merits, are a magazine of universal knowledge. The philosopher regards, with an eager and scrutinizing curiosity, the oldest monuments of pagan antiquity; the poet contemplates, with fervid admiration, the oldest, richest, raciest of poems; and the most careless student must possess little of that divine mind which so distinguishes the old bard, who reads the poems of Homer without becoming familiar with the character, the manners, the curious livelihood of the early Greeks, without finding his mind filled with sublime and beautiful images, instructed in human nature, strengthened by precepts of prudence and morality, astonished and delighted by a work of genius which all succeeding ages have regarded as marking the utmost bound of human effort.

NIAGARA.

How am I lost? and whither am I borne ?
Methought as on the beetling cliff I stood,
Gazing intently on the fearful scene,
Like a wild pageant it at once dissolv'd,
And dunnest night came o'er me; and I fell
Headlong, how far! never to rise again.
But lo, it bursts upon the view once more!
The roar of waters, the dark-tumbling flood,
The bounding spray and all-involving mist,
And the wide-yawning gulf beneath my feet,-
The war of elements anew proclaim,
And wake to ecstacy the astonish'd soul.
Yet where, amid the uproar dread around,
Where shall the eye an instant find repose?
If on the mighty stream which sweeps amain
The tribute of its ocean-lakes, I gaze-
Waves press on waves forever as before,
To be ingulf'd as soon. If o'er the brink,

The shudd'ring brink, I bend, to scrutinize
The wonders there, and eye the drear profound-
What but a whirlpool vast do I behold,
And sea of foam that never knows a calm!
Or, upward gazing, what but cloud on cloud
Of spray resplendent issuing from the abyss,
This way and that perpetually convolv'd,
Yet glowing with ethereal tints, as heaven's
Own bow, most beautiful. Fir'd at the view-

Alike with beauty, grandeur, terror fir'd-
At once I break the long continued spell,

Fly the charm'd spot, seize every point, and take
My fill of rapture. Nor with this content,

Down the rude steep I urge my vent'rous steps,
And to the o'erwhelming flood's appalling verge
Trembling advance: but oh, as thence I lift
My eye, what sight stupendous overawes
The aching sense! Straight from my feet a wall
Of adamant, of vast immeasured curve,
Its front upheaves immoveable and huge,
Towering to heaven; whence, like a rushing sea,
Bearing the whirlwind on its skirts, descends
The mighty deluge! Dreadful is the shock-
Earth trembles, and the affrighted deep recoils !
As when the thirsty clouds converging o'er
The sea, the subtle element attract,

And then upon the tempest's wing upborne,
Mid the wild heavens to battle rush sublime-

Down comes with thundering crash the liquid world,
And hill and valley instantly submerg'd,
The waters roll tumultuous to the main.

But who shall paint the inimitable scene,
Where Nature in a realm yet all her own,
Seems in unrivall'd majesty enthron'd!
As well, with magic of sweet sounds, the bard
To frenzy wrought, might hope there to detain
Yon glorious setting sun: lo! hovering o'er
The forest's verge, it sinks-while dusky night
Too hastily advancing, shuts the scene.
Darkness and Solitude-mysterious Powers!
At such an hour as this, how do ye seize
Upon the trembling soul! I feel the earth
Is without foothold; while a voice amidst
The roar eternal, seems to sound its doom!

But see! amid the East a light! the full orb'd moon
Which there, majestic rising, sheds o'er heaven
And earth a milder day; and now, as if
Enchanted, pours upon the lapsing flood
Her brightest beams. The falling waves
Imbibe the effulgence, and in volumes vast
Descend like liquid silver;-till, as they
Impinge with headlong force below, they break,
Swift shatter'd in ten thousand parts-fly off
Diverse or upward curl in snowy mist
Far 'mid the blue serene. The breeze that like
A living stream seems ever gushing up,
Plays with the forest leaf; on either hand,

And from the opposing isle,* majestic trees

Lift high their verdant screens-here veil'd in night-
There glitt'ring amid showers of spray-while o'er

The rocks, the banks, upon the loftiest heights,

And deep within the bosom of the abyss,

The light and shade their magic force exert,
And in mysterious grandeur wrap the scene.

O miracle of Nature! though amid

The boundless wild for ages thou hast been
From distant worlds conceal'd, yet myriad eyes
On thee have gaz'd. The proud, unconquer'd tribes,
That fearless roam'd the shadowy forest, caught
Far off thy wondrous music, and approach'd
With reverence the scene: while from thy crags
The eaglet peer'd,-or, taught full soon to tempt
Thy troubled air, his vigorous pinions shook,
And screaming wild, amid the ethereal void

Swift vanish'd. Yet with the bright morn once more
Shall he return, and in thy rainbows sport,

Or up to heaven shall mount' to drink the sun.'
But ah! those dark-eyed men-where now are they?
With thy returnless waves forever gone!

Yet thou in all thy grandeur still remain'st

To mock our withering race. Say! when the world
Sprang out of chaos, and the stars look'd down
Enamour'd of the virgin earth, did then

Thy thundering voice the trembling echoes wake?
Or hath the subtle miner, Time, earth's old
Foundations sapp'd, and with her giant walls
Let fall thy floods?-Within the Eternal Mind
The images of all that's beautiful

And fair, of wondrous and sublime, repose;

Till as thou will'st, O God! they seize, they fire
The enraptur'd sight. This beauteous orb, which thou
In thy beneficence didst call to light,

Thou gav'st to man; and, glorious to behold,
Around its outstretch'd continents didst pour
Thy world of waters. Storms the ocean lash
And wake it into wrath; as soon to peace
Again 'tis lull'd; but when thou badst unlock
The mountain-springs, outgush'd the impetuous floods
That leap exulting from their heaven-built seats,

And with eternal thunders shake the vales!

* Goat Island.

P. H.

THE CHARACTER OF GOETHE.

MEMOIRS OF GOETHE, written by himself. J. & J. Harper, N. York.

It has been well remarked, that of all histories Autobiography is the least likely to be honest. The difficulty which first occurs to the mind, however, is not, we apprehend, the greatest. Nothing is more natural, and therefore excusable, than the disposition to flatter one's own likeness, and we can easily conceive the necessity of a stern nerve, for the drawing to the life of weaknesses which may have been successfully concealed, and passions which have, perhaps, flashed upon here and there an observer, but are not credited to us by the general tongue. A much greater obstacle exists, we suspect, in the difficulty of sitting to ourselves for a portrait, and catching the wonted expression of our own features. It is next to impossible to get sufficiently rid of one's identity-to stand aside like a third person and measure one's own stature and proportions coolly and definitely. The very attempt to fix upon a feature alters it. You may as well arrest your own shadow, or look for the unconscious and natural expression of your face in a mirror. By a strong effort you may sometimes conjure up, for a moment, to your mind's eye, your own distinct image, but it closes upon you instantly again, like a phantom that will not be held off, and your glance has not settled upon it before it is incorporated again with yourself and become invisible. Besides, we believe there is no possibility of a thorough self knowledge. A high degree of it, even, is exceedingly rare. Most men know less of themselves than they can see at a glance in the character of others; and though the occasional sympathies of life, and its temporary feelings of every description may be wholly understood and felt by the sufferer, and by him only, yet these are but the effects of the principles of character which lie far deeper, and he who feels the whole measure of their bitterness often knows least of their origin. It is a singular truth, that the heart deceives itself more than it deceives others. Self love early brings on that inner blindness to which the dim and mingled lines of character appear confused, and pride and necessity and ambition, and all the negative virtues and plausible vices, have a convenient diffusiveness which easily spreads their slight leaven over the whole mass of motive, and gives it a general and indefinite color of nobleness and truth. No man who is not utterly abandoned, ever believed himself guilty of an action of unqualified baseness. He could not have committed it without first silencing his scruples by some of those

weak sophistries which, surprisingly enough, can silence them, and the remembrance of which sinks away into the dark chambers of the heart, to speak out at the call of that voice which must be answered when the deed is past, though it, strangely, matters little how. To one ever so much out of love with himself, therefore, a faithful autobiography must be difficult enough, but to one who thinks so well of his character that he sits down deliberately to draw its likeness for the world to see, it would seem that perfect self justice were an unreasonable expectation. This last must be the case of at least every distinguished autobiographer. A felon or a conscience-stricken fanatic may be driven by remorse to portray with a terrible minuteness the secret circumstance of guilt, but self love does not turn and sting itself, unless driven like the scorpion by a circle of fire.

true.

The autobiography of Goethe, though of course not an entire history of the character and mind of that great man, is still wonderfully We are all judges of this. Unskilled as we are in self knowledge, we have in us a living and unfailing test of human nature, and it is one of the most astonishing of our moral wonders, that, without the power to walk for a moment the sphere of genius, we can measure its reach and detect the obliquities of its flight, as if we had trodden its illimitable range in familiar and daily fellowship. The theory may be more true than we imagine, that we are all equally gifted though circumstances make us to differ, and it perhaps settles the question of distinctions hereafter, that, in the complete developement of a heavenly nature, these elements of all mental power which we find so strangely in us, may for the first time be loosened from the torpor of untoward circumstance, and quicken into beauty and strength.

Autobiography is by far the most interesting species of memoir writing, and that of a great and gifted poet, perhaps, the most likely to gratify the curious in the philosophy of our nature. The faculties requisite for the higher order of poetical genius are both so much rarer and more numerous than for any other, that he who possesses it, is always the leading wonder of the age which first appreciates him. This arises, no less from the distinctness of the poet's power from all other gifts, than from the intrinsic mystery of its nature. It is, of all human faculties, the least comprehensible by the ungifted. There is no attaining it by study-no finding out of its secrets as of other matters of knowledge, by comparison, and reference to principles. The fine ear, the nice susceptibilities, the fervent fancy, the pure heart, the burning upward desire, and even the intuitive knowledge of human character, may be found separately in other men, and are perhaps,