Or on food were your thoughts placed,
Bring you nectar for a taste :
Would you have all these in one,
Name my mistress, and 'tis done.”

« And this other is still more curiously elegant.”

SONG.
“ Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauties' orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither doth stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders, to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat,
She winters and keeps warm her note.

winterge sweet din May is

Ask me no more, if east or west
The Phænix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.”

“ And where will you find a sweeter pastoral, than this sylvan dialogue between a shepherd and a nymph ?" “ Shep. This mossy bank they press'd. Nym. That

aged oak
Did canopy the happy pair
All night from the damp air.

Cho. Here let us sit and sing the words they spoke,

Till the day breaking their embraces broke. Shep. See, love, the blushes of the morn appear,

And now she hangs her pearly store,

(Robb’d from the eastern shore,) ['th' cowslip's bell, and rose's ear : Sweet, I must stay no longer here.

Nym. Those streaks of doubtful light usher not day,

But show my sun must set; no morn

Shall shine till thou return;
The yellow planets, and the gray
Dawn, shall attend thee on thy way.

Shep. If thine eyes gild my paths, they may forbear

Their useless shine. Nym. My tears will quite

Extinguish their faint light. Shep. Those drops will make their beams more clear,

Love's flames will shine in ev'ry tear.

Cho. They kiss'd and wept ; and from their lips and

eyes,
In a mix'd dew of briny sweet,

Their joys and sorrows meet ;
But she cries out. Nym. Shepherd, arise,
The sun betrays us else to spies.

Shep. The winged hours fly fast, whilst we embrace ;

But when we want their help to meet,

They move with leaden feet.
Nym. Then let us pinion time, and chase

The day for ever from this place.

Shep. Hark! Nym. Ay, me, stay! Shep. For ever.

Nym. No, arise,
We must be gone. Shep. My nest of spice.
Nym. My soul. Shep. My paradise.

Cho. Neither could say farewell, but through their

Grief interrupted speech with tears supplies.” 66 Carew possessed naturally but little humour; but there is a dignified, pleasing, sly gravity in the lines upon Lord Chief Justice Finch, on paying his addresses to Lądy Anne Wentworth. It possesses, moreover, Benedict, what you so much admire, a sort of classical air, which, by the way, is rather a stiffishness of manner than an excellence.”

“ Read the poem,” said the Bachelor, and the Nymph read,

“ Hear this, and tremble all

Usurping beauties, that create
A government tyrannical

In love's free state;
Justice hath to the sword of your edged eyes
His equal balance join'd, his sage lies
In love's soft lap, which must be just and wise.

Hark how the stern law breathes

Forth amorous sighs, and now prepares
No fetters, but of silken wreaths

And braided hairs;
His dreadful rods and axes are exiled
Whilst he sits crown’d with roses : Love hath filed
His native roughness, Justice is grown mild.

The golden age returns,

Love's bow and quiver useless lie ;
His shaft, his brand, nor wounds nor burns,

And cruelty
Is sunk to hell : the fair shall all be kind;
Who loves shall be beloved, the froward mind
To a deformed shape shall be confined.

Astræa hath possest

An earthly seat, and now remains
In Finch's heart, but Wentworth’s breast

That guest contains :
With her she dwells, yet hath not left the skies,
Nor lost her sphere, for, new-enthroned, she cries,
I know no heaven but fair Westworth's eyes.”

CHAP. XV.

THE EXCOMMUNICANT.

One morning, after a long debate in the House of Commons on the Catholic question, the Nymph and the Bachelor fell into conversation in reading the report of the speeches in the Morning Chronicle. “I think,” said she, “ that none of the orators venture to touch the marrow of this important subject.”

“ How ! what do you mean?” replied Benedict, anticipating, from the tone in which she had made the remark, something paradoxical," what other marrow is there in the subject, than that the law as it stands deprives millions of their undoubted political rights ?”

“ The law as it stands, you ought rather to say, prevents those millions from disturbing public affairs, merely because such is the state and circumstances of their minds, that they can neither reason nor exercise their judgment like other men.—There can be no emancipation of the Catholic but by himself.—He should show that he is as free a moral agent as the rest of the species, before he can hope that they will permit him to take a part in their common affairs."

“ In what way,” said the Bachelor, 6 are they to do this ? I am sure in all things the Roman Catholic shows himself as much a man, and as good a subject, as any other Christian.”

66 He does no such thing," replied the Nymph, somewhat fervently, at hearing her beloved repeat this stale assertion. “ In the first place, he acknowledges a power to reside in other men, which, were he in a condition to exercise his judgment freely, he would feel himself obliged to confess is not consistent with human nature. I mean the priestly remission of sin ;-and, moreover, in believing the irrational doctrine of transubstantiation, he denies the evidence of his own senses. Now, what sort of confidence should we be disposed to give to a person, who asserted that he was intrusted with supernatural powers, and maintained that fire was ice,-treating with contempt the opinion, that supernatural power can never be possessed by man, and asserting that all deserved eternal perdition who did not believe that the fire which he called ice, in despite of the sensations of touch and vision, was ice ?"

“ But not to grow polemical,” interrupted the Bachelor,—“ those sort of absurdities are mere speculative opinions, and as such have probably as little influence on the conduct of the Catholic as any theoretical dogma whatever has on that of the more philosophical Protestant. It is therefore hard, that