such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was passing away, and Rip felt famished for his breakfast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to meet his wife; but it would not do to starve among the mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty firelock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned his steps homeward.

As he approached the village, he met a number of people, but none that he knew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrence of this gesture, induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and pointing at his grey beard. The dogs, too, not one of which he recognized for his old acquaintances, barked at him as he passed. The very village seemed altered: it was larger and more populous. There were rows of houses which he had never seen before, and those which had been his familiar haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors strange faces at the windows-every thing was strange. His mind now began to misgive him, that both he and the world around him were bewitched. Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the day before. There stood the Kaatskill mountains there ran the

silver Hudson at a distance there was every hill and dale precisely as it had always been-Rip was sorely perplexed-"That flagon last night," thought he," has addled my poor head sadly!"

It was with some difficulty he found the way to his own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. He found the house gone to decaythe roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half starved dog, that looked like Wolf, was skulking about it. Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed "My very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!"

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness overcame all his connubial fears he called loudly for his wife and children—the lonely chambers rung for a moment with his voice, and then all again was silence.

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, the little village inn-but it too was gone. A large ricketty wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken, and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on top that looked like a red night cap, and from it was fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of stars and stripes-all this was strange and incomprehensible. He recognised on the sign, however, the ruby face of King George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful pipe, but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was stuck in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was paint◄ ed in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON.

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but none that

Rip recollected. The very character of the people seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco smoke instead of idle speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a lean bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of handbills, was haranguing vehemently about rights. of citizens-election-members of congress-liberty-Bunker's Hill-heroes of seventy-six-and other words, that were a perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle.

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his rusty fowling piece, his uncouth dress, and the army of women and children that had gathered at his heels, soon attracted the attention of the tavern politicians. They crowded around him, eyeing him from head to foot, with great curiosity. The orator bustled up to him, and drawing him partly aside, inquired "which side he voted ?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, and raising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "whether he was Federal or Democrat." Rip was equally at a loss to comprehend the question; when a knowing, selfimportant old gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, demanded, in an austere tone, "what brought him to the election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village?" "Alas! gentlemen," crièd Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King, God bless him!"

Here a general shout burst from the by-standers-"A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the cocked hat restored order; and

Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, "where's Nicholas Vedder "

There was a silence for a little while, when an old man replied, in a thin piping voice," Nicholas Vedder? why he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a wooden tomb-stone in the church yard that used to tell all about him, but that's rotted and gone too."

"Where's Brom Dutcher?"

"Oh he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; some say he was killed at the battle of Stoney Point-others say he was drowned in a squall, at the foot of Antony's Nose. I don't know-he never came back again."

"Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?"

"He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, and is now in Congress."

Rip's heart died away, at hearing of these sad changes in his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the world. Every answer puzzled him, too, by treating of such enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war-congress Stoney Point; - he had no courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle ?"

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree."

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name?

"God knows," exclaimed he, at

his wit's end; " I'm not myself-I'm somebody else that's me yonder-no -that's somebody else, got into my shoes I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and every thing's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"

The bystanders began now to look at each other, nod, wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their foreheads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, and keep ing the old fellow from doing mischief. At the very suggestion of which, the self-important man in the cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical moment a fresh likely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the greybearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool, the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What is your name, my good woman?" asked he.

"Judith Gardenier."

86 And your father's ́s name?".. 863 Ah, poor man, his name was Rip Van Winkle; it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl."

Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering

voice:

"Where's your mother?"

Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England pedlar.

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms." I am your father!" cried he, “Young Rip Van Winkle once old Rip Van Winkle now!-Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle!"

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and

peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle-it is himself. Welcome home again, old neighbour. -Why, where have you been these twenty long years?”

Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbours stared when they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks; and the self-important man in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had returned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, and shook his head-upon which there was a general shaking of the head throughout the assemblage.

It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighbourhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon, being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name. That his father had once seen them in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow of the mountain; and that he himself had heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like long peals of thunder.

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and returned to the more important concerns of the election. Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning

lagainst the tree, he was employed to work on the farm, but evinced an hereditary disposition to attend to any thing else but his business.

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for the wear and tear of time; and preferred making friends among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into great favour.

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can do nothing with impunity, he took his place once more on the bench, at the inn-door, and was reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a chronicle of the old times "before the war." It was some time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, or could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor. How that there had been a revolutionary war-that the country had thrown off the yoke of old Englandand that, instead of being a subject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him. But there was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was-petticoat-go vernment. Happily, that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, or joy at his deliverance.

He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at Mr Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighbourhood, but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it

VOL. V.

full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder storm of a sum mer afternoon, about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighbourhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van Winkle's flagon.

ON DANTE'S PURGATORIO.

THERE is a saying recorded in Miss Seward's Letters, we do not know upon what authority, of the learned Cyril Jackson, formerly Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, that, in his estimation, there have been but four very great poets in the world-Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. Miss Seward makes light of this observation, and treats it as a piece of mere pedantry; but, for our parts, we think there is a good deal in it. It is the grandeur and comprehensiveness of mind in these poets that Dr Jackson probably had in view in this classification; and we really do not know any others who come near them in these particulars. There is no Grecian poet who is within a hundred miles of Homer, however abundant and beautiful the poetry of the Greeks must be felt to be. The greatest of the Latin poets is Lucretius, yet his unhappy subject forces him to wade through such a quantity of dull prose, that we cannot contemplate him purely as a poet. Virgil is all poetical perfection, but it is more the perfection of taste than of genius. There will be little hesitation among us in placing Shakespeare and Milton at the head of the poets of modern times. We would ask, is there one in Spain, in France, in Germany, in Italy, (excluding Dante for a moment,) who at all approaches them? Ariosto and Tasso, for invention and sublimity, stand, perhaps, in the next rank; yet every one sees that they are of a lower form, and without that mens divinior which predominates through all the infinitude of Shakespeare's creations, and is apparent in almost every line that Milton wrote. It is not so much the poetical faculty of these great men that elevates them so high, it is the general reach and suprema

Tt

cy of their intellect. We would place them rather in the scale of Bacon, or Plato, or Newton, than in that of any mere poet. The riches of their fancy, their profound moral sense, and their command of corre sponding numbers and harmony, have only directed into the channel of poet ry the lofty march of all their faculties, and it is from this beautiful and celestial garb in which they are clothed that they seem to rise above the race of mortals, and to speak the language of the gods.

It is giving a sufficient indulgence to the patriotic feeling to claim Two of those illustrious Four as our own, and, perhaps, the two who, in common estimation, must hold the highest place. Homer, indeed, combines the most varied perfections. He has more nature and observation than any one but Shakespeare, and he soars in a higher region than any one but Milton. Yet Shakespeare is so inexhaustible, and Milton so sublime, that we cannot but consider them as more enlivening and elevat ing even than the Father of Poetry. The least popular of the four, and he whose astonishing genius is least understood, is certainly Dante. But we are inclined, we confess, to place him at the head of the whole choir,and, notwithstanding all that is repulsive and tedious in his subject and manner, notwithstanding his dry details of history, or obscure and uninteresting allusions,-notwithstanding his persevering continuance in the same uninterrupted tone, and his everlasting pacing along in the same unvarying circles, there is, in truth, less of the mortal in him than in any other poet. He appears more distinctly a high and commissioned Being, whose natural intercourse is with things beyond mortality, whose mysterious language seems constantly to breathe from a spiritual region, and who, in his few and lucid words, seems ever above the indulgence of his human imagination, even while it is winged in its most eccentric flights.

We have already attended this great poet through the horrors of his infernal descent,-yet, powerful as his genius appears in that dark and terrible picture, we have ever thought that its finer characteristics can be but imperfectly felt by those who accompany him no farther. In the midst, indeed, of the "hel

lish blasts" by which he is there encircled, "airs from heaven" are ever stealing around him; yet it is only when he comes forth into the light of day, and advances towards the Mount of Purification, that we are fully aware of the clearness and the gentle delicacy of his spirit. It is impossible to convey in any translation the buoy ancy and brilliancy of his expression,

yet we think our readers will have some perception of it from Mr Cary's faithful transcript. We shall go pretty much at large into quotations from this poem, and we shall be doing, we think, a greater service to our readers in pointing out to them the neglected beauties of this ancient Bard, than in expounding to them the characteristics of the genius of our eminent contemporaries, which they will find eloquently expatiated upon in so many different quarters.

His opening description of the light which broke upon him as he advanced to the mountain almost surrounds us with the brightness which it pourtrays. We shall give it along with the fine apparition of Cato, who is made, we do not very well know why, the guardian of the entrance to Pur◄ gatory.

"Sweet hue of eastern sapphire, that was spread

O'er the serene aspect of the pure air, High up as the first circle, to mine eyes Unwonted joy renew'd, soon as I 'scap'd Forth from the atmosphere of deadly gloom, That had mine eyes and bosom fill'd with grief.

The radiant planet, that to love invites, Made all the orient laugh, and veil'd be neath

The Pisces' light, that in his escort came. To the right hand I turn'd, and fix'd my On the other pole attentive, where I saw

mind

Four stars ne'er seen before save by the ken Of our first parents. Heaven of their rays Seem'd joyous. O thou northern site, bereft,

Indeed, and widow'd, since of these depriv'd!

As from this view I had desisted, strait Turning a little tow'rds the other pole, There from whence now the wain had disappear'd,

Alone, so worthy of rev'rence in his look, I saw an old man standing by my side

That ne'er from son to father more was ow'd.

Low down his beard, and mix'd with hoary white

Descended, like his locks, which parting fell Upon his breast in double fold. The beams