turesque ruin of Ehrenbreitstein, the wanderer bids adieu to the Rhine in two stanzas full as vivid and infinitely more beautiful than could be achieved by the highest powers of painting:

Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!

There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
The mind is colored by thy every hue;

And, if reluctantly the eyes resign

Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise :
More mighty spots may rise-more glaring shine,
But none unite in one attaching maze

The brilliant, fair, and soft-the glories of old days.

The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom

Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,'
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,

The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been
In mockery of man's art; and these withal
A race of faces happy as the scene,

Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,

Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall.

Childe Harold then wanders to Switzerland, where the solitude of the Alps renews in him his disgust of mankind.

• Then comes his fit

again.' But we will pass over this, and give his character of Rousseau, in which he has aptly painted that singular compound of vice, freaks, madness, and vulgarity:

Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,

The apostle of affliction, he who threw

Enchantment over passion, and from woe

Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew

The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew

How to make madness beautiful, and cast

O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue
Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they past

The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast.

His love was passion's essence—as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be

Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems

Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.

This breathed itself to life in Júlie, this

Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss

Which every morn his fevered lip would greet,
From hers, who but with friendship his would meet;
But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast,
Flashed the thrilled spirit's love-devouring heat;
In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest
Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest.

His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
Or friends by him self-banished; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose,
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,

'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was frenzied-wherefore, who may know?

Since cause might be which skill could never find;

But he was frenzied, by disease or woe,

To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.

The poet then describes a night scene on the Lake of Geneva, which is not the least happy of his efforts. The skill with which the closing in of the night is told, with an effect so tranquil and lulling, is heightened by the fierce delight which the vigorous description of the subsequent storm occasions :

It is the hush of night, and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,

Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear

Precipitously steep; and, drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grashopper one good-night carol more.

*

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires-'tis to be forgiven,

That, in our aspirations to be great,

Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

All heaven and earth are still-though not in sleep,

But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;

And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:

All heaven and earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain-coast,

All is coucentred in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf, is lost,

But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defence.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt

In solitude where we are least alone;

A truth which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,

The soul and source of music, which makes known

Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,

Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,

Binding all things with beauty;-'twould disarm The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harın.

The sky is changed!-and such a change! Oh night,
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong,
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along,

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,

But every mountain now hath found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!
And this is in the night :-Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight—
A portion of the tempest and of thee!
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,.
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!

And now again 'tis black-and now the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth,
As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

Now, where the quick Rhone thus hath cleft his way,
The mightiest of the storms hath ta'en his stand:
For, here, not one, but many, make their play,
And fling their thunderbolts from hand to hand,
Flashing and cast around: of all the band,
The brightest through these parted hills hath forked
His lightnings-as if he did understand,

That, in such gaps as desolation worked,

There the hot shaft should blast whatever therein lurked.

Sky, mountains, river, winds, lake, lightnings! ye!
With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a soul
To make these felt and feeling, well may be
Things that have made me watchful; the far roll
Of your departing voices is the knoll

Of what in me is sleepless—if I rest.

But where of ye, oh tempests! is the goal?
Are ye like those within the human breast?

Or do ye find, at length, like eagles, some high nest?

The apostrophe to Clarens, the scene of Rousseau's romance, which has been far too highly praised, is very beautiful; but the beauty is that which is imparted by the poet, whose mind transformed the dross of the maudlin sensualist

Into something rich and strange.'

Clarens! sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep Love!

Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought;
Thy trees take root in Love; the snows above
The very Glaciers have his colours caught,
And sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought
By rays which sleep there lovingly the rocks,

The permanent crags, tell here of Love, who sought
In them a refuge from the worldly shocks

Which stir and sting the soul with hope that woos, then mocks.
Clarens! by heavenly feet thy paths are trod—
Undying Love's, who here ascends a throue
To which the steps are mountains; where the god
Is a pervading life and light—so shown
Not on those summits solely, nor aloue
In the still cave and forest; o'er the flower

His eye is sparkling, and his breath hath blown-
His soft and summer breath, whose tender power

Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.

Lord Byron could afford to compliment Rousseau, but we think he did so without the exercise of his usual good taste. It is for smaller people to admire an author who had only just genius enough to add a dazzling eccentricity to very impudent quackery.

The poet then alludes to Gibbon and Voltaire, who both lived in the neighborhood of the Lake of Lausanne: their characters are given with an accuracy and strength which belong only to such men as Lord Byron :

Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes

Of names which unto you bequeathed a name;
Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads,
A path to perpetuity of fame:

They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim
Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile

Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
Of Heaven, again assailed, if Heaven the while

On man and man's research could deign do more than smile.

The one was fire and fickleness-a child

Most mutable in wishes, but, in mind,

A wit as various-gay, grave, sage, or wild

Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;

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