Heav'd in its cerements, and a sudden flush
Ran through the lines of the divided lips,
And, with a murmur of his mother's name,
He trembled and sat upright in his shroud.
And, while the mourner hung upon his neck,
Jesus went calmly on his way to Nain.'

'The Leper' is perhaps even superior still, in beauty and pathos.

Throughout the volume, are many pieces of uncommon excellence; and detached passages, embodying thoughts fine enough to be enrolled among those uttered by the best poets in the language. How expressive is this image of a lovely woman:

'Never swan

Dreamed on the water with a grace so calm!'

And this, of a young girl's innocent buoyancy, con-
trasted with the blighted hopes and seared feelings of
one who had experienced how 'all is vanity.'

'But life with her was at the flow,
And every wave went sparkling higher;
While mine was ebbing, fast and low,
From the same shore of vain desire.'

The following lines, from the 'Healing of Jairus' Daughter,' present a water scene with more than the vividness of painting:

And my locks are not yet gray;
For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,

To catch the thrill of a happy voice,
And the light of a pleasant eye.

'I have walked the world for fourscore years;
And they say that I am old,

And my heart is ripe for the reaper, Death,
And my years are well nigh told.
It is very true; it is very true;

I'm old, and "I bide my time:"
But my heart will leap at a scene like this
And I half renew my prime.

'Play on, play on; I am with you there,
In the midst of your merry ring;

I can feel the thrill of the daring jump,
And rush of the breathless swing.
I hide with you in the fragrant hay,
And I whoop the smothered call,
And my feet slip up on the seedy floor,
And I care not for the fall.

'I am willing to die when my time shall come, And I shall be glad to go;

For the world at best is a weary place,

And my pulse is getting low;

But the grave is dark, and the heart will fail
In treading its gloomy way;

And it wiles my heart from its dreariness,
To see the young so gay.'

Notwithstanding all this praise, however, there is some ground for censure.

Our first quarrel is with the metre which Mr. Willis often uses. It is so much out of the common way, that ordinary readers cannot find in it half the pleasure which the same thoughts would afford, if couched

And where can be found a more exquisite picture of in rhyming couplets, or in quatrains with alternate Jesus than follows?

A great merit of Mr. W.'s poems, is the admirable moral tone that pervades them. There is not an indecent word or allusion: no holding up of villainy, or gentlemanly vice, to admiration; no attempt, by sneer or innuendo, to throw ridicule upon any of man's good affections. On the contrary, no one can read the volume, with clear understanding and proper feeling, without having the generous principles of his nature refined and strengthened. Nor is Mr. W.'s always a tearful or pensive muse, like that of Mrs. Hemans. Serious, she generally is: but now and then, her frolic step and joyous note shew a just consciousness that life has a due mixture of gladness with its gloom. The piece called "Saturday Afternoon," is an instance of this. The supposed speaker is a cheerful old man :

'I love to look on a scene like this, Of wild and careless play,

And persuade myself that I am not old,

rhymes; those old-fashioned, but smoothest, most
transparent, and most captivating forms of poetical
diction. Writers who adopt either the spenserian
stanza, or the more new-fangled one preferred by our
present author, may be assured that they diminish very
much their chances of popularity; for both the latter
are unmanageable and with difficulty understood, by
readers whose ear is charmed by the melody while their
minds are alive to the meaning, of Campbell, Gold-
smith, and Pope. How much better are the metrical
forms of these poets adapted to quotation, and there-
fore how much more likely to win that fame which all
poets long for, than the really beautiful ideas embodied
in the following stanzas! They are a part of some
lines' On a picture of a girl leading her blind mother.'

'But thou canst hear! and love
May richly on a human tone he pour'd,
And the least cadence of a whisper'd word
A daughter's love may prove-
And while I speak thou know'st if I smile,
Albeit thou canst not see my face the while!

Yes, thou canst hear! and He
Who on thy sightless eye its darkness hung,
To the attentive ear, like harps, hath strung
Heaven and earth and sea!

And 'tis a lesson in our hearts to know-
With but one sense the soul may overflow.'

There is an occasional want of exactness in Mr. Willis's rhymes. In the last extract, 'love' and 'prove,' 'pour'd' and 'word,' are unnaturally yoked together.

Elsewhere, 'love' is made to rhyme with wove;' and ]
'flow' with 'bow' (to bend the body.) Let us not be
misunderstood. We would not alter a syllable, an
accent, or a pause, in several of the pieces here, which
vary from the modes of versification we generally pre-
fer. "Saturday Afternoon,” above quoted, is not more
exquisite in conception, than musical and appropriate
in its bounding numbers. Many of Moore's poems,
'Birth Days,' for instance-are unsurpassably melodi-
ous; and print themselves in the memory without an
effort, and almost without volition on the reader's part.
And who can be insensible to the varied flow of Walter
Scott's epic verse, so happily commingling sweetness
and strength? But even there, our favorite forms pre-
dominate; and are only sometimes departed from, to
prevent monotony.

The sense of his verses is not always clear. It was only after thrice reading, that we could discern what the last six lines of the following stanza mean; and even now, they seem a jumble of ill assorted and infelicitous metaphors, leaving no distinct idea in the mind:

'I fear thy gentle loveliness,

Thy witching tone and air,
Thine eye's beseeching earnestness
May be to thee a snare:

The silver stars may purely shine,
The waters taintless flow-

But they who kneel at woman's shrine,
Breathe on it as they bow-

Ye may fling back the gift again,

But the crushed flower will leave a stain.'

We have no objection to fancy-pictures, when they are happily conceived and well drawn: but when they falsify Nature or History, they deserve ridicule or reprobation, accordingly as the untruth is merely ludicrous, or positively mischievous. The latter imputation, certainly, rests upon the verse, which crowns treason and all baseness, with the laurels of patriotism and virtue: which says of Arnold, almost all that could be said of Washington. We entreat Mr. Willis, if he loves historic truth and justice, to blot out this piece from his book.

LORD BACON.

PART II.

HIS CHARACTER, AND WRITINGS.

The Baconian Philosophy--its chief peculiarity--its end, 'Fruit' -Bacon contrasted with Seneca-superiority of the Baconian, to the ancient Philosophy, even to that of Socrates-still more, to that of Epicurus-Fruitlessness of ancient philosophyWhy?--its disdain of the merely useful--its disrepute, even before Bacon's time--its false use, and false estimate, of the Sciences--arithmetic-geometry--astronomy--alphabetical writing-medicine--difference of Bacon in these respects.

The chief peculiarity of Bacon's philosophy seems to us to have been this-that it aimed at things altogether different from those which his predecessors had proposed to themselves. This was his own opinion. Finis scientiarum,' says he, 'a nemine adhuc bene positus est.'* And again, 'Omnium gravissimus error in deviatione ab ultimo doctrinarum fine consistit.' 'Nec ipsa meta,' says he elsewhere, adhuc ulli, quod sciam, mortalium posita est et defixa.' The more carefully his works are examined, the more clearly, we think, it will appear, that this is the real clue to his whole system; and that he used means different from arrive at an end altogether different from theirs. those used by other philosophers, because he wished to

But the greatest fault in the whole book, is the honorary tribute to Benedict Arnold. In boyhood, he was selfish and cruel : in riper years, he added peculation and swindling to increased selfishness and cruelty: later still, he grafted upon those vices, constantly grow ing more intense in his bosom and in his practice,—a treason unparalleled in its blackness and enormity: and the sun of his life went down amid clouds of just contempt, and storms of revenge, drunkenness and avarice. Yet in 'The Burial of Arnold,' Mr. Willis calls this prodigy of crime 'the noble sleeper'! and 'the no-vitæ humanæ incommoda.'§ It was 'dotare vitam hublest of the dead! Of him, whose childhood, like Domitian's, was signalized by torturing brutes and insects, as well as by oppressing his weaker playmates,* Mr. Willis asks and answers,

'Whose heart, in generous deed and thought,
No rivalry might brook,

And yet distinction claiming not?
There lies he-go and look!'

So far from not claiming his share of distinction, Arnold
was greedy even of that which properly belonged to
others.

Of him, whose last years were those of a drunkard, and whose eyes were therefore probably bloodshot, his eye-lids inflamed, and his features discolored and bloated, in accordance with the usual effect of drunkenness,—Mr. W. says (beautifully, were it not so untruly,)

'Tread lightly-for 'tis beautiful,
That blue-veined eye-lid's sleep,
Hiding the eye death left so dull-
Its slumber we will keep.' [!]

See Mr. Sparks' Life of Arnold.

What then was the end which Bacon proposed to himself? It was, to use his own emphatic expression, 'FRUIT.' It was the multiplying of human enjoyments and the mitigating of human sufferings. It was 'the inservire.' It was 'efficaciter operari ad sublevanda relief of man's estate.' It was 'commodis humanis

manam novis inventis et copiis.' It was 'genus humanum novis operibus et potestatibus continuo dotare.' This was the object of all his speculations in every department of science,—in natural philosophy, in legislation, in politics, in morals.

Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrineutility and progress. The ancient philosophy disdained to be useful, and was content to be stationary. It dealt largely in theories of moral perfection, which were so sublime that they never could be more than theories; in attempts to solve insoluble enigmas; in exhortations to the attainment of unattainable frames of mind. It could not condescend to the humble office of ministering to the comfort of human beings. All the schools regarded that office as degrading; some censured it as immoral. Once indeed Posidonius, a distinguished writer of the age of Cicero and Caesar, so far forgot himself as to enumerate among the humbler blessings which mankind owed to philosophy, the discovery of the principle of the arch, and the introduction of the use of metals. This eulogy was considered as an af

The proper aim of science, no man hath as yet determined.' The most grievous of errors is, to miss the true and main end of learning.'

To promote the good of mankind."

To strive to alleviate the ills of human life.'

To endow life with new inventions and resources,'

VOL. IV.-10

front, and was taken up with proper spirit. Seneca, he said, in one of the most remarkable of his early letvehemently disclaims these insulting compliments. ters, was so fixed in his mind as it could not be removed,' Philosophy, according to him, has nothing to do with this majestic humility, this persuasion that nothing can teaching men to rear arched roofs over their heads. be too insignificant for the attention of the wisest, which The true philosopher does not care whether he has an is not too insignificant to give pleasure or pain to the arched roof or any roof. Philosophy has nothing to do meanest is the great characteristical dictinction, the with teaching men the uses of metals. She teaches us essential spirit of the Baconian philosophy. We trace to be independent of all material substances, of all me- it in all that Bacon has written on physics, on laws, on chanical contrivances. The wise man lives according morals. And we conceive that from this peculiarity all to nature. Instead of attempting to add to the physi- the other peculiarities of his system directly and almost cal comforts of his species, he regrets that his lot was necessarily sprang. not cast in that golden age when the human race had no protection against the cold but the skins of wild beasts-no screen from the sun but a cavern. To impute to such a man any share in the invention or improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill, is an insult. In my own time,' says Seneca, there have been inventions of this sort,-transparent windows,-tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building, short-hand, which has been carried to such perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves: philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul—Non est, inquam, instrumentorum ad usus necessarios opifex.** If the non were left out, this last sentence would be no bad description of the Baconian philosophy; and would, indeed, very much resemble several expressions in the Novum Organum. 'We shall next be told,' exclaims Seneca, 'that the first shoemaker was a philosopher.' For our own part, if we are forced to make our choice between the first shoemaker, and the author of the three books 'On Anger,' we pronounce for the shoemaker. It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept any body from being angry.

It is very reluctantly that Seneca can be brought to confess that any philosopher had ever paid the smallest attention to any thing that could possibly promote what vulgar people would consider as the well being of mankind. He labors to clear Democritus from the disgraceful imputation of having made the first arch, and Anacharsis from the charge of having contrived the potter's wheel. He is forced to own that such a thing might happen; and it may also happen, he tells us, that a philosopher may be swift of foot. But it is not in his character of philosopher that he either wins a race or invents a machine. No, to be sure. The business of a philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty with two millions sterling out at usury-to meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of luxury, in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns-to rant about liberty, while fawning on the insolent and pampered freedmen of a tyrant-to celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with the same pen which had just before written a defence of the murder of a mother by a son.

From the cant of this philosophy-a philosophy meanly proud of its own unprofitableness-it is delightful to turn to the lessons of the great English teacher. We can almost forgive all the faults of Bacon's life when we read that singularly graceful and dignified passage:-Ego certe, ut de me ipso, quod res est, loquar, et in iis quæ nunc edo, et in iis quæ in posterum, meditor, dignitatem ingenii et nominis mei, si qua sit, sæpius sciens et volens projicio, dum commodis humanis inserviam; quique architectus fortasse in philosophia et scientiis esse debeam, etiam operarius et bajulus, et quidvis demum fio cum haud pauca quæ omnino fieri necesse sit, alii autem ob innatam superbiam subterfugiant, ipse sustineam et exsequar.' This philanthropia, which, as

She, I say, is [not] a mere artisan, to drudge with tools.' If I may be allowed to say so,-I do often, both in my present and in my meditated works, lay aside the dignity of genius and of reputation (if any I have,) in my zeal for the good of mankind and I, who should perhaps be an architect in science and philosophy, drudge as a hodman; doing and bearing many things indispensable to the work, but which others, through pride eschew.'

The spirit which appears in the passage of Seneca to which we have referred, tainted the whole body of the ancient philosophy from the time of Socrates downwards; and took possession of intellects with which that of Seneca cannot, for a moment, be compared. It pervades the dialogues of Plato. It may be distinctly traced in many parts of the works of Aristotle. Bacon has dropped hints from which it may be inferred, that in his opinion the prevalence of this feeling was in a great measure to be attributed to the influence of Socrates. Our great countryman evidently did not consider the revolution which Socrates effected in philosophy as a happy event; and he constantly maintained that the earlier Greek speculators, Democritus in particular, were, on the whole, superior to their more celebrated successors.*

Assuredly, if the tree which Socrates planted, and Plato watered, is to be judged of by its flowers and leaves, it is the noblest of trees. But if we take the homely test of Bacon,-if we judge of the tree by its fruits,-our opinion of it may perhaps be less favorable. When we sum up all the useful truths which we owe to that philosophy, to what do they amount? We find, indeed, abundant proofs that some of those who cultivated it were men of the first order of intellect. We find among their writings incomparable specimens both of dialectical and rhetorical art. We have no doubt that the ancient controversies were of use in so far as they served to exercise the faculties of the disputants; for there is no controversy so idle that it may not be of use in this way. But, when we look for something more-for something which adds to the comforts or alleviates the calamities of the human race,--we are forced to own ourselves disappointed. We are forced to say with Bacon, that this celebrated philosophy ended in nothing but disputation; that it was neither a vineyard nor an olive ground, but an intricate wood of briers and thistles, from which those who lost themselves in it, brought back many scratches and no food †

We readily acknowledge that some of the teachers of this unfruitful wisdom were among the greatest men that the world had ever seen. If we admit the justice of Bacon's censure, we admit it with regret, similar to that which Dante felt when he learned the fate of those illustrious heathens who were doomed to the first circle of Hell.

'Gran duol mi prese al cuor quando lo'ntesi,
Perocché gente di molto valere

Conobbi che'n quel limbo eran sospesi.'

But, in truth, the very admiration which we feel for the eminent philosophers of antiquity, forces us to adopt the opinion, that their powers were systematically misdirected. For how else could it be that such powers should effect so little for mankind? A pedestrian may show as much muscular vigor on a treadmill as on the highway road. But on the road his vigor will assuredly carry him forward; and on the treadmill he will not mill, not a path. It was made up of revolving quesadvance an inch. The ancient philosophy was a treadtions, of controversies which were always beginning again. It was a contrivance for having much exertion

*Norum Organum, Lib. 1, Aph. 71, 79. De Augmentis, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. De principiis atque originibus. Cogitata et visa. Redargutio philosophiarum. Norum Organum. Lib. 1, Aph. 73.

that

'Great sorrow seized my heart, when I heard it, for I knew persons of great worth were suspended in that limbo.'