IV. But I shall see the day-it will come before I die I shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an age-dimmed eye;- As yonder fountain leaps away from the darkness of the ground; Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea." overcome. There are also several sonnets-or rather, as the author himself avows-short poems in fourteen lines, not fashioned upon the strict Italian model. That model, consecrated as it has been by all the grandeur and energy, as well as the beauty of genius-is after all, perhaps, essentially barbarous. Yet we candidly confess our decided partiality for it. The form, besides the interest which it derives from accidental association, has an intrinsic one of its own-that of great difficulty But more than any other kind of poetry, it abhors mediocrity. The general reason assigned by Horace in the well known dict, applies to it more strongly than to any other kind of poetry. It is artificial, and therefore, frigid, unless it be redeemed by surpassing excellence. It is in another sense artificial, and, therefore, admits of being done after a fashion, according to rule, and by mere mechanical industry. The difficulty consists not in executing a sonnet, but a fine sonnet, and a failure in it affects one with something like the same sensation of dismal disgust inspired by the grimace and tumblings of the clown in his awkward imitations of Harlequin. We love Petrach and his sonnets-bad as the taste of many of them is and all the world has been awakened by those of Milton and Filicaja. Mr. Bryant's, besides their wanting the legitimate form, are not master-pieces in other respects. Still they are very good. We submit as specimens the two following-the first is in an animated strain; but it wants power. "SONNET-WILLIAM TELL Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee, The everlasting creed of Liberty. That creed is written on the untrampled snow, Thundered by torrents which no power can hold, Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught, And to thy brief captivity was brought A vision of thy Switzerland unbound. The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee The other is very sweet and balmy, like the breathing of our own south-wind in a serene October day. Aye, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay In the gay woods and in the golden air, Like to a good old age released from care, Journeying, in long serenity, away. In such a bright, late quiet, would that I Might wear out life like the, 'mid bowers and brooks, And music of kind voices ever nigh; And when my last sand twinkled in the glass, There are three or four pieces of a livelier mood than the rest, that pleasingly diversify the character of this little volume. They are not remarkable for a very high degree of vis comica, but their gay and ironical good humour makes them agreeable. The meditation "On Rhode-Island Coal" is a piece of philosophy embodying such reflections as one is apt to fall into when poring over the cheerful light of a grate, amid the pitiless howlings of a northern winter. There are, also, some excellent lines of the same character on certain "gay creatures of the element" that we would gladly extract, if we had not been already quite unconscionable in our use of Mr. Bryant's labours. As it is, we can only remark that he deserves to be a favourite with the belles-the flowersarrayed in more than the glory of Solomon-that blossom forth in the sunshine of Broadway-and that he ought to be sent into coventry, for life, by the race of musquitoes for treating their terrific trump and sanguinary warfare, as matters of poetry, and even of burlesque. To one living in the vapours of a marshy country within ten degrees of the tropic, this joke appears as strange as a comedy on the cholera. Of the more serious pieces, we ought to mention that the "Hymn of the Waldenses" is very good, but "The Hurri cane" strikes us as a failure. We do not think poems of that sort the fort of Mr. Bryant. Upon the whole, we have great pleasure in strongly recommending this excellent little volume to the attention and patronage of the public. Decided poetical merit, is a great desideratum, in the social character of our country. A most exalted merit it is-precious in itself, still more precious as an index of what is felt and thought by a people, and as tending to foster and to warm into enthusiasm, all the sentiments that do most honour to human nature. In this point of view, Mr. Bryant deserves well of his country-and if "one great and kindling thought," as Dr. Channing sublimely expresses it, may awaken the minds of men to virtue and to glory, and live when thrones are crumbled, and those who sat upon them forgotten, let no one rate that service low. ART. VII.-The History of England. By the Right Hon. Sir JAMES MCINTOSH, M. P. Vols. 1, 2. Philadelphia. 1830. THE subject, of which the present article is to treat, is an august nation. In the statistics of the world, no people count larger items of power than England; none rivals her wealth, and in the perfection to which she has brought the arts of life she is the wonder and the benefactress of all. There are other titles, more venerable far, to exalt her in all eyes: these were nobly indicated by Wordsworth in 1802, when he mourned for the tardy arising within her of a spirit commensurate with the great part of liberatress of the world, which he predicted she was to play. He fondly complained that altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower If each single word of this complaint be well meditated, it opens all the characteristic glories of his country. To America, however, this power, thus august and venerable in herself, may stand in a peculiar relation. All men know the intimate intellectual affiliation which has hitherto connected America with her. For ourselves, we have two often felt within us the impulse of doubts touching this interesting relation, to suppose its consideration wholly indifferent to others. We intend to examine it, therefore, in a two-fold view. First, we shall endeavour to put a philosophic estimate on some of those opinions and sentimens, which are the main elements of the English civilization. By the civilization of a nation, we desire here to express the sum of those results which constitute the character, intellectual and moral, public and domestic of that nation. Suppose a Linnæus of the intellect wished to impersonate all the characteristics distinctive of the European man, from the Asiatic, the African, the American: he would, in the eclectic process of getting materials, find some traits peculiar to single nations of Europe, some so much more strongly pronounced in one than in the rest, as almost to deserve to be called peculiar, and others common to them all as Europeans. Having finished his work he would exult that he had embodied the noblest specimen of all intellectual and moral physiology. He would be at no loss to mark to which nation belongs the glory of any one of his endowments, nor which endowment it is that contributes most to make him the lord of creation. We beg to divine, in our humble way, what he would have borrowed from the homo sapiens Britannus, and how far he would consider that the European man, (who has confessedly traced nature "up to the sharp peak of her sublimest elevation,") owes his supremacy to his British blood. subjoin, however, that if it be true as Justinian in the first preface to the Pandects, $5th, says: "artes cum etsi vilissimæ sint, omnes tamen infinitæ sunt,' more true it is, that to take the height and depth of a nation's entire reason, is indeed, an infinite work. We, therefore, shall only adventure to throw out some hints on a small number of points in our topic. Secondly, we shall endeavour to weigh the influence which the civilization of England is having on us, for good or ill. We I. The philosophical mind of Hegel has divided the past history of civilization into four Missions, the Oriental, the Greek, the Roman, and the Teutonic. But we think it too vague to embrace all modern civilization under the name Teutonic: there are distinct lines enough in that of Europe at present to admit of a partition, and we avail ourselves of the hint to ask what seems to have been the mission of England in the great toil? In pondering on this inquiry there figures itself to the respectful imagination, something like a solemn vision of the Peers of the Fairy Queen, issuing forth on great and definite vocations, to reclaim a world in barbarism to the cause of truth, honour and justice. There are certain domestic sentiments, which we might almost admit are emphatically English, which the world could as ill spare as any the richest jewels of modern life: these hardly require enumeration. The free inquiring spirit, in matters of religious faith, also might be set down as theirs emphatically, had not Protestant Germany equalled it. Then again, beyond all doubt, there is much about Shakespear's psychology and manner that is essentially English-we should be glad to have time and sagacity enough to develope this and add it to our summary. In no other great light of her literature might it be very profitable to search for the nationalisms. Bacon might have been D'Aguesseau, or Newton Kepler, or Gibbon Bayle, with only the alteration of more or less talent and learning. But we will not detain the reader by an inadequate sketch of these general titles. We love to admit that in the matter of civil liberty, she was blessed with the destiny of maintaining in practice, more or less perfect, many of the principal rights of man. The representation of the Commons, the voting the supplies, freedom of the press from previous censorship, the unlawfulness of arbitrary imprisonment, the trial of accused persons and of differences about meum and tuum conducted viva voce, not before Prætorian Judges merely, but selecti judices of the vicinage; of these great rights was she the depositary, and with more or less vestal purity did she preserve them. What, though the civilians always had held that "domus tutissimum cuique refugium atque receptaculum sit?" (1. 18 ff. de in jus. voc.)-England only had truly made every man's house his castle. What, though Ulpian could write, and Tribonian sanction under Justinian, the formal declaration that all men are by nature free, and by nature equal? Yet no where but in England was there equality before the law, and true impartiality in the courts. What, though it is written in letters of gold in the German publicists that "the right of voting taxes is as old on the German soil, as the polity of the States itself," nay, that in the old Electorate of Hanover, not to mention the liberal States bordering on France, this right anciently existed in the Provincial Estates, and was still in practice in the Austrian Tyrol up to 1815? Yet still, England, it was, of all the monarchies, who alone kept the right inviolate, that she might serve as a safe model to so many kingdoms whose charters secure that right to their subjects since the General Peace. What |