Gabriel Harvey.

Edmund Spenser--Shepherd's Calendar.

His Great Work.
THE GREAT CHANGE.
With what joy does the traveller in the desert, after a day of scorching glow and a night of breathless heat, descry the distant trees which mark the longed-for well-spring in the emerald oasis, which seems to beckon with its branching palms to the converging caravans, to come and slake their fever-thirst, and escape from the threatening sirocco! The pilgrim arrives at the caravansery: not the long, low stone house, unfurnished and bare, which former experience had led him to expect; but a splendid palace.

He dismounts; maidens purer and more beautiful than fabled houris, accompanied by slaves bearing rare dishes and goblets of crusted gold, offer him refreshments: perfumed baths, couches of down, soft and soothing music are about him in delicious combination.

Surely he is dreaming; or if this be real, were not the burning sun and the sand of the desert, the panting camel and the dying horse of an hour ago but a dream?
Such is not an overwrought illustration of English literature in the long, barren reach from Chaucer to Spenser, as compared with the freshness, beauty, and grandeur of the geniuses which adorned Elizabeth's court, and tended to make her reign as illustrious in history as the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Louis XIV.