No more shall feel the victor's tread, 3. O, better that her shattered hulk Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale. As a specimen of Dr. Holmes's quaint humor employed in kindliest satire, we give the following poem, addressed to his college classmates of 1829 on the occasion of their reunion some thirty years after their graduation : III.--The Boys. 1. Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the almanac's cheat and the catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! we're twenty to-night! 2. We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? He's tipsy,-young jackanapes!-show him the door! 66 Gray temples at twenty?"-Yes! white if we please ; Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze! 3. Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! 4. We've a trick,-we young fellows,-you may have been told, Of talking (in public) as if we were old; That boy, we call "Doctor," and this, we call "Judge;" It's a neat little fiction,-of course it's all fudge. 5. That fellow's the "Speaker," the one on the right; "Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night? That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaff; There's the "Reverend"-what's his name?-don't make me laugh. 6. That boy with the grave mathematical look 7. There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain, 8. And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith; Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!" 9. You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done: The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all! 10. Yes, we're boys,-always playing with tongue or with pen; And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men? 11. Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! An exquisitely expressed little lyric illustrates the delicacy and elevation of Dr. Holmes's soberer moods. It is said to be one of his favorite compositions, and is entitled IV. The Chambered Nautilus. 1. This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 2. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 3. Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 4. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: 5. Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! Dr. Holmes has written the romances Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel, the plot of each turning upon inherited physical conditions. He must be placed in art with the disciples of Pope, as Bryant must be with those of Wordsworth. Miss Mitford's judgment of him is as follows:-"Of all this flight of genuine poets, I hardly know any one so original as Dr. Holmes. For him we can find no living prototype. To track his footsteps we must travel back as far as Pope or Dryden." The Irish Quarterly Review notices an edition of the Doctor's poems in these words:" He possesses Swift's quaintness and motley merriment, Pope's polish and graceful point, and the solemn pathos and allied excruciating merriment of Hood." The London Athenæum, a critical periodical noted for its severity, thus sums up our author's chief qualities:-" There are strains of didactic thought, humorous fancy, pathetic feeling, there is an Augustan sonority and neatness of versification,—in the poems of Dr. Holmes which by turns remind us of the prize poems of our colleges,-of Crabbe, who minutely brought out the homeliest themes in heroic metre,—and of William Spencer's drawing-room lyrics, light as gossamer, sentimental as music on a lake." CHAPTER LXXVIII.—MISCELLANEOUS. I.-Letter Correspondence. 1. Blessed be letters! They are the monitors; they are also the comforters, and they are the only true hearttalkers. Your speech, and the speeches of others, are conventional; they are moulded by circumstances. Your truest thought is modified half through its utterance by a look, a sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual; it is not integral; it is serial and mixed,-half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways, it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others presses, relaxes, or quickens. 2. But it is not so with letters:-there you are with only the soulless pen, and the snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is measuring itself by itself, and saying its own sayings there are no sneers to modify its utterance,— no scowl to scare,-nothing is present but you and your thought. Utter it, then, freely-write it down-stamp it -burn it in the ink!-There it is, a true soul-print! 3. Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter! It is worth all the lip-talk of the world. Do you say it is studied, made up, acted, rehearsed, contrived, artistic? Let me see it, then; let me run it over; tell me age, sex, circumstances, and I will tell you if it be studied or real; if it be the merest lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper. 4. I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with |