they are afflicted with utter blindness as to the merits of all creeds except their own, and who generously take it for granted that cowardice, selfishness, and meanness are the only reasons why all their fellow-mortals do not shout their war-cry, advocate their measures, and worship them as the only great and good reformers and iconoclasts of modern times. Mr. Lowell has too much good sense and good taste to go all lengths with them in their insane fanaticism; but the tone of his mind, as evinced by several of the poems in this collection, has been injured by contact with them, and though we admire the gallantry and nobleness of feeling by which he is evidently prompted, we cannot but sorrow to see it wasted in such a cause. Earnestly, but kindly, would we entreat him to

strive after more liberal and catholic views, not to believe that the great bulk of his countrymen are dastards or bigots, or that Christian teachers and Christian institutions are solely responsible for all the great social evils of our times. Poetry is profaned when it is made to minister to the miserable party politics of the day, however these may be veiled. by big words and philanthropic or sentimental manifestos. If there are any beings who ought to be entirely avoided by a man of good sense and high principles, they are those whom Sidney Smith calls "our moral bullies and virtuous braggadocios." Lowell doubtless discharged his conscience by including these poems in his volume; we hope he will do us the justice to believe that we have discharged ours by frankly commenting upon them. We gladly turn to more attractive matter.

Mr.

The descriptive power shown in many of these poems is one of their most striking merits. The poet's eye catches even the most minute tracery of Nature's works, and the most rapidly fleeting of her aspects, and depicts them in verse with startling distinctness. His language, when he chooses that it should be so, excels in precision and terseness, and thus admirably seconds his fine perceptive powers. The pictures are usually minute, and the canvas crowded; but they give back the features of Nature with a daguerreotype exactness. They are drawn with sharp outlines, and seen under a white light. If any fault is to be found with them, it is for the curious and elaborate finish of the parts, so that the effect of the whole is somewhat hard, like that of painting in enamel, or of flowers delicately represented in mosaic. Our readers will perceive what we mean by referring to the only two

poems in the volume which are exclusively descriptive, the "Summer Storm," and "An Indian Summer Reverie," both of which are very beautiful and exact. We are sorry that either is too long for quotation, and extracts would do them no justice. We prefer to give specimens of another class, in which the poet's aim is not merely to copy the outward features of the object, but to preserve the sentiment which they inspire. The following is called ، The BirchTree." Nothing can exceed the delicateness of the second and third stanzas:

66

Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine,
Among thy leaves that palpitate for ever;

Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned,

The soul once of some tremulous inland river,
Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb for ever!

"While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine,
Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence,

Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, -
I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands,

And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence.

"Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet,

Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad,

Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow

Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet,

Thou shrink'st as on her bath's edge would some startled

Dryad.

"Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers;

Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping;

Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience,
And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping.

"Thou art to me like my beloved maiden,

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences;
Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets
Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses,
And Nature gives me all her summer confidences.

“Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble,
Thou sympathizest still; wild and unquiet,
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river,
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet."

- pp. 96, 97.

We must give a portion also of the beautiful stanzas “To the Dandelion."

"Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth's ample round

May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

"Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;

'Tis the spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,

Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

"Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,

His conquered Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

"Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through

Some woodland gap,

and of a sky above,

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move."

pp. 118-120.

Of the poems of feeling and fancy, "The Changeling" is our favorite.

“I had a little daughter,

And she was given to me
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee,
That I, by the force of nature,
Might in some dim wise divine
The depth of his infinite patience
To this wayward soul of mine.

"I know not how others saw her,

But to me she was wholly fair,

And the light of the heaven she came from Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; For it was as wavy and golden,

And as many changes took,

As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of a brook.

"To what can I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover?
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also,
And I almost seemed to see
The very heart of her mother

Sending sun through her veins to me!

"She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zincali
But loosed the hampering strings,
And when they had opened her cage-door,
My little bird used her wings.

"But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,

That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled:
When I wake in the morning, I see it
Where she always used to lie,

And I feel as weak as a violet
Alone 'neath the awful sky;

"As weak, yet as trustful also ; For the whole year long I see

All the wonders of faithful Nature
Still worked for the love of me ;
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,
Rain falls, suns rise and set,

Earth whirls, and all but to prosper
A poor little violet.

"This child is not mine as the first was,

I cannot sing it to rest,

I cannot lift it up fatherly

And bliss it upon my breast;

Yet it lies in my little one's cradle

And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to

Transfigures its golden hair." - pp. 160-163.

We have quoted enough to show that Mr. Lowell possesses extraordinary powers as a poet, and has arrived at the free and vigorous use of them, his finished work no longer falling behind his fresh and beautiful conceptions. If his future publications should show the constant improvement that has thus far distinguished his career, he may yet scale heights which at present, perhaps, he is hardly bold enough to measure. His readers, we are very sure, will join us in urging him to go on, but to publish sparingly. The world is tired of mediocrity in verse, and will give a joyous reception, now, only to the most carefully matured results of the poet's happiest hours.

Lon

ART. XI.1. Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a Distance of upwards of 3000 Miles, during the Years 1844, 1845. By DR. LUDWig Leichhardt. don: T. & W. Boone. 1847. 8vo. pp. 544. 2. Cooksland in Northeastern Australia; the Future Cotton-field of Great Britain: its Characteristics and Capabilities for European Colonization. With a Disquisition on the Origin, Manners, and Customs of the Aborigines. By JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D. D., A. M. London: Longman & Co. 1847. 16mo.

pp. 496.

THE work of colonization and maritime discovery seems to have fallen, with the tacit acquiescence of the rest of the