consequences of a man's devoting himself to an all-absorbing love of gain,-to the supreme worship of Mammon," the idea being suggested by the general rage for California gold, at the time of the composition of the play prevalent in the community. The location of the plot in the White Mountains was an improvement of the same Indian legend mentioned in Sullivan's History of Maine, upon which Mr. Hawthorne founded his tale of the Great Carbuncle.

Mr. Judd, in addition to his services in the pulpit, found frequent opportunities as a lyceum lecturer on topics growing out of the religious ideas which were the mainspring of his life. He took a prominent part in the social reforms of the day, opposed war, slavery, and advocated the cause of temperance. He was fond of children and of country life; one of the favorite recreations of his ministry at Augusta being an annual rur..l festival, in June, with his young parishioners. He felt the beauty of the old observance o Christmas, and was accustomed on the eve of that day to open his church, decorated for the occasion with the time-honored evergreens. His kindly disposition and genial activity, his study of language and habits of composition, have been Cescribed by a fond and appreciative pen in the admirably prepared volume, Life and Character of the Rev. Sylvester Judd, published in 1854, and "tenderly and most lovingly" dedicated by its author, Arethusa Hall, "to the three little children whose father was translated from their home before they were old enough to know and comprehend him."

The Rev. Sylvester Judd died after a short illness at his home in Augusta, Jan. 20, 1853.

A posthumous work from his pen-The Church in a Series of Discourses-was published in 1854.

A NEW ENGLAND SNOW-STORM AND A HOME SCENE-FROM

MARGARET.

An event common in New England is at its height. It is snowing, and has been for a whole day and night, with a strong north-east wind. Let us take a moment when the storm intermits, and look in at Margaret's and see how they do. But we cannot approach the place by any of the ordinary methods of travel; the roads, lanes, and by-paths are blocked up: no horse or ox could make his way through those deep drifts, immense mounds and broad plateaus of snow. If we are disposed to adopt the means of conveyance formerly so much in vogue, whether snow-shoes or magic, we may possibly get there. The house or hut is half sunk in a snow bank; the waters of the Pond are covered with a solid enamel as of ivory; the oxen and the cow in the barn-yard, look like great horned sheep in their fleeces of snow. All is silence, and lifelessness, and if you please to say, desolation. Hens there are none, nor turkeys, nor ducks, nor birds, nor Bull, nor Margaret. If you see any signs of a human being, it is the dark form of Hash, mounted on snow-shoes, going from the house to the barn. Yet there are the green hemlocks and pines, and firs, green as in summer, some growing along the flank of the hill that runs north from the Indian's Head, looking like the real snow-balls, blossoming in midwinter, and nodding with large white flowers. But there is one token of life, the smoke coming from the low grey chimney, which, if you regard it as one, resembles a large, elongated, transparent balloon; or if you look at it by piece-meal, it is a beautiful cur

rent of bluish-white vapor, flowing upward unendingly; and prettily is it striped and particolored as it passes successively the green trees, the bare rocks, and white crown of the hill behind, nor does its interest cense even when it disappears among the clouds. Some would dwell a good whil on that smoke, and see in it manifold out-shows and denotements of spiritualities; others would say, the house is buried so deep, it must come up from the hot mischief-hatching heart of the earth; others still would fancy the whole Pond lay in its winding-sheet, and that if they looked in, they would behold the dead faces of their friends. Our own sentiment is, that that smoke comes from a great fire in the great fireplace, and that if we should go into the house, we should find the family as usual there; a fact which, as the storm begins to renew itself, we shall do well to take the opportunity to verify.

In

Flourishing in the centre of these high-rising and broad-spreading snows, unmoved amid the fiercest onsets of the storm, comfortable in the extremity of winter, the family are all gathered in the kitchen, and occupied as may be. In the cavernous fire-place burns a great fire, composed of a huge green backlog, a large green fore-stick, and a high cob-work of crooked and knotty refuse-wood, ivy, hornbeam, and beech. Through this the yellow flame leaps and forks, and the bluish-grey smoke flows up the ample sluice-way of the chimney. From the ends of the wood the sap fries and drips on the siz zling coals below, and flies off in angry steam. Under the forestick great red coals roll out, sparkle a semibrief, lose their grosser substance, indicate a more ethereal essence in prototypal forms of white, downlike cinders, and then fall away into brown ashes. To a stranger the room has a sombre aspect, rather heightened than relieved by the light of the fire burning so brightly at mid-day. The only connexion with the external air is by the south windowshutter being left entirely open, forming an aperture through the logs of about two feet square; yet when the outer light is so obscured by a storm, the bright fire within must anywhere be pleasant. one corner of the room sits Pluck, in a red flannel shirt and leather apron, at work on his kit mending a shoe; with long and patient vibration and equipoise he draws the threads, and interludes the strokes with snatches of sorgs, banter, and laughter. The apartment seems converted into a workshop; for next the shoemaker stands the shingle-maker, Hash, who with froe in one hand and mallet in the other, by dint of smart percussion, is endeavoring to rive a three-cornered billet of hemlock on a block. In the centre of the room sits Brown Moll, with still bristling and grizzly hair, pipe in her mouth, in a yellow woollen long-short and black petticoat, winding a ball of yarn from a windle. Nearer the fire are Chilion and Margaret, the latter also dressed in woollen, with the Orbis Pictus, or world displayed, a book of Latin and English, adorned with cuts, which the Master lent her; the former with his violin, endeavoring to describe the notes in Dr. Byles's Collection of Sacred Music, also a loan of the Master's, and at intervals trailing on the lead of his father in some popular air. We shall also see that one of Chilion's feet is raised on a stool, bandaged, and apparently disabled. Bull, the dog, lies rounded on the hearth, his nose between his paws, fast asleep. Dick, the grey squirrel, sits swinging listlessly in his wire wheel, like a duck on a wave, Robin, the bird, in its cage, perched on its roost, shrugs and folds itself into its feathers as if it were night. Over the fire-place, on the rough stones that compose the chimney, which day and night through all the long winter are ever warm, where Chilion

and beauty. The volume also contains a ballad, Florence, an interesting story, poetically narrated. The remaining poems are descriptive and reflective, and are eloquent in tone, with occasional traces of imitation.

THE ROBIN,

The woods are almost bare; the mossy trees
Moan as their mottled leaves are hurried by,
Like sand before the Simoom, over the leas,
Yellowing in Autumn's eye:

And very cold the bleak November wind

Shrills from the black Nor-West, as fitfully blow The gusts, like fancies through a maniac mind, Eddying to and fro.

Borne, like those leaves, with piercing cries, on high
The Robins come, their wild, autumnal wail,
From where they pass, dotting the angry sky,
Sounding above the gale.

Down, scattered by the blast, along the glen,
Over the browning plains, the flocks alight,
Crowding the gum in highland or in fen,

Tired with their southward flight.

Away, away, flocking they pass, with snow
And hail and sleet behind them, where the South
Shakes its green locks, and delicate odors flow
As from some fairy mouth.

Silently pass the wintry hours: no song,
No note, save a shrill querulous cry
When the boy sportsman, cat-like, creeps along
The fence, and then-then fly.

Companioned by the cautious lark, from field

To field they journey, till the winter wanes, When to some wondrous instinct each one yields, And seeks our northern plains.

March and its storms: no matter how the gale
May whistle round them, on, through snow, and
sleet,

And driving hail, they pass, nor ever quail,
With tireless wings and feet.

Perched here and there on some tall tree-as breaks
The misty dawn, loud, clarionet-like, rings
Their matin hymn, while Nature also wakes

From her long sleep, and sings.

Gradually the flocks grow less, for, two by two,
The Robins pass away, each with his mate;
And from the orchard, moist with April dew,
We hear their pretty prate;

And from the apple's snowy blossoms come
Gushes of song, while round and round them
crowd

The busy, buzzing bees, and, over them, hum
The humming-birds aloud.

The sparrow from the fence; the oriole

From the now budding sycamore; the wren From the old hat; the blue bird from his hole Hard by the haunts of men;

The red-start from the wood-side; from the meadow,

The black-cheek, and the martin in the air;
The mournful wood-thrush from the forest shadow
With all of fair and rare

Among those blossoms of the atmosphere,-
The birds, our only Sylphids,--with one voice,
From mountain side and meadow, far and near,
Like them at spring rejoice.

May, and in happy pairs the Robins sit
Hatching their young,-the female glancing down
From her brown nest. No one will trouble it,
Lest heaven itself should frown

On the rude act, for from the smouldering embers
On memory's hearth flashes the fire of thought,
And each one by its flickering light remembers
How flocks of Robins brought,

In the old time, leaves, and sang, the while they covered

The innocent babes forsaken. So they rear
Their fledglings undisturbed. Often has hovered
While I have stood anear

A Robin's nest, o'er me that simple story,
Gently and dove-like, and I passed away
Proudly, and feeling it as much a glory
As 'twas in Cæsar's day

To win a triumph, to have left that nest

Untouched; and many and many a schoolboy time,

When my sure gun was to my shoulder prest,
The thought of that old rhyme

Came o'er me, and I let the Robin go.
-At last the young are out, and to the woods
All have departed: Summer's sultry glow
Finds them beside the floods.

Then Autumn comes, and fearful of its rage
They flit again. So runs the Robin's life;
Spring, Sumner, Autumn, Winter sees its page
Unstained with care or strife.

J. L. H. MCCRACKEN

Was the son of a New York merchant, and pursued his father's business. He was engaged in the trade with western Africa, and it was on a business visit to Sierra Leone that his death occurred from a fever of the climate, March 25, 1853. It was about his fortieth year. Mr. McCracken bore a distinguished part in New York society by his fortune, his amateur pursuit of literature, and his fine conversational powers. He wrote for the magazines and journals-in particular for the Knickerbocker, under the editorship of Hoffman, and Mr. Benjamin's "American Monthly" where one of his papers was entitled The Education of the Blood. A very clever sketch, The Art of Making Poetry by an Emeritus Professor, appeared in the second number of the Knickerbocker. He wrote a few trifles for Yankee Doodle. 1849, he published in the Democratic Review a comedy in five acts, of New York life, entitled Earning a Living. He had also a hand in a Democratic free-trade paper, which had a short

career.

THE ART OF MAKING POETRY.

In

I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, suppers, and sleeping hours excepted-it is the right butter women rate to market.-As You Like It.

Cardinal Richelieu is reported to have said once that he would make so many dukes that it should be a shame to be one, and a shame not to be one. It appears, however, that he changed his mind afterwards, inasmuch as, down to St. Simon's time, there were only twelve or thirteen dukes in France, besides the blood-royal. At present they are more plenty, though it is even yet some distinction to be a duke, out of Italy; and in Poland there is an express law against the title being borne by any man who has not a clear income of three hundred dollars a year to support its dignity. In Bavaria, you may

And so on, ad infinitum, or throughout the "World to Come."

But not to seek eccentric writers and farfetched examples, let us take a popular and noted one, even Dr. Johnson himself; everybody will recognise the opening sentence of Rasselas :

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia.

This is prose incontrovertibly. In two minutes it shall be as incontrovertibly blank verse :

Oh, ye, who listen with credulity
To fancy's whispers, or with eagerness
Phantoms of hope pursue, or who expect
Age will perform the promises of youth,
Or that the present day's deficiencies
Shall by the morrow be supplied, attend
To Rasselas, the Abyssinian Prince,

His history. Rasselas was fourth son, &c.

I do not suspect any reader of this Magazine of stupidity enough to find a difficulty here, or of wit enough to imagine one. The process speaks for itself, and so far requires no comment; but in carrying it a step or two farther, we shall see by what alchemy gold may be transmuted into baser metals and into tinsel, and how the rogue who steals, or the poor devil who borrows it, may so thoroughly disguise it as to run no risk at last in passing it openly for his own. I take the first six lines only of the above, and tipping them with rhymes, they suffer a little violence, and read thus:-

Oh, ye who listen.-a believing race-
To fancy's whispers, or with enger chase
Phantoms of hope pursue, expecting still
Age will the promises of youth fulfil,
Or that the morrow will indeed amend
The present day's deficiencies, attend-

Now, in this shape they might do pretty well, had they not been taken purposely from a notorious part of a notorious work; for one might borrow even from Rasselas, in the middle or anywhere less in sight, and few indeed are the critics who would detect and expose the cheat. But the next stage of our progress would distance the major part even of these. That a scrap from Rasselas should be set to Yankee Doodle is an idea which seems to have been reserved from all time to be first broached in the

present article. But if not the same, there are similar things done hourly; and if the written monuments of genius, like the temples and palaces of antiquity, were themselves diminished by all the materials they supply to new constructions, how much would there be remaining of them now. Imagine a chasm in Moore or Byron for every verse any lover has scrawled in an album, or any Cora or Matilda in a newspaper; or reverse the case, and imagine the masters of the lyre and of the pen reclaiming, throughout the world, whatever is their own, in whatever hands, and in whatever shape it might be now existing. The Scotch freebooter was warned upon his death-bed-rather late, but it was the first time the parson had had a chance at him--that in another world all the people he had robbed, and all the valuables he had robbed them of, sheep, horses, and cattle, would rise up to bear witness against him. "Why then," said he, in a praiseworthy vein of restitution, "if the horses, and kye, and a' will be there, let ilka shentleman tak her ain, and Donald will be an honest man again." Now, I should like to be by, at a literary judgment, when "ilka shentleman should tak her ain," to have righteousness rigidly laid to the line, and see who would in fact turn out to be "a shentleman" and have a balance left that was "her ain," and who would be a Donald, left with nothing, a destitute “bipes implumis."

Then, and not till then, will I give back the following piece of morality to Rasselus, and indeed, in the shape into which I am now going to put it, I think it will not be till then that he, or anybody for him, will lay claim to it.

Air-Yankee Doodle. Listen ye, who trust as true All the dreams of fancy, Who with eager chace pursue Each vain hope you can see, Who expect that age will pay All that youth may borrow, And that all you want to day Will be supplied to-morrow.

JOHN ROMEYN BRODHEAD,

AUTHOR of a "History of the State of New York," &c., is descended rom an old New York family, the ancestor of which, Captain Daniel Brodhead, of Yorkshire, England, was an officer in the expedition under Colonel Nicolls against New Netherland in 1664, and settled in Esopus, or Kingston, Ulster county, in 1665. His grandfather, Charles W. Brodhead, of Marbletown, Ulster county, was

Birdtnay

a captain of grenadiers in the Revolutionary Army, and was present at the surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga. His father was the late Rev. Jacob Brodhead, D.D., a distinguished clergyman of the Reformed Dutch church, and formerly one of the ministers of the Collegiate churches in the city of New York. His mother was a daughter of the late John N. Bleecker of Albany. His father having removed to Philadelphia in 1813, to take charge of the First Reformed Dutch church there, Mr. Brodhead was born in that city on the second day of January, 1814, and was named after his uncle, the late Rev. John B. Romeyn, D.D. He was thoroughly drilled at grammar-schools in Philadelphia and New Brunswick, and at the Albany Academy. In 1826 his father returned to New York, where Mr. Brodhead was prepared for Rutgers College, of which he entered the junior class, and from which he was graduated in 1831 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Immediately afterwards he began the study of the law in the office of Hugh Maxwell, Esq., and in 1835 was licensed to practise his profession. This he did for two years in the city of New York in partnership with Mr. Maxwell. His tastes, however, inclining him to literary pursuits, Mr. Brodhead went, in 1837, to reside with his parents, who were then living at Saugerties in Ulster county, where he occupied himself chiefly in the study of American history. In 1839 he went to Holland, where his kinsman, the late Mr. Harmanus Bleecker, was Charge d'Affaires, and was attached to the United States Legation at the Hague. While there he projected the work of writing the history of New York. In the mean time the Legislature, at the suggestion of the New York Historical Society, had passed an act on the 2d of May, 1839, to appoint an agent to procure and transcribe documents in Europe relative to the Colonial History of this State.