in these regions at all, and that for thousands of years, presupposes an exuberant arboreal vegetation, and the necessary degree of climate for its growth and development.  It has been mentioned that the mastodon and mammoth seem to have attained their meridian toward the close of the tertiary epoch, and that a few may have lived even in the current era; but it is more probable that the commencement of existing conditions was the proximate cause of their extinction, and that not a solitary specimen ever lived to be the contemporary of man.

* * * * *

[FROM FRASER’S MAGAZINE.]

ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

  Askest thou if in my youth I have mounted, as others have mounted,
  Galloping Hexameter, Pentameter cantering after,
  English by dam and by sire; bit, bridle, and saddlery, English;
  English the girths and the shoes; all English from snaffle to crupper;
  Everything English around, excepting the tune of the jockey? 
  Latin and Greek, it is true, I have often attach’d to my phaeton
  Early in life, and sometimes have I ordered them out in its evening,
  Dusting the linings, and pleas’d to have found them unworn and untarnisht. 
  Idle! but Idleness looks never better than close upon sunset. 
  Seldom my goosequill, of goose from Germany, fatted in England,
  (Frolicksome though I have been) have I tried on Hexameter, knowing
  Latin and Greek are alone its languages.  We have a measure
  Fashion’d by Milton’s own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder. 
  Germans may flounder at will over consonant, vowel, and liquid,
  Liquid and vowel but one to a dozen of consonants, ending
  Each with a verb at the tail, tail heavy as African ram’s tail,
  Spenser and Shakspeare had each his own harmony; each an enchanter
  Wanting no aid from without. Chevy Chase had delighted their fathers,
  Though of a different strain from the song on the Wrath of Achilles. 
  Southey was fain to pour forth his exuberant stream over regions
  Near and remote:  his command was absolute; every subject,
  Little or great, he controll’d; in language, variety, fancy,
  Richer than all his compeers and wanton but once in dominion;
  ’Twas when he left the full well that for ages had run by his homestead,
  Pushing the brambles aside which encumber’d another up higher,
  Letting his bucket go down, and hearing it bump in descending,
  Grating against the loose stones ’til it came but half-full from the bottom. 
  Others abstain’d from the task.  Scott wander’d at large over Scotland;
  Reckless of Roman and Greek, he chanted the Lay of the Minstrel
  Better than ever before any minstrel in chamber had chanted. 
  Never on mountain or wild hath echo so cheerfully sounded,
  Never did monarch bestow such glorious meeds upon knighthood,