"While the cock with lively din,
Scatters the rear of Darkness thin,
And to the stack, or barn-door,
Stoutly struts his dames before;
While the ploughman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milk-maid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe.
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."

Who would not take a morning excursion to witness such scenes as these? is the first question which presents itself; the second-Who says that Milton is a dull poet? I do not think it would be possible to condense more of domestic life in so small a compass, or furnish a truer picture, or give a more vivid and chaste description of it.

Would our town beauties like to cultivate the acquaintance of those who live so naturally, and so happy?

"Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks,
Where Corydon and Thyasia met,
Are at their savoury dinner set

Of herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses."

"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith," said King Solomon; but as well as the "herbs and country messes," which, like the rosy lips of "neat-handed Phyllis," by whom they have been prepared,

"So sweetly tempt to taste them," there is no want of good roast beef, and plum pudding too, or something as good, or better; for the farmers of California are not poor people, we must recollect, but the very bone and sinew of the country. The times are different now from what they used to be in Milton's day. The country people here live on better fare, and are better informed and more intelligent. But even in the olden time, there was a bliss in the ignorance of country folks, of which the impression still remains, and Milton

has embalmed it.

"With stories told of many a feat,
How fairy Mab the junkets eat;
And how the dredging goblin sweat,
To earn his cream-bowl duly set;
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
His shadowy flail had threshed the corn
That ten day-laborers could not end;
Then lies him down the lubber fiend.
When done such tales to bed they creep,
By whispering winds soon lull'd asleep."

After enjoying such unsophisticated pleasure from country scenes, and country reminiscences, we have less relish for "towered cities,"

"And the busy hum of men;

Where throngs of knights and barons bold
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold;

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize." Such people we can read about in any trashy novel, any day; but a poet, like Milton is a rarity. I would rather wind up the proceedings of our little excursion party, just returned, by sitting quietly down beside our own Louisa, and turning over the leaves of her music for her, while she gives us some old tune in unison with the happy state of mind in which we all feel,

"In notes with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
Her melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony."

Such is L'Allegro, and it is a glorious little poem, and not in any respect unworthy of the author of Paradise Lost. But Milton is not content with urging the claims of Mirth, and all those accompanying innocent enjoyments, which compose her train. He wishes also to plead the other side; like the supple lawyer in that famous case reported by Cowper, when

"Between eyes and nose a strange contest arose, As to which the said spectacles ought to belong."

Perhaps he may have had some compunctions of conscience about having treated Melancholy with unnecessary severity, and supposed that to retrieve his own character he must be impartial, and submit Mirth to equal indignity to appease her. Perhaps he thought that he was a man of such talent that to him either side was alike. I believe he meant his L'Allegro to represent the opinions of the world, and Il Penseroso those which were more befitting a philosopher.

"Hence, vain deluding joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred!
How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys!"

So he proposes to banish all silly suppositions of terrestrial enjoyment, desirable merely through the senses, to "dwell in some idle brain," and occupy "fancies fond with gaudy shapes,"

"As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun-beams;
Or likest hovering dreams,

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' train." And such, after all, is the language of Wisdom. It is, as he elsewhere expresses it, from the "Cynic tub" that true philosoThe fewer of ordinary pleasphy comes. ures that men can learn to live with and be happy, so much the more do they make themselves independent of contingent circumstances. But let us proceed. Now,

the poet is advocating the case of Melancholy, and he wants her to come forward and show herself; but now he speaks to her, and about her, in a very different manner. One would think he had got a retaining fee.

"Hail, thou Goddess sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight!" However, nothwithstanding such dazzling brightness, he describes her as well as circumstances will admit, and makes her regular Tragedy Queen, such as Mrs. Stark, or Mrs. Siddons if she were alive, might take a pattern from :

:

Forget thyself to marble till,
With a sad, leaden, downward cast,
Thou fix them on the earth as fast.

After having given the good lady herself an invitation, he next desires her to bring her train along with her (as he asked Mirth to do before), namely, Peace and Quiet names very congenial, as Shakspeare would have said "to a married ear ;" and

"Spare Fast, who oft with Gods doth diet," (apparently as bad as dining with Duke Humphrey,) and "mute Silence," and "the Cherub Contemplation;" but candor compels me to say they do not by any means form so interesting a group as those whom he proposes as suitable companions for Mirth, leaving out that boisterous fellow Laughter, whose vulgar bearing seems altogether indefensible. The truth is, although Milton is said to have himself preferred Il Penseroso to L'Allegro, the subject does not admit of so rich and natural imagery, and no one who judges the merits of the two pieces according to their poetical recommendations only, would hesitate a moment in awarding the palm to L'Allegro. But Il Penseroso is also superlatively beautiful. Shakspeare tells us of charms "so strong as could control the moon;" Milton attributes a similar power to the music of the Nightingale, whom he represents as a hair-dresser and toilet-woman for "homely-featured Night," as Cowper calls her or does he mean that the old lady has got into the sulks, and that the gentle Nightingale is trying to put her in a better temper?

"'Less Philomel will deign a song,

In her sweetest, saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of Night;" and the notes of that song are so sweet, and its music so irresistible, that the Moon brings her team to a walk for the purpose of listening, as we are told in the next line,

"While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke,
Gently o'er the accustomed oak.”

The poor Moon apparently gets quite bewildered. We know she is but a lunatic; but, like Sterne's M aria, there is an attraction about her which is irresistible :

"the wandering Moon
Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the Heaven's wide pathless way,
And oft, as it her head she bow'd,
Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

This is extremely beautiful, but it is also quaint and curious. The following idea (though an in-door one) is fully as much in accordance with my taste. After proposing to seat himself" on a plat of rising ground," where he

"May hear the far-off curfew sound,

Over some wide-watered shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar,"

he recollects that the weather may not exactly coincide with such an arrangement, and being in a 'compromising mood, concludes that

"Some still removed place will fit,

Where glowing embers through the room Teach Light to counterfeit a gloom." And what could be more elegant than his apostrophe on the power of music (in the minor key)?

"But, O sad Virgin, that thy power
Might raise Museus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes, as warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek."

The English used to talk of the "Iron Duke of Wellington;" a title which was thought peculiarly applicable, as expressive of his character, his constitution, and his firmness; and he was without doubt a big man in his way; but we feel convinced he was a mere nobody compared with old Pluto, who was iron even to his tears. We know it was not everything that would make him cry. But the powerful influence of Music even he could not resist. Yet who does not realize, in the congregating consonants in the last line,

"And made Hell grant what Love did seek,"

from the very difficulty we experience in reading it, with what reluctance he compled with the petition of the bereaved Or

such as he found in the colleges of his own Alma Mater. We are carried in imaginatiou to Westminister or Saint Peter's; and look around with wonderment and surprise, that it should be possible merely by human craft so to induce religious feelings. But when the organ peals

"To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthem clear,"

"Not tricked and frounced as she was wont
With the Attic boy to hunt,
But kercheft in a comely cloud."

One cannot help smiling at such a very English prepossession, only equalled by that of the British tar, who having left his Poll of Wapping behind, for several years had been cruising in the Mediterranean. As he sailed up the Thames into that peculiar atmosphere which continually hangs over London, and through which the sun does not penetrate his heart became exultant with the delights of "home-born happiness," and he could not help exclaiming, "This is the atmosphere! None of your flaring suns and clear blue skies for me, but the regular gray mist of the Thames

River!"

Where the rude ax with heaved stroke
Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt;
There in some covert, by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from Day's gairish eye."

We fancy we see the old man taking to his boyish ways again, and now that like another Horace he has got away from the "profanum vulgus," having fine times with the Nymphs,

"Sporting with Amargllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair."

Such is not only "a fit retreat for wooing," but also, if we may credit Burns, the very place for a poet to go to. Says he,

"The Muse, nac poet ever fand her,
Till, by himself, he loved to wander
Down by some burnie's sweet meander,
An' nae think lang."

From "the arched walks of twilight groves," the transition is natural to

"Dissolve us into ecstasies,

And bring all Heaven before our eyes!"

But even from such holy scenes and their inspirations, the poet longs to be again with Nature.

"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown and mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that Heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew;
Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain."

Had Milton only written these two short poems, I should have been disposed to look upon him not only as a great poet, but as a benefactor to society.

AGRICOLA.

ERRATA. In No. 2 of this series, in the first column, line 30 from the top, for "since the days of Hume," read "since the days of Homer." In column 3, line 39, for " Assian," read "Ossian." In column 3, line 58, for "heralds," read "heroes ;" and in column 5, line 10, for "to make them dii minorum genitum," read "to make them other than dii minorum genitum."

My friend Butler is a very loquacious young gentleman, and often puts a word in out of time-but he was taken down a day or two since after the following manner:-Maj. M., in conversation with a friend upon the merits or demerits of the Rev. Kulloch case, chanced to remark that when young, the Rev. gentleman was expelled from College-"Well, supposing he was?" chimed in young Butler, "my father was turned out of College for stealing a goose, but that don't prove any thing." "No," said the Maj., "it don't prove any thing, but it goes to show that your father had an early and continued predilection for the genus of aquatic fowl generally known as "geese."

It requires at the present time the impurturable good humor of Mr. Mark Tapley who, when "jolly," wished to be so under creditable circumstances; or in other words only took credit in being jolly when in the deepest of trouble; inasmuch as he thought that anybody could be good-humored when every thing around them was sunny and prosperous; therefore, we say that it requires good-humor equal to his, at the present time, to keep people "jolly" and raise them above the remembrance of their bereavements and losses by the Central America, and the oppressive financial difficulty of brethren and friends at the east. Each of us suffer from sympathy; besides from our being members of one common body-politic.

Amidst all, it is well to read of such a case as the following from our ever-welcome exchange, the spirited and witty Picayunethe Punch of New York-under the editorial direction of Doesticks and Triangle, (an inimitable pair of large-souled and witty fellows):

HARD TIMES AND SOFT SPOTS.-Proclaim it in Wall Street; cry it aloud in State Street, and announce it in Third-that there is at least one rich man who has a soft spot, not in his head, but in his heart, and that he lives where do you think? why, in Chicago- the place of which St. Peter is said to be entirely ignorant, according to the story. His name is James Ward-he is the owner of many houses; and the other day, when the pressure came, he spontaneously went around to his tenants and reduced their rents twenty per cent. Verily, Ward will be re-warded hereafter-for though we know

how hard it is for a rich man to enter the

Chair.

meeting with such a disastrous reward, he still feels a glow of pride that so many Californians should present to the world such a glorious example of manly self-possession and commendable fortitude, in the hour of danger and of death, as to see that the weak and helpless, the women and children, were first saved, even though they themselves should be lost-the unfortunate and painful result, with but few heart-gladdening exceptions.

We remember no example in history which presents a parallel to it: but then, history tells of no school for the heart's education in self-sacrifice like that of California, with all its beauties and advantages. From the first day of the first pioneer to the present, it has been one long, long day of personal sacrifices to her people. How could it be otherwise, cut off as we have been from almost every social tie, and shut out from every spirit-invigorating influence, derived from communion with personal friends? Uncheered and alone, to labor, to forego, to suffer and to wait, until fortune should favor us to visit our friends, or bring them to us, how could we become other than self-sacrificing? But the reward will come-wait.

Distressing as are the facts, yet how much of life-experience would often be excluded from the world's eye but for such events. For instance, read the following:

A STRANGE AND AFFECTING STORY.-Some time during the year 1837-twenty years ago when the inhabitants of the Pueblo of San Francisco dwelt in adobe houses, a couof English sailors, belonging to a whale less arduous vocation of raising vegetables. ship, determined to abandon sea life for the They accordingly enclosed a small piece of ground with a fence of raw hides, and applied themselves to agricultural pursuits with such vigor that they soon had secured means to afford them a comfortable living. They lived quietly by themselves, and having no other object whereon to place their affections, loved each other, and resolved to pull together for the balance of their life-voyage; and so they might have done but for the discovery of gold in California, an event which has disappointed the intentions of many others besides the two old "matelots," and has caused many old friends to part company who never thought of parting before. Dave Morgan and Bob Levick were