JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. [Born 1779.] Mr. PAULDING is known by his numerous novels and other prose writings, much better than by his poetry; yet his early contributions to our poetical literature, if they do not bear witness that he possesses, in an eminent degree, "the vision and the faculty divine," are creditable for their patriotic spirit and moral purity. He was born in the town of Pawling,-the original mode of spelling his name,-in Duchess county, New York, on the 22d of August, 1779, and is descended from an old and honourable family, of Dutch extraction. His earliest literary productions were the papers entitled "Salmagundi," the first series of which, in two volumes, were written in conjunction with WASHINGTON IRVING, in 1807. These were succeeded, in the next thirty years, by the following works, in the order in which they are named: John Bull and Brother Jonathan, in one volume; The Lay of a Scotch Fiddle, a satirical poem, in one volume; The United States and England, in one volume; Second Series of Salmagundi, in two ODE TO JAMESTOWN. OLD cradle of an infant world, Her gallant wing and soar'd away; All hail! thou birth-place of the glowing west, What solemn recollections throng, What touching visions rise, As, wandering these old stones among, I backward turn mine eyes, And see the shadows of the dead flit round, The wonders of an age combined, In one short moment memory supplies; As time's dark curtains rise. The volume of a hundred buried years, I hear the angry ocean rave, As o'er the drowned earth 't was hurl'd, I see a train of exiles stand, Amid the desert, desolate, The fathers of my native land, The daring pioneers of fate, Who braved the perils of the sea and earth, volumes; Letters from the South, in two volumes; The Backwoodsman, a poem, in one volume; Koningsmarke, or Old Times in the New World, a novel, in two volumes; John Bull in America, in one volume; Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham, in one volume; The Traveller's Guide, or New Pilgrim's Progress, in one volume; The Dutchman's Fireside, in two volumes; Westward Ho! in two volumes; Slavery in the United States, in one volume; Life of Washington, in two volumes; The Book of St. Nicholas, in one volume; and Tales, Fables, and Allegories, originally published in various periodicals, in three volumes. Beside these, and some less pretensive works, he has written much in the gazettes on political and other questions agitated in his time. Mr. PAULDING has held various honourable offices in his native state; and in the summer of 1838, he was appointed, by President VAN BUREN, Secretary of the Navy. He continued to be a member of the cabinet until the close of Mr. VAN BUREN's administration, in 1841. I see the sovereign Indian range His woodland empire, free as air; I see the gloomy forest change, And, where the red man chased the bounding deer, I see the haughty warrior gaze While he, the monarch of the boundless wood, A moment, and the pageant's gone; And the proud wood-king, who their arts disdain'd, The forest reels beneath the stroke Of sturdy woodman's axe; The earth receives the white man's yoke, And pays her willing tax Of fruits, and flowers, and golden harvest fields, Then growing hamlets rear their heads, Till what was once a world of savage strife, Empire to empire swift succeeds, Each happy, great, and free; One empires still another breeds, A giant progeny, Destined their daring race to run, Then, as I turn my thoughts to trace The fount whence these rich waters sprung, I glance towards this lonely place, And find it, these rude stones among. Here rest the sires of millions, sleeping round, The Argonauts, the golden fleece that found. Their names have been forgotten long; The stone, but not a word, remains; Yet this sublime obscurity, to me As bright a crown as e'er was worn, No one that inspiration drinks; No one that loves his native land; The mighty shade now hovers round Of HIM whose strange, yet bright career, In letters that no time shall sere; The angel of the woodland shade, The miracle of God's own hand, Who join'd man's heart to woman's softest grace, Sister of charity and love, Whose life-blood was soft Pity's tide, Dear goddess of the sylvan grove, Flower of the forest, nature's pride, Jamestown, and Plymouth's hallow'd rock I care not who my themes may mock, I envy not the brute who here can stand, And if the recreant crawl her earth, He is a bastard, if he dare to mock Old Jamestown's shrine, or Plymouth's famous rock. PASSAGE DOWN THE OHIO.* As down Ohio's ever ebbing tide, Sent forth blithe labour's homely, rustic song; "Twas evening now: the hour of toil was o'er, EVENING. "T WAS sunset's hallow'd time--and such an eve This, and the two following extracts, are from the "Backwoodsman." Others, like vessels gilt with burnish'd gold, The sparkling meadow's green and fragrant bound, CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. As look'd the traveller for the world below, The lively morning breeze began to blow; The magic curtain roll'd in mists away, And a gay landscape smiled upon the day. As light the fleeting vapours upward glide, Like sheeted spectres on the mountain side, New objects open to his wondering view Of various form, and combinations new. A rocky precipice, a waving wood, Deep, winding dell, and foaming mountain flood, Each after each, with coy and sweet delay, Broke on his sight, as at young dawn of day, Bounded afar by peak aspiring bold, Like giant capp'd with helm of burnish'd gold. So when the wandering grandsire of our race On Ararat had found a resting-place, At first a shoreless ocean met his eye, Mingling on every side with one blue sky; But as the waters, every passing day, Sunk in the earth or roll'd in mists away, Gradual, the lofty hills, like islands, peep From the rough bosom of the boundless deep, Then the round hillocks, and the meadows green, Each after each, in freshen'd bloom are seen, Till, at the last, a fair and finish'd whole Combined to win the gazing patriarch's soul. Yet, oft he look'd, I ween, with anxious eye, In lingering hope somewhere, perchance, to spy, Within the silent world, some living thing, A charnel-house, where all the human race THE OLD MAN'S CAROUSAL. DRINK! drink! to whom shall we drink? Go seek them in heaven, for there they abide. A bumper, my boys! to a gray-headed pair, On the head of their son, without tear, sigh, or frown! Would you know whom I drink to go seek mid the dead, You will find both their names on the stone at their head. And here's-but, alas! the good wine is no more, With a health to our dead, since we've no living friends. WASHINGTON ALLSTON. [Born, 1779. Died, 1843.] MR. ALLSTON was born in South Carolina, of a family which has contributed some eminent names to our annals, though none that sheds more lustre upon the parent stock than his own. When very young, by the advice of physicians, he was sent to Newport, Rhode Island, where he remained until he entered Harvard College in 1796. In his boyhood he delighted to listen to the wild tales and traditions of the negroes upon his father's plantation; and while preparing for college, and after his removal to Cambridge, no books gave him so much pleasure as the most marvellous and terrible creations of the imagination. At Newport he became acquainted with MALBONE, the painter, and was thus, perhaps, led to the choice of his profession. He began to paint in oil before he went to Cambridge, and while there divided his attention between his pencil and his books. Upon being graduated he returned to South Carolina, to make arrangements for prosecuting his studies in Eu rope. He had friends who offered to assist him with money, and one of them, a Scottish gentleman named BOWMAN, who had seen and admired a head which he had painted of Peter hearing the cock crow, pressed him to accept an annuity of one hundred pounds while he should remain abroad; but he declined it, having already sold his paternal estate for a sum sufficient to defray his lookedfor expenses; and, with his friend MALBONE, embarked for England in the summer of 1801. Soon after his arrival in London, he became a student of the Royal Academy, then under the presidency of our countryman, WEST, with whom he contracted an intimate and lasting friendship. His abilities as an artist, brilliant conversation, and gentlemanly manners, made him a welcome guest at the houses of the great painters of the time; and within a year from the beginning of his residence in London, he was a successful exhibitor at Somerset House, and a general favourite with the most distinguished members of his profession. In 1804, having been three years in England, he accompanied JOHN VANDERLYN to Paris. After passing a few months in that capital, he proceeded to Italy, where he remained four years. Among his fellow-students and intimate associates here, were VANDERLYN and the Danish sculptor THORWALDSEN. Another friend with whom he now became acquainted, was COLERIDGE. In one of his letters he says: "To no other man do I owe so much, intellectually, as to Mr. COLERIDGE, with whom I became acquainted in Rome, and who has honoured me with his friendship for more than five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome the silent city; but I never could think of it as such, while with him; for meet him when or where I would, the fountain of his mind was never dry, but, like the far-reaching aqueducts that once supplied this mistress of the world, its living stream seemed specially to flow for every classic ruin over which we wandered. And when I recall some of our walks under the pines of the villa Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I had once listened to PLATO in the groves of the Academy." In 1809 ALLSTON returned to America, and was soon after married at Boston to a sister of Dr. CHANNING. In 1811 he went a second time to England. His reputation as a painter was now well established, and he gained by his picture of the "Dead Man raised by the Bones of Elisha" a prize of two hundred guineas, at the British Institution, where the first artists in the world were his competitors. A long and dangerous illness succeeded his return to London, and he removed to the village of Clifton, where he wrote "The Sylphs of the Seasons," and some of the other poems included in a volume which he published in 1813. Within two weeks after the renewal of his residence in the metropolis, in the last-mentioned year, his wife died, very suddenly; and the event, inducing the deepest depression and melancholy, caused a temporary suspension of his labours. In 1818 he accompanied LESLIE to Paris, and in the autumn of the following year came back to America, having been previously elected an associate of the English Royal Academy. In 1830 he married a sister of RICHARD H. DANA, and the remainder of his life was tranquilly passed at Cambridgeport, near Boston, where he was surrounded by warm and genial friends, in assiduous devotion to his art. He died very suddenly, on the night of the eighth of July, 1843, As a painter ALLSTON had no superior, perhaps not an equal, in his age. He differed from his contemporaries, as he said of MONALDI, "no less in kind than in degree. If he held any thing in common with others, it was with those of ages past, with the mighty dead of the fifteenth cen tury. From them he had learned the language of his art, but his thoughts, and their turn of expres sion, were his own." Among his principal works are "The Dead Man restored to Life by Elisha;" the "Angel liberating Peter from Prison;" "Jacob's Dream;" «Elijah in the Desert;" the "Trium phant Song of Miriam ;" «The Angel Uriel in the Sun;" "Saul and the Witch of Endor;" "Spalatro's Vision of the bloody Hand;" «Gabriel setting the Guard of the Heavenly Host;" « Anne Page and Slender;" "Rosalie;"«Donna Marcia in the Robber's Cave;" and "Belshazzar's Feast, or the This work he subsequently sold to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, for thirty-five hundred dollars. Handwriting on the Wall." The last work, upon Besides the volume of poems already mentioned, and many short pieces which have since been given to the public, Mr. ALLSTON was the author of "MONALDI," a story of extraordinary power and interest, in which he displays a deep sensibility to beauty, and philosophic knowledge of human passion. He wrote also a series of discourses on art, and various essays and poems, which are unpublished. Although ALLSTON owed his chief celebrity to his paintings, which will preserve for his name a place in the list of the greatest artists of all the nations and ages, his literary works alone would have given him a high rank among men of genius. A great painter, indeed, is of necessity a poet, though he may lack the power to express fittingly his conceptions in language. ALLSTON had in remarkable perfection all the faculties required for either art The Sylphs of the Seasons," his longest poem, in which he describes the scenery 66 of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, and the effects of each season on the mind, show that he regarded nature with a curious eye, and had power to exhibit her beauties with wonderful distinctness and fidelity. The Two Painters" is an admirable satire, intended to ridicule attempts to reach perfection in one excellency in the art of painting, to the neglect of every other; the "Paint King" is a singularly wild, imaginative story; and nearly all his minor poems are strikingly original and beautiful. It was in his paintings, however, that the power and religious grandeur of his imagination were most strongly developed. When this work was originally published, I dedicated it to Mr. ALLSTON, with whom I had the happiness to be personally acquainted, addressing him as "the eldest of the living poets, and the most illustrious of the painters" of our country. I retain the dedication in this edition, as an expression of the admiration and reverence in which I, with all who knew him, continue to hold his genius and character. www THE PAINT KING. FAIR Ellen was long the delight of the young, fet cold was the maid; and though legions advanced, And languish'd, and ogled, protested and danced, From object to object still, still would she veer, But rather than sit like a statue so still When the rain made her mansion a pound, From the tiles of the roof to the ground. Ah, what can he do," said the languishing maid, And she knelt to the goddess of secrets and pray'd, Oh, beautiful picture!" the fair Ellen cried, When the youth, looking back, met her eye. Then take it, I pray you, perhaps 't will beguile "T was a youth o'er the form of a statue inclined, "T was the tale of the sculptor Pygmalion of old; "Ah, couldst thou but lift from that marble so cold, She said: when, behold, from the canvas arose As, frowning, he thunder'd « I am the PAINT KING! |