pendent of, their purely critical excellencies. Though he has never published an autobiography,* yet all of his works are, in a certain sense, confessions. He pours out his feelings on a theme of interest to him, and treats the impulses of his heart and the movements of his mind as historical and philosophical data. Though he almost invariably trusts himself, he is almost as invariably in the right. For, as some are born poets, so he too was born a critic, with no small infusion of the poetic character. Analytic judgment (of the very finest and rarest kind), and poetic fancy, naturally rich, and rendered still more copious and brilliant by the golden associations of his life, early intercourse with honorable poets, and a most appreciative sympathy with the master-pieces of poesy. Admirable as a genial critic on books and men, of manners and character, of philosophical systems and theories of taste and art, yet he is more especially the genuine critic in his favorite walks of art and poesy; politics and the true literature of real life-the domestic novels, the drama, and the belles-lettres.

As a descriptive writer, in his best passages, he ranks with Burke and Rousseau; in delineation of sentiment, and in a rich rhetorical vein, he has whole pages worthy of Taylor or Lord Bacon. There is nothing in Macaulay for profound gorgeous declamation, superior to the character of Coleridge, or of Milton, or of Burke, or of a score of men of genius whose portraits he has painted with love and with power. In pure criticism who has done so much for the novelists, the essayists, writers of comedy; for the old dramatists and elder poets? Lamb's fine notes are mere notes-Coleridge's improvised criticisms are merely fragmentary, while if Hazlitt has borrowed their opinions in some cases, he has made much more of them than they could have done themselves. Coleridge was a poet-Lamb a humorist. To neither of these characters had Hazlitt any fair pretensions, for with all his fancy he had a metaphysical understanding (a bad ground for the tender plant of poesy to flourish in), and to wit and humor he laid no claim, being too much in earnest to indulge in pleasantry and jesting-though he has satiric wit at will and the very keenest sarcasm. Many of his papers are prose satires, while in others there are to be found exquisite jeux d'esprit, delicate banter, and the purest intellectual refinements upon works of wit and humor. In all, however, the critical quality predominates, be the form that of essay, criticism, sketch, biography, or even travels.

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS,

THE author of a translation of The First Ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dante, published in 1843, and of a volume of original Poems in 1854, is a native of, and resident at, Boston. His writings bear witness to his sound classical education, as well as to the fruits of foreign travel. The translation of Dante, in the stanza of the original, has been much adınired by scholars. The Poems exhibit variety in playful satire, epistle, ballad, the tale, description of nature, of European antiquities, and the occasional record of personal emotion. In all, the subject is controlled and elevated by the language of art. It is the author's humor in the Epistles which open the volume to address several foreign celebrities in the character of an English traveller in America, writing to Charles Kemble on the drama; to Edward Moxon, the London publisher, on the

The Liber Amoris can hardly be called an exception. VOL. II. 41

state of letters; and to Rogers and Landor on poetry and art generally. In the Epistle to Landor, the comparatively barren objects of American antiquities are placed by the side of the storied associations of Italy. The land is pictured as existing "in Saturn's reign before the stranger came," like the waste Missouri; when the view is changed to the Roman era:-

Soon as they rose-the Capitolian lords

The land grew sacred and beloved of GOD; Where'er they carried their triumphant swords Glory sprang forth and sanctified the sod. Nay, whether wandering by Provincial Rome, Ör British Tyne, we note the Cæsar's tracks, Wondering how far from their Tarpeian flown, The ambitious eagles bore the prætor's axe. Those toga'd fathers, those equestrian kings, Are still our masters-still within us reign, Born though we may have been beyond the springs Of Britain's floods-beyond the outer main. For, while the music of their language lasts,

They shall not perish like the painted menBrief-lived in memory as the winter's blasts!

Who here once held the mountain and the glen. From them and theirs with cold regard we turn, The wreck of polished nations to survey, Nor care the savage attributes to learn

Of souls that struggled with barbarian clay. With what emotion on a coin we trace

Vespasian's brow, or Trajan's chastened smile, But view with heedless eye the murderous mace And checkered lance of Zealand's warrior-isle. Here, by the ploughman, as with daily tread

He tracks the furrows of his fertile ground, Dark locks of hair, and thigh-bones of the dead, Spear-heads, and skulls, and arrows, oft are found. On such memorials unconcerned we gaze;

No trace returning of the glow divine, Wherewith, dear WALTER! in our Eton days We eyed a fragment from the Palatine. It fired us then to trace upon the map The forum's line-proud empire's church-yard paths

Ay, or to finger but a marble scrap

Or stucco piece from Diocletian's baths. Cellini's workmanship could nothing add, Nor any casket, rich with gems and gold, To the strange value every pebble had O'er which perhaps the Tiber's wave had rolled.

One of the longer poems-Ghetto di Roma, a story of the Jewish proscription-is admirably told; picturesque in detail, simple in movement, and the pathos effectively maintained without apparent effort. The lines On the Death of Daniel Webster are among the ablest which that occasion produced. The chaste and expressive lines, Steuart's Burial, are the record of a real incident. The friend of the author whose funeral is literally described, was Mr. David Steuart Robertson, a gentleman well known by his elegant rural hospitality at his residence at Lancaster to the wits and good society of Boston.

The healthy objective life of the poems, and their finished expression, will secure them a reputation long after many of the feeble literary affectations of the day are forgotten.

ON A BUST OF DANTE.

See, from this counterfeit of him
Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim,
The father was of Tuscan song.
There but the burning sense of wrong,
Perpetual care and scorn, abide;
Small friendship for the lordly throng;
Distrust of all the world beside.

Faithful if this wan image be,
No dream his life was-but a fight;
Could any Beatrice see

A lover in that anchorite?

To that cold Ghibeline's gloomy sight
Who could have guessed the visions came
Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light,
In circles of eternal flame?

The lips as Cumae's cavern close,
The cheeks with fast and sorrow thin,
The rigid front, almost morose,
But for the patient's hope within,
Declare a life whose course hath been
Unsullied still, though still severe,
Which, through the wavering days of sin,
Kept itself icy-chaste and clear.

Not wholly such his haggard look
When wandering once, forlorn, he strayed,
With no companion save his book,
To Corvo's hushed monastic shade;
Where, as the Benedictine laid

His palm upon

the pilgrim guest,

The single boon for which he prayed
The convent's charity was rest.*

Peace dwells not here-this rugged face
Betrays no spirit of repose;

The sullen warrior sole we trace,
The marble man of many woes.
Such was his mien when first arose
The thought of that strange tale divine,
When hell he peopled with his foes,
The scourge of many a guilty line.
War to the last he waged with all
The tyrant canker-worms of earth;
Baron and duke, in hold and hall,
Cursed the dark hour that gave him birth;
He used Rome's harlot for his mirth;
Plucked bare hypocrisy and crime;
But valiant souls of knightly worth
Transmitted to the rolls of Time.

O, Time! whose verdicts mock our own,
The only righteous judge art thou;
That poor, old exile, sad and lone,
Is Latium's other VIRGIL Now:
Before his name the nations bow;
His words are parcel of mankind,
Deep in whose hearts, as on his brow,
The marks have sunk of DANTE's mind.

STEUART'S BURIAL.

The bier is ready and the mourners wait,
The funeral car stands open at the gate.
Bring down our brother; bear him gently, too;
So, friends, he always bore himself with you.
Down the sad staircase, from the darkened room,
For the first time, he comes in silent gloom:

It is told of DANTE that, when he was roaming over Italy, he came to a certain monastery, where he was met by one of the friars, who blessed him, and asked what was his desire; to which the weary stranger simply answered, "Pace."

Who ever left this hospitable door

Without his smile and warm "good-bye," before!
Now we for him the parting word must say
To the mute threshold whence we bear his clay.
The slow procession lags upon the road,—
T is heavy hearts that make the heavy load;
And all too brightly glares the burning noon
On the dark pageant-be it ended soon!
The quail is piping and the locust sings,-
O grief, thy contrast with these joyful things!
What pain to see, amid our task of woe,
The laughing river keep its wonted flow!
His hawthorns there-his proudly-waving corn-
And all so flourishing-and so forlorn!
His new-built cottage, too, so fairly planned,
Whose chimney ne'er shall smoke at his command.
Two sounds were heard, that on the spirit fell
With sternest moral-one the passing bell!
The other told the history of the hour,
Life's fleeting triumph, mortal pride and power.
Two trains there met-the iron-sinewed horse
And the black hearse-the engine and the corse!
Haste on your track, you fiery-winged steed!
I hate your presence and approve your speed;
Fly! with your eager freight of breathing men,
And leave these mourners to their march again!
Swift as my wish, they broke their slight delay,
And life and death pursued their separate way.
The solemn service in the church was held,
Bringing strange comfort as the anthem swelled,
And back we bore him to his long repose,
Where his great elm its evening shadow throws-
A sacred spot! There often he hath stood,
Showed us his harvests and pronounced them good;
And we may stand, with eyes no longer dim,
To watch new harvests and remember him.
Peace to thee, STEUART!-and to us! the All-wise
Would ne'er have found thee readier for the skies
In his large love He kindly waits the best,
The fittest mood, to summon every guest;
So, in his prime, our dear companion went,
When the young soul is easy to repent:
No long purgation shall he now require
In black remorse-in penitential fire;

From what few frailties might have stained his

morn

Our tears may wash him pure as he was born.

JOHN W. BROWN.

JOHN W. BROWN was born in Schenectady, New York, August 21, 1814, and was graduated at Union College in 1832. He entered the General Theological Seminary in 1833, and on the completion of his course of study was ordained Deacon, July 3, 1836, and took charge of a parish at Astoria, Long Island, with which he was connected during the remainder of his life. In 1888 he established a school, the Astoria Female Institute, which he conducted for seven years. In 1845 he became editor of the Protestant Churchman, a weekly periodical. In the fall of 1848 Mr. Brown visited Europe for the benefit of his health. He died at Malta on Easter Monday, April 9, 1849.

In 1842 Mr. Brown published The Christmas Bells: a Tale of Holy Tide: and other Poems, a volume of pleasing verses suggested by the seasons and services of his church.

In the Christmas Bells he has described with beauty and feeling the effect of the holy services of the season upon the old and young. The poem has been set to music.

Mr. Brown was also the author of Constance, Virginia, Julia of Baia, and a few other prose tales of a religious character for young readers.

THE CHRISTMAS BELLS.

The bells-the bells-the Christmas bells
How merrily they ring!
As if they felt the joy they tell
To every human thing.

The silvery tones, o'er vale and hill,
Are swelling soft and clear,
As, wave on wave, the tide of sound
Fills the bright atmosphere.

The bells-the merry Christmas bells,
They're ringing in the morn!
They ring when in the eastern sky
The golden light is born;
They ring, as sunshine tips the hills,
And gilds the village spire-

When, through the sky, the sovereign sun
Rolls his full orb of fire.

The Christmas bells-the Christmas bells,
How merrily they ring!

To weary hearts a pulse of joy,
A kindlier life they bring.

The poor man on his couch of straw,
The rich, on downy bed,

Hail the glad sounds, as voices sweet
Of angels overhead.

The bells the silvery Christmas bells,
O'er many a mile they sound!
And household tones are answering them
In thousand homes around.
Voices of childhood, blithe and shrill,
With youth's strong accents blend,
And manhood's deep and earnest tones
With woman's praise ascend.
The bells-the solemn Christmas bells,
They're calling us to prayer;
And hark, the voice of worshippers
Floats on the morning air.
Anthems of noblest praise there'll be.
And glorious hymns to-day,
TE DEUMS loud-and GLORIAS:
Come, to the church-away.

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY,

A MEMBER of a Boston family, and graduate of Harvard of 1831, is the author of two novels of merit, Morton's Hope, or The Memoirs of a Provincial, and Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony.

The first of these fictions appeared in 1839. The scene of the opening portion is laid at Morton's Hope, a quiet provincial country-seat in the neighborhood of Boston. In consequence of disappointment in a love affair, the hero leaves his country and passes some time among the German University towns, the manners of which are introduced with effect. Towards the middle of the second volume, he is summoned home by the news of the death of his uncle, and a hint from a relative that the fortune which this event places in his hands can be better employed in the service of his country, now engaged in the struggle of the Revolution, than in an aimless foreign residence. He returns home, becomes an officer in the Continental army, distinguishes himself, and regains his lost mistress.

In Merry Mount the author has availed himself of the picturesque episode of New England

history presented in the old narrative of Thomas Morton, of which we have previously given an account. Both of these fictions are written with spirit; the descriptions, which are frequent, are carefully elaborated; and the narrative is enlivened with frequent flashes of genuine humor.

Mr. Motley is at present residing at Dresden, where he has been some time engaged in writing a History of Holland, which will no doubt prove a work of high merit, as an animated and vigorous portraiture of the Dutch struggle of independence.

GOTTINGEN-FROM MORTON'S HOPE.

Gottingen is rather a well-built and handsome looking town, with a decided look of the Middle Ages about it. Although the college is new, the town is ancient, and like the rest of the German University towns, has nothing external, with the exception of a plain-looking building in brick for the library, and one or two others for natural collections, to remind you that you are at the seat of an institution for education. The professors lecture, each on his own account, at his own house, of which the basement floor is generally made use of as an auditorium. The town is walled in, like most of the continental cities of that date, although the ramparts, planted with linden-trees, have since been converted into a pleasant promenade, which reaches quite round the town, and is furnished with a gate and guard at the end of each principal avenue. It is this careful fortification, combined with the nine-story houses, and the narrow streets, which imparts the compact, secure look peculiar to all the German towns. The effect is forcibly to remind you of the days when the inhabitants were huddled snugly together, like sheep in a sheep-cote, and locked up safe from the wolfish attacks of the gentlemen highwaymen, the ruins of whose castles frown down from the neighbouring

hills.

The houses are generally tall and gaunt, consisting of a skeleton of frame-work, filled in with brick, with the original rafters, embrowned by time, projecting like ribs through the yellowish stucco which covers the surface. They are full of little windows, which are filled with little panes, and as they are built to save room, one upon another, and conse quently rise generally to eight or nine stories, the inhabitants invariably live as it were in layers. Hence it is not uncommon to find a professor occupying the two lower stories or strata, a tailor above the professor, a student upon the tailor, a beer-seller. conveniently upon the student, a washerwoman upon the beer-merchant, and perhaps a poet upon the top; a pyramid with a poet for its apex, and a professor for the base.

The solid and permanent look of all these edifices, in which, from the composite and varying style of architecture, you might read the history of half a dozen centuries in a single house, and which looked as if built before the memory of man, and like to last for ever, reminded me, by the association of contrast, of the straggling towns and villages of America, where the houses are wooden boxes, worn out and renewed every fifty years; where the cities seem only temporary encampments, and where, till people learn to build for the future as well as the present, there will be no history, except in pen and ink, of the changing centuries in the country.

As I passed up the street, I saw on the lower story of a sombre-looking house; the whole legend of Samson and Delilah rudely carved in the brown freestone, which formed the abutments of the house op

• Ante, vol. i. p. 28.

repairing the tackle as best I could, casting the line again into the pool, and fixing the pole firmly in the knot-hole of a fallen tree, I abandoned it, to fish upon its own hook.

When I arose in the morning, a cold "norther" was blowing fiercely, and the river had risen in the world during the night. The log to which my pole had formed a temporary attachment, had taken its departure for parts unknown, and was in all human probability at that moment engaged in making an experimental voyage on account of "whom it may concern."

The keen eyes of Joe, who had been peering up and down the river, however, discovered something upon the opposite side that bore a strong resemblance to the missing pole, and when the sun had fairly risen, we found that there it surely was, and moreover its bowing to the water's edge, and subsequent straightening up, gave proof that a fish was fast to the line.

The northern blast blew shrill and cold, and the ordinarily gentle current of the river was now a mad torrent, lashing the banks in its fury, and foaming over the rocks and trees that obstructed its increased volume.

Joe and I looked despairingly at each other, and shook our heads in silence and in sorrow.

Yet there was the pole waving to and fro, at times when the fish would repeat his efforts to escape-it was worse than the Cup of Tantalus, and after bearing it as long as I could, I prepared for a plunge into the maddened stream. One plunge, however, quite satisfied me; I was thrown back upon the shore, cold and dispirited.

During the entire day there stood, or swung to and fro, the wretched pole, now upright as an or derly sergeant, now bending down and kissing the waters at its feet.

The sight I bore until flesh and blood could no more eadure. The sun had sunk to rest, the twilight was fading away, and the stars were beginning to peep out from their sheltering places inquiringly, as if to know why the night came not on, when I, stung to the soul, determined at any hazard to dare

the venture.

Wringing the hand of Joe, who shook his head dubiously, up the stream I bent my course until I reached a point some distance above, from which the current passing dashed with violence against the bank, and shot directly over to the very spot where waved and wagged my wretched rod, cribbed by the waters, and cabined and confined among the logs.

I plunged in, and swift as an arrow from the bow, the water hurried me on, a companion to its mad career. The point was almost gained, when a shout from Joe called my attention to the pole: alas, the fish was gone, and the line was streaming out in the fierce wind.

That night was I avenged; a huge cat was borne hone in triumph. How I took it, or where, it matters not; for so much time having been occupied in narrating how I did not, I can spare no more to tell how I did.

The next point was to decide as to the cooking of him. Joe advised a barbacue; "a fine fellow like that," he said, "with two inches of clear fat upon his back-bone, would make a noble feast." Let not the two inches of clear fat startle the incredulous render; for in that country of lean swine, I have often heard that the catfish are used to fry bacon

He would not be cooked, and was in fact much worse, and not half so honest as a worthy old gander -once purchased by a very innocent friend of mine -that was found to contain in its maw a paper embracing both his genealogy and directions with reference to the advisable mode of preparing him for the table; of which all that I remember is, that parboiling for sixteen days was warmly recommended as an initial step.

Sixteen days' parboiling I am convinced would but have rendered our friend the tougher. We tried him over a hot fire, and a slow one, we smoked him, singed him, and in fine tried all known methods in vain, and finally consigned him again, uneaten, to the waters.

CORNELIUS MATHEWS.

CORNELIUS MATHEWS was born October 28, 1817, in the village of Port Chester, in Westchester county, State of New York. It is a spot situated on the Sound, on the borders of Connecticut, and was, until recently, before modern taste had altered the name, designated Saw-pitts, from the branch of industry originally pursued there. The early country life of Mr. Mathews in Westchester, on the banks of Byram river, or by the rolling uplands of Rye and its picturesque lake, is traceable through many a page of his writings, in fanciful descriptions of nature based upon genuine experience, and in frequent traits of the rural personages who filled the scene. Mr. Mathews was among the early graduates of the New York University, a circumstance which he recalled some years afterward in an address on Americanism, before one of the societies. His literary career began early. For the American Monthly Magazine of 1836, he wrote both in verse and prose. A series of poetical commemorations of incidents of the Revolution entitled, Our Forefathers, in this journal, are from his pen, with the animated critical sketches of Jeremy Taylor and Owen Felltham, among some revivals of the old English prose writers. In the New York Review for 1837 he wrote a paper, The Ethics of Eating, a satiric sketch of the ultra efforts at dietetic reform then introduced to the public. He was also a contributor to the Knickerbocker Magazine of humorous sketches. In the Motley Book in 1838, a collection of tales and sketches, he gave further evidence of his capacity for pathos and humor in description. It was followed the next year by Behemoth, a Legend of the Moundbuilders, an imaginative romance, in which the physical sublime was embodied in the great mastodon, the action of the story consisting in the efforts of a supposed ante-Indian race to overcome the huge monster. This "fossil romance" was a purely original invention, with very slender materials in the books of Priest, Atwater, and others; but such hints as the author procured from these and similar sources, were more than repaid in the genial notes which accompanied the first edition.

In 1840 his sketch of New York city electioneering life, The Politicians, a comedy, appeared; the subject matter of which was followed up in The Career of Puffer Hopkins in 1841, a novel which embodies many phases of civic political life, which have rapidly passed away. Both the play and the tale were the precursors of many similar attempts in local fiction and description.