y
idlers. He sees but the children just escaped from school, running and
leaping, and romping in their innocent glee. Happy himself, he fastens
upon whatever in nature around him seems to sympathise with him, and
dwelling fondly upon it, casts away from his thoughts every thing that can
obstruct the full, free flow of his joyous emotions.

We may remark in passing, what has probably been before remarked by the
attentive reader, that both Gray and Goldsmith, excited as they are by
different passions, refer to the 'lowing herd' as raising on the one hand
a cheerful, and on the other a melancholy feeling. To our thought, the
associations connected with the return of the herds from the fields at
sunset are best fitted to awaken that quiet, reflective state of mind
which is most congenial to the mood of the elegiac poet. To another, these
associations may be of such a character as to produce a directly opposite
effect.

The writer of prose who should describe scenes like these, would aim to
give us a distinct and accurate picture by presenting all their prominent
features, omitting nothing, and grouping them as Nature herself had
grouped them. Such descriptions we daily see in all books of voyages and
travels. Or if the descriptions be of scenes wholly imaginary, their
essential character is not changed. Although they cease to be real, they
do not become poetical. The extract which we have made from Irving is not
poetical. Accurate, vivid, life-like, it is. We cannot read it without a
feeling of pleasure. We admire the genius of the writer; we wonder at the
magnificence of the spectacle which, by a few masterly touches, he has
raised up before us. But there is no more poetry in it than in his
description of Herr Van Tassel's supper table, covered with all the
luxuries of Dutch housewifery. It is true, there may be more of beauty and
sublimity in the scenery of the Hudson, in the gathering clouds and
muttering thunder, than in the sight of dough-nuts and crullers,
sweet-cakes and short-cakes, peach pies and pumpkin pies, slices of ham
and slices of smoked beef; yet the spirit of poetry exists no more in the
one than in the other. Poetry has its abode in the _heart_ of man; not in
the winds, in the clouds, in the mountains, or in the vales. It does not
derive its power from the outward world, but breathes into it its own
breath of life, investing the earth with a beauty which has no existence
but in the human soul, and fillin