ROMANCE AND REALITY. MANY, many are the hours I have spent in the glorious wilderness of imagination! Who would ever exchange it for the plodding regularity of matter of fact existence? O! the joy of revelling, the owner of half the treasures of the world, and using your exhaustless wealth in gladdening that circle of creation of which you are the centre! O! the rapturous exultation of the moment of successful affection, when the eye of beauty, before clouded by the staid prudery of female decorum, beams with all the mild softness of the tenderest love, when she, you have so long adored, hangs on each word of the tale of past mental suffering with rapt attention, and repays each by-gone pang with those endearing looks which woman only can bestow, and which make the heart of man throb with passionate emotion! O! the glories of the field of combat, the trumpet's call, the hasty preparation, the dread array of opposing hosts, the thunder of artillery, the fierce charge, when, at the head of hundreds, you hear the rapid tramp of steeds, you see the determined resolution of those whom you are leading to brave and conquer death,—the triumph of success, the plaudits of those who hail you as a protector and preserver!-O! the revellings of power-power gained by talent, and maintained by virtue; when listening multitudes hang upon your words, and their minds are swayed to and fro by an eloquence which makes them obedient to your will, and enables you to lead them to their happiness!-All these intense enjoyments are in your reach-imagination can afford them; and for the moment with all the vividness of reality. O how I love the silent solitude of nature! It is upon the pointed hill-top, where you stand alone far from the bustle and restlessness of the world—the heavens above you, and the dark green forests around and below you, where the dwellings of man are afar off, where the smoke from their hearths curls only in the dim horizon-it is there that the most awful and indescribable sensation of quietude, spreading through all visible nature, makes you conscious that you are alone. I have revelled, I revel still for hours in the solitude which I have described. I have stood by the running stream, and watched it, as it dashed its petty but untiring foam from ledge to ledge of some obtruding rock, until I fancied myself another Sacripant, and looked around for an Angelica to appear, a bright vision of beauty.-O! that I had lived before the days of Ariosto, when bugle horns hung on castle gates for knights in black, white, blue, and green armour to blow; when dwarfs of hideous form appeared on projecting battlements; when giants and |