respecting the attachment of the hero and heroine, Lorenzo and Isabella :

'With every morn their love grew tenderer,
With every eve, deeper and deeper still;
He might not in house, field, or garden stir,
But her full shape would all his seeing fill;
And his continual voice was pleasanter

To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;
Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,
She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same;

He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes;
And from her chamber window he would catch
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers, he would watch,
Because her face was turned to the same skies;
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning step upon the stair.'

In the Eve of St Agnes, there is one peculiarly beautiful picture-Madeline kneeling by moonlight, in a convent, beneath a window of stained glass

'A casement high and triple-arched there was,
All garlanded with carven imag'ries

Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth's deep damasked wings;
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of kings and queens.

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,

And on her hair a glory like a saint:

She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven :-Porphyro grew faint:

She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.'

In an imperfect poem entitled Hyperion, which appeared in this volume, and related to the dethronement of Saturn by Jupiter, and the later gods taking the places of the early powers of heaven and earth, Mr Keats's

genius rose to a height which we do not think has been surpassed, or even reached, by any modern poet. His singular imagination here carries the reader into the times of the dawning mythology of Greece, which he renders instinct with a life and nature quite of his own forming. All is huge, gloomy, and wonderful. The deposed Saturn is thus described :

'Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer day

Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade.

*

*

Along the margin sand large footmarks went,
No farther than to where his feet had strayed,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed,
While his bowed head seemed listening to the earth,
His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.'

There is also an ode to the Nightingale, full of sweet poetry, and touching in a most affecting manner on his own sad state. It is worthy of being given entire

'My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk :

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm south,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never knownThe weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards.

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the queen-moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry fays;
But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown,
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful death, Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To seize upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that ofttimes hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music :-Do I wake or sleep?'

Soon after the publication of his last volume, the Edinburgh Review noticed his works in such a candid and generous spirit as must have compensated, if anything could now have compensated, for the malignity of other critics, and arrested, if anything could now have arrested, his progress towards the tomb. While acknowledging the existence of faults, the reviewer spoke of his works as 'flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and so coloured and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry, that, even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present.' He added, with reference to the Endymion, which had been so abused elsewhere: 'We do not know any book which we would sooner employ as a test to ascertain whether any one had in him a native relish for poetry, and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm. While these praises were passing upon his writings, the young poet was on his way to Italy, in the hope of staying the progress of his malady. After his arrival in that country, he revived for a short time, but soon grew worse. A few weeks before his death, a gentleman sitting close by his bedside, spoke of an inscription to his memory. He expressed his dislike of the proposal--he wished that there should be no mention

of his name or country; Or if any,' said he, 'let it beHere lies the body of one whose name was writ in water? He breathed his last on the 23d of February 1821, in the twenty-fifth year of his age.

According to his earliest literary friend and patron, 'Mr Keats had a very manly as well as delicate spirit. He was personally courageous in no ordinary degree, and had the usual superiority of genius to little arts and the love of money. His patrimony, which was inconsiderable, he freely used in part, and even risked altogether, to relieve the wants of others, and forward their views. He was handsome, with remarkably beautiful hair, curling in natural ringlets.'

THE MAMMOTH CAVE OF KENTUCKY.

THE great majority of the natural excavations or caverns found on the surface of the earth, have been formed by subterranean currents of water, which have enlarged original fissures, or carried away masses of soft clay or loose sand, that were interposed between layers of hard rock. The streams, or springs, that exist in almost every cavern of any great extent, tend strongly to corroborate this view. It is observable, also, that nearly all large caverns occur in limestone formations, through which water filtrates with ease, and where, of course, it is most likely to accumulate in such quantities as to require and force for itself a vent. The subsidence of rocks, or the upheavings of them by earthquakes or volcanic agency, may doubtless have originated some caverns, but the majority of them are unquestionably to be ascribed to the escape of infiltrated water in the manner alluded to.

The most remarkable cavern which has been discovered in any part of the world, is that called the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, North America. What the true proportions of this cave are, as far as regards the length to