in his composition. He is an excellent commentator on the minute beauties of poetry. He has little grasp or acuteness of understanding, and his opinions are valueless where those qualities should be called into play; but he has a natural taste, which detects with nice accuracy what is beautiful, and a power of jaunty expression, which conveys its intuitive decisions directly to other minds. He surveys poetry almost always from a luxurious point of view, and his criticism therefore is merely a transcript of the fine and warm sensations it has awakened in himself. He is a sympathizing critic of words, sentences, and images, but has little success in explaining the grounds of his instinctive judgments, and is feeble and jejune in generalization. He broods over a dainty bit of fancy or feeling, until he overflows with affection for it. He dandles a poetic image on his knee as though it were a child, pats it lovingly on the back, and addresses to it all manner of dainty phrases; and, consequently, he has much of the baby-talk, as well as the warm appreciation, which comes from affection. This billing and cooing is often distasteful, especially if it be employed on some passages which the reader desires to keep sacred from such handling; and we cannot see him approaching a poet like Shelley without a gesture of impatience; but generally it is far from unpleasant. His "Imagination and Fancy" is a delightful book. "The Indicator" and "Seer" are filled with essays of peculiar excellence. Hunt's faults of style and thinking are ingrained, and cannot be weeded out by criticism; and to get at what is really valuable in his writings, considerable toleration must be exercised towards his effeminacy of manner and daintiness of sentiment. That, with all his faults, he has a mind of great delicacy and fulness, a fluent fancy, unrivalled good-will to the whole world, a pervading sweetness of feeling, and that he occasionally displays remarkable clearness of perception, must be cheerfully acknowledged by every reader of his essays.

In these hurried remarks on some of the essayists and critics of the time, we have not noticed two, who are well entitled to an extended consideration. We refer to Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. The influence of Carlyle on the whole tone of criticism at the present day has been powerfully felt. Mill is principally known on this side of the Atlantic by his work on Logic; but he has been for a number of years a writer for the Westminster Review, over the signature of A, and his articles, especially his masterly disquisition on Jeremy Bentham, evince uncommon solidity, fairness, penetration, and reach of thought. These are worthy of a more elaborate review than our limits will now permit; but we trust at some early period to repair the deficiency.

RUFUS CHOATE.*

To give a strict analysis of a mind so complex, various, and richly gifted, as that of Mr. Choate, we feel to be a difficult and delicate task. What is peculiar in his genius and character is provokingly elusive; and though an unmistakable individuality characterizes all his productions as a lawyer, orator, and statesman, it is an individuality so modified by the singular flexibility of his intellect, that it can be more easily felt than analyzed. We propose to give a few dates illustrating his biography; to allude to some of his masterly expositions of national policy as a statesman; and to touch slightly that rare combination in his character of the poet and the man of affairs, by which the graces of fancy and the energies of impassioned imagination lend beauty and power to the operations of his large and practical understanding.

Mr. Choate was born in Ipswich, Mass., on the 1st day of October, 1799. He entered Dartmouth College in 1815, and was distinguished there for that stern devotion to study, and that love of classical literature, which have accompanied him through all the distractions of political and professional life. Shortly after graduating he was chosen a tutor in college; but, selecting the law for his profession, he entered the Law School at Cambridge, and afterwards completed his studies in the office of Judge Cummins, of Salem. He also studied a year in the office of Mr. Wirt, Attorney-General of the United States. He commenced the practice of his profession in the town of Danvers, in 1824. But a considerable portion of the period between his first entry into his profession and his final removal to Boston, in 1834, was passed in Salem. He early distinguished himself as an advocate. His legal arguments, replete with knowledge, conducted with admirable skill, evincing uncommon felicity and power in the analysis and application of evidence, blazing with the blended fires of imagination and sensibility, and delivered with a rapidity and animation of manner which swept along the minds of his hearers on the torrent of his eloquence, made him one of the most successful advocates at the Essex bar. In 1825, he was elected a representative to the Massachusetts Legislature; and in 1827 he was in the Senate. He took a prominent part in the debates, and the energy and sagacity which he displayed gave him a wide reputation. In 1832 he was elected member of Congress from the Essex district. He declined a reëlection, and in 1834 removed to Boston, to devote himself to his profession. He soon took a position among the most eminent lawyers at the Suffolk bar, and for seven years his legal services were in continual request. In 1841, on the retirement of Mr. Webster from the Senate, he was elected to fill his place by a large majority of the Massachusetts Legislature, - an honor which Massachusetts bestows on none but men of signal ability and integrity. Since Mr. Choate resigned his seat in the Senate, he has been more exclusively devoted to his profession than at any previous period of his life. The only public office he now holds is that of Regent of the Smithsonian Institute. The country is principally indebted to his efforts for the promising form which that institution has now assumed.

Mr. Choate's powers as a statesman are to be estimated chiefly by his course while a member of the United States Senate, especially by his speeches on the Tariff, the Oregon question, and the Annexation of Texas. These appear to us among the ablest which were delivered during the agitation of those inflammable questions. Beneath an occasional wildness of style, there can easily be discerned a sagacious and penetrating intellect, well trained in dialectical science; capable of handling the most intricate questions arising under the law of nations and constitutional law; keen to perceive the practical workings of systems of national policy; possessed of all the knowledge relating to the topics under discussion; fertile in arguments and illustrations, and directing large stores of information and eloquence to practical objects. In his speech, March 14, 1842, on the right and duty of Congress to continue the policy of protecting American labor, he presents a lucid and admirable argument to prove that Congress has the constitutional power "so to provide for the collection of the necessary revenues of Government as to afford reasonable and adequate protection to the whole labor of the country, agricultural, navigating, mechanical, and manufacturing, and ought to afford that protection;" and in the course of the argument he gives a review of the opinions current on the subject about the period of the adoption of the Constitution. This displays an extensive acquaintance with the political history of the time,