colors and the most vivid lights are dashed,—a mirror in which the crimson and gold of morning, the blue of noon, and the orange and yellow-green of sunset behold a livelier image of themselves,-a gentle and tideless sea, whose waves break upon the shore like caresses, and never like angry blows. Should he ever become weary of waves and languish for woods, he has only to turn his back upon the sea and climb the hills for an hour or two, and he will find himself in the depth of sylvan and mountain solitudes, -in a region of vines, running streams, deep-shadowed valleys, and broad-armed oaks,-where he will hear the ring-dove coo, and see the sensitive hare dart across the forest aisles. A great city is within an hour's reach; and the shadow of Vesuvius hangs over the landscape, keeping the imagination awake by touches of mystery and terror. From Castellamare to Sorrento a noble road has within a few years past been constructed between the mountains and the sea, which in many places are so close together that the width of the road occupies the whole intervening space. On the right, the traveller looks down a cliff of some hundred feet or more upon the bay, whose glassy floor is dappled with patches of green, purple, and blue,— the effect of varying depth, or light and shade, or clusters. of rock overgrown with sea-weed scattered over a sandy bottom. On the left is a mountain wall, very steep, many hundred feet high, with huge rocks projecting out of it, many of them big enough to crush a carriage and its contents, or sweep them into the sea. This was no fanciful imagination; for, not long before, two or three immense masses, each as large as a good-sized cottage, had fallen from the cliff, and were blocking up the road so that it was impossible to get round or over them. The carriages came to a full stop here, and the occupants were obliged to scramble over the obstructions, and charter a new conveyance on the other side. The road combined rare elements of beauty; for it nowhere pursued a monotonous straight line, but followed the windings and turnings of this many-curved shore. Sometimes it was cut through solid ledges of rock; sometimes it was carried on bridges, over deep gorges and chasms, wide at the top and narrowing towards the bottom, where a slender stream tripped down to the sea. The sides of these glens were often covered with orange- and lemon-trees; and we could look down upon their rounded tops, presenting, with their darkgreen foliage, their bright, almost luminous fruit, and their snowy blossoms, the finest combination of colors which the vegetable kingdom, in the temperate zone at least, can show. The scenery was in the highest degree grand, beautiful, and picturesque,-with the most animated contrasts and the most abrupt breaks in the line of sight,yet never savage or scowling. The mountains on the left were not bare and scalped, but shadowed with forests, and thickly overgrown with shrubbery,—such wooded heights as the genius of Greek poetry would have peopled with bearded satyrs and buskined wood-nymphs and made vocal with the reeds of Pan and the hounds and horn of Artemis. All the space near the road was stamped with the gentle impress of human cultivation. Fruit-trees and vines were thickly planted; garden vegetables were growing in favorable exposures; and houses were nestling in the hollows or hanging to the sides of the cliff. Over the whole region there was a smiling expression of wooing and invitation, to which the sparkling sea murmured a fitting accompaniment. No pitiless ice and granite chill or wound the eye; no funereal cedars and pines darken the mind with their Arctic shadows; but bloom and verdure, thrown over rounded surfaces, and rich and gay forms of foliage, mantling gray cliffs or waving from rocky ledges, give to the face of Nature that mixture of animation and softness which is equally fitted to soothe a wounded spirit or restore an overtasked mind. If one could only forget the existence of such words as "duty" and progress," and step aside from the rushing stream of onward-moving life, and be content with being, merely, and not doing,-if these lovely forms could fill all the claims and calls of one's nature, and all that we ask of sympathy and companionship could be found in mountain breezes and breaking waves,-if days passed in communion with nature, without anxious vigils or ambitious toils, made up the sum of life,-where could a better retreat be found than along this enchanting coast? Here are the mountains, and there is the sea. Here is a climate of delicious softness, where no sharp extremes of heat and cold put strife between man and nature. Here is a smiling and goodnatured population, among whom no question of religion, politics, science, literature, or humanity is ever discussed, and the surface of the placid hours is not ruffled by argument or contradiction. Here a man could hang and ripen, like an orange on the tree, and drop as gently out of life upon the bosom of the earth. There is a fine couplet of Virgil, which is full of that tenderness and sensibility which form the highest charm of his poetry, as they probably did of his character, and they came to my mind in driving along this beautiful road : "Hic gelidi fontes; hic mollia prata, Lycori ; Hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo." There is something in the musical flow of these lines which seems to express the movement of a quiet life, from which day after day loosens and falls, like leaf after leaf from a tree in a calm day of autumn. But Virgil's air-castle includes a Lycoris; that is, sympathy, affection, and the heart's daily food. With these, fountains, meadows, and groves may be dispensed with; and without them, they are not much better than a painted panorama. To have something to do and to do it, is the best appointment for us all. Nature, stern and coy, reserves her most dazzling smiles for those who have earned them by hard work and cheerful sacrifice. Planted on these shores and lapped in pleasurable sensations, man would turn into an indolent dreamer and a soft voluptuary. He is neither a fig nor an orange; and he thrives best in the sharp air of self-denial and on the rocks of toil. HOME LIFE AND HOME SENTIMENT. The poems which properly fall under the title here given are far too many for the limited space which we can devote to them. We must therefore omit many poems of fine quality, while selecting a few of those which have become "familiar as household words," together with some others, chosen almost at random out of the abundant store at our disposal. In most direct consonance with our title is John Howard Payne's beautiful song, a poem which has almost lost its American lineage, through its adoption by the whole English-speaking world. HOME, SWEET HOME. 'MID pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home! A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. IV. Home! home! sweet, sweet home! There's no place like home! There's no place like home! 35* An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain : There's no place like home! There's no place like home! How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile, The pleasures of home. To thee I'll return, overburdened with care; There's no place like home! Another poem, instinct with the same home-clinging feeling, and as fresh and mellow in sentiment as the drip of the pure liquid which it commemorates, is the "Old Oaken Bucket" of Samuel Woodworth. How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, |