you might easily fancy that you saw land rising out of the ocean, stretching itself before you and on every side in the most enchanting perspective, and having the glowing lustre of a bar of iron when newly withdrawn from the forge.  On this brilliant ground the dense clouds which lay nearest the bottom of the horizon, presenting their dark sides to you, exhibited to the imagination all the gorgeous and picturesque appearances of arches, obelisks, mouldering towers, magnificent gardens, cities, forests, mountains, and every fantastic configuration of living creatures, and of imaginary beings; while the finely stratified clouds a little higher in the atmosphere, might really be imagined so many glorious islands of the blessed, swimming in an ocean of light.

The beauty and grandeur of the sunsets, thus imperfectly described, surpass inconceivably any thing of a similar description which I have ever witnessed, even amidst the most rich and romantic scenery of our British lakes and mountains.

Were I to attempt to account for the exquisite enjoyment on beholding the setting sun between the tropics, I should perhaps say, that it arose from the warmth, the repose, the richness, the novelty, the glory of the whole, filling the mind with the most exalted, tranquillizing, and beautiful images.

* * * * *

There is likewise a tale, Going to Sea, and the Ship’s Crew, by Mrs. Bowdich, which equally merits commendation.

Powerful as may be the aid which the editor has received from the contributors to the “Friendship’s Offering,” we are bound to distinguish one of his own pieces—­Glen-Lynden, a Tale of Teviot-dale, as the sun of the volume.  It is in Spenserian verse, and a more graceful composition cannot be found in either of the Annuals.  It is too long for entire extract, but we will attempt to string together a few of its beauties.  The scenery of the Glen is thus described:—­

  A rustic home in Lynden’s pastoral dell
  With modest pride a verdant hillock crown’d: 
  Where the bold stream, like dragon from the fell,
  Came glittering forth, and, gently gliding round
  The broom-clad skirts of that fair spot of ground,
  Danced down the vale, in wanton mazes bending;
  Till finding, where it reached the meadow’s bound,
  Romantic Teviot on his bright course wending. 
  It joined the sounding streams—­with his blue waters blending.

  Behind a lofty wood along the steep
  Fenced from the chill north-east this quiet glen: 
  And green hills, gaily sprinkled o’er with sheep,
  Spread to the south; while by the brightening pen,
  Rose the blithe sound of flocks and hounds and men,
  At summer dawn, and gloaming; or the voice
  Of children nutting in the hazelly den,
  Sweet mingling with the winds’ and waters’ noise,
  Attuned the softened heart with Nature to rejoice.