The month of March was nearly half gone, when I reached Keswick, by the road from Edinburgh; having passed, in my way, an old stone building, pointed out to me as “Branksome Tower,” known by the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” who has sung the achievements of Scottish knights and ladies.  This village, at the foot of Skiddaw, though much visited in the summer, has still all the wildness of nature.  Daffodils were in blossom when I walked there; and primroses, daisies and violets opened, among the trees, upon every bank and grass plat, while the mountains, clustering about Derwent Water, assumed such tints and shades of purple and blue as are peculiar to a northern climate.

  “Oh, man, thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear!”

All these pleasing images seemed to flit before me while putting into rhyme the “Song of Prince Hoel,”—­but before I could write it down, tidings reached me of the illness, (perhaps incurable,) of him who drew it from the oblivion of its native Welsh.

Death already has robbed me of so much, that I have become, as it were, inured to grief, and accustomed, even in my least unhappy moments to reflect on the incertitude of all earthly hopes and wishes.  I can now hear of losses with melancholy rather than with horror.

So much of the soul of Robert Southey has been dispersed about the world that a translation to some other state of being, (now, before time has given him any burthen to carry,) would be, perhaps, no misfortune, except to those left to sorrow.  Yet to know that so benevolent a being is still existing, feeling, joying, and suffering, on the sphere of our own mortality, awakens a feeling so nearly allied to pleasure that all who can appreciate excellence must entreat of Heaven the continuance upon earth of a contemporary of whom it may be said: 

  “Virtue and he are one!”

* * * * *

Miss Leslie’s life of John Fitch.

It has been announced for years that Miss Leslie—­the very clever but not altogether amiable magazinist—­was engaged upon a memoir of John Fitch, to whom, it has always seemed to us, was due much more than to Fulton, the credit of inventing the steamboat.  While Fitch was in London, Miss Leslie’s father was one of his warmest friends, and the papers of her family enable her to give many particulars of his history unknown to other biographers.  When several years ago.  R.W.  Griswold published his Sketches of the Life and Labors of John Fitch, the late Noah Webster sent him the following interesting letter upon the subject: