I shall therefore, my dear Anne, devote this letter to the selection of a few instances for your amusement, of the poetical allusions to this elegant fiction. The following singular creation of an ideal being, is from the fertile genius of Dr. Darwin:

"So when the nightingale in eastern bowers

On quivering pinions woos the queen of flowers,
Inhales her fragrance as he hangs in air,
And melts with melody the blushing fair;
Half Rose, half bird, a beauteous monster springs,
Waves his thin leaves, and claps his glossy wings;
Long horrent thorns his mossy legs surround,
And tendril-talons root him to the ground,
Green films of rind his wrinkled neck o'erspread,
And crimson petals crest his curled head ;
Soft warbling beaks in each bright blossom move,
And vocal rose-buds fill th' enchanted grove.
Admiring evening stays her beainy star,
And still Night listens from his ebon car;
While on white wings descending houris throng,
And drink the floods of odour and of song."

It was an hyperbolical compliment, which the Greeks used to pay to some of their most flowery orators, to say, that they "spoke Roses!" With much greater propriety of metaphor do the orientals compare their poets to the celebrated bird in question : Hafez, especially, is constantly called the "Persian Nightingale;" and the following extract from the eighth volume of " Time's Telescope," will give you some idea of his style, and refers moreover to the

fiction before mentioned: "Hafez, speaking of our eagerness to enjoy the pleasures of the Spring, beautifully observes, We drop, like nightingales, into the nest of the Rose. Again, in his Seventh Ode, he says, 'O Hafez, thou desirest, like the nightingales, the presence of the Rose: let thy very soul be a ransom for the earth, where the keeper of the rose-garden walks!' In the Eighth Ode, also, we have the following:

"The youthful season's wonted bloom
Renews the beauty of each bower,
And to the sweet-song'd bird is come

Glad welcome from its darling flower!?

In the sixth stanza of the Ninth Ode, the bard again alludes to this favourite fiction, which, literally translated, would stand thus: When the Rose rides in the air, like Solomon, the bird of morn comes forth with the melody of David.' In Ode XIII. on the return of Spring, we are presented with the following beautiful stanza on the same subject:

"The love-struck nightingale's delightful strain,
The lark's resounding note are heard again;
Again the Rose, to hail Spring's festive day,
From the cold house of sorrow hastes away.'

"In the delicious garden of Negauristan, the eye and the smell are not the only senses regaled by the presence of the Rose. The ear is enchanted by the

wild and beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, whose warblings seem to increase in melody and softness, with the unfolding of their favourite flowers; verifying the song of their poet, who says: 'When the Roses fade, when the charms of the bower are passed away, the fond tale of the nightingale no longer animates the scene.'

There is a beautiful little elegy and air composed by a gentleman of Sheffield, I believe, on occasion of the death of the lamented Princess Charlotte of Wales, which turns upon the fiction before us :

"When first the glooms of wrath o'erspread,

In Eden's bowers, each blissful scene;
When first in death declined her head
The virgin Rose, the garden's queen;
"Twas then that to the naked thorn,

The nightingale her bosom prest,
'Twas then the song became so lorn,

That trembled from her bleeding breast.

"Such was our fate-such are our woes;
(Ah! what can e'er those woes beguile ;)

Our gem of hope! our regal Rose !

The bud and blossom of our Isle ;

Each faded on its death-bed lies!

And though they bloom in bowers divine;
Yet still, each weeping Briton cries,

The thorn-the thorn alone is mine!"

The conceit of the nightingale leaning her bosom against a thorn, while pouring forth her mournful

strains, is a very old conceit, and is thus quaintly noticed by Sir Philip Sydney :

“The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth

Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,

While late base earth, proud of new clothing springeth, Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making; And mournfully bewailing,

Her throat in tunes expresseth

What grief her breast oppresseth."

I remain,

Yours, &c.

LETTER XVII.

There the Rose unveils

Her breast of beauty, and each delicate bud

O'the season comes in turn to bloom and perish."

MY DEAR ANNE,

IN my

last letter, I cited some of the allusions made by oriental, and other poets, to that beautiful fiction, which represents the nightingale I shall now as being enamoured of the Rose. return to our favourite flower, denominated, by Sir J. Davis, the

"Eye of the garden, queen of flowers,

Love's cup, wherein lie nect'rous powers,

Ingender'd first of nectar,

Sweet nurse-child of the Spring's young hours,

And beauty's fair character."

"In no country of the world," says the compiler of Time's Telescope for 1822, "does the ROSE grow in such perfection as in Persia; and in no