moor-of Nature in her very meanest aspect-where, Far as the eye can reach, no tree is seen,

Earth, clad in russet, scorns the lively green,—

and yet, see what, in the hands of a master, can be made even of a country like this:-" Huge continuous heaths, → spread before, behind, and around us, in hopeless barrenness, now level, and interspersed with swamps, green with treacherous verdure, or sable with turf, or, as they call them in Scotland, peat-bogs, and now swelling into huge heavy ascents, which wanted the dignity and form of hills, while they were still more toilsome to the passenger. There were neither trees nor bushes to relieve the eye from the russet livery of absolute sterility. The very heath was of that stinted imperfect kind which has little or no flower, and affords the coarsest and meanest covering which, as far as my experience enables me to judge, Mother Earth is ever arrayed in."

I have purposely cited nothing in support of the poetical susceptibilities of the higher orders of natural objects-I have confined myself to what relates to Nature's very lowest appearances and attributes, and yet I have, I trust, proved that even these can be, and are, poetical.

Now, that there are numberless objects in Art which cannot by any powers, however great, be made poetical, we have in these days conclusive and most abundant evidence. I do not ask, whether it can be possible for any one to give poetry to the commonest productions of mechanical art,-household utensils, for instance, brooms, mops, pails, and warming-pans ;-but look at the attempts of persons of poetical genius confessedly great, of Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Wordsworth,-to poetize these things;-look at nine-tenths of the lyrical

ballads-above all, Mr. Wordsworth's "washing-tub," and his "Alice Fell," and say whether it is possible for any genius to dignify objects like these.

I have said, secondly, that the most poetical objects in Nature are more poetical than the most poetical objects in Art. Is not, for instance, mountain scenery, in sunshine, in moonlight, and perhaps still more in stormis not the ocean in its " boundless magnitude,” whether in the heavy heaving of a dead calm, in the smiles and serenity of a light breeze, or in the appalling terrors of a tempest-are not, more than all, the heavens, with their sun and moon and stars, their clouds and winds, their rain and hail and snow, and all their infinite varyings of weather, and thence of atmosphere and appearance-are not these things-this earth and sea and skyand last, not least, is not human beauty-more poetical than any objects of Art whatsoever ?

I grant that many things in Art are highly poetical ;— that Athens, Rome, the pyramids, the remains of ancient sculpture, the master-pieces of painting-I grant that these and numberless other objects of Art may be cited as breathing poetry;—but are they as poetical as the splendid manifestations of Nature I have instanced above? Mr. Bowles says, finely and truly, that the one leads the thought to God-the other to man-that the imagination rises." from Nature up to Nature's God;" this alone, one would think, should decide the question-but let us take an instance.

One of the most beautiful and impressive objects in Nature is the sky on a moonlight night.-What is the blemish in the beauty of the following lines, composed on contemplating the heavens in this state?-lines of high power in themselves, and extraordinary as having been written by Voltaire:

Tous ces vastes pays d'azure et de lumière,
Tirés du sein du vide, et formés sans matière,
Arrondis sans compas, et tournant sans pivot,
Ont à peine couté la dépense d'un mot.

What is, I ask, the drawback from these fine verses? why, the associating compasses and pivots, objects of mechanical art, with the grandest ideas of Nature in all her pride. After the line,

Tirés du sein du vide, et formés sans matière,

it is, indeed, a falling off to speak of this magnificent and miraculous heaven as being

Arrondi sans compas, et tournant sans pivot.

Lord Byron himself furnishes a striking and beautiful instance of the superiority of Nature to Art in its effect on human passion, as pictured in poetry—

They were alone, but not alone as they

Who, shut in chambers, think it loneliness;
The silent ocean, and the starlight bay—

The twilight glow which momently grew less-
The voiceless sands, and dropping caves, which lay
Around them, made them to each other press,
As if there were no life beneath the sky,

Save their's, and that their life could never die.

Such, indeed, is the true effect of Nature upon the soul. The lines under which I have run my pen are the most direct exemplification of my position. They were not alone in the chambers of man, but in the vast dome of Nature;-the most gorgeous scenes of worldly art would not have drawn their hearts together like the simple solitude of the evening shore, and the solemn aspect of its natural beauty.

Again. Take the following splendid passage from Manfred-for from Lord Byron's own mouth will I judge him :

My joy was in the wilderness, to breathe

The difficult air of the iced-mountain's top,

Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing
Flit o'er the herbless granite ;-or to plunge
Into the torrent, and to roll along
On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave
Of river-stream, or ocean in their flow.
In these my early strength exulted, or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars and their developements; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;
Or to look, list'ning, on the scatter'd leaves,

While autumn winds were at their evening song.

Now, could a mind like Manfred's-fallen, indeed, but originally, and at the time to which these lines have reference, of the highest mould possible for humanity to be cast in,-could this mind have derived the same sensations from gazing on any objects of Art, as it did from communing thus with Nature in the scenes and seasons of her wildest and grandest sublimity ?—I think not.

It is also observable, that every image in this passage of exquisite poetry is drawn from Nature-not one single one from Art. The same remark is generally applicable to the whole of the splendid poem from which these lines are taken-and, indeed, with few exceptions, to all Lord Byron's works. But it is natural that it should be so,-for all our most poetical poets (if I may so speak) derive the great majority of their images from Nature. I will defy the best-read Shakspearian to point out in his works more than one image in ten not deduced from the poetry of Nature.

Lord Byron has made great appeal to sculpture in support of the doctrines which he upholds so much in his theory, but from which he departs so wholly in practice-and he cites the Venus as being more beautiful than (almost) any thing he has ever seen in Nature. I shall not take advantage of his exception in favour

of Lady Charlemont and the Albanian road-maker*, I shall merely say that I have seen numberless women who, however inferior to the Venus in form, have far excelled her in general beauty, insomuch as a woman of marble must always yield in expression to a woman of flesh and blood. Marble may have-the Venus hasall the beauty of perfection of form and feature, and of gracefulness of attitude-but can it have that far superior grace, the grace of motion? Can a statue have that magical variety of beautiful colouring which delights us in the eyes, lips, teeth, hair and complexion of a living woman? Can the surface of stone possess that exquisite texture which nothing but the skin of lovely living flesh can have-that mingling of velvet and satin, with the freshness of life superadded? Can the hair of a statue float on the wind? Can the glance of its eye shift? Can the smile of its lip change?These, it will be said are impossibilities-they are so; stone cannot be made to equal a living being-Art cannot be made to equal Nature.

How beautifully this idea is expressed in the following lines;

They said her cheek of youth was beautiful,

Till withering sorrow blanched the bright rose there-
And I have heard men swear her form was fair,

But grief did lay his icy finger on it,

And chilled into a cold, joyless statue†.

* Lord B., in the following lines, directly contradicts the position here advanced in his letter-but, indeed, his preachments in the pamphlet are in direct opposition to his practice in poetry:

Fit for the model of a statuary,

(A race of mere impostors, when all's done.)

I've seen much finer women, ripe and real,

Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal."-So have I.

+ Bertram.