The wannut logs shot sparkles out Looked warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full as rosy agin Ez th' apples she was peelin'. She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu, But hern went pity Zekle. WILLIAM W. STORY, THE poet and artist, is the son of the late Judge Story. He was born in Salem, February 19, 1819. He became a graduate of Harvard in 1838, and applied himself diligently, under his father's auspices, to the study of the law. He was a frequent contributor, in prose and verse, to the Boston Miscellany, edited by Mr. Nathan Hale, in 1842. In his legal career he published Reports of Cases argued and determined in the Circuit Court of the United States for the First Circuit, 2 vols. Boston, 1842-5, and A Treatise on the Law of Contracts not under Seal, Boston, 1844. In the last year he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, Nature and Art, an indication of the tastes which were to govern his future life. His single volume of Poems was published by Messrs. Little and Brown in 1847. They are the productions of a man of cultivated taste, and of a quick susceptibility to impressions of the ideal. In 1851 Mr. Story discharged an honorable debt to the memory of his father, in the publication of the two diligently prepared volumes of The Life and Letters of Joseph Story, a full, genial biography, written with enthusiasm and fidelity. It was at this period, or earlier, that Mr. Story turned his attention particularly to art, in which he has achieved much distinction as a sculptor. He has resided for some time in Italy. Among his works, as an artist, are an admired statue of his father, and various busts in marble, including one of his friend Mr. J. R. Lowell. He has modelled a "Shepherd Boy," "Little Red Riding Hood," and other works. Besides achieving success in these varied pursuits of law, letters, and art, Mr. Story is an accomplished musician. Streets are lonely and deserted, where the sickly lamplights glare,— And the steps of some late passer only break the silence there. Round the grim and dusky houses, gloomy shadows nestling cower, Night hath stifled life's deep humming into slumber for an hour. Sullen furnace fires are glowing over in the suburbs far, And the lamp in many a homestead shineth like an earthly star. O'er the hushed and sleeping city, in the cloudless sky above, Never-fading stars hang watching in eternal peace and love. Years and centuries have vanished, change hath come to bury change, But the starry constellations on their silent pathway range. Great Orion's starry girdle-Berenice's golden hair Ariadne's crown of splendor-Cassiopeia's shining chair; Sagittarius and Delphinus, and the clustering Pleiad train, Aquila and Ophiucus, Pegasus and Charles's Wain; Red Antares and Capella, Aldebaran's mystic light, Alruccabah and Arcturus, Sirius and Vega white; They are circling calm as ever on their sure but hidden path, As when mystic watchers saw them with the reverent eye of Faith. So unto the soul benighted, lofty stars there are, that shine Far above the mists of error, with a changeless light divine. Lofty souls of old beheld them, burning in life's shadowy night, And they still are undecaying 'mid a thousand centuries' flight. Love and Truth, whose light and blessing, every reverent heart may know, Mercy, Justice, which are pillars that support this life below; These in sorrow and in darkness, in the inmost soul Though unsolved the mighty secret, which shall thread the perfect whole, And unite the finite number unto the eternal soul, We shall one day clearly see it-for the soul a time shall come, When unfranchised and unburdened, thought shall be its only home ; And Truth's fitful intimations, glancing on our fearful sight, Shall be gathered to the circle of one mighty disk of light. EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE WAS born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, March 8, 1819. His father, Matthew Whipple, who died while the son was in his infancy, is described as possessing "strong sense, and fine social powers." One of his ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His mother, Lydia Gardiner, was of a family in Maine noted for its mental powers. She early removed to Salem, Massachusetts, where her son was educated at the English High School. At fourteen he published articles in a Salem newspaper; and at fifteen, on leaving school, became a clerk in the Bank of General Interest in that city. He was next employed, in 1837, in the office of a large broker's firm of Boston, and shortly was appointed Superintendent of the News Room of the Merchants' Exchange in State street. He had been a prominent member of the Mercantile Library Association, and one of a club of six which grew out of it, which held its sessions known as "The Attic Nights," for literary exercises and debate. There Whipple was a leader in the display of his quick intellectual fence and repartee, extensive stores of reading, and subtle and copious critical faculty. In 1840 he was introduced to the public by the delivery of a poem before the Mercantile Association, sketching the manners and satirizing the absurdities of the day, according to the standard manner of these productions, which will be hereafter sought for as valuable illustrations of the times. A critical article from his pen, on Macaulay, in the Boston Miscellany for February, 1843, attracted considerable attention. In October of that year, his lecture on the Lives of Authors was delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, and from that time he has been prominently before the public as a critic and lecturer, in the leading journals, and at the chief lyceums in the country. He has written in the North American Review, The American Review, Christian Examiner, Graham's Magazine, and other journals, extensive series of articles on the classical English authors and historical. biographical, and social topics, marked by their acute characterization and fertility of illustration. His lectures, embracing a similar range of subjects, are philosophical in their texture, marked by nice discrimination, occasionally pushing a favorite theory to the verge of paradox; and when the reasoning faculties of his audience are exhausted, relieving the discussion by frequent picked anecdote, and pointed thrusts of wit and satire. He is greatly in request as a lecturer, has probably lectured a thousand times in the cities and towns of the middle and northern states, from St. Louis to Bangor, has on numerous occasions addressed the literary societies of various Colleges, as Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst, the New York University; and in 1850 was the Fourth of July orator before the city authorities of Boston. Two collections of his writings have been published by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields,-Essays and Reviews, in two volumes, and Lectures on Subjects Connected with Literature and Life. THE GENIUS OF WASHINGTON. This illustrious man, at once the world's admira tion and enigma, we are taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong opinion to misjudge. The might of his character has taken strong hold upon the feelings of great masses of men, but in translat ing this universal sentiment into an intelligent form, the intellectual element of his wonderful nature is as much depressed as the moral element is exalted, and consequently we are apt to misunderstand both Mediocrity has a bad trick of idealizing itself in eulogising him, and drags him down to its own low level while assuming to lift him to the skies. How many times have we been told that he was not a man of genius, but a person of "excellent common sense," of "admirable judgment," of " rare virtues;" and by a constant repetition of this odious cant, we have nearly succeeded in divorcing comprehension from his sense, insight from his judgment, force from his virtues, and life from the man. Accordingly, in the panegyric of cold spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots he expires in the agonies of rant. Now the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the andacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the beginning of wisdom. He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue_can spout patriotic speeches, or some versifier, whose muse can "Hail Columbia," but not of the man who supported states on his arm, and carried America în his brain. The madcap Charles Townsend, the mo tion of whose pyrotechnic mind was like the whizz of a hundred rockets, is a man of genius; but George Washington, raised up above the level of even eminent statesmen, and with a nature moving with the still and orderly celerity of a planet round its sun,―he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of angelic dunce? What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit,-that which it recedes from, or tends towards? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country! On what principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble, the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in himself a transcendant character, indestructible as the obligations of Duty, and beautiful as her rewards? Indeed, if by the genius of action you mean will enlightened by intelligence, and intelligence ener gised by will,-if force and insight be its characteristics, and influence its test,-and, especially, if great effects suppose a cause proportionably great, that is, a vital, causative mind,-then is Washington most assuredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equalled in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius, it is true, was of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought and the objects of thought, solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare class of men,-rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons,-who have impressed their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts. Washington, in short, had that greatness of character which is the highest expression and last result of greatness of mind, for there is no method of building up character except through mind. Indeed, character like his is not built up, stone upon stone, precept upon precept, but grows up, through an actual contact of thought with things,-the assimilative mind transmuting the impalpable but potent spirit of public sentiment, and the life of visible facts, and the power of spiritual laws, into individual life and power, so that their mighty energies put on personality, as it were, and act through one centralizing human will. This process may not, if you please, make the great philosopher, or the great poet, but it does make the great man, the man in whom thought and judgment seem identical with volition, the man whose vital expression is not in words but deeds,-the man whose sublime ideas issue necessarily in sublime acts, not in sublime art. It was because Washington's character was thus composed of the inmost substance and power of facts and principles, that men instinctively felt the perfect reality of his comprehensive manhood. This reality enforced universal respect, married strength to repose, and threw into his face that commanding majesty, which made men of the speculative audacity of Jefferson, and the lucid genius of Hamilton, recognise, with unwonted meekness, his awful superiority. CHARLES WILKINS WEBBER His Was born on the 29th May, 1819, at Russelville, Kentucky. His mother, Agnes Maria Webber, was the daughter of General John Tannehill, and niece of the Hon. William Wilkins, both of Pittsburg. General Tannehill had served with distinction as an officer of the Revolution. eldest son, Wilkins Tannehill, is known as the author of a book entitled Sketches of the History of Literature from the Earliest Period to the Revival of Letters in the Fifteenth Century,* remarkable for its various reading and the spirit which animates it, and the singularity of its production at an early date west of the Alleghanies. The Preface modestly states the author's design, "Prepared during intervals of occasional leisure from the duties of an employment little congenial with literary pursuits, and without any opportunity for consulting extensive libraries, it aspires only to the character of sketches, without pretending to be a complete history. It is an attempt by a backwoodsman,' to condense and · Sketches of the History of Literature. from the Earliest Period to the Revival of Letters in the Fifteenth Century. Indocti discant, ament meminisse periti. By Wilkins Tannehill 8vo. pp. 844. Nashville: John S. Simpson, 1827. comprise within a narrow compass, the most prominent and interesting events, connected with the progress of literary and scientific improvement, from the earliest period through a long succession of ages, and amidst a great variety of circumstances.' As such it is an exceedingly creditable production. Its author was also for many years editor of the Nashville Herald, the first Clay-Whig paper ever published in Tennessee. This learned, modest, and useful man, having spent the greater portion of his life in close and unremitting literary labors, is now (in 1854) blind and rapidly declining in years. It is understood that his most valuable researches have been in the field of American antiquities. The grandfather, General Tannehill, having met with heavy reverses of fortune, died leaving his family comparatively helpless. In this strait they found a home in the house of a brother of his wife, Charles Wilkins of Lexington, a wealthy and generous gentleman, whose memory is warmly cherished by the older families of that portion of Kentucky. The children were educated with great care, and the daughters grew up to be accomplished women. After the death of their uncle they removed with their mother to Nashville, to reside with her eldest son, Wilkins Tannehill. Here the eldest daughter married, and on her removing to the new town of Hopkinsville, Ky., was accompanied by her young sister Agnes, who became the wife of a physician from North Kentucky, Doctor Augustine Web ber. Of this marriage C. W. Webber was the second child, and first son. For forty years past Dr. Webber has stood prominent in his profession in South Kentucky, and has been noted as an intelligent, liberal, and devoted churchman and Whig. It is, however, to his mother, a lady of great beauty of character, that C. W. Webber is most indebted for his early tastes. The education which her son received as the companion of her artistic excursions, for she possessed a natural genius for art, into the natural world, determined in a great measure the character of his future pursuits. His early life, to his nineteenth year, was spent in miscellaneous study and the sports of the field, when, after the death of his mother, we find him wandering upon the troubled frontier of Texas. He soon became associated with the celebrated Colonel Jack Hays, Major Chevalier, Fitzgerald, &c., whose names are noted as forming the nucleus around which the famous Ranger Organization was constituted. After several years spent here, in singular adventures-many of which have been given to the world in his earlier books, Old Hicks the Guide, Shot in the Eye, and Gold Mines of the Gila-he returned to his family in Kentucky. He now further prosecuted his study of medicine, upon which he had originally entered with the design of making it his profes sion. Becoming, however, deeply interested in controversial matters during a period of strong religious excitement which prevailed throughout the whole country, he entered the Princeton Theological Seminary as a candidate for the ministry. He, however, remained there but a short time. From this time, his pen was to be his sole dependence. He had already tried its point in an article which appeared in the Nassau Monthly, which was edited by a committee of students. This paper was called "Imagination, and the Soul," and had attracted considerable attention both in the College and in the Seminary. Arrived in New York, his first night was spent at "Minnie's Land," the residence of Audubon, whose acquaintance he had previously formed during the last Rocky Mountain tour of the old Naturalist, for whose character, from a similarity of tastes, he had nourished a most enthusiastic admiration. He listened to the counsel of the venerable sage with affectionate respect. Among other things, Audubon urged upon him to dedicate the best years of his life to the study of the natural history of South America, which he only regretted the want of years to grapple with. Finding himself at New York utterly without acquaintances who could aid him, he resolved upon introducing himself, and a manuscript which he had prepared, to Mr. Bryant the poet, for whom he had conceived from his writings a high personal admiration, which was fully confirmed by his interview. He found Mr. Bryant at the office of the Evening Post; the poet smiled upon his eager enthusiasm, a self-confidence which had in it a touch of despair, and kept his manuscript for perusal. The result, the next day, was a letter of introduction to Winchester the publisher, who immediately engaged from the young writer a series of papers on "Texan Adventure" to be published in his flourishing newspaper, the New World. On the failure of Winchester in his bold but rash conflict with the Harpers, Mr. Webber was again thrown out of employment, but was soon engaged in writing a number of sketches and other papers for the Democratic Review. The most important of these was called Instinct, Reason, and Imagination, and published under the sobriquet of C. Wilkens Eimi. About this time, the story of the Shot in the Eye, one of the best known of his productions, was written. The manuscript was delivered to Mr. O'Sullivan, and after being in his possession for several months, was misplaced and lost sight of by him, and, after a long search, supposed to be irrecoverably lost. The story was then re-written for the Whig Review, and appeared in its second number. But having been unexpectedly found by Mr. O'Sullivan, it was published simultaneously in the Democratic Review, without the knowledge of Mr. Webber. His connexion with the Whig Review as associate editor and joint proprietor, continued for over two years, in which time the magazine ran up to an unprecedented circulation for one of its class. The Shot in the Eye, Charles Winterfield Papers, Adventures upon the Frontiers of Texas and Mexico, with a long paper on Hawthorne, are the principal articles by him which will be remembered by the earlier readers of the Review, although a great amount of critical and other miscellaneous matter was comprised within the sum of his editorial labors. About this time, Mr. Webber was a contributor Mr. Webber's next enterprise was one on a mammoth scale, projected by him in connexion with the two sons of John J. Audubon, the orni thologist. The design was to issue a magnificent monthly of large size, to be illustrated in each number by a splendid copperplate colored engraving, taken from a series of unpublished pictures by the elder Audubon, and to be edited by Mr. Webber. Only the first number was ever completed, and it was never published, owing to the many discouragements growing out of the protracted illness of John Woodhouse Audubon, and his immediate departure, while convalescing, with a view to the permanent restoration of his health, by overland travel to California. The immense expense which it was found would attend the prosecution of the work had also its effect in deterring its issue. Among the contributors to this first number were Hawthorne, Whipple, Headley, Street, Constable, Wallace, &c. The leading paper, Eagles and Art, was by Mr. Webber. In the meantime he continued to write occasionally for the Democratic Review, Graham's Magazine, &c. In March, 1849, simultaneously with the discovery of gold in California, appeared the Gold Mines of the Gila, all but a few concluding chapters of which he had written several years previously. This work was considered by the author rather as a voluminous prospectus of an enterprise of exploration to the gold region, once attempted during his Texan experiences, and now again projected in the Centralia Exploring Expedition, than as a formal book. To the chivalrous appeal, dedicated to the ladies of America, and addressed to its young men for their cooperation in the dangerous effort to resolve by examination the mystery of the unknown region lying between the river Gila and the Colorado of the West, there was a ready response. The required number of young men from all parts of the country had expressed their readiness to participate in the enterprise, under the leadership of Mr. Webber. Preparations were very far advanced, and the journey to New Orleans commenced, when, on arriving at Washington, he was met by the news of the loss of all the horses of the expedition, which had been collected at Corpus Christi to await their arrival. The Camanches carried off every animal, and, as they had been collected from the mountains at great trouble and as peculiarly adapted for this service, the loss proved irretrievable. The news of the ravages of the cholera along the whole line of the South-western border completed the defeat of the projected rendezvous. Mr. Webber instantly commenced a new movement, by which he hoped to effect this purpose. The experiences of this year of the utter in-ufficiency of the means of transportation across the great desert to the gold regions, as limited to the horse, ox, and mule, of the country, offered an opening for urging upon the government the project of employing the African and Asiatic camel for such purposes. The vast endurance, capacity for burden, and speed, together with the singular frugality of this animal, seemed to him to indicate its introduction as the great deside ratum of service in the South-west. This object has been assiduously pursued by Mr. Webber since 1849, and it may be mentioned as an instance of his perseverance, that he succeeded in obtaining from the last legislature of New York a charter for the organization of a camel company, and that the Secretary of War has warmly recommended the project to Congress in an official report. In the meantime, the literary labors of Mr. Webber have by no means been suspended. His marriage, which occurred in Boston in 1849, had furnished him with an artistic collaborator in his wife. With her assistance, as the artist of many of its abundant illustrations, the first volume of The Hunter Naturalist was completed, and published in the fall of 1851 by Lippincott, Grambo & Co. The prosecution of this work, to be continued through a series of volumes, was impeded by the author's serious illness, in spite of which, however, he succeeded in getting out, during the year 1852, two new books-Spiritual Vampirism, in which the heretical isms of the day are made the subject of dramatic and withering exposure, and Tales of the Southern Border, both of which were published by Lippincott & Co. In the fall of 1853 the second volume of the Hunter Naturalist- Wild Scenes and Song Birds -appeared from the press of G. P. Putnam & Co. Of this Mrs. Webber was also the Natural History illustrator. Mr. Webber's style is full, rapid, and impulsive, combining a healthy sense of animal life and outof-door sensation, with inner poetical reflection. His narrative is borne along no less by his mental enthusiasm than by the lively action of its stirring Western themes. As a critic, many of his papers have shown a subtle perception with a glowing reproduction of the genius of his author. A NIGHT HUNT IN KENTUCKY-FROM WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. ing of the trees!-There they are! Negroes of all Now the scene has burst upon us through an opendegrees, size, and age, and of dogs Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, All are there, in one conglomerate of active, noisy confusion. When indications of the hurried approach of our company are perceived, a great accession to the hubbub is consequential. Old Sambo sounds a shriller note upon his horn, the dogs rise from independent howls to a simultaneous yell, and along with all the young half-naked darkies rush to meet us. The women come to the doors with their blazing lamps lifted above their heads, that they may get a look at the "young masters," and we, shouting with excitement, and blinded by the light, plunge stumbling through the meeting current of dogs and young negroes, into the midst of the gathering party. Here we are suddenly arrested by a sort of awe as we find ourselves in the presence of old Sambo. The young dogs leap upon us with their dirty fore-paws, but we merely push aside their caresses, for old Sambo and his old dog Bose are the two centres of our admiration and interest. Old Sambo is the "Mighty Hunter before"-the moon! of all that region. He is seamed and scarred with the pitiless siege of sixty winters! Upon all matters appertaining to such hunts, his word is" law," while the tongue" of his favorite and ancient friend Bose is recognised as "gospel." In our young imaginations, the two are respectfully identified. Old Sambo, with his blanket "roundabout"-his cow's-horn trumpet slung about his shoulders by a tow string-his bare head, with its greyish fleece of wool-the broad grin of complacency, showing his yet sound white teeth-and rolling the whites of his eyes benignantly over the turmoil of the scenewas to us the higher prototype of Bose. He, with the proper slowness of dignity, accepts the greet of our patting caresses, with a formal wagging of the tail, which seems to say-" O, I am used to this!" while, when the young dogs leap upon him with obstreperous fawnings, he will correct them into propriety with stately snarling. They knew him for their leader!-they should be more respectful! Now old Sambo becomes patronizing to us, as is necessary and proper in our new relations! From his official position of commander-in-chief, he soon reduces the chaos around us into something like subjection, and then in a little time comes forth the form of our night's march. A few stout young men who have obeyed his summons have gathered around him from the different huts of the Quarter-some with axes, and others with torches of pine and bark. The dogs become more restless, and we more excited, as these indices of immediate action appear. Now, with a long blast from the cow's horn of Sambo, and a deafening clamor of all sizes, high and low-from men, women, children, and dogs, we take up the line of march for the woods. Sambo leads, of course. We are soon trailing after him in single file, led by the glimmer of the torches far ahead. Now the open ground of the plantation has been passed, and as we approach the deep gloom of the bordering forest |