And lady, when this cake you press, Man's but a bubble on the leaf, That breaks e'en at the view. His muse is ready to greet all comers, from the "Mouse which took lodgings with the author in a public house, near the Park, New York," Fly not, poor trembler, from my bed, For here no murderous snare is spread, up to General La Fayette. Christmas and the Fourth of July are of course celebrated, nor is the "First of May in New York" neglected, as a stanza or two of a comic song, "sung with applause at Chatham Garden," rattles off like the heterogeneous laden carts in active motion on that day. First of May-clear the way! Pots and kettles, broken victuals, "A Large Nose and an Old Coat" show that the writer did not disdain familiar themes, while an "Ode to Genius, suggested by the present unhappy condition of the BOSTON BARD, an eminent poet of this country," stands in evidence that the bard held the poetaster's usual estimate of his powers. Coffin was at one period of his life a sailor, or, to use his own expression, "a Marine Bachelor." He died at Rowley, Mass., in May, 1827, at the early age of thirty. The following song would do honor to a poet of far higher pretensions. NATHANIEL LANGDON FROTHINGHAM was born at Boston July 23, 1793. After a preparation for college at the public schools of that city, he entered Harvard, where he completed his course in 1811. He next became an assistant teacher in the Boston Latin school, and afterwards a private tutor in the family of Mr. Lyman of Waltham. In 1812, when only nineteen, he was appointed instructor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, being the first incumbent of the office. He pursued theological studies at the same time, and on the 15th of March, 1815, was ordained pastor of the First Church in Boston; resigned in consequence of ill health. a charge which he retained until 1850, when he Dr. Frothingham is the author of from forty to, fifty sermons and addresses, published in separate forins, and of a volume, Sermons in the order of a Twelvemonth, none of which had previously appeared. He has also contributed numerous prose articles to various religious periodicals. His poetical career was commenced by the delivery of a poem in the junior year of his col The following list includes most of these productions:On the Death of Dr. Joseph McKean: 1818. Artillery Election Sermon: 1825. On the Death of President John Adams: 1826. Plea against Religious Controversy: 1829. Terms of Acceptance with God: 1829. Centennial Sermon on Two Hundred Years Ago: 1830. Signs in the Sun; On the great Eclipse of February 12: 1881. Barabbas preferred: 1882. Centennial Sermon of the Thursday Lecture: 1838. On the Death of Lafayette: 1834. Twentieth Anniversary of my Ordination 1835. On the Death of J. G. Stevenson, M.D.: 1835. At the Installation of Rev. Wm. P. Lunt, at Quincy: 1885. At the Ordination of Mr. Edgar Buckingham: 1836. The Ruffian Released: 1836. The Chamber of Imagery: 1886. Duties of Hard Times: 1837. On the Death of Joseph P. Bradlee: 1888. All Saints' Day: 1840. The New Idolatry: 1840. The Solemn Week: 1841. Death of Dr. T. M. Harris, and of Hon. Daniel Sargent: 1842. The Believer's Rest: 1843. On the Death of Rev. Dr. Greenwood: 1843. The Duty of the Citizen to the Law: 1844. Address to the Alumni of the Theological School: 1844. Deism or Christianity? Four Discourses: 1845. Ordination of O. Frothinghatn: 1947. Funeral of Rev. Dr. Thomas Gray: 1847. A Fast Sermon-National Sins: 1847. Paradoxes in the Lord's Supper: 1848. A Fast Sermon ; God among the Nations: 1848. Water into the City of Boston: 1848. Salvation through the Jews: 1850. Death of Hon. P. C. Brooks: 1849. Gold: 1849. Sermon on resigning my Ministry: 1850. Great Men, Washington's Birth-Day: 1852. Days of Mourning must end: 1853. Lage course, at the inauguration of President Kirkland, which has never been published, but is still remembered with favor by its auditors. He has since contributed several occasional poems of great beauty to the magazines, written numerous hymns, which hold a place in the collections, and translated various specimens of the modern German poets. A collection of these, with the title Metrical Pieces, Translated and Original, is now in press. HYMN. O God, whose presence glows in all Whose word is Truth, whose name is Love. That truth be with the heart believed Of all who seek this sacred place; With power proclaimed, in peace received,— Our spirit's light, thy Spirit's grace. That love its holy influence pour, To keep us meek and make us free, And throw its binding blessing more Round each with all, and all with thee. Send down its angel to our side, Send in its calm upon the breast; For we would know no other guide, And we can need no other rest. THE MC LEAN ASYLUM, SOMERVILLE, MASS. O House of Sorrows! How thy does But all its fireside pleasures-where are they? A stranger might suppose the spot Some seat of learning, shrine of thought;— Ah! here alone Mind ripens not, And nothing reasons, nothing can be taught. Or he might deem thee a retreat For the poor body's need and ail; When sudden injuries stab and beat, Or in slow waste its inward forces fail. Ah, heavier hurts and wastes are here! The ruling brain distempered lies. When Mind flies reeling from its sphere, Life, health, aye, mirth itself, are mockeries O House of Sorrows! Sorer shocks Than can our frame or lot befall Are hid behind thy jealous locks; Man's Thought an infant, and his Will a thrall. The mental, moral, bodily parts, So nicely separate, strangely blent, Or sink together, wildered all and spent. Of grief and wonder for the musing soul! VOL. II. — O House of Mercy! Refuge kind For Nature's most unnatural state! Place for the absent, wandering mind, Its healing helper and its sheltering gate! What woes did man's own cruel fear Once add to his crazed brother's doom! Neglect, aversion, tones severe, The chain, the lash, the fetid, living tomb! And now, behold what different hands He lays on that crazed brother's head! See how this builded bounty stands, With scenes of beauty all around it spread. Yes, Love has planned thee, Love endowed ;And blessings on each pitying heart, That from the first its gifts bestowed, Or bears in thee each day its healthful part. Was e'er the Christ diviner seen, Than when the wretch no force could bindThe roving, raving Gadarene Sat at his blessed feet, and in his perfect mind? Mr. Richard Frothingham, Jun., the author of the thorough and valuable History of the Siege of Boston, is a relative of Dr. Frothingham. ROBERT WALN ROBERT WALN was born in Philadelphia in 1797. He received a liberal education, but never engaged in professional pursuits. He published in 1819 The Hermit in America on a visit to Philadelphia, one of several imitations of an English work then popular, the Hermit in London. It contains a series of sketches on the fashionable pursuits and topics of city life, pleasantly written, but without any features of mark. In the following year he made a similar essay in verse by the publication of American Bards, a Satire. In this poem of nearly one thousand lines he reviews the leading aspirants of the day, praising Cliffton and Dwight and condemning Barlow and Humphreys. Lucius M. Sargent and Knight receive severe treatment, and the Backwoodsinan is dealt with in like manner. In the course of the piece a number of minor writers of the ever renewed race of poetasters are mentioned, most of whom have long since been forgotten. A description of a newspaper with the approaches of a youthful bard is one of its best passages. How oft, when seated in our elbow-chairs, The Politician roams through every clime: And humming all the advertisements o'er, And as he lisps the Thespian Bill of Fare, For so the rhyme be at the verse's end, Now, with a trembling step, he seeks the door, Again returns;-fluttering with fears and hopes Waln published a second volume of verse in the same year entitled Sisyphi Opus, or Touches at the Times, with other poems, and in 1821 The Hermit in Philadelphia, a continuation of his previous work, but mostly occupied with a caveat against the introduction of foreign vices into the United States. He makes up a formidable list of wives sold at Smithfield, betting noblemen, and bruised prizefighters, as an offset to the stories by English travellers of society in our frontier settlements. We next hear of our author as the supercargo of a vessel, in which capacity he made a voyage to China, turning his observations to account on his return by writing a history of that country, which was published in quarto numbers. He also undertook the editorship of the Lives of the Signers, after the publication of the third volume, and wrote several of the biographies which appeared in the subsequent portion of the series. In 1824 he published a Life of Lafayette. In addition to these works he was the author of numerous contributions to the periodicals of the day. He died in 1824. HUNTING SONG. "Tis the break of day, and cloudless weather, The eager dogs are all roaming together, WILLIAM A. MUHLENBERG. THE Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, a descendant from a family of revolutionary fame, was for many years the head of St. Paul's College, Flushing, Long Island, an institution which under his control attained a high measure of usefulness and reputation. He is now Rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in the city of New York. Dr. Muhlenberg published in 1823, Church Poetry: Being portions of the Psalms in verse, and Hymns suited to the Festivals and Fasts and various occasions of the Church, selected and altered from various Authors.* He has since, in connexion with the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, published a work on Church Music, and has done much in the practical advancement of public taste in the same direction by the choral arrangements of his own church, while he has served church poetry as well as music by the production of several highly esteemed hymns. We give the best known of these in its original form, with a brief note from the Evangelical Catholic, a weekly paper conducted for about a year by Dr. Muhlenberg, descriptive of its introduction in the Episcopal collection (where it appears in an abridged form). THE 187TH HYMN. We have been so repeatedly urged by several of our readers to give them the whole of the original of "I would not live alway," that we at length comply, though somewhat reluctantly, as it has appeared at various times in print before-first in the Philadelphin Episcopal Recorder, somewhere about the year 1824. It was written without the remotest idea that any portion of it would ever be employed in the devotions of the Church. Whatever service it has done in that way is owing to the late Bishop of Pennsylvania, then the Rector of St. Ann's Church, Brooklyn, who made the selection of verses out of the whole, which constitutes the present hymn, and offered it to the Committee on Hymns, appointed by the General Convention of. The hymn was, at first, rejected by the committee, of which the unknown author was a member, who, upon a satirical criticism being made upon it, earnestly voted against its adoption. It was admitted on the importunate application of Dr. Onderdonk to the bishops on the committee. Tae following is a revised copy o the original: Phila.; 12mo. pp. 268. I WOULD NOT LIVE ALWAY.-Job vil. 16. I would not live alway-live alway below! Apostles and martyrs so joyfully trod? While brethren and friends are all hastening home, I would not live alway-I ask not to stay, Leaves its brilliance to fade in the night of despair, I would not live alway-thus fettered by sin, I would not live alway-no, welcome the tomb; Who, who would live alway-away from his God, And the noontide of glory eternally reigns: The notes of the harpers ring sweet in the air; soar, And in ecstasy bid earth adieu, evermore. Dr. Muhlenberg is also the author of several pamphlets on topics connected with the church of which he is a prominent member, and the numerous charitable enterprises of the city with which his name is identified. SAMUEL H. DICKSON Was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1798. His parents, from the north of Ireland, were both of unmixed Scottish blood. His father came to America before the Revolutionary war, and fought in the south under General Lincoln and others. He was in Charleston during the siege, but ecaped in a canoe up Cooper river previous to the capitulation. He was long a resident in Charleston, where he taught the school of the South Ca rolina Society. He died in 1819. The maternal uncle of Dr. Dickson was Samuel Neilson, the editor of the Northern Star, the first paper published in Ireland advocating Catholic Emancipation, and was one of the first of the Protestants who became United Irishinen. He suffered a long imprisonment after the execution of Emmet, and, being at last released on condition of expatriating himself, came to this country and died at Poughkeepsie. Play Dick, Ar The early education of Dr. Dickson was chiefly in Charleston College, a respectable high-school merely at that time, under Drs. Buist and Hedley and Judge King. He was sent to Yale College in 1811, joined the Sophomore class, and was graduated in due course. He commenced at once, in his seventeenth year, the study of medicine, entering the office of Dr. P. G. Prioleau, who had reached the highest point of professional eminence at the South, and whose practice was extended and lucrative in an almost unparalleled degree. In 1817, '18, and '19, he attended lectures in the University of Pennsylvania in its palmy days, when Chapman, Physick, and Wistar were among its faculty, and received the diploma in 1819. He returned to Charleston and became engaged in a large practice. In 1823 he delivered a course of lectures on Physiology and Pathology before the medical students of the city, the class consisting of about thirty. With Dr. Ramsay, who then read to the same class a course of lectures on Surgery, and Dr. Frost, he undertook the agitation of the subject of domestic medical instruction, and urged the institution of a Medical College in Charleston. He moved the Medical Society to petition to the Legislature for a charter, which was granted, and the school went into operation in 1824. He was elected without opposition to the professorship of the Institutes and Practice of Medicine, which chair he held until 1832, when he resigned it in consequence of a contest between the Medical Society and the College. The next year he was appointed to the same chair in the Medical College of the state of South Carolina, newly erected, with a liberal charter from the legislature. In 1847 he received the unanimous vote of the New York University to fill the chair rendered vacant by the death of Professor Revere, and removed to that city, where he lec. tured to large classes. In 1850, at the earnest request of his former colleagues, he resumed his connexion with the Medical School at Charleston. His writings are varied and numerous. He has been a contributor to many of the periodicals of the day, and ha delivered many occasional addresses, which have been published. His address before the Phi Beta Kappa of Yale in 1842, on the Pursuit of Happiness, is one of the most important of the latter. He has written many articles in the American Medical Journal of Phila delphia, the Medical Journal of New York, the Charleston Medical Journal and Review, and in some of the Western journals. He has published two large volumes on the Practice of Medicine, and, in 1852, a volume of Essays on Life, Sleep, Pain, &c., embracing many important questions of philosophy and hygiene handled in an ingenious and popular manner; amply illustrated from copious stores of reading and extensive personal experience. This book is written in an ingenious and candid spirit; his Manual of Pathology and Therapeutics has gone through six or seven editions. A small volume of verses from his pen, printed but not published, has been noticed in the Southern Literary Messenger,* to which magazine he has sent several papers. In most of the Southern literary journals, the Rose-Bud, Magnolia, Literary Gazette, &c., will be found articles by him. To the Southern Quarterly Review he has been from its origin a frequent contributor. One of his recent articles was a review of Forsyth's Life of Sir Hudson Lowe. He has published a pamphlet on Slavery, originally printed in a Boston periodical, in which he maintains the essential inferiority of the negro, and the futility of the projects suggested for changing his condition at the South. OLD AGE AND DEATH-FROM THE ESSAYS ON LIFE, SLEEP, PAIN, &C. Death may be considered physiologically, pathologically, and psychologically. We are obliged to regard it and speak of it as the uniform correlative, and indeed the necessary consequence, or final result of life; the act of dying as the rounding off, or termination of the act of living. But it ought to be remarked that this conclusion is derived, not from any understanding or comprehension of the relevancy of the asserted connexion, nor from any à priori reasoning applicable to the inquiry, but merely à posteriori as the result of universal experience. All that has lived has died; and, therefore, all that lives must die. The solid rock upon which we tread, and with which we rear our palaces and temples, what is it often, when microscopically examined, but a congeries of the fossil remains of innumerable animal tribes! The soil from which, by tillage, we derive our vegetable food, is scarcely anything more than a mere mixture of the decayed and decaying fragments of former organic being the shells and exuviæ, the skeletons, and fibres, and exsiccated juices of extinct life. : I have stated that there is no reason known to us why Death should always "round the sum of life." Up to a certain point of their duration, varying in each separate set of instances, and in the comparison 8. Literary Messenger, July, 1844., vol. x. p. 424. of extremes varying prodigiously, the vegetable and animal organisms not only sustain themselves, but expand and develop themselves, grow and increase, enjoying a better and better life, advancing and progressive. Wherefore is it that at this period all progress is completely arrested; that thenceforward they waste, deteriorate, and fail? Why should they thus decline and decay with unerring uniformity upon their attaining their highest perfection, their most Intense activity? This ultimate law is equally mys terious and inexorable. It is true the Sacred Writ ings tell us of Enoch, "whom God took, and he was not;" and of Elijah, who was transported through the upper air in a chariot of fire; and of Melchisedek, the most extraordinary personage whose name is recorded," without father, without mother, without descent: having neither beginning of days, nor end of life." We read the history without conceiving the faintest hope from these exceptions to the universal rule. Yet our fancy has always exulted in visionary evasions of it, by forging for ourselves creations of immortal maturity, youth, and beauty, residing in Elysian fields of unfading spring, amidst the fruition of perpetual vigor. We would drink, in imagination, of the sparkling fountain of rejuvenescence; nay, boldly dare the terror of Medea's caldron. We echo, in every despairing heart, the ejaculation of the expiring Wolcott, Bring back my youth!" 66 Reflection, however, cannot fail to reconcile us to our ruthless destiny. There is another law of our being, not less unrelenting, whose yoke is even harsher and more intolerable, from whose pressure Death alone can relieve us, and in comparison with which the absolute certainty of dying becomes a glorious blessing. Of whatever else we may remain ignorant, each of us, for himself, comes to feel, realize, and know unequivocally that all his capacities, both of action and enjoyment, are transient, and tend to pass away; and when our thirst is satiated, we turn disgusted from the bitter lees of the once fragrant and sparkling cup. I am aware of Parnell's offered analogy The tree of deepest root is found and of Rush's notion, who imputes to the aged such an augmenting love of life that he is at a loss to account for it, and suggests, quaintly enough, that it may depend upon custom, the great moulder of our desires and propensities; and that the infirm and decrepit "love to live on, because they have acquired a habit of living." His assumption is wrong in point of fact. He loses sight of the important principle that Old Age is a relative term, and that one man may be more superannuated, farther advanced ia natural decay at sixty, than another at one hundred years. Parr might well rejoice at being alive, and exult in the prospect of continuing to live, at one hundred and thirty, being capable, as is affirmed, even of the enjoyment of sexual life at that age; but he who has had his "three sufficient warnings," who is deaf, lame, and blind; who, like the monk of the Escurial, has lost all his cotemporaries, and is condemned to hopeless solitude, and oppressed with the consciousness of dependence and imbecility, must look on Death not as a curse, but a refuge. |