And her whole upward soul in her coun- | Never mind what he touches, one shrieks tenance glistening, Eurydice stood - like a beacon unfired, Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture did more than relieve The need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love Hears these words oft repeated-beyond and above,' So these seemed to be but the visible sign Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine; They were ladders the Artist erected to climb D'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, And we see there the footsteps by which ing his duty To interpret 'twixt men and their own sense of beauty, And has striven, while others sought honor or pelf, To make his kind happy as he was himself, He finds he's been guilty of horrid offences In all kinds of moods, numbers, genders, and tenses; He's been ob and subjective, what Kettle calls Pot, Precisely, at all events, what he ought not, You have done this, says one judge; done that, says another; You should have done this, grumbles one; that, says 't other; out Taboo! And while he is wondering what he shall do, Since each suggests opposite topics for song, They all shout together you're right! and you're wrong! 66 'Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can't write, can surely review, Can set up a small booth as critic and sell us his Petty conceit and his pettier jealousies; Thus a lawyer's apprentice, just out of his teens, Will do for the Jeffrey of six magazines; Having read Johnson's lives of the poets half through, There's nothing on earth he's not competent to; He reviews with as much nonchalance as he whistles, He goes through a book and just picks out the thistles; It matters not whether he blame or commend, If he's bad as a foe, he's far worse as a friend: Let an author but write what's above his NOTICES OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS. [I HAVE observed, reader (béne- or male- | volent, as it may happen), that it is customary to append to the second editions of books, and to the second works of authors, short sentences commendatory of the first, under the title of Notices of the Press. These, I have been given to understand, are procurable at certain established rates, payment being made either in money or advertising patronage by the publisher, or by an adequate outlay of servility on the part of the author. Considering these things with myself, and also that such notices are neither intended, nor generally believed, to convey any real opinions, being a purely ceremonial accompaniment of literature, and resembling certificates to the virtues of various morbiferal panaceas, I conceived that it would be not only more economical to prepare a sufficient number of such myself, but also more immediately subservient to the end in view to prefix them to this our primary edition rather than await the contingency of a second, when they would seem to be of small utility. To delay attaching the bobs until the second attempt at flying the kite would indicate but a slender experience in that useful art. Neither has it escaped my notice, nor failed to afford me matter of reflection, that, when a circus or a caravan is about to visit Jaalam, the initial step is to send forward large and highly ornamented bills of performance to be hung in the bar-room and the post-office. These having been sufficiently gazed at, and beginning to lose their attractiveness except for the flies, and, truly, the boys also (in whom I find it impossible to repress, even during school-hours, certain oral and telegraphic communications concerning the expected show), upon some fine morning the band enters in a gayly painted wagon, or triumphal chariot, and with noisy advertisement, by means of brass, wood, and sheepskin, makes the circuit of our startled village streets. Then, as the exciting sounds draw nearer and nearer, do I de siderate those eyes of Aristarchus, "whose looks were as a breeching to a boy.' Then do I perceive, with vain regret of wasted opportunities, the advantage of a pancratic or pantechnic education, since he is most reverenced by my little subjects who can throw the cleanest summerset or walk most securely upon the revolving cask. The story of the Pied Piper becomes for the first time credible to me (albeit confirmed by the Hameliners dating their legal instruments from the period of his exit), as I behold how those strains, without pretence of magical potency, bewitch the pupillary legs, nor leave to the pedagogic an entire self-control. For these reasons, lest my kingly prerogative should suffer diminution, I prorogue my restless commons, whom I follow into the street, chiefly lest some mischief may chance befall them. After the manner of such a band, I send forward the following notices of domestic manufacture, to make brazen proclamation, not unconscious of the advantage which will accrue, if our little craft, cymbula sutilis, shall seem to leave port with a clipping breeze, and to carry, in nautical phrase, a bone in her mouth. Nevertheless, I have chosen, as being more equitable, to prepare some also sufficiently objurgatory, that readers of every taste may find a dish to their palate. I have modelled them upon actually existing specimens, preserved in my own cabinet of natural curiosities. One, in particular, I had copied with tolerable exactness from a notice of one of my own discourses, which, from its superior tone and appearance of vast experience, I concluded to have been written by a man at least three hundred years of age, though I recollected no existing instance of such antediluvian longevity. Nevertheless, I afterwards discovered the author to be a young gentleman preparing for the ministry under the direction of one of my brethren in a neighboring town, and whom I had once instinctively corrected in a Latin quantity. But this I have been forced to omit, from its too great length. - H. W.] From the Dekay Bulwark. We should be wanting in our duty as the conductor of that tremendous engine, a public press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such an opportunity as is presented to us From the Universal Littery Universe. by "The Biglow Papers" to pass by without Full of passages which rivet the attention of entering our earnest protest against such atthe reader. Under a rustic garb, senti- tempts (now, alas! too common) at demoralizments are conveyed which should be committed ing the public sentiment. Under a wretched to the memory and engraven on the heart of mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the soevery moral and social being. . . . . We concial glass, and, in short, all the valuable and sider this a unique performance. We time-honored institutions justly dear to our hope to see it soon introduced into our common common humanity and especially to republischools. . . Mr. Wilbur has performed his cans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless duties as editor with excellent taste and judg-ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is This is a vein which we hope to time that the respectable and religious portion see successfully prosecuted. We hail the of our community should be aroused to the appearance of this work as a long stride toward alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansthe formation of a purely aboriginal, indige- culottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof nous, native, and American literature. We reof the wide-spread nature of this contagion, joice to meet with an author national enough that these secret stabs at religion and virtue to break away from the slavish deference, too are given from under the cloak (credite, posteri!) common among us, to English grammar and of a clergyman. It is a mournful spectacle inorthography. Where all is so good, we deed to the patriot and Christian to see liberare at a loss how to make extracts. On ality and new ideas (falsely so called, - they the whole, we may call it a volume which no are as old as Eden) invading the sacred prelibrary, pretending to entire completeness, cincts of the pulpit. On the whole, we should fail to place upon its shelves. consider this volume as one of the first shocking results which we predicted would spring out of the late French Revolution" (!). ment. From the Higginbottomopolis Snapping-turtle. A collection of the merest balderdash and doggerel that it was ever our bad fortune to lay eyes on. The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the editor a talkative, tedious old fool. We use strong language, but should any of our readers peruse the book, (from which calamity Heaven preserve them!) they will find reasons for it thick as the leaves of Vallumbrozer, or, to use a still more expressive comparison, as the combined heads of author and editor. The work is wretchedly got up. . . . . We should like to know how much British gold was pocketed by this libeller of our country and her purest patriots. From the Oldfogrumville Mentor. In We have not had time to do more than glance through this handsomely printed volume, but the name of its respectable editor, the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, of Jaalam, will afford a sufficient guaranty for the worth of its contents. The paper is white, the type clear, and the volume of a convenient and attractive size. reading this elegantly executed work, it has seemed to us that a passage or two might have been retrenched with advantage, and that the general style of diction was susceptible of a higher polish. On the whole, we may safely leave the ungrateful task of criticism to the reader. We will barely suggest, that in volumes intended, as this is, for the illustration of a provincial dialect and turns of expression, a dash of humor or satire might be thrown in with advantage. The work is admirably got up..... This work will form an appropriate ornament to the centre-table. It is beautifully printed, on paper of an excellent quality. Full From the Bungtown Copper and Comprehensive mountain-mirth," mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel... We know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once both objective and subjective. We might indulge in some criticisms, but, were the ican bards. |