand hearts before mine stirred with life. Yet look on that many pictured mirror! alter et idem,-my life upon't the very landscape I look on now, the sun himself never saw before any more than I did, nor did Shakspeare himself see every passion in every possible turn and aspect. Those are as multiform, as infinite, aye, as the emerald prismatic glancing of dewy leaves on its banks, to the half-sun on the horizon's brink, on a May morning; as the silver sailing of the pink-edged clouds above at the same moment; as the playful frowning of their shadows on its face; as the countless diversities of the countenance of nature.

Having thus satisfied myself, if not thee, gentle reader, (far behind,) that a passion may yet be painted in these late and evil

days, a few words and a trait or two of the heart, under the pains of absence: one especially I may record, for which I need not draw on my imagination, but memory. At the town of B at the early hour of four, A.M., when the mail to Caermarthen comes in, on its way thither, was very often to be seen a travelstained, confused looking, pale, country youth, lurking near the inn door, avoiding the saucy inquiring looks of the stable lads, while the horses stood ready brought out, but hurrying up and brightening a little in his dejection of look, as the horn announced the mail's approach. Yet when it stopped he inquired for no one, only looked shy and wistful at the first face that appeared within at the window, seemed to pore curiously on the whole vehicle, its wheels, and the very dust on them; his countenance dropped, and he was seen no more, till, perhaps, after two or three days; then repeating the same melancholy pantomime. This was poor Robin come over the mountains several miles during the night, to see the folks, the coach, the very dust on its wheel that came from the very town she lived in. Perhaps he was too bashful to ask of the passengers about Margery Morgan; though he had little doubt they must know something of her, as living in the same town with her.

A year had now passed away since the commencement of that lovely and land languishing new existence he had dragged from the moment of her departure: a new anguish too, that of a vague jealousy, was added to that of loneliness. "A dashing young man," as Margery wrote word, now visited her aunt, a nephew, and didn't treat her at all haughtily, but quite made a lady of her, as if she had not been a poor Welsh cousin," and little better than a servant to his relative, she might have added, though called her companion.

I remember the last time of my encountering Robin in this state of his mind. He was watching a new flock of sheep, which his master, and foster-father, had bought out of a maritime county, the most distant of the Principality. These required that close watch to prevent their general flight and return to that distant home, which they often effect by a wonderful instinct, reappearing on their old sheepwalk, by travelling mountains, vallies, and streams, that should seem to form an impassable barrier. Another curious trait that distinguishes the deerlike mountaineer, from his fat and lordly alderman brother of Leicestershire, may here be not unamusing, however out of place. This strange flock when turned out on the open hill side, when once become naturalised to the spot, confine themselves to a certain circuit, whose limit they will no more pass than an actual fence. But Robin's charge had not yet made themselves at home, this phantom-penfold of nature's delicate secret workmanship, only visible to their optics, was not yet erected, so they

stood all pellmell, disdaining their new and yet undefined little realm of sunny bank on the broad mountain breast, though its smooth turf, stretched tempting under their feet, and basking in the sun, exhaled the fine aromatic odour of its herbage. Observing their erected nostrils and heads all directed one way, I asked an explanation, and found that they were "snuffing the salt air" of the sea, as the shepherds call it, meditating escape back to the sea downs which habit had endeared to them. "They want to be with them again they 've been brought up with, sir," Robin remarked, "see how they do all look, and look that one way, as if every one was seeing some one that played with him from a lamb." I couldn't but think the shepherd gazed sympathetically with his flock, for he kept his dark, and now dark-circled and hollow eye, rolled, without reverting, not in their direction, but another, that of London. A deep sigh escaped him. "It's natural, sir, isn't it?" he added.

"Not

I knew what was in his mind, and having won his confidence before, asked, at once, "When did you hear last from there?" "Oh, a very long long while ago." "Did she write to you, or her father, and what did she say about you, or to you?" a word, only that I was to take care of old Bobby for her, that she might see him again when she comes back,-when indeed!" "Who's Bobby?" "A house lamb, that's a great old sheep now, haven't you seen him butting every body as comes in at Llan-? I found it half dead in a snow drift, and she warmed it to life as it were, and named him after me-poor wench! so he's lived ever since, and grown quite masterful in the house, and now I wouldn't any thing should happen to the old fellow for ever so much, since she's been gone, though I didn't like him before." I shall throw together a few of those broken hints as well as opener outpourings, which I elicited by talking about Margery, expressive of the pains of absence. He compared himself to those restless sheep, all loathing the green feast before them, through a sick longing after distant downs, sea washed and less pleasant, but dearer, because their own.

London, though he had always had almost a dread of it by report, was become a very home to his thoughts, and Llan—, though he had always loved, always lived in, was now homeless and, as it were, strange. Where she was, seemed the world, and everywhere else out of the world, even that very mountain where they had been so happy! where the kindness of the master often allowed her to bring him up something of a better kind for dinner than usual, if they chanced to have it,-a turkey or the like. He was like that flock, "tethered" now to a little round, while his whole soul was stretching away over that sea of mountains round him, of all whose grand attributes, (for many a simple mountaineer, Gaelic and Cambro-British, can taste mountain

grandeur,) of all that lured his eye to rest on them before, nothing now remained but that horrible one-distance, tremendous distance, which cut her off from him. It was a fine panoramic picture (I but poetize his simpler ideas,) reversed in a moment, of whose colours, gay objects, and artificial sunlight, nothing remains but a blank breadth of uncouth rough mere wood, which instead of delighting with an imaginary sunshine, proves an ugly barrier excluding the real. "What a way it is from our town to that! Why she would be in her grave before I could reach her, or her father, even if a letter came straight post to tell us of her being taken ill! And that's not all: even when she does come back, I'm always thinking she will come so altered! and I'm not altered a bit, only for the worse,—they tell me I look quite old and crabbed; I know I'm grown very curst since she went, and can't bear a word from our master, good as he is: she wont find me a "dashing young man," I'm sure. L-d! how they talk there: she never knew that word now, here! I used to be so happy, I did not envy our great squire himself, not I: I verily think I'd more pleasure in every great shady oak of his fields, by only sitting to hear the thrush o' evenings, on its great green roots, while the cows were coming to be milked across the meadow brow, than he or any rich man could find in all the money all the timber of that and the whole wood would put into his pocket; and now I've no rest under our old tree or any one for these cruel thoughts; no peace at all day or evening, and yet all round is so peaceful,-quiet as ever, and that makes me ten times worse."

"And when does the squire come down?" I inquired. "Very soon, sir; ah! he'll have a great miss of our Margery, too, for nobody should make his cream cheeses and his butter but her, she'd such a white little hand, he said and I loved the old gentleman ever since for praising her, and it's true, so she has, sure enough, she had at least,-God knows, it may be horrid whitewhite as her shroud now! or brown as earth,-earthy-earthy!" he muttered, shrugging and shuddering; "for her old mistress has had the prelatic stroke, and can't write to us, even if poor Margery were gone prelatic too, or dead and gone!"

The aspect of human life under the vicissitudes of chance and change, is like the varying face of earth under those of the seasons: now black and furrowed by the plough, and beaten by the winterstorm; now wearing all the tender unsullied gloss of young grasses, young grain, young leaves, tottering lambs, and children singing in that grass's depth, and picking primroses, the very world seeming young again; presently waving gold to the intense blue of Autumn's skies, or to the harvest moon; and last,-all wintry desolation again!

Froward, illhumoured.

I know not how long it was before I saw our shepherd again, I hardly knew him. Joy, glee, dance of blood, buoyancy of spirit, now fairly lifted him out of his own shy nature,-out of himself, as he led me, looking "unutterable things," to a very pretty lone house, under a large clump of elms, in the little park of- once a keeper's lodge; kites, and crows, and weasels, still hung nailed against the wall: but now enlarged to a sort of cottage farm house, for the reception of a new bailiff to the old squire just arrived, and who but Robin was to be bailiff? who to manage the dairy but the said bailiff's wife? and who that wife but Margery Morgan? Much discourse had passed between this warm-hearted old gentleman and Jacky Morgan, about the attachment between the young people, and Robin's altered character, (for he had tried the good old master's patience greviously, to his own bitter aggravation of misery the first cool moment,) and it was settled that Robin should go up to London, superintend the sale of some droves of black cattle, which had already set off for Barnet fair, (for Morgan had made Robin an excellent farmer,) and return by coach-not alone, but with her; to wait no more for deaths and fortunes, but snatch what fortune presented now, and live again! Happy Robin! It was indeed a lovely hermitage: the sweeps of greensward all round, only broken by single trees, but each a little mass of greenwood and shade, in its venerable size, were as an emerald sunny sea shutting them in to themselves, under that lonely thatch, as in an ark which had found land again, and only waited a little farther ebb to become a blessed home! Very little, for the hours of this overwhelming misery of separation were numbered. "What's a couple of hundred miles?" said he exultingly; "Just none! just none, you know, I mean when I'm set off: God knows it do seem long to then, sir!" "When do you set off?" "Tomorrow!"

Syllabubs, cream cheeses, of Margery's making; flummery, caudle (in the winter), cyder, salad suppers of Margery's raising, with "a shave of ham" of her curing; pockets of apples for my boys, and pecks of plums for myself, all were promised, my "kind acceptance" begged in futuro. Robin was grateful for my listening to his complaints, so made me partaker of both fortunes with him: rare, indeed, is a serious listener to the complaint of a lover.

A staff of ponderous bulk, and little wallet by the side of him, perhaps that Midsummer sun just risen did not see, in all the sunshiny half-world, still as night, so truly blest a mortal as the humble dust-covered one it discovered breakfasting on a hay cock, by a brook, in a field, where not one haymaker was yet stirring. To start by a Midsummer night's moon, and breakfast by a segment of sun, levelled full in our face, a golden crescent on the edge of the gilded world, all asleep, under vermilion