pering off with a silver fragment. It is true, this does not possess the deep, quiet beauty of that line of the poetess Amelia, where she says,

"Each wave had caught a star in its embrace,

And held it trembling there,"

but well illustrates that characteristic life and sprightliness that meets you on almost every page.

Mrs. Child refines and etherializes our most common thoughts, often making such a display of feeling on the constant occurrences of life, that were it not for the simplicity, earnestness, and sincerity, that are so conspicuous, we should become disgusted with an apparent sentimentality. If our authoress is ever wearisome, it is when she is endeavoring to etherialize our common and prosaic ideas. She is ever ready to treat us to an aerial tour, on her balloon-like imagination, to the far off cloud-land, but our earth-born spirits cling too fondly to the material, and shudder at so distant a separation. In these speculations there is a kind of transcendentalism, and often a feeling of dissatisfaction with the results, however beautiful they may be.

Those mystic and shadowy thoughts of man's destiny, and his relation to the visible world around him, that often just flash for a moment on our mental horizon and then vanish, like the play of the lightning on the lowest verge of a summer's evening sky, she endeavors to grasp and to retain, until they shall have shed inextinguishable brightness over the whole intellectual firmament. But they mock her daring, and shrouding her in endless theorizing, often make her speak with the oracular solemnity and unmeaning verbosity of a pytho

ness.

We have mentioned, in general terms, the enthusiasm Mrs. Child displays in her writings; but to bring this prominent feature out more distinctly, we would refer to her own description of the emotions which the music of Ole Bull aroused. It is as though she became a part of all she heard. From this enthusiasm of her nature, it results, that in music, she not only listens to the melody that charms the common ear, but infinite symphonies seem to flood her soul, from the harps swept by the unseen hands of angels. It is not merely sound, but to her imaginative spirit music has infinite and untold harmonies and relations with matter and the secret action of the mind, which rush through her soul with unutterable interest. Still, with all this ideality, she desires to blend the practical. Though she seems, at times, to ascend above the fairest dream of the poet, instead of permitting the airy creation to fade into vacuity, or die like the lingering swell of music, she endeavors to make it lend yet another hue to life and reality. She woud be the priestess, in the temple of this secret and higher life, pervaded by solemn sounds and soft accords, to teach man their hidden but truthful and serious relations to his existence.

While endeavoring to give the leading spirit of Mrs. Child's productions, we have intentionally left unnoticed her grave and rich reflections upon all liberty, moral, intellectual, and physical; upon the

means of social improvement; upon kindness and its kindred virtues, because adapted to a more serious criticism than what we have attempted in this paper. Upon every theme of this nature, her thought is eminently original and progressive. But we would by no means be understood as adopting all her views upon these subjects.

If we have been successful in portraying the spirit of our authoress as a writer, we think its influence cannot be doubted. But to remark briefly on a few of the leading characteristics that we have mentioned, we can never deem that writing useless, which has a tendency to point our thoughts at times away from the gross, the material, the practical, to the higher and more refined joys of the ideal, the spiritual, the imaginative. For while it imparts delicacy and compass to the mind, it teaches more extended and loftier views of truth than it is possible we can reach by the contemplation of the merely material. Also, whoever gives us faith and hope in humanity, does a noble deed, showing us that there is kindly passion latent in every soul, that needs but a single breath of love and sympathy to kindle into a flame of the warmest devotion, and directing the too often averted eye to this avenue of reciprocity, confidence, happiness.

But above all, we consider it the happiest tendency of Mrs. Child's writings, to impart contentment and cheerfulness; to show us how various and rich are the sources of comfort; how many are the bright colorings of life; how much, too, of its darkness is but the reflection of our own spirit, and how much it is our duty to make our own life a radiant spot on earth. It seems as though her power in this respect was peculiarly gentle and reformative upon the bitter and desponding. This is one influence of her thought, which, often unobserved but in its genial results, will murmur through the secret record of a thousand hearts, as the refreshing brook, whose hidden source, welling up in the cooling shade, is only known as it is curtained by the flowers and foliage which it has nurtured into life and beauty.

We have finished our essay, or criticism, as you may be pleased to term it, and shall be gratified if what we have written may direct the attention of one of your readers to our authoress, whose writings, we think, truly add another ornament to the literature of our country.

A WORD

TO THE MAN WHO STOLE MY UMBRELLA.

I BOUGHT a new Umbrella, sir,

Its price my pockets draining,
And bore it home one stormy day,

When old King Rain was reigning.

Its color was the ebon hue

Of coal, or black prunella,

And all who saw it spread, admired
And praised my new Umbrella.

DEAR READER, I wish I had a little inspiration! Then what good times we should have together over these few pages. I would write off-hand-not as I do now, biting this goosequill, now looking steadfastly into my lamp-flame, and now out into the darkest corners of my room, seeing nothing in both cases-but dealing out great truths in one sentence, showering right and left the most glorious conceptions, uttering the sweetest melodies "like a god in pain," unlocking a perfect

world of fun-while you, with your whole soul riveted to the page, should hold your breath in wonder, shout in ecstacy, melt in tenderness, and explode in laughter. But in all seriousness,-for in this world, as you and I have experienced, do come thus quick the widest extremes,-did you ever think in what way inspiration must have acted upon the minds of those ancients divinely favored? Did they merely feel all their faculties at once deepened and quickened, so that, without any consciousness of a foreign influence acting upon them, they had power to grasp what was before unattainable, intuitive perceptions into the minds of their contemporaries, and "strength to sweep adown the vale of time?" Or did they suddenly feel their own powers humbled and superseded by a strange spirit, which took possession of their minds and dictated their mission to their fellowBut this is the vaguest question, reader, I shall ever ask you. You hope so?-now there was no need of whispering that remark.

men?

SPEAKING about vagne questions, one of the very worst I know, is, "How are you getting along?" I never yet, on the first trial, gave the correct answer to this question. I meet a person whom I have not spoken with for a fortnight; after a brief salutation, he exclaims, "Well, how are you getting along now-a-days?" Thinking he refers, of course, to my studies, my cheerfulness vanishes, as I reply, "Why, not very well." "No, I thought not," he adds, glancing at my phiz, "there is not that color in your face that there ought to be." Again, I have but fairly seated myself beneath the paternal roof for a vacation sojourn, when warng inquires, in an animated tone, "How have you been getting along, my son?" Finely, finely, never enjoyed better health in my life." "Ah! glad to hear it--but I asked the question in reference to your studies." "Oh! yes-well-on the whole, why, rather quite well, sir, quite well!"

66

THERE is a practice at present, perhaps, in times past, certainly, quite prevalent among " Yalensia's sons," (the medical students, I rather suspect, though "Yalensia's sons" was so poetical I couldn't help introducing it,) which, reader, if I take the liberty to entitle abominable, I pray thee have me excused. It is a practice indicative of shallowness, demonstrative of folly-without any object, without any excuse-and, therefore, worthy the uncompromising rebuke of every lover of letters. But here I am quoting from my last speech in society, without having told you what this withering piece of rhetoric is aimed at ;-it is the practice of marking in books belonging to the public libraries. Why, you can scarcely take out a book, but, upon opening its pages, you find it scrawled over, here and there, as thickly with nonsensical remarks, as it would have been with creeping vermin, had it been lying a twelvemonth in a damp cellar. Is it a history? The author is upbraided for his partiality and ridiculed for his ignorance. An argumentative work? The reader finds pencil marks on the mar

gin, kindly warning him against being led astray by the gross blunders in the writer's reasoning. A poem or a novel? A single word, and two donkey-eared looking exclamation points effectually settle the merit of every striking passage.

But as "truth is my object," take these instances of my own experience. I had occasion lately to look into Scott's Life of Napoleon, and, on the first page I opened to, I found this courteous reprimand→ "You lie, Sir Walter." Of course, my belief in the veracity of the author was much shaken at the time, but it was completely demolished when I met, on the third page, with the decided poser, to which poor Scott could make no reply, " Then why did you say he didn't, on p. 73 ?"

When I was a that is, when I had just entered college, I obtained a volume of Macaulay's works; but was in an instant deterred from reading the first article on Lord Byron, by the announcement, in ink—in ink, mind you-" This is a scandalously false statement of the errors of an injured man."

66

In Combe's Constitution of Man, which is here lying on my tablebut I'll turn the pages and give you the marginal commentaries as they strike my eye--"Without foundation."- Query?"-"They never could."- 66 Yes, but is it so ?--no, manifestly."-"Then you are a gump, by your own showing."

But how happy the author who wins the commendations of anonymous petit-scribblers! Preceding Webster's reply to Hayne, is the (apparently) ingenuous confession, "A really able speech." Who now will say that geniuses are envious of each other?

Between the title, CHRISTABEL, and the first line of that noble fragment, I am informed that it is " a sweet poem."

And, finally, beneath a soliloquy in Hamlet, I once found, in staring letters, "Beautiful, very beautiful." There, reader, I think that will do.

To me there is something exceedingly touching in the death of John Keats. A nobler son of song, certainly, never walked this sphere. With a powerful intellect and a heart throbbing for every thing grand and heroic in humanity, he united a spirit so pure, a sympathy so exquisitely gentle, so sweetly divine, that he declared the intensest pleasure he had experienced on earth, was in watching the growth of flowers! And there he is dying far away from home, amid the sombre ruins of the Eternal City, with one only friend to cool his burning brow! Though brief his intercourse with the world, his sensitive nature has already been wrung to bleeding by the ills of poverty, the treachery of friends, and the heartless abuse of the guardians of literature. His youthful efforts have met mainly with ridicule-his youthful love with cold neglect. And now, amid the agonies of pain and the stings of memory, his distracted mind views this world only as the abode of misery and despair; and with a joyous fervor he exclaims, at the immediate prospect of death, "I feel the daisies growing over me!"-Upon those verses, immature as they are, which will

VOL. XIV.