Kitabı oku: «Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848», sayfa 11

VISIT TO GREENWOOD CEMETERY

BY MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY

 
City of marble! whose lone structures rise
In pomp of sculpture beautifully rare,
On thy still brow a mournful shadow lies,
For round thy haunts no busy feet repair;
No curling smoke ascends from roof-tree fair,
Nor cry of warning time the clock repeats —
No voice of Sabbath-bell doth call to prayer —
There are no children playing in thy streets,
Nor sounds of echoing toil invade thy green retreats.
 
 
Rich vines around thy graceful columns wind,
Young buds unfold, the dewy skies to bless,
Yet no fresh wreaths thine inmates wake to bind —
Prune no wild spray, nor pleasant garden dress —
From no luxuriant flower its fragrance press —
The golden sunsets through enwoven trees
Tremble and flash, but they no praise express —
They lift no casement to the balmy breeze,
For fairest scenes of earth have lost their power to please.
 
 
A ceaseless tide of emigration flows
On through thy gates, for thou forbiddest none
In thy close-curtained couches to repose,
Or lease thy narrow tenements of stone,
It matters not where first the sunbeam shone
Upon their cradle – 'neath the foliage free
Where dark palmettos fleck the torrid zone,
Or 'mid the icebergs of the Arctic sea —
Thou dost no questions ask; all are at home with thee.
 
 
One pledge alone they give, before their name
Is with thy peaceful denizens enrolled —
The vow of silence thou from each dost claim,
More strict and stern than Sparta's rule of old,
Bidding no secrets of thy realm be told,
Nor slightest whisper from its precincts spread —
Sealing each whitened lip with signet cold,
To stamp the oath of fealty, ere they tread
Thy never-echoing halls, oh city of the dead!
 
 
'Mid scenes like thine, fond memories find their home,
For sweet it was to me, in childhood's hours,
'Neath every village church-yard's shade to roam,
Where humblest mounds were decked with grassy flowers,
And I have roamed where dear Mount Auburn towers,
Where Laurel-Hill a cordial welcome gave
To the rich tracery of its hallowed bowers,
And where, by quiet Lehigh's crystal wave,
The meek Moravian smooths his turf-embroidered grave:
 
 
Where too, in Scotia, o'er the Bridge of Sighs,
The Clyde's Necropolis uprears its head,
Or that old abbey's sacred turrets rise
Whose crypts contain proud Albion's noblest dead, —
And where, by leafy canopy o'erspread,
The lyre of Gray its pensive descant made —
And where, beside the dancing city's tread,
Famed Père La Chaise all gorgeously displayed
Its meretricious robes, with chaplets overlaid.
 
 
But thou, oh Greenwood! sweetest art to me,
Enriched with tints of ocean, earth and sky,
Solemn and sweet, to meditation free,
Most like a mother, who with pleading eye
Dost turn to Him who for the lost did die —
And with thy many children at thy breast,
Invoke His aid, with low and prayerful sigh,
To bless the lowly pillow of their rest,
And shield them, when the tomb no longer guards its guest.
 
 
Calm, holy shades! we come to you for health, —
Sickness is with the living – wo and pain —
And dire diseases thronging on, by stealth
From the worn heart its vital flood to drain,
Or smite with sudden shaft the reeling brain,
Till lingering on, with nameless ills distrest,
We find the healer's vaunted armor vain,
The undrawn spear-point in our bleeding breast, —
Fain would we hide with you, and win the boon of rest.
 
 
Sorrow is with the living! Youth doth fade —
And Joy unclasp its tendril green, to die —
The mocking tares our harvest-hopes invade,
On wrecking blasts our garnered treasures fly,
Our idols shame the soul's idolatry,
Unkindness gnaws the bosom's secret core,
Long-trusted friendship turns an altered eye
When, helpless, we its sympathies implore —
Oh! take us to your arms, that we may weep no more.
 

THE HALL OF INDEPENDENCE

BY GEO. W. DEWEY

 
This is the sacred fane wherein assembled
The fearless champions on the side of Right;
Men, at whose declaration empires trembled,
Moved by the truth's immortal might.
 
 
Here stood the patriot band – one union folding
The Eastern, Northern, Southern sage and seer,
Within that living bond which truth upholding,
Proclaims each man his fellow's peer.
 
 
Here rose the anthem, which all nations hearing,
In loud response the echoes backward hurled;
Reverberating still the ceaseless cheering,
Our continent repeats it to the world.
 
 
This is the hallowed spot where first, unfurling,
Fair Freedom spread her blazing scroll of light;
Here, from oppression's throne the tyrant hurling,
She stood supreme in majesty and might!
 

THE LAST OF THE BOURBONS

A FRENCH PATRIOTIC SONG,

WRITTEN BY ALEXANDRE PANTOLÉON,

THE MUSIC COMPOSED AND DEDICATED TO THE NATIONAL GUARD OF FRANCE, BY

J. C. N. G

II

 
Oh thou spirit of lightning
That movest the French
From the hands of the tyrant,
The sceptre to wrench.
Thou no more wilt be cheated
But keep under arms
Till the sway thou upholdest
Is free from alarms!Hurrah! hurrah! &c.
 

II

 
J'entends gronder la foudre
Des braves Français
Ils ont réduit en poudre
Le siége des forfaits.
Leurs éclairs épouvantent
Les rois étrangers
Dont les glaives tourmentent
Des coeurs opprimés.Vive, vive, &c.
 

III

 
Tis too late for an Infant
To govern a land
Which a tyrant long practiced
Has failed to command.
For the men of fair Gallia
At home will be free,
And extend independence
To lands o'er the sea!Hurrah! hurrah! &c.
 

III

 
Désormais soyez sages
Restez tous armés
Protégeant vos suffrages
Et vos droits sacrés.
Comblez l'espoir unique
De France! en avant!
Vive la République!
A bas les tyrans!Vive, vive, &c.
 

TO AN ISLE OF THE SEA. ¹⁵

BY MRS. J. W. MERCUR

 
Bright Isle of the Ocean, and gem of the sea,
Thou art stately and fair as an island can be,
With thy clifts tow'ring upward, thy valleys outspread,
And thy fir-crested hills, where the mountain deer tread,
So crowned with rich verdure, so kissed by each ray
Of the day-god that mounts on and upward his way,
While thy wild rushing torrent, thy streams in their flow,
Reflect the high archway of heaven below,
Whose clear azure curtains, so cloudless and bright,
Are here ever tinged with the red gold at night;
Then with one burst of glory the sun sinks to rest,
And the stars they shine out on the land that is blest.
 
 
Thy foliage is fadeless, no chilling winds blow,
No frost has embraced thee, no mantle of snow;
Then hail to each sunbeam whose swift airy flight
Speeds on for thy valleys each hill-top and height!
To clothe them in glory then die 'mid the roar
Of the sea-waves which echo far up from the shore!
They will rest for a day, as if bound by a spell,
They will noiselessly fall where the beautiful dwell,
They will beam on thy summits so lofty and lone,
Where nature hath sway and her emerald throne,
Then each pearly dew-drop descending at even,
At morn they will bear to the portals of Heaven.
 
 
Thou art rich in the spoils of the deep sounding sea,
Thou art blest in thy clime, (of all climates for me,)
Thou hast wealth on thy bosom, where orange-flowers blow,
And thy groves with their golden-hued fruit bending low,
In thy broad-leafed banana, thy fig and the lime,
And grandeur and beauty, in palm-tree and vine.
Thou hast wreaths on thy brow, and gay flowers ever bloom,
Wafting upward and onward a deathless perfume,
While round thee the sea-birds first circle, then rise,
Then sink to the wave and then glance tow'rd the skies!
 
 
While their bright plumage glows 'neath the sun's burning light,
And their screams echo back in a song of delight.
Thou hast hearts that are noble, and doubtless are brave,
Thou hast altars to bow at, for worship and praise,
Thou hast light when night's curtains around thee are driven
From the Cross which beams out in the far southern heaven,
Yet one spot of darkness remains on thy breast,
As a cloud in the depth of a calm sky at rest.
 
 
Like a queen that is crowned, or a king on his throne,
In grandeur thou sittest majestic and lone,
And the power of thy beauty is breathed on each gale
As it sweeps o'er thy hills or descends to the vale;
And homage is offered most boundless and free,
Oh, Isle of the Ocean, in gladness to thee,
So circled with waters, so dashed by the spray
Of the waves which leap upward then stop in their way.
 
 
And lo! thou art loved by a child of the West,
For the beauty and bloom of thy tropical breast,
Yet dearer by far is that land where the skies
Though colder bends o'er it and bleak winds arise,
Where the broad chart of Nature is boldly unfurled,
And a light from the free beameth out o'er the world.
 
 
Yes, dearer that land where the eagle on high
Spreads his wings to the wind as he cleaves the cold sky,
Where mountain, and torrent, and forest and vale,
Are swept by the path of the storm-ridden gale,
And each rock is an altar, each heart is a shrine,
Where Freedom is worshiped in Liberty clime,
And her banners float out on the breath of the gale,
Bright symbols of glory which proudly we hail,
And her bulwarks are reared where the heart of the brave
Refused to be subject, and scorned to be slave.
 

SONNET: – TO ARABELLA,

BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY

 
There is a pathos in those azure eyes,
Touching, and beautiful, and strange, fair child!
When the fringed lids upturn, such radiance mild
Beams out as in some brimming lakelet lies,
Which undisturbed reflects the cloudless skies:
No tokens glitter there of passion wild,
That into ecstasy with time shall rise;
But in the deep of those clear orbs are signs —
Which Poesy's prophetic eye divines —
Of woman's love, enduring, undefiled!
If, like the lake at rest, through life we see
Thy face reflect the heaven that in it shines,
No idol to thy worshipers thou'lt be,
For he will worship Heaven, who worships thee.
 

PROTESTATION

 
No, I will not forget thee. Hearts may break
Around us, as old lifeless trees are snapt
By the swift breath of whirlwinds as they wake
Their path amid the forest. Lightning-wrapt,
(For love is fire from Heaven,) we calmly stand —
Heart pressed to answering heart – hand linked with hand.
 

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS

Endymion. By Henry B. Hirst. Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

It was Goethe, we believe, who objected to some poet, that he put too much water in his ink. This objection would apply to the uncounted host of our amateur versifiers, and poets by the grace of verbiage. If an idea, or part of an idea, chances to stray into the brain of an American gentleman, he quickly apparels it in an old coat from his wardrobe of worn phrases, and rushes off in mad haste to the first magazine or newspaper, in order that the public may enjoy its delectable beauty at once. We have on hand enough MSS. of this kind, which we never intend to print, to freight the navy of Great Britain. But mediocrity and stupidity are not the only sinners in respect to this habit of writing carelessly. Hasty composition is an epidemic among many of our writers, whose powers, if disciplined by study, and directed to a definite object, would enable them to produce beautiful and permanent works. So general is the mental malady to which we have alluded, that it affects the judgments of criticism, and if a collection of lines, going under the name of a poem, contains fine passages, or felicitous flashes of thought, it commonly passes muster as satisfying the requirements of the critical code. Careless writers, therefore, are sustained by indulgent critics, and between both good literature is apt to be strangled in its birth.

Now it is due to Mr. Hirst to say that his poem belongs not to the class we have described. It is no transcript of chance conceptions, expressed in loose language, and recklessly huddled together, without coherence and without artistic form, but a true and consistent creation, with a central principle of vitality and a definite shape. He has, in short, produced an original poem on a classic subject, written in a style of classic grace, sweetness and simplicity, rejecting all superfluous ornament and sentimental prettinesses, and conveying one clear and strong impression throughout all its variety of incident, character and description. It is no conglomeration of parts, but an organic whole. This merit alone should give him a high rank among the leading poets of the country, for it evidences that he has a clear notion of what the word poem means.

We have neither time nor space to analyze the poem, and indicate its merits as a work of art. It displays throughout great force and delicacy of conception, a fine sense of harmony, and a power and decision of expression which neither overloads nor falls short of the thought. In tone it is half way between Shelley and Keats, neither so ideal as the one nor so sensuous as the other. Keat's Endymion is so thick with fancies, and verbal daintinesses, and sweet sensations, that with all its wonderful affluence of beautiful things it lacks unity of impression. The mind of the poet is so possessed by his subject that, in an artistic sense, he becomes its victim, and wanders in metaphor, and revels in separate images, and gets entangled in a throng of thoughts, until, at the end, we have a sense of a beautiful confusion of "flowers of all hues, and weeds of glorious feature," and applaud the fertility at the expense of the force of his mind. The truth is that will is an important element of genius, and without it the spontaneous productions of the mind must lack the highest quality of poetic art. True intellectual creation is an effort of the imagination, not its result, and without force of will to guide it, it does not obey its own laws, and gives little impression of real power. Art is not the prize of luck or the effect of chance, but of conscious combination of vital elements. Mr. Hirst, though he does give evidence of Keats' fluency of fancy and expression, has really produced a finer work of art. We think it is so important that a poem, to be altogether worthy of the name, should be deeply meditated and carefully finished, that we hazard this last opinion at the expense of being berated by all the undeveloped geniuses of the land, as having no true sense of the richness of Keats' mind, or the great capacity implied, rather than fully expressed, in his Endymion.

Mere extracts alone can give no fair impression of the beauty of Mr. Hirst's poem as a whole, but we cannot leave it without quoting a few passages illustrative of the author's power of spiritualizing the voluptuous, and the grace, harmony and expressiveness of his verse:

 
And still the moon arose, serenely hovering,
Dove-like, above the horizon. Like a queen
She walked in light between
The stars – her lovely handmaids – softly covering
Valley and wold, and mountain-side and plain
With streams of lucid rain.
 
 
She saw not Eros, who on rosy pinion
Hung in the willow's shadow – did not feel
His subtle searching steel
Piercing her very soul, though his dominion
Her breast had grown: and what to her was heaven
If from Endymion riven?
 
 
Nothing; for love flowed in her, like a river,
Flooding the banks of wisdom; and her soul,
Losing its self-control,
Waved with a vague, uncertain, tremulous quiver,
And like a lily in the storm, at last
She sunk 'neath passion's blast.
 
 
Flowing the fragrance rose – as though each blossom
Breathed out its very life – swell over swell,
Like mist along the dell,
Wooing his wondering heart from out his bosom —
His heart, which like a lark seemed slowly winging
Its way toward heaven, singing.
 
 
Dian looked on; she saw her spells completing,
And sighing, bade the sweetest nightingale
That ever in Carian vale
Sang to her charms, rise, and with softest greeting
Woo from its mortal dreams and thoughts of clay
Endymion's soul away.
 

From the conclusion of the poem we take a few stanzas, describing the struggle of Dian with her passion, when Endymion asserts his love for Chromia:

 
The goddess gasped for breath, with bosom swelling:
Her lips unclosed, while her large, luminous eyes
Blazing like Stygian skies,
With passion, on the audacious youth were dwelling:
She raised her angry hand, that seemed to clasp
Jove's thunder in its grasp.
 
 
And then she stood in silence, fixed and breathless;
But presently the threatening arm slid down;
The fierce, destroying frown
Departed from her eyes, which took a deathless
Expression of despair, like Niobe's —
Her dead ones at her knees.
 
 
Slowly her agony passed, and an Elysian,
Majestic fervor lit her lofty eyes,
Now dwelling on the skies:
Meanwhile, Endymion stood, cheek, brow and vision,
Radiant with resignation, stern and cold,
In conscious virtue bold,
 

In conclusion, we cannot but congratulate Mr. Hirst on his success in producing a poem conceived with so much force and refinement of imagination, and finished with such consummate art, as the present. It is a valuable addition to the permanent poetical literature of the country.

Memoir of William Ellery Channing. With Extracts from His Correspondence and Manuscripts. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 3 vols. 12mo.

This long expected work has at last been published, and we think it will realize the high expectations raised by its announcement two or three years ago. It is mostly composed of extracts from the letters, journals, and unpublished sermons of Dr. Channing, and is edited by his nephew, Wm. H. Channing, who has also supplied a memoir. It conveys a full view of Dr. Channing's interior life from childhood to old age, and apart from its great value and interest, contains, in the exhibition of the steps of his intellectual and spiritual growth, as perfect a specimen of psychological autobiography as we have in literature. Such a work subjects its author to the severest tests which can be applied to a human mind in this life, and we have risen from its perusal with a new idea of the humility, sincerity, and saintliness of Dr. Channing's character. In him self-distrust was admirably blended with a sublime conception of the capacity of man, and a sublime confidence in human nature. He was not an egotist, as passages in his writings may seem to indicate, for he was more severe upon himself than upon others, and numberless remarks in the present volumes show how sharp was the scrutiny to which he subjected the most elusive appearances of pride and vanity. But with his high and living sense of the source and destiny of every human mind, and his almost morbid consciousness of the deformity of moral evil, he reverenced in himself and in others the presence of a spirit which connected humanity with its Maker, and by unfolding the greatness of the spiritual capacities of men, he hoped to elevate them above the degradation of sensuality and sin. He was not a teacher of spiritual pride, conceit and self-worship, but of those vital principles of love and reverence which elevate man only by directing his aspirations to God.

The present volumes give a full length portrait of Dr. Channing in all the relations of life, and some of the minor details regarding his opinions and idiosyncrasies are among the most interesting portions of the book. We are glad to perceive that he early appreciated Wordsworth. The Excursion he eagerly read on its first appearance, and while so many of the Pharisees of taste were scoffing at it, he manfully expressed his sense of its excellence. This poem he recurred to oftener than to any other, and next to Shakspeare, Wordsworth seems to have been the poet he read with the most thoughtful delight. When he went to Europe, in 1822, he had an interview with Wordsworth, and of the impression he himself made on the poet there can be no more pertinent illustration, than the fact that, twenty years afterward, Wordsworth mentioned to an American gentleman that one observation of Channing, respecting the connection of Christianity with progress, had stamped itself ineffaceably upon his mind. Coleridge he appears to have profoundly impressed. In a letter to Washington Allston, Coleridge says of him – "His affection for the good as the good, and his earnestness for the true as the true – with that harmonious subordination of the latter to the former, without encroachment on the absolute worth of either – present in him a character which in my heart's heart I believe to be the very rarest on earth… Mr. Channing is a philosopher in both the possible renderings of the word. He has the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love… I am confident that the few differences of opinion between him and myself not only are, but would by him be found to be apparent, not real – the same truth seen in different relations. Perhaps I have been more absorbed in the depth of the mystery of the spiritual life, he more engrossed by the loveliness of its manifestations."

In nothing is Dr. Channing's humility better seen than in his relations to literature. He became an author almost unconsciously. All his intellectual convictions were so indissolubly woven into the texture of his life, so vitalized by his heart and imagination, that writing with him was never an end but a means. Literary fame followed him; he did not follow it. When, however, he found that his reputation not only rung through his own country but was reverberated from Europe, he appears to have feared that it might corrupt his motives for composition. He studiously avoided reading all eulogistic notices of his works or character, though they were interesting to him as indications of the influence his cherished opinions were exerting. The article in the Westminster Review, which exceeded all others in praise, he never read. Dr. Dewey's criticism in the Christian Examiner he only knew as far as related to its objections, and his only disappointment was in finding them so few. Brougham's criticism on his style provoked in him no retort. Hazlitt's coarse attack on him in the Edinburgh Review he considered as an offset to the undue praise he had received from other quarters. "The author of the article," he says, in one of his letters, "is now dead; and as I did not feel a moment's anger toward him during his life, I have no reproach for him now. He was a man of fine powers, and wanted nothing but pure and fixed principles to make him one of the lights of the age."

It would be impossible in our limits to convey an adequate impression of the beauty, value, or interest of the present volumes. They are full of matter. The letters are admirable specimens of epistolary composition, considered as the spontaneous expression of a grave, high and warm nature, to the friends of his heart and mind. They are exceedingly original of their kind, and while they bear no resemblance to those of Cowper, Burns, Byron, or Mackintosh, they are on that very account a positive addition to the literature of epistolary composition. Few biographies have been published within a century calculated to make so deep an impression as this of Dr. Channing, and few could have admitted the reader to so close a communion with the subject, without sacrificing that delicacy in the treatment of frailties due to the character of the departed.

Napoleon and the Marshals of the Empire. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 2 vols. 12mo.

The present work is to some extent an attempt "to head" Mr. Headley. For our part, we profess to have as much patience as any of the descendants of Job, but we must acknowledge that we have broken down in every effort to master the merits of the quarrel between the publishers of the present volumes and the Author of Napoleon and his Marshals. Accordingly we can give no opinion on that matter. In respect to the value of the volumes under consideration, as compared with a similar work by Mr. Headley, there can be little hesitation of judgment. It is idle to say, as some have said, that a work which has run through fifteen editions, as Mr. Headley's has done, is a mere humbug. On the contrary, it is a book evincing a mind as shrewd as it is strong, aiming, it is true, rather at popularity than excellence, but obtaining the former by possessing the sagacity to perceive that accounts of battles, to be generally apprehended, must be addressed to the eye and blood rather than to the understanding; and this power of producing vivid pictures of events Mr. Headley has in large measure. Hence the success of his book, in spite of its exaggerations of statement, sentiment and language.

The present work evinces a merit of another kind. It is a keen, accurate, well-written production, devoid of all tumult in its style and all exaggeration in its matter, and giving close and consistent expositions of the characters, and a clear narrative of the lives, of Napoleon and his Marshals. It is evidently the work of a person who understands military operations, and conveys a large amount of knowledge which we have seen in no other single production on the subject of the wars springing out of the French Revolution. The portraits of fifteen of the marshals, in military costume, are very well executed.

The portion of the work devoted to Napoleon, about one third of the whole, is very able. Its defect consists in the leniency of its judgment on that gigantic public criminal. Napoleon was a grand example of a great man, who demonstrated, on a wide theatre of action, what can be done in this world by a colossal intellect and an iron will without any moral sense. In his disregard of humanity, and his reliance on falsehood and force, he was the architect at once of his fortune and his ruin. No man can be greatly and wisely politic who is incapable of grasping those universal sentiments which underlie all superficial selfishness in mankind, and of discerning the action of the moral laws of the universe. Without this, events cannot be read in their principles. The only defect in Napoleon's mind was a lack of moral insight, the quality of perceiving the moral character and relations of objects, and, wanting this, he must necessarily have been in the long run unsuccessful. It is curious that of all the great men which the Revolution called forth, Lafayette was almost the only one who never violated his conscience, and the only one who came out well in the end. Intellectually he was below a hundred of his contemporaries, but his instinctive sense of right pushed him blindly in the right direction, when all the sagacity and insight of the masters in intrigue and comprehensive falsehood signally failed.

Romance of the History of Louisiana. A Series of Lectures By Charles Gayarre. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

The romantic element in historical events is that which takes the strongest hold upon the imagination and sensibility; and it puts a certain degree of life into the fleshless forms of even the commonplace historian. The incidents of a nation's annals cannot be narrated in a style sufficiently dry and prosaic to prevent the soul of poetry from finding some expression, however short of the truth. It seems to us that there is much error in the common notions regarding matters of fact. Starting from the unquestionable axiom that historians should deal with facts and principles, not with fictions and sentimentalities, most people have illogically concluded that those histories are the worthiest of belief which address the understanding alone, and studiously avoid all the arts of representation. Now this is false in two respects – such histories not only giving imperfect and partial views of facts, but disabling the memory from retaining even them. Facts and events, whether we regard them singly or in their relations, can be perceived and remembered only as they are presented to the whole nature. They must be realized as well as generalized. The sensibility and imagination, as well as the understanding are to be addressed. As far as possible they should be made as real to the mind as any event which experience has stamped on the memory. History thus written, is written close to the truth of things, and conveys real knowledge. Far from departing from facts, or exaggerating them, it is the only kind of history which thoroughly comprehends them. We should never forget that the events which have occurred in the world, are expressions of the nature of man under a variety of circumstances and conditions, and that these events must be interpreted in the light of that common humanity which binds all men together. History, therefore, differs from true poetry, not so much in intensity and fullness of representation; not so much in the force, vividness and distinctness with which things are brought home to the heart and brain, as in difference of object. The historian and the poet are both bound to deal with human nature, but one gives us its actual development, the other its possible; one shows us what man has done, the other what man can do. The annalist who does not enable us to see mankind in real events, is as unnatural as the poetaster who substitutes monstrosities for men in fictitious events.

We accordingly welcome with peculiar heartiness all attempts at realizing history, by evolving its romantic element, and thus demonstrating to the languid and lazy readers of ninepenny nonsense, that the actual heroes and heroines of the world have surpassed in romantic daring the fictitious ones who swell and swagger in most novels and poems. Mr. Gayarre's work is more interesting, both as regards its characters and incidents, than Jane Eyre or James's "last," for, in truth, it requires a mind of large scope to imagine as great things as many men, in every country, have really performed. The History of Louisiana affords a rich field to the poet and romancer, who is content simply to reproduce in their original life some of its actual scenes and characters; and Mr. Gayarre has, to a considerable extent, succeeded in this difficult and delicate task. The work evinces a mind full of the subject; and if defective at all, the defect is rather in style than matter. The author evidently had two temptations to hasty composition – a copious vocabulary and complete familiarity with his subject. There is an occasional impetuosity and recklessness in his manner, and a general habit of tossing off his sentences with an air of disdainful indifference, which characterizes a large class of amateur southern writers. Such a style is often rapid from heedlessness rather than force, and animated from caprice rather than fire. The timid correctness of an elegant diction is not more remote from beauty than the defiant carelessness of a reckless one is from power; and to avoid Mr. Prettyman, it is by no means necessary to "fraternize" with Sir Forcible Feeble. Mr. Gayarre has produced so pleasant a book, and gives evidence of an ability to do so much toward familiarizing American history to the hearts and imaginations of the people, that we trust he will not only give us more books, but subject their style to a more scrupulous examination than he has the present.