Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd
Within thy beams, O Sun! Or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect, stood reveal'd,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If light can thus deceive—wherefore not life?"
Coleridge is said to have pronounced this "The finest and most grandly conceived in our language; at least, it is only in Milton's and in Wordsworth's sonnets that I recollect any rival."
Balliolensis.
English and American Booksellers.—It is rather curious to note, that whilst English booksellers are emulously vying with one another to publish editions of Uncle Toms, Queechys, Wide Wide Worlds, &c., they neglect to issue English works which the superior shrewdness of Uncle Sam deems worthy of reprinting. Southey's Chronicle of the Cid, which was published by Longman in 1808, and not since printed in England, was brought out in a very handsome octavo form at Lowell, U. S., in 1846. And this, the "first American edition," as it is called on the title-page, can be readily procured from the booksellers in London; whereas the English original is not to be met with. In like manner, Macaulay's Essays were collected and published first in America; and so with Praed's Poems, and many others. Uncle Sam has lately announced collections of Dr. Maginn's and De Quincey's scattered Essays, for which we owe him our most grateful acknowledgments.
J. M. B.