music of a woodland brook, or in the soft shadows of the falling leaves. He was enjoying the most delicious hour of a poet's life—that consciousness of power which indicates its possession; but a consciousness unembittered by the harsh realities of its after-struggles into actual life. In this one charmed hour is all that afterwards constitutes poetry: at once poetry and its prophecy, it is the Aurora of the mind,
"Fille de la jour,
Qui naquit avant son père."
But he had left the green wood, and the thousand inspirations of the wild flowers, and the shadows that flit athwart the drooping boughs, for scenes whose inspirations were thought, toil, and suffering. The clock of St Mary had just tolled one, and the neighbourhood around was hushed in profound repose. Every window was darkened excepting one; and there a faint light burned steadily. Night after night it burned till it mingled with the chill white light of morning.
There has always been to me something
