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by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, to the sounds that express it, this is poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the musical in thought and feeling is the sustained and continuous also. Whenever articulation passes naturally into intonation, this is the beginning of poetry. There is no natural harmony in the ordinary combinations of significant sounds. The language of prose is not the language of music, or of passion: and it is to supply this inherent defect in the mechanism of language—to make the sound an echo to the sense, when the verse becomes a sort of echo to itself to mingle the tide of verse, 'the golden cadences of poesy,' with the tide of feeling, flowing, and murmuring as it flows-or to take the imagination off its feet, and spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses, without being stopped or perplexed by the ordinary abruptnesses, or discordant flats and sharps of prose-that poetry was invented.-Jeffrey.

A POPULAR VERSE.

There is a verse which has gone the rounds of all the papers and is often quoted in company-indeed it is very popular, for it strikes a chord that vibrates in almost every heart-which I suspect hardly any one could ascribe to its right author.

If every man's internal care

Were written on his brow,

How many would our pity share,

That raise our envy now!

It is a translation of a verse of a little piece of Metastasio which runs thus:

Se a ciascun l'interno affanno

Si ligesse in fronte scritto,
Quanti mai che invidia fanno,
Ci farebbero pieta!

Si vedria che i lor nemici

Hanno in seno, e si riduce
Nel parere a noi felici,

Ogui lor felicita.

Oh, could we read on every brow
The inward grief in silence bred,
How many whom we envy now

Would claim our pity while we read.

Then would appear what hidden foes
Are lodged in every human breast,
That all our smiles but mask our woes,

That all our bliss is seeming blest.

B.

THE PRAISE OF DARKNESS.

Light that makes some things seen, makes some invisible; were it not for darkness and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of the creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.—Sir Thomas Browne.

ON SULLY'S PORTRAIT OF POCAHONTAS.

'Tis Pocahontas that you see;

As lovely as she ought to be

For Sully, by his matchless art,

Has drawn her visage from her heart.

P.

THE

VIRGINIA HISTORICAL REGISTER

AND

LITERARY COMPANION.

EDITED BY

WILLIAM MAXWELL.

VOL. VI.

FOR THE YEAR 1853.

RICHMOND:

PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR,

BY MACFARLANE & FERGUSSON.

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