siphyllon]), the glorious mornings

"Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,"

--and for these the poet must soar above the barn-yard and the
house-tops. There is more of the spirit of true poesy in that little
fragment of Jean Ingelow's,[F] beginning,--

"What change has made the pastures sweet,
And reached the daisies at my feet,
And cloud that wears a golden hem?"

than in all the verse of Bloomfield, if all of Bloomfield were
compressed into a single song.

And yet, if we had lived in those days, we should all have subscribed
for the book of the peasant-bard, perhaps have read it,--but, most
infallibly, have given it away to some country-cousin.

* * * * *

I will not leave the close of the last century without paying my
respects to good Mrs. Barbauld,--not so much for her pleasant "Ode to
Spring," about which there is a sweet odor of the fields, as for her
partnership in those "Evenings at Home" which are associated--I scarce
can remember how--with roaring fires and winter nights in the country;
and not less strongly with the first noisy chorus of the frogs in the
pools, and the first coy uplift of the crocuses and the sweet violets.
There are pots of flowers, and glowing fruit-trees, and country
hill-sides scattered up and down those little stories, which, though my
eye has not lighted on them these twenty odd years past, are still fresh
in my mind, and full of a sweet pastoral fragrance. The sketches may be
very poor, with few artist-like touches in them; it may be only a boyish
caprice by which I cling to them; but what pleasanter or more grateful
whim to cherish than one which brings back all the aroma of childhood in
the country,--floating upon the remnant-patches of a story that is only
half recalled? The cowslips are there; the pansies are there; the
overhanging chestnuts are there; the dusty high-road is there; the
toiling wagons are there; and, betimes, the rain is dripping from the
cottage-eaves--as the rain is dripping to-day.

And from Mrs. Barbauld I am led away to speak of Miss
Austen,--belonging, it is true, to a little later date, and the tender
memory of her books to an age that had outgrown "Evenings at Home."
Still, the association of her tales is strongest with the country, and
with country-firesides. I sometimes take up one of her works upon an odd
hour even now; and how like finding old-garret clothes--big bonnets and
scant skirts--i