om the very nature of things, belong to any one human being,
however endowed by nature and beloved of heaven. He is felt to stand
between us and our upbraiding conscience. In his life lies the
strength--the power--the virtue of ours--in his death the better half of
our whole being seems to expire. Such communion of spirit, perhaps, can
only be in existences rising towards their meridian; as the hills of
life cast longer shadows in the westering hours, we grow--I should not
say more suspicious, for that may be too strong a word--but more silent,
more self-wrapt, more circumspect--less sympathetic even with kindred
and congenial natures, who will sometimes, in our almost sullen moods or
theirs, seem as if they were kindred and congenial no more--less devoted
to Spirituals, that is, to Ideas, so tender, true, beautiful, and
sublime, that they seem to be inhabitants of heaven though born of
earth, and to float between the two regions, angelical and divine--yet
felt to be mortal, human still--the Ideas of passions, and desires, and
affections, and "impulses that come to us in solitude," to whom we
breathe out our souls in silence, or in almost silent speech, in utterly
mute adoration, or in broken hymns of feeling, believing that the holy
enthusiasm will go with us through life to the grave, or rather knowing
not, or feeling not, that the grave is any thing more for us than a mere
word with a somewhat mournful sound, and that life is changeless,
cloudless, unfading as the heaven of heavens, that lies to the uplifted
fancy in blue immortal calm, round the throne of the eternal
Jehovah.--_Noctes_--_Blackwood's Magazine_.

* * * * *

ENGLISH LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

The English school of landscape painting has come to be of the first
rank, and the contemporaries of Turner, Constable, Calcott, Thomson,
Williams, Copley Fielding, and others whom we might name even with
these masters, have no reason to reproach themselves with any neglect
of their merits. The _truth_ with which these artists have delineated
the features of British landscape is, according to general admission,
unmatched by even the most splendid exertions of foreign schools in
the same department.--_Quarterly Rev._.

* * * * *

PANORAMA OF THE RHINE.

Mr. Leigh, who is well known as the publisher of the best English
guides all over the continent, has just added to their number a
_Panorama of t