near to the great source of harmony, without which nothing was made and nothing lives; uttering the beautiful mysteries which it saw and heard. His imitators, of which whole schools have recently come into fashion, have caught the shadow but never found the substance.' This is well said; but we conceive that SHELLEY himself has, with more than equal distinctness, conveyed, in a letter to one of his friends, his peculiar poetical characteristics. His power, he was right in believing, consisted in giving a genuine picture of his own mind; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation.' He was formed to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature, or the living beings which surrounded him, and to communicate the conceptions which resulted from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. These faculties, which comprehend the sublime in man, existed preëminently in SHELLEY's mind. But we must permit the readers of the volume before us, and their number will not be few, to derive their impressions of its character from its own pages; and to this end, we again commend it to that acceptance bounteous' which its merits demand.

LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF OLIVER CROMWELL. In two Volumes, of four Parts. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 'Library of Choice Reading.'

VERY remarkably Carlyleish' are these stirring pages. Earnest, picturesque, unique, grotesque, graphic. Every where CARLYLE; so that if you have the patient assiduity to work them out, meanings pregnant flash upon you continually. In a line, in a short sentence often, you shall see, not a single picture only, but a group of forceful limnings; scenes, it may be, as 'level to the eye' as a Dutch landscape, and figures erect and life-like as breathing Man himself. Great plainness of speech also, touching men and men's deeds; the higher in power and station, the more free and biting the satirical animadversion. Flunkey,'' spooney,' noodle,'' buzzard,' ninny; these are the terms visited upon those who have proved themselves worthy to wear them. Perhaps one might wish that such word-pillories were not so often erected in the progress of our author's pictured narrative; but then this is CARLYLE; which is far from being the case with the weak 'spoonies' who exhibit their intellectual poverty and irredeemable awkwardness in trying to imitate him. Here, in a single extract, is a specimen of CARLYLE'S crowded canvass:

'ON the fourth day after this appearance of Bulstrode as a Law-reformer, occurred the famous Black Monday; fearfullest eclipse of the sun ever seen by mankind. Came on about nine in the morning; darker and darker; ploughmen unyoked their teams, stars came out, birds sorrow fully chirping took to roost, men in amazement to prayers; a day of much obscurity; Black Monday, or Mirk Monday; 29th March, 1652. Much noised of by Lilly, Booker, and the buzzard Astrologer tribe. Betokening somewhat? Belike that Bulstrode and this Parliament will, in the way of Lawreform and otherwise, make a Practical Gospel, or real Reign of GOD in this England?

July 9th, 1652. A great external fact which, no doubt, has its effect on all internal movements, is the War with the Dutch. The Dutch ever since our Death-Warrant to Charles First have looked askance at the New Commonwealth, which wished to stand well with them; and have accumulated offence on offence against it. Ambassador Dorislaus was assassinated in their country; Charles Second was entertained there; evasive slow answers were given to tough St. John, who went over as new Ambassador: to which St. John responding with great directness, in a proud, brief and very emphatic manner, took his leave, and came home again. Came home again; and passed the celebrated Navigation Act, thereby terribly maiming the Carrying Trade of the Dutch;' and indeed, as the issue proved, depressing the Dutch Maritime Interest not a little, and proportionally elevating that of England. Embassies in consequence, from their irritated High Mightinesses; sea-fightings in consequence; and much negotiating, apologizing, and bickering, mounting ever higher; which at length, at the date above given, issues in declared War. Dutch War: cannonadings and fierce seafights in the narrow seas; land-soldiers drafted to fight on shipboard; and land-officers, Blake, Dean, Monk, became very famous sea-officers; Blake a thrice-famous one; - poor Dean lost his life in this business. They doggedly beat the Dutch, and again beat them; their best Von Tromps and De Ruy ters could not stand these terrible Puritan Sailors and Gunners.'

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL MISCELLANIES. BY WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT, Author of the History of FERDINAND and ISABELLA, The Conquest of Mexico,' etc. In one volume. pp. 638. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THE publishers of this beautiful volume uniform, we are glad to remark, with the previous popular works of its author-have performed a good service to the public in placing it before American readers. The papers which it contains, with a single exception, have been selected from contributions originally made to the North American Review, the most considerable journal in the United States,' as Mr. PRESCOTT well observes, in his preface to the English edition of the volume under notice. The articles, which were written many years since, have little reference to local or temporary topics, but are purely of a literary character; the titles of the several papers being CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN, the American Novelist;' Asylum for the Blind ;' IRVING'S Conquest of Granada; CERVANTES;Sir WALTER SCOTT ;' 'CHATEAUBRIAND'S English Literature;' BANCROFT'S United States;' 'Madame CALDERON's Life in Mexico; MOLIERE; Italian Narrative Poetry;' Poetry and Romance of the Italians; Scottish Song,' and DA PONTE's Observations.' Mr. PRESCOTT rarely undertakes the consideration of any subject which he does not illustrate,' in the best meaning of the word. The papers which have impressed us most favorably in the volume under notice, are the reviews of CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN, of Sir WALTER SCOTT, CHATEAUBRIAND'S English Literature,' and the article on Asylums for the Blind.' A well-engraved portrait of Mr. PresCOTT fronts the title-page, excellent in all respects save in the smallness of the head and features.

MONTEZUMA, THE LAST OF THE AZTECS: an Historical Romance of the Conquest of Mexico. By EDWARD MATURIN. In two volumes. pp. 540. New-York: PAINE AND BURGESS.

MR. MATURIN, in making choice of scene and character for the work before us, has evinced the self-reliance of true genius, with unmistakeable evidences of which indeed the work abounds. So well conjoined are the incidents, and so incapable of segregation, without doing injustice to the author's complete plan, that we are compelled, partly from a lack of leisure, but more from a want of space consequent upon the first number of a new volume, to forego an elaborate consideration of the work. This will be of little consequence to our readers, since the volumes are already widely disseminated, and even before these pages will pass to the press, will have become very generally extant. To the magnificent Curse of QUETZALCOATL' we adverted at some length in our last number; and reading it over again, in connection with the incidents of the romance, we are struck with the power of its execution. Next to this, in point of original force and graphic description, we consider the history and account of the execution of the Tlascalan chief, in the second volume. The sacrificial scene is drawn with the hand of a master; and that which ensues, descriptive of the agony and undying affection of that fine creation, CHOITLA, is admirably well sustained. But without the work by us, (and books like this are the ones which so often disappear miraculously from one's table,) we are unable satisfactorily to recall the many points which arrested our attention and fixed our admiration in their perusal. We shall content ourselves for the present therefore with recommending to our readers the well-printed volumes whose merits we have rather hinted at than indicated; satisfied that they will find in their pages ample confirmation of the justice of our praise.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT' is the title of a discourse not long since delivered before the Erosophic Society of the University of Alabama, by BENJAMIN FANEUIL PORTER. It is a production of decided originality and power, and we propose to afford our readers a slight taste of its quality.' It was a remark of Madame De Stael, that that Past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the Present, was itself founded on an alteration of some Past that went before it.' The discourse before us rebukes the disposition manifested by many of the writers and speakers of the present day to undervalue the times in which we live; to condemn the present, and mourn the future as beset with disastrous revolutions. The nations, the institutions, the men of one age, are but dead bodies to the souls of succeeding times. Death is the sleep from which another existence wakes up. Like the green

ivy, which reaches its utmost height only through time-broken crevices, each era lives and advances upon the ruins of the last. The flame which burned so brilliantly on the altars of the Grecian, it is true, is extinguished there; but it enlightens lands boasting a more rational and widely-diffused liberty. The monument of art which once hailed the morning sun in mysterious tones, echoes now but to the labors of a CHAMPOLLION and ROSSELLINI; but still it records the vanity of man, and exists as the vindicator of the awful providences of GOD.' The writer assumes the ground that man, the object of all revolution, constantly improves; in defiance of his opposition, Nature vindicates her laws; notwithstanding his destruction, all is life; independent of his sloth, all is progression. These truths are established by a detail of some of the physical and intellectual processes through which this state of progression' is unfolded. The phenomena presented in the structure of the earth is in this connexion thus considered:

WHEN We examine the composition and arrangement of the materials forming the mass of matter on which we live, we discover rocks, minerals, and, in a popular sense, earths of various qualities. In some places we see a loose red brown and white soil, crumbled into powder, and forming the general surface. In others we find horizontal masses of rock spread out in strata or beds, one resting upon the other. Again, we see these strata twisted and raised up from their flat position, and cones of harder and crystallated rock, in which no strata are discoverable, forced up through them. In some of these we notice remains of vegetable matter; in others of animals. In some places we find rocks rolled and rounded as if by some violent action; in others we see particles deposited as if by the gentlest motion. Cutting into beds of some rocks, we behold veins of metal injected into fissures. Often the rocks themselves seem melted as if by suppressed fires. When we descend into the interior of the earth, we have a sensation of heat, increasing at the rate of one degree for every fifty feet; when we examine its surface, we find something like two hundred mouths vomiting forth internal fires. But to illustrate these phenomena farther: If we see in the bosom of the earth a body of rock, not spread out into layers, having the appearance of being once melted by fire; if this rock presents no sign of animal or vegetable remains, it is no strained conclusion, that it was moulded amidst intense fires, and surrounded by an atmosphere of too high temperature for

the existence of organized life. Again: If we discover rocks of different chemical composition, lying in strata, having the appearance of the deposits we now see formed from water, if of great thickness, and full of the remains of vegetables, it is a just conclusion that these also are deposits from water, the work of ages; and that heat and moisture, the chief conditions of vegetable life, prevailed. If in the strata of other rocks we find the remains of organized life, which could not have existed in an atmosphere necessary to the vegetation last considered, it is but just to believe, that a lower temperature, suited to their habits of life and capacities, must have existed. If coming nearer, in supposition, to our own times, we see evidences of ungovernable floods of water having rushed in many directions, rolling fragments of rocks into globes, again reducing them to gravel, again cutting grooves into granite; if we see remains of animals of vast physical powers, whose existence could be safely subjected to an atmosphere of intense temperature, and then, after their races had become extinct, we see the first proofs of man's appearance on the earth, can it be called a wild mental scheme to assert, that in different times and places, the earth was subjected to a deluge of water; that physical life gradually declined as a cooler atmosphere and other circumstances combined to prepare the way for a more intellectual being? Lastly if reviewing all these things we find nothing lost amidst the revolutions of earth; if, in connexion with all these vicissitudes, the physical and the moral condition of nature has improved, what, let us ask, results from these facts and indications? Simply the truths of Geology; one of the most sublime, because the most natural of sciences; one whose volume is the great globe itself, unfolding its noble pages of granite and crystal, and metal, as if to disclose, in characters of fire, the awful truths of nature, and reveal to the present age their once incomprehensible narrations.'

We should be glad, did our limits permit, to follow the writer in the farther inquiries by which he tests the principles of geology, and the inferences which he draws from them; tracing our planet as a burning mass, cooling gradually, and forming a crust upon its surface; the first organic formations, from the crude plant to the latest form of irrational animal matter; produced and perishing in their successions, and changed into rocky and mineral substances; and lastly, the appearance, upon their tombs, of MAN, an intellectual and moral being, bearing the relation to the moral world that the primitive rocks, the foundations of the earth, bear to nature; both having been gradually developed, and both serving in their turn the eternal purposes of truth and justice. In the one case, rocks are raised up amidst awful convulsions, only to crumble beneath external influences and fertilize the plain; in the other, the process of mental development gradually but certainly advances toward perfection:

A

'EVERY modern improvement, every new institution, every triumph of mind, indicates a remarkable adaptation to the useful purposes of life. It is reserved for an age, deeply reflective upon the character of events, to appreciate the assertion, that taking the same number of persons, and separating from the history of former times their brilliant pageantry; take from their religion its superstitious horrors and gorgeous ceremonies; from war its martial music and splendid decorations; from their orators the occasion, and from their manners their pleasures; and the whole scene, in comparison with the habits and inventions and institutions of the last fifty years, will fade like the evanescent cloud breathed upon a mirror. Observe the rapid strides of discoveries in philosophy, science and the mechanic arts, and their application to the means of feeding and clothing men. philosopher ascertains that sulphur, uitre and charcoal form a combustible substance; our ancestors applied it to murder each other; we to the arts. Gun-powder blasts rocks, cuts through mountains, and excavates tunnels for the use of rail-roads, and to supply cities with building materials. One ascertains that steam is expansive; that thrown into a tube in a particular way, it will move a pistonrod and produce action. On this a FULTON applies the principle to machinery, and a WATT builds a steam-engine. A plant is found bearing a woolly substance; WHITNEY invents a machine, which on turning a crank, separates the seed from the wool. A HARGRAVES invents a spinning-jenny; a CARTWRIGHT the power-loom. What effect have these things had on the population, the wealth, the trade, the comfort of the world!'

6

CARLYLE in one of his essays hints at such improvements' in his own altogether inimitable way: The Staffordshire coal stratum and coal strata lay side by side with iron strata, quiet since the creation of the world. Water flowed in Lancashire and Lanarkshire; bituminous fire lay bedded in rocks there too. GOD said, 'Let the iron missionaries be!' and they were. Coal and iron, so long close but unregardful neighbors, are wedded together; Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and the hundred Stygian forges, with their fire-throats and never-resting sledge-hammers, rose into day. Wet Manconium stretched out her hand toward Carolina and the torrid zone, and plucked cotton thence; who could forbid her, she that had the skill to weave it? Fish fled thereupon from the Mersey river, vexed by innumerable keels. (What a

'picture in little' of commerce, reader, is conveyed in that brief sentence !) England, I say, dug out her bituminous fire and bade work; towns arose, and steeple-chimneys.' We had pencilled for insertion, but are compelled to omit, a remarkable illustration of the easily-traced influence of steam, in the instance of the rise of the town of Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool; preeminently establishing the position, that anciently, moral as well as mental energy, like wealth, confined to a few, slumbered without producing in the course of centuries what is now in the period of a few months unfolded in the minds and occupations of the great mass. 'Therefore, industry is awake, because it brings fortune and honor to the laborer; ignorance declines, because education is more general; wealth is more useful, because more extensively distributed.' We conclude with the advice to all such of our readers as can command the modest but most meritorious discourse which we have been considering, at once to secure the perusal which it will so richly repay.

-We are indebted to a favorite con

A CAPITAL STORY OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. tributor for an amusing sketch, with which we shall serve our Table' in two separate side-dishes. Have the goodness at this present' to taste and admire the first: Some years since, there lived in Cincinnati a bullet-headed, broad-shouldered, thick-necked brute of a Dutchman, who, tempted' as he said by de rum and de Tuyfel,' committed the horrible crime of murdering his wife. There existed at that time, and for aught that I know up to the present period, a law in the state of Ohio that a criminal found guilty of murder might, as it was expressed, have 'liberty of choice' between hanging or imprisonment for life. Consequently most homicides had taken the privilege of drawing their necks from the noose, and had chosen the 'liberty' of being deprived of liberty during their natural lives.' But our Dutchman, from sheer obstinacy and contempt of advice, loudly declared that he had rather be hung. The Cincinnatians, like all other enlightened people, love to ride on an excitement; and the city was divided against itself on the hanging question with the same spirit and sincerity as it would have been on a contested election. There were hanging and anti-hanging tea-parties, hanging and anti-hanging churches; and the anti-hangers raged furiously against the hangers for their blood-thirstiness and non-obedience to the commandments, while the hangers as loudly denounced the anti-hangers as immoral innovators, who would destroy the constitution and uproot civilization. The old man suddenly found himself the most interesting' person that had ever been in Cincinnati, and received several deputations every day to shake or confirm his decision; but, inflexible as PROMETHEUS on the rock, he firmly adhered to the hanging. At that time Science had not as now lifted her many-eyed head in every town and village, and any one who could even say a few words on such subjects was looked upon with no small wonder. A young Scotchman was then the oracle, who pronounced sentence on all the 'onomies and 'ologies, to the astonishment of the town'speople, that one small head could carry all he knew.' Professor KILMARNOCK was one of the most credulous, kind-hearted, benevolent Scotchman breathing. His whole thoughts were bent on the physical sciences; and he was continually expatiating in all places, for his mind never reverted to the person with whom he discoursed, and consequently entirely disregarded their capacity or fitness for the subject. On electricity, galvanism or magnetism he would talk by the hour; and it mattered little