The bowers are budding, green each woodland dell, Come to mine arms, beloved,—o'er the sea LINES. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”—KEATS. The primrose-shaws of Kilton grove Are balmy-soft, and fragrant fair, But she the floweret of my love The violet on the castle wall The hawthorn-tree that blossoms nigh O, she is fairer than them all, I gaz'd upon the heavens so clear, One lovely star illum'd the scene,— Behold, a fairer gem is near Star of my heart, my bosom Queen! I saw the glinting of her eye That fell with soft and mellowed light, The loveliest star in all the sky, The peach-flower blossoming in May, Might hither hie its sweets to sip. But not alone her graceful form, She's gone! 'tis thus Love's dreams depart,-- Oft will thy memory warm my heart, 258 RURAL SKETCHES. SOUTH WALES, No. IV. My motto must be on the present occasion from Churchyard, an ominously named poet, who indited his ditties in 1587. "The mountain men live longer many a year Than those in vale, in playne, or marrish soil; A lustie heart, a clean complexion clear They have on hill, that for hard living toil. With ewe and lamb, with goats and kids they play, In greatest toyle to rub out weary day. And when to house and home good fellows draw, The fact is, that the inhabitants of all mountains bear a striking similarity, and, perhaps, the most truly delightful description of their manners and habits is in Mrs. Grant's "Letters from the mountains," and in the "Heloise" of Jean Jacques Rousseau-a book much and deservedly praised by Byron. Rousseau, whose heart was all sympathy and expanded itself over the whole human race, seems to have been quite entranced by the kindness and hospitality of his Swiss friends, who, however, acccording to his own account, made him somewhat more than "half-seas over," each night of his sojourn among them :—which, by the bye, was at a time when all the senseless bigots of France were howling against him, and when religious persecution, the most baneful of all others, was surrounding his name with the blackest insult and detraction. But Byron, who was so like Rousseau in many respects, has done honor to this writer's memory; sanctifying, by immortal verse, the spot were he dwelt, and lavishing the splendour of his own genius in honor of a brother and an equal. But to return to Lanidloes, where we spent some time. The circulating library, I found on examination, contained what every library in the British Empire boasts of, viz. some of Sir Walter Scott's novels, also the Rev. George Lamb's very silly and ridiculous caricatures on the Arabian Nights Entertainments, with some of Basil Hall's entertaining voyages. I could find nothing else, save Chesterfield's prigmatic and un-English letters to his son, Locke's essays, Cruden's Concordance, and a few others of the same amusing kind, and equally well fitted for a rainy day. On inquiring of the man if he had any of the Magazines,-" Oh! yes, Sir," said he, "Oh! yes, we take in all the Magazines, the Penny Magazine, the Saturday Magazine, Chambers's Magazine, all the Magazines, sir, at your service." As, however, I wished to see Blackwood, Tait, the New Monthly, or some other of that kind of magazine-I did not trouble him for the Penny or Saturday. The Loo Choo of Basil Hall is a strange anomoly, but exceedingly interesting, though I shrewdly suspect that the author gives his subject much extra-coloring, and no small quantity of ingenious exaggeration. How The church here is a pleasant and elegant building; there were also a good Baptist and Methodist chapel. Perhaps, this accounted for the quiet, orderly, wellconducted character of the people; as there was none of that rioting brutality and drunkenness, which disgraced Brecon and Built. Salmon are not plentiful up the Severn as in the Wye, but they are, notwithstanding, often caught with the rod and line after rain. small is the Severn here, comparing with that abundant and rapid sweep of waters at Chepstow ;-and we had the day before seen the sylvan and romantic Wye, dwindled into a mere thread. So it is with man's destiny. His fame and progress are in the commencement of his career but as a speck on the horizon: the stream of his ambition gradually widens and expands; till at length the rapidity increases, the tide becomes more sweeping, and crowns, empires, and worlds, perchance, fall under the dominion of its later strength. Bonaparte at the Tuilleries, when his few cannon saved Paris, was the same man as at Austerlitz, and on the plains of Austria, but how different! From Lanidloes, we walked to the foot of the celebrated mountain Cader Idris, at Mallwhyn (Malthyn pronounced), through Llambramair and Commes. The |