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moved to Albany, where he has since resided. He married a daughter of Mr. Smith Weed, of that place, and has for several years held the appointment of state librarian.

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Mr. Street commenced his literary career at an early age as a poetical writer for the magazines. His first volume, The Burning of Schenectady, and other Poems, was published in 1842. The leading poem is a narration of a well known incident of the colonial history of New York; the remaining pieces are of a descriptive character. second collection, Drawings and Tintings, appeared in 1844. It includes a poem on Nature, of decided merit in its descriptions of the phenomena of the seasons, which was pronounced by the author in 1840 before the Euglossian Society of Geneva College.

In 1849 Mr. Street published in London, and in the same year in this country, Frontenac, or the Atotarho of the Iroquois, a Metrical Romance, a poem of some seven thousand lines in the octosyllabic measure, founded on the expedition of Count Frontenac, governor-general of Canada, against the powerful Indian tribe of the Iroquois. The story introduces many picturesque scenes of Indian life, and abounds in passages of description of natural scenery, in the author's best vein of careful elaboration.

He

In 1842, a collection of the poems of Mr. Street, embracing, with the exception of a few juvenile pieces and the romance of Frontenac, all that he had written to that period, was published in New York. He has since contributed to various magazines a number of pieces sufficient to form a volume of similar size. has also written a narrative poem, of which La Salle is the hero, extending to some three thousand lines, which still remains in manuscript. He is besides the author of a number of prose tale sketches, which have appeared with success in the magazines of the day.

Mr. Street's poems are chiefly occupied with descriptions of the varied phases of American scenery. He has won a well merited reputation by the fidelity of his observation. As a descriptive writer he is a patient and accurate observer of Nature, daguerreotyping the effects of earth and air, and the phenomena of vegetable and animal life in their various relation to the landscape. He has been frequently described by critics by comparison with the minute style of the painters of the Dutch school. Mr. Tuckerman, in an article in the Democratic Review, has thus alluded to this analogy, and to the home atmosphere of the author's descriptions of American nature:-"Street is a true Flemish painter, seizing upon objects in all their verisimilitude. As we read him, wild flowers peer up from among brown leaves; the drum of the partridge, the ripple of waters, the flickering of autumn light, the sting of sleety snow, the cry of the panther, the roar of the winds, the melody of birds, and the odor of crushed pine-boughs are present to our senses. In a foreign land his poems would transport us at once to home. He is no second-hand limner, content to furnish insipid copies but draws from reality. His pictures have the freshness of origina's. They are graphic, detailed, never untrue, and often vigorous; he is essentially an American poet."

THE SETTLER.

His echoing axe the settler swung
Amid the sea-like solitude,
And rushing, thundering, down were flung
The Titans of the wood;

Loud shrieked the eagle as he dashed
From out his mossy nest, which crashed
With its supporting bough,

And the first sunlight, leaping, flashed
On the wolf's haunt below.

Rude was the garb, and strong the frame
Of him who plied his ceaseless toil:
To form that garb, the wild-wood game
Contributed their spoil;

The soul that warmed that frame, disdained
The tinsel, gaud, and glare, that reigned
Where men their crowds collect;

The simple fur, untrimmed, unstained,
This forest tamer decked.

The paths which wound 'mid gorgeous trees, The streams whose bright lips kissed their flowers,

The winds that swelled their harmonies

Through those sun-hiding bowers,
The temple vast-the green arcade,
The nestling vale, the grassy glade,

Dark cave and swampy lair;
These scenes and sounds majestic, made
His world, his pleasures, there.

His roof adorned, a pleasant spot,

'Mid the black logs green glowed the grain, And herbs and plants the woods knew not, Throve in the sun and rain.

The smoke-wreath curling o'er the dell,
The low-the bleat—the tinkling bell,
All made a landscape strange,
Which was the living chronicle

Of deeds that wrought the change.
The violet sprung at Spring's first tinge,

The rose of Summer spread its glow, The maize hung on its Autumn fringe,

Rude Winter brought his snow;
And still the settler labored there,
His shout and whistle woke the air,
As cheerily he plied

His garden spade, or drove his share
Along the hillock's side.

He marked the fire-storm's blazing flood
Roaring and crackling on its path,
And scorching earth, and melting wood,
Beneath its greedy wrath;

He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot,
Trampling the pine tree with its foot,

And darkening thick the day
With streaming bough and severed root,
Hurled whizzing on its way.

His gaunt hound yelled, his rifle flashed,

The grim bear hushed its savage growl,
In blood and foam the panther gnashed

Its fangs with dying howl;
The fleet deer ceased its flying bound,
Its snarling wolf foe bit the ground,
And with its moaning cry,
The beaver sank beneath the wound
Its pond-built Venice by.
Humble the lot, yet his the race!

When liberty sent forth her cry,
Who thronged in Conflict's deadliest place,
To fight-to bleed-to die.
Who cumbered Bunker's height of red,
By hope, through weary years were led,
And witnessed Yorktown's sun

Blaze on a Nation's banner spread, A Nation's freedom won.

AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE.

A knoll of upland, shorn by nibbling sheep
To a rich carpet, woven of short grass
And tiny clover, upward leads my steps
By the seamed pathway, and my roving eye
Drinks in the vassal landscape. Far and wide
Nature is smiling in her loveliness,

Masses of woods, green strips of fields, ravines,
Shown by their outlines drawn against the hills,
Chimneys and roofs, trees, single and in groups,
Bright curves of brooks, and vanishing mountain
tops

Expand upon my sight. October's brush

The scene has colored; not with those broad hues
Mixed in his later palette by the frost,
And dashed upon the picture, till the eye
Aches with the varied splendor, but in tints
Left by light scattered touches. Overhead
There is a blending of cloud, haze and sky;
A silvery sheet with spaces of soft hue;
A trembling veil of gauze is stretched athwart
The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks;
A soothing quiet broods upon the air,

And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness.
Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark-
The bleat-the tinkle-whistle-blast of horn--
The rattle of the wagon-wheel-the low-
The fowler's shot-the twitter of the bird,
And e'en the hue of converse from the road.
The grass, with its low insect-tones, appears
As murmuring in its sleep. This butterfly
Seems as if loth to stir, so lazily

It flutters by. In fitful starts and stops
The locust sings. The grasshopper breaks out
In brief harsh strains; amidst its pausing chirps

The beetle glistening in its sable mail,

Slow climbs the clover-tops, and e'en the ant
Darts round less eagerly.

What difference marks
The scene from yester-noontide. Then the sky
Showed such rich, tender blue, it seemed as if
"Twould melt before the sight. The glittering

clouds

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theological topics, which he collected in a volume of Critical and Miscellaneous Writings in 1843. In 1842 he published a treatise, A Discourse of Matters relating to Religion, in an octavo vOlume. It was the substance of a series of lectures delivered the previous season in Boston, and constituted a manifesto of the growing changes of the author in his doctrinal opinions, which had widely departed from points of church authority, the inspiration of the scriptures and the divine character of the Saviour. He had previously in May, 1841, startled his associates by his Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity, preached at the ordination of Mr. Charles C. Shackford, in Harris Place Church in Boston. Both these publications were met and opposed in the Christian Examiner.

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Proscribed by the Unitarian Societies of Boston on account of the promulgation of his new views, Mr. Parker organized, by the aid of his friends, a congregation, which met in the old Melodeon in the city, and has since transferred itself to the ample accommodations of the new Music Hall. He has published a memorial of this change, in Two Sermons, on leaving an old and entering a new place of worship. His title, as appears from his printed discourses, is Minister of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in Boston. In his new quarters he holds an independent service, delivering a weekly discourse on Sunday morning, frequently taking for his theme some topic of the times or point of morality. The questions of slavery, war, social and moral reforms of various kinds, are discussed with much acute analysis, occasional effective satire, and a rather unprofitable reliance on the powers of the individual. As a practical teacher, he is in the unfortunate position of a priest without a church, and a politician without a state. Though he interweaves some elegance of fancy in his discourses, yet it is of a dry quality, a flower of a forced growth, and his manner and matter seem equally unaffected by tender poetic imagination. He has nothing of the air of hearty impulse of a democratic leader of revolutionary opinion, as might be supposed, from the drift of his printed discourses. As a speaker he is slow, didactic, positive, and self-sufficient.

Mr. Parker has published several series of discourses, entitled Sermons of Theism, Atheism, and

the Popular Theology, and Ten Sermons of Religion, from which his moral views may be gathered.

He has borne a prominent part in the agitation of the Fugitive Slave Law, of which he is a vigorous denouncer. A number of his discourses on this and other social topics are included in his two volumes, Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, published in 1852. In 1848 he delivered an elaborate critical essay on the character of John Quincy Adams, immediately after the death of that statesman, and a similar discourse, remarkable for its severity, on Daniel Webster.

As a specimen of Mr. Parker's manner on a topic of more general agreement than most of his writings afford, we may cite a few passages from a sermon published by him in 1854 on

OLD AGE.

I cannot tell where childhood ends, and manhood begins; nor where manhood ends, and old age begins. It is a wavering and uncertain line, not straight and definite, which borders betwixt the two. But the outward characteristics of old age are obvious enough. The weight diminishes. Man is commonly heaviest at forty, woman at fifty. After that, the body shrinks a little; the height shortens as the cartilages become thin and dry. The hair whitens and falls away. The frame stoops, the bones become smaller, feebler, have less animal and more mere earthy matter. The senses decay, slowly and handsomely. The eye is not so sharp, and while it penetrates further into space, it has less power clearly to define the outline of what it sees. The ear is dull; the appetite less. Bodily heat is lower; the breath produces less carbonic acid than before. The old man consumes less food, water, air. The hands grasp l o less strongly; the feet less firmly tread. The lungs suck the breast of heaven with less powerful collapse. The eye and ear take not so strong a hold upon the world:

And the big manly voice,
Turning again to childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

The animal life is making ready to go out. The very old man loves the sunshine and the fire, the armchair and the shady nook. A rude wind would jostle the full-grown apple from its bough, full-ripe, fullcolored, too. The internal characteristics correspond. General activity is less. Salient love of new things and of new persons, which bit the young man's heart, fades away. He thinks the old is better. He is not venturesome; he keeps at home. Passion once stung him into quickened life; now that gad-fly is no more buzzing in his ears. Madame de Stael finds compensation in Science for the decay of the passion that once fired her blood; but Heathen Socrates, seventy years old, thanks the gods that he is now free from that "ravenous beast," which had disturbed his philosophic meditations for many a year. Romance is the child of Passion and Imagination; the sudden father that, the long protracting mother this. Old age has little romance. Only some rare man, like Wilhelm Von Humboldt, keeps it still fresh in his bosom.

In intellectual matters, the venerable man loves to recall the old times, to revive his favorite old men, -no new ones half so fair. So in Homer, Nestor, who is the oldest of the Greeks, is always talking of the old times, before the grandfathers of men then living had come into being; "ot such as live in these degenerate days." Verse-loving John Quincy

Adams turns off from Byron and Shelley and Wie land and Goethe, and returns to Pope,

Who pleased his childhood and informed his youth. The pleasure of hope is smaller; that of memory greater. It is exceeding beautiful that it is so. The venerable man loves to set recollection to beat the roll-call, and summon up from the grave the old time, "the good old time," the old places, old friends, old games, old talk, nay, to his ear the old familiar tunes are sweeter than anything that Mendelssohn, or Strauss, or Rossini can bring to pass. Elder Brewster expects to hear St. Martins and Old Hundred chanted in Heaven. Why not? To him Heaven comes in the long-used musical tradition, not in the neologies of sound.

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Then the scholar becomes an antiquary; he likes not young men unless he knew their grandfathers before. The young woman looks in the newspaper for the marriages, the old man for the deaths. The young man's eye looks forward; the world is "all before him where to choose." It is a hard world; he does not know it: he works a little, and hopes much. The middle-aged man looks around at the present; he has found out that it is a hard world; he hopes less and works more. The old man looks back on the fields he has trod; "this is the tree I planted; this is my footstep," and he loves his old house, his old carriage, cat, dog, staff, and friend. In lands where the vine grows, I have seen an old man sit all day long, a sunny autumn day, before his cottage door, in a great arm-chair, his old dog couched at his feet, in the genial sun. The autumn wind played with the old man's venerable hairs; above him on the wall, purpling in the sunlight, hung the full clusters of the grape, ripening and maturing yet more. The two were just alike; the wind stirred the vine leaves, and they fell; stirred the old man's hair and it whitened yet more. Both were waiting for the spirit in them to be fully ripe. The young man looks forward; the old man looks back. How long the shadows lie in the setting-sun; the steeple a mile long reaching across the plain, as the sun stretches out the hills in grotesque dimensions. So are the events of life in the old man's consciousness.

WILLIAM HAYNE SIMMONS-JAMES WRIGHT

SIMMONS.

DR. W. H. SIMMONS is a native of South Carolina, and at present a resident of East Florida. He is a graduate of the medical school of Philadelphia, but has never practised the profession. He published anonymously some years since at Charleston, an Indian poem, with the title, Onea, which contains descriptive passages of merit. Mr. Simmons is also the author of a History of the Seminoles. The following is from his pen :

THE BELL BIRD.*

Here Nature, clad in vestments rich and gay, Sits like a bride in gorgeous palace lone;

"It is generally supposed," says the Rev. R. Walsh, in his Notices of Brazil, that the woods abound with birds whose flight and note continually enliven the forest, but nothing can be more still and solitary than everything around. The silence is appalling, and the desolation awful; neither are disturbed by the sight or voice of any living thing, save one-which only adds to the impression. Among the highest trees, and in the deepest glens, a sound is sometimes heard so singular, that the noise seems quite unnatural. It is like the clinking of metals, as if two lumps of brass were struck together; and resembles sometimes the distant and solemn tolling of a church bell, struck at long intervals. This extraordinary sound proceeds from a bird called Araponga, or Quiraponga. It is about the

And sees naught move, and hears no sound all day,
Save from its cloudy source the torrent tumbling,
And to the mountain's foot its glories humbling,
Or wild woods to the desert gale that moan!
Or, far, the Araponga's note deep toiling
From the tall pine's glossy spine, where the breeze,
Disporting o'er the green and shoreless seas,
Impels the leafy billows, ever rolling.
It comes again! sad as the passing bell,
That solitary note!-unseen whence swell
The tones so drear-so secret is the shade
Where that coy dweller of the gloom has made
His perch. On high, behind his verdant screen,
He nestles; or, like transient snow-flake's flash,
Or flying foam that winds from torrent's dash,
Plunges to stiller haunts, where hangs sublime
The trav'lling water vine, its pitcher green

Filled from the cloud, where ne'er the bear may climb,

Or thirsting savage, when the summer ray

Has dried each fount, and parched the desert way.
Here safe he dips refreshed his pearly bill
In lymph more pure than from a spring or rill;
No longer by the wand'ring Indian shared,
The dewy draught he there may quaff unscared,-
For vacant now glooms ev'ry glen or grove
Where erst he saw the quivered Red Man rove;
Saw, like the otter's brood upon the stream,
His wild-eyed offspring sport, or, 'neath the tree,
Share with the birds kind nature's bounty free.
Changed is the woodland scene like morning dream!
The race has vanished, to return no more,
Gone from the forest's side, the river's shore.
Is it for this, thou lone and hermit bird!
That thus thy knell-like note so sad is heard?
Sounding from ev'ry desert shade and dell

Where once they dwelt, where last they wept farewell!

They fled-till, wearied by the bloody chase;
Or stopped by the rich spoil, their brethren pale,
Sated, the dire pursuit surceased a space.
While Memory's eye o'er the sad picture fills,
They fade! nor leave behind or wreck or trace;
The valiant tribes forgotten on their hills,
And seen no more in wilderness or vale.

JAMES WRIGHT SIMMONS, a younger brother of He the preceding, was born in South Carolina. studied at Harvard, wrote verses, afterwards travelled in Europe, and returned to America to reside in the West. In 1852 he published at Boston a poem, The Greek Girl; a sketch in the desultory style made fashionable by Don Juan, and so well adapted to the expression of emotion. It breathes a poetic spirit, and bears traces of the author's acquaintance with books and the world. Mr. Simmons has written several other poems of an occasional or satirical character, and is also the author of a series of metrical tales, Woodnotes from the West, which are still in manuscript. The following, from the volume containing the "Greek Girl," are in a striking vein of reflection.

size of a small pigeon; white, with a red circle round the eyes. It sits on the tops of the highest trees, and in the deepest forests; and though constantly heard in the most desert places, is very rarely seen. It is impossible to conceive anything of a more solitary character than the profound silence of the woods, broken only by the metallic and almost preternatural sound of this invisible bird, wherever you go. I have watched with great perseverance when the sound seemed quite near to me, and never once caught a glimpse of the cause. It passed suddenly over the tops of very high trees, like a large flake of snow, and immediately disappeared."

TO HIM WHO CAN ALONE SIT FOR THE PICTURE

If to be free from aught of guile,
Neither to do nor suffer wrong;
Yet in thy judgments gentle still,
Serene-inflexible in will,

Only where some great duty lies;
Prone to forgive, or, with a smile,
Reprove the errors that belong
To natures that fall far below
The height of thy empyreal brow:
Of self to make a sacrifice,
Rather than view another's woe;
And guided by the same fixed law
Supreme, to yield, in argument,
The bootless triumph that might draw
Down pain upon thy opponent:

By fate oppressed," in each hard instance tried,”
Still seen with Honor walking by thy side;

E'en in those hours when all unbend,
And by some thoughtless word offend,
Thy conscious spirit, great and good,
Neither upborne, nor yet subdued,
Impressed by sense of human ill,
Preserv'st its even tenor still;

While 'neath that calm, clear surface lie
Thoughts worthy of Eternity!
And passions-shall I call them so!
Celestial attributes! that glow
Radiant as wing of Seraphim,
Lighting thy path, in all else dim.
Placed on their lofty eminence,

Thou see'st the guerdons that to thee belong,
Passed to the low-browed temple, burn intense-
Standing between thee and the throng
Of noble minds, thy great compeers!
And still the same serenity appears,
Like stars in its own solitude-
Setting its seal on thy majestic blood!
If elements like these could give
The record that might bid them live,
The mighty dead-Saint, Sophist, Sage,
Achilles in his tent-

Might claim in vain a brighter page,
A haughtier monument.

TWILIGHT THOUGHTS.

Ye're fading in the distance dim,
Illusions of the heart!

Yes, one by one, recalled by Him—
I see ye all depart.

The swelling pride, the rising glow,
The spirit that would mount!
The mind that sought all things to know-
And drank at that dread fount.
Over whose waters, dark and deep,
Their sleepless vigils still
Those melancholy Daughters keep,
Or by thy sacred Hill!

Deep Passion's concentrated fire,
The soul's volcanic light!
A Phoenix on her fun'ral pyre,
The Eden of a night!
The wish to be all things-to soar,
And comprehend the universe;
Yet doomed to linger on the shore,
And feel our fettered wings a curse!
To drink in Beauty at a glance,
Its graces and its bloom;
Yet weave the garlands of Romance
To decorate the tomb!

To sigh for some dear Paradise,
Exempt from age or death;

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FRANCES SARGENT OSGOOD.

MRS. OSGOOD was a member of a family distinguished by literary ability. Mrs. Wells, the author of a graceful volume of Poems, was the daughter of Frances's mother by a previous marriage, and her youngest sister, Mrs. E. D. Harrington, and her brother, A. A. Locke, are known as successful magazine writers. Their father, Mr. Joseph Locke, was a well educated merchant of Boston, where his daughter Frances was born about the year 1812.

The chief portion of her childhood was passed in the village of Hingham, a locality peculiarly adapted by its beautiful situation for a poetic culture, which soon developed itself in her youthful mind. She was encouraged in writing verses by her parents, and some of her productions being seen by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, were so highly approved, as to be inserted by her in a juvenile Miscellany which she at that time conducted. They were rapidly followed by others from the same facile pen, which soon gave their signature," Florence," a wide reputation.

In 1834, Miss Locke formed the acquaintance of Mr. S. S. Osgood, a young painter already favorably known in his profession. She sat to him for her portrait, and the artist won the heart of the sitter. Soon after their marriage they went to London, where they remained four years, during which Mr. Osgood pursued his art of portrait-painting with success; and his wife's poetical compositions to various periodicals met with equal favor. In 1839, a collection of her poems was issued by a London publisher, with the title of A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England. A dramatic poem, Elfrida, in the volume, impressed her friend James Sheridan Knowles the dramatist, so favorably, that he urged her to write a piece for the stage. In compliance with the suggestion, she wrote The Happy Release or the Triumphs of Love, a play in three acts. It was accepted by one of the theatres, and would have been produced had not the author, while engaged in the reconstruction of a scene, been suddenly summoned home by the melancholy news of the death of her father. She returned with Mr. Osgood to Boston in 1840. They soon afterwards removed to New York, where, with a few intervals of absence, the remainder of her life was

Anna Maria Foster was born about 1794 In Gloucester, a sea-port town of Massachusetts. Her father died during her infancy, and her mother marrying some years after Mr. Joseph Locke, became the mother of Mrs. Osgood. Miss Foster married in 1829 Mr. Thomas Wells, an officer of the United States revenue service, and the author of a few prize poems. In 1831 she published Poems and Juvenile Sketches in a small volume, and has since occasionally contributed to periodicals, her chief attention having been given to a young ladies' school.

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Frances Hosgood:

Mrs. Osgood's physical frame was as delicate as her mental organization. She suffered frequently from ill health, and was an invalid during the whole of the winter of 1847-S. During the succeeding winter she rallied, and her husband, whose own health required the reinvigorating influence of travel, with a view to this object, and to a share in the profitable adventure which at that time was tempting so many from their homes, sailed for California in February, 1849. He returned after an absence of a year, with restored health and ample means, to find his wife fast sinking in consumption. The husband carried the wife in his arms to a new residence, where, with the happy hopefulness characteristic of her disorder, she selected articles for its furniture and decoration, from patterns brought to her bedside. The rapidly approaching termination of her disorder was soon gently made known to her, and received, after a few tears at the thought of leaving her husband and two young children, with resignation. The evening but one after she wrote for a young girl at her side, who was making and teaching her to make paper flowers, the following lines:

You've woven roses round my way,

And gladdened all my being;
How much I thank you, none can say,
Save only the All-seeing.

Im going through the eternal gates,
Ere June's sweet roses blow;
Death's lovely angel leads me there,

And it is sweet to go.

The touching prophecy was fulfilled, by her calm death, five days after, on Sunday afternoon, May 12, 1850. Her remains were removed to Boston, and laid beside those of her mother and daughter, at Mount Auburn, on Wednesday of the same week.

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