the Burial of Sir John Moore," and divine blood. The riot of imagination, Christopher Smart's "David." Now, "The the pomp of words, the melody of numDevil's Dream" has both the latter recom- bers, are exchanged for a breathless air, mendations. It is altogether unlike any a severe reserve, a prosaic literality, which other poem ever written; and it is pos- fall with the precision and power of stasessed, besides, of exalted merit. Every-tuary upon the soul. The tale is told, as it thing is in intense keeping. Its large vo- might have been, by one to his fellow standlume of verse-its rugged rhythm-the ing under the darkness which, above the impenetrable obscurities which, like jet- cross, blotted out the universe! Thus, in black ornaments, are wreathed around it- guttural pantings, in rude interjections, its severe and awful spirit-its unearthly in sounds straggling and simple, is the diction-the throes and labours of its powerful, strange, and most melting story execution-the daring homeliness of its disclosed. We admire, especially, the imagery, and the whole conception of the picture of the fiend-possessed, into the character of its hero, are terribly true to sad secrets of whose very soul the poet each other, and entitle it to rank with seems privileged to pierce; and surely any one book of the "Inferno." As in never was there finer subject for idealising that great poem, too, beauty, like a vein verse than those ancient demoniacs, with of vegetation led along the margin of the their wild locks floating in the wind of eternal pit, and down its very sides, wins hell, "tormented before the time," all luits irresistible way into the centre of the minous with unearthly light, pacing the horror. tombs, or plunging into the lake of How would honest Jean Paul, that Sodom, or crunching the salt ashes by its dear dreamer of all gorgeous and grotesque sides, or driven away, away, on the breath chimeras, have rejoiced over this Bowden of their dreadful inmates, or crying to the emulation of his Baireuth inspirations! | rocks to cover them; or, in the intervals He would have dreamed it over again, of their bondage, waiting with breathless with variations all his own, rays shooting hearts and bloodshot staring eyne for the still farther and more daringly into the coming of their tormentors; or wallowing abysses of night. Yet we doubt if even and foaming in the pangs of their exorhe could have compressed so much mystic cism; or, in a milder light, afterwards, meaning into the same compass-have clothed and in their right mind, at the feet struck off, from the mint of his imagina- of their deliverer. All this Aird has intion, an infernal medal so thickly inscribed. cluded in the one figure of Herman, whose And it is clear that the Scotchman has young, fresh, joyous hunter soul is supnot copied from the German. The resem- planted by a demon, till breathed back by blances are produced by a kindred genius, Jesus. We like, too, the modesty with the peculiarity of which, perhaps, is, that which the poet has abstained from a its wing loves, in serious sport, to dip into subject so tempting to the rash and reck the darkness which envelops the left side less as the Crucifixion. Feeling that of Mirza's ocean of eternity. Both are this is a subject too "solemn for fiction, birds of the tempest, but it is that storm too majestic for ornament"-a scene which beats upon the shore which is "heaped with the damned like pebbles." Both "affect the shade;" but it is of the worm that dieth not, and eternal dark

ness.

The "Demoniac" is distinguished by a bare and nervous simplicity, which sorts well with the scene and the time of the story-the scene being Judea; the time, when it was being consecrated by the tread of blessed feet and the baptism of

across which a curtain should be sacredly stretched-he stands, like Peter, "afar off." His genius, he feels, may disport itself upon the breakers of the burning lake, but here must furl its plume of fire. And yet how impressive his representation, and how worthy of a great artist! He watches the tragedy of the universe, through the eyes of Herman's heart-sick mother, who, disappointed in her search for Christ to cure her son, has entered a

wood in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, or walking in the palace of Babylon; or when "a horror of great darkness falls, driven from men, with dew for his perthe quenched day is done;" and through fumes, grass for his delicate bread, feathers that darkness sounds first a dull deep instead of hairs, claws digging into the shock, as of some far-fallen pile of ages, dust, instead of nails dyed in henna; or, and then "steps, as if shod with thunder,” in fine, a meek worshipper of Him who are heard amid the gloom; and then out-removeth kings-he furnishes scope the springs from that brief eclipse the day, most abundant for artistic treatment, and with livelier, fresher beam, as if from the for more than Mr Aird has accomplished. womb of the morning; and seems to ray He has written neither a tragedy nor an out, even to her half-taught soul, the in- epic, but the most finished of all his telligence that the burden is borne, the poems; a firm, nervous, and manly narbattle won, the tragedy over, and the rative; with fewer prominent beauties, or great Sufferer away. glaring defects, than some of his other We like this looking at the Cross, as works. We like in it the strong simmen do to the sun, through the half-shut plicity of the diction; the wild energy of eye. It contrasts well with the impudent parts of the dialogue; the precision and familiarities of French preachers, and of pomp of some individual descriptions; the not a few modern poets. It reminds us conception of Ezekiel, turning from men of the turning aside from this great sight to mountains, as more congenial compa→ of Milton himself, who, not choosing to nions, and continuing, even in the wilderlook at it, even as Aird does, through the ness, very jealous for the Lord God of double darkness of a forest and a quench- Hosts, and of Cyra, sweetest daughter of ed sun, has, in his "Paradise Regained," Israel. She, indeed, is one of the finest avoided the subject altogether. The close of female natures. Her love is wonderof the poem, again, is just the calm of ful, passing that of women; but the soul the mildest of sunsets, transferred to the of Deborah mounts often to her wild eyes. page, which softly pictures the evening Her lips have never been kissed but by life of the heroine, "setting in the bosom "a prophetess' fire." Every inch a woman of her God;" and is, we know, almost the-nay, a child-the hand of God is on her only passage in all his works which satis- head; and it is no secular fury which fies the fastidious taste of the author.

slumbers in those fairy fingers, and amid A nobler subject than Nebuchadnezzar, the strings of that lightsome lyre, by for tragedy or epic, Scripture does not fur- which she soothes the soul of the imnish. There is an oriental gusto about perial maniac. That maniac himself, perall he does, a passionate pomp, a wild haps, is not drawn in such vivid and vein of poetry about him, which invest startling colours as we should have liked. him, from first to last, with a dream-like He is too tame, too submissive; lacks the magnificence. Whether we see him, that touch of insane grandeur which would patient Apollyon! growing grey with his have befitted his character-should have soldiers before the indomitable Tyre- been made to fight his battles o'er again in nursing in his breast, the while, a deadly the desert, to have taken a rock for the revenge for his deferred hopes; or riding platform of his palace-a pool for the into the affronted temple of Jehovah; or sea which laved imperial Tyre-and have rising, in affright, from his dream of the tossed from his white lips the eloquence dreadful Image, and the more dreadful of a noble despair. Nor do we much Stone that smote it to dust; or rearing, admire the conception or execution of the in mim cry of his vision, the Image on the underplot of the piece-the attempt on plains of Dura; or, looking into the burn- the king's life. It violates probability; ing fiery furnace, and seeing four men who durst have sought a life protected walking therein; or listening again, in by the inviolate sacredness of madness? the land of dream, to the fell cry, "Hew circled in by the curse of the Eternal? down the tree, and cut off his branches;" | Thank God, bad as human nature is,

that curse has generally been a hedge what tamely told; and, as you read, the round its victim, a hedge nearly as strong fear will not flee, "Has his strength gone as his blessing. Few have sought to out from him? has he become weak as "break those whom God hath bowed other men?" before." It distracts, too, the tissue and interest of the tale. The apparition of the king, in his own palace, at the critical moment, is, however, managed with much art and energy. The close has that unexpectedness of simplicity which distinguishes one or two of Hall's perorations; that, for instance, in the sermon on the death of the Princess Charlotte, in which you are permitted, contrary to what you supposed from the elaboration of previous parts, to slide gently down from the subject, not hurled headlong from the back of a rolling period. Altogether, it is an epic in miniature, though the poetry mantles most around the bushy locks of Ezekiel, and the subtle lyre of Cyra.

He has written, besides, in "Blackwood" and "Fraser," some prose stories of great power. Who that has read, has forgot "Buy a Broom," the most poetical of tales, and one of the most interesting? A tale is seldom read twice; but this tale has a charm besides the story-that of exquisite description, and fine, rich, mellow, and musical writing. Oh, for a Century, a Decameron, of such stories! They would positively raise the standard of the kind of composition. A strong prejudice exists against a tale; when once it "has been told," it is treated with contempt. And yet tales have constituted some of the finest productions of the human mind. What is the "Falcon ?". a tale. What We must not dilate on Mr Aird's other "Tam O'Shanter ?"- -a tale. What one poems-on his "Father's Curse," with of Shakspere's finest dramas?—the "Winthe calm sweet stream of its commence-ter's Tale." What the noblest flight of ment, and the red torrent of energy which Scott in the region of the supernatural? forms its close; on his "Mother's Grave" Wandering Willie's Tale." A tale is lines more tender than any, since the germ of every other kind of composiCowper's on the receipt of his "Mother's tion-of novel, tragedy, comedy, epic, and Picture," though without the uniform all. It is the first key to turn the infant simplicity and clearness of that delicious heart, which swells up to the very eyes at poem; on his "Mother's Blessing"-a its mother's tale. It is often the last to series of beautiful descriptions, suspended win its way into the fastness of age, which on the string of a rather improbable and weeps, and thrills, and shakes its grey mediocre story; on his "Byron”—a high locks at nothing so much as at a tale. mettled gallop upon an old road, with Remember, ye sneerers at stories, the more flow of sound, and less energy of "Tale of Troy Divine," the "Arabian sense, than his wont; or on his "Church- Nights," the tales told by Turcomans to yard Eclogues," which may be compared rapt audiences, in the glorious evenings to apple-trees growing near a graveyard, of the East; the tales of the "Great rich with the fatness of death. One Spirit" and the "Great Waters" refigure in the second of those strange counted by half-inspired red men to their poems we particularly remember. It is children, in the forests and by the beathat of a lost one, whose eternal employ-con-fires of the West. ment is, on the sand of his " own place, Mr Aird is a native of Bowden, Roxaye to write his mother's name," and for burghshire. His parents, who still live, ever does a horned tongue of flame pass are in humble circumstances, but of the by which erases that sad literature, and most amiable and respectable characters. chases the wretch along the waste. 'Tis He was originally intended for the church, a dreary figure, and may be called a "cha- but chose to turn aside into the flowery racter omitted in the Devil's Dream.' by-paths of literature. He was much "Othuriel," again, is the ghost of "Nebu- distinguished at college; and his producchadnezzar," with all its simplicity, but tions in "Blackwood" gained him a large without its strength. The tale is some-share of notice among the more discrimi

nating. He was employed for some time In Dumfries, no man is more respected in editing the "Edinburgh Weekly Jour- and loved. His appearance is striking. nal," after the death of James Ballantyne. His figure is erect and manly. His head He passed from thence to the editorship is well developed, especially in the moral of the "Dumfries Herald” - an office organs. His lips are singularly rich and which he still fills with great ability. expressive. His whole appearance deMr Aird is a man of simple, unassum- notes a man whose "soul is like a star, ing manners, and high moral character. | and dwells apart."

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

AMERICA has been long looking for its Goethe, "Giant of the Western Star;" Poet, and has been taught by many sages and a third modestly confined his wishes to believe that hitherto it has been look- within the compass of a second Shakspere. ing in vain. Each new aspirant to the Pernicious as, in some measure, such laurel has been scanned with a watchful- inordinate expectations must have proved ness and jealousy, proportioned to the to all timid and vacillating minds in height of expectation which had been America, it did not prevent its bolder excited, and to the length of time during and more earnest spirits from taking their which that expectation has been deferred; own way-by grafting upon the stock of and because the risen Poet did not supply imported poetry many graceful and lovely the vacuum of centuries-did not clear shoots of native song. In spite of the all the space by which Britain had got penumbra of prejudice against American the start of her daughter-did not in- verse, more fugitive floating poetry of clude in his single self the essence of real merit exists in its literature than Shakspere, Spenser, Milton, and Byron in almost any other. Dana has united -his genius was pronounced a failure, many of the qualities of Crabbe to a porand his works naught. Tests were pro- tion of the wierd power of Coleridge's posed to him, from which our home muse. Percival has recalled Wordsworth authors would have recoiled. Origina- to our minds, by the pensive and tremulities were demanded of him, which few British writers, in this imitative age, have been able to exemplify. As in "Macbeth," not the "child's," but the "armed head," was expected to rise first from the vacant abyss. American literature must walk before creeping, and fly before walking. Not unfrequently our British journals contained programmes of the genius and writings of the anticipated Poet, differing not more from common sense, than from each other. "He must be intensely national," said one authority. "He must be broadly Catholic-of no country," said a second. "He must be profoundly meditative, as his own solitary woods," said a third. "He must be bustling and fiery, as his own railways,” said a fourth. One sighed for an American Milton; another predicted the uprise of another

lous depth of his strains. Bryant, without a trace of imitation, has become the American Campbell-equally select, simple, chary, and memorable. In reply to Mrs Hemans, have been uttered a perfect chorus of voices

"Sweet and melancholy sounds, Like music on the waters." Emerson has poured forth notes, sweet now as the murmur of bees, and now strong and unhappy as the roar of torrents; and with a voice of wide compass, clear articulation, and most musical tones, has Longfellow sung his manifold and melting numbers.

The distinguishing qualities of Longfellow seem to be beauty of imagination, delicacy of taste, wide sympathy, and mild earnestness, expressing themselves

sometimes in forms of quaint and fantas-ing chaos of its philosophies, you see him, tic fancy, but always in chaste and simple lured by their fascination, hanging over language. His imagination sympathises their brink, and rapt in wonder at their more with the correct, the classical, and strange, gigantic, and ever shifting forms. the refined, than with the outer and Indeed, his "Hyperion" contains two or sterner world, where dwell the dreary, three most exquisitely absurd bits of the rude, the fierce, and the terrible transcendentalism. shapes of things. The scenery he de- Longfellow is rather a romantic and scribes best is the storied richness of the sentimental, than a philosophical poet. Rhine, the golden glories of the Indian He throws into verse the feelings, moods, summer, the environs of the old Nova and fancies of the young or female mind Scotian village, or the wide billowing of genius, not the cogitations of philoprairie; and not those vast forests, where sophy. His song is woven of moonlight, a path for the sunbeams must be hewn, not of summer sunshine. To glorify abnor those wildernesses of snow, where the stractions, to flush clear, naked truth storm and the wing of the condor divide into beauty, to "build" up poems slowly the sovereignty. In the midst of such and solidly, as though he were piling dreadful solitudes, his genius rather shi-pyramids, is neither his aim nor his atvers and cowers, than rises and reigns. tainment. He gathers, on the contrary, He is a spirit of the Beautiful, more than roses and lilies-the roses of the hedge of the Sublime; he has lain on the lap of and lilies of the field, as well as those Loveliness, and not been dandled, like a of the garden—and wreaths them into lion-cub, on the knees of Terror. The chaplets for the brow and neck of the magic he wields, though soft, is true and beautiful. His poetry is that of sentistrong. If not a prophet, torn by a secret ment, rather than of thought. But the burden, and uttering it in wild, tumul- sentiment is never false, nor strained, nor tuous strains, he is a genuine poet, who mawkish. It is always mild, generally has sought for, and found, inspiration, manly, and sometimes it approaches the now in the story and scenery of his own sublime. It touches both the female part country, and now in the lays and legends of man's mind and the masculine part of of other lands, whose native vein, in itself woman's. He can at one time start unexquisite, has been highly cultivated and wonted tears in the eyes of men, and at delicately cherished. another kindle on the cheeks of women a It is to us a proof of Longfellow's ori-glorious glow of emotion, which the term ginality, that he bears so well and meekly blush cannot adequately measure; as far his load of accomplishments and acquire- superior to it as is the splendour of a sunments. His ornaments have not crushed set to the bloom of a peach. him, nor impeded the motions of his own mind. He has transmuted a lore, gathered from many languages, into a quick and rich flame, which we feel to be the flame of Genius.

We have been struck with the variety of Longfellow's poems. He has written hitherto no large, recondite work. His poems are all short and occasional. He has exhibited no traces of a comic vein. It is evident that his principal obliga- His sphere is that of sentiment, moralistions are due to German literature, which ing elegantly upon many objects. And over him, as over so many at the present yet, within that sphere there is little day, exerts a certain wild witchery, and mannerism, repetition, or self-imitation. is tasted with all the sweetness of the for- His sentiment assumes a great variety of bidden fruit. No writer in America has aspects. Now it is tender to tears, and more steeped his soul in the spirit of Ger- now heroic to daring; now it muses, and man poetry, its blended homeliness and now it dreams; now it is a reverie, and romance, its simplicity and fantastic em- now a rapture; now it is an allegory, phasis, than Longfellow; and, if he does now a psalm, and again a song; everynot often trust himself amidst the welter-thing, in short, save a monotony. Nor