Let us rather endeavour, therefore, to afford our readers some portion of that gratification which we have ourselves enjoyed in the perusal of the last poem which he wrote in Europe, and which forms the gem of the volumes at the head of our article ;-his parting address to the Academy of Marseilles, before sailing with his wife and child. to the Holy Land; to which, attracted on the one hand by religious and poetical associations, and sick on the other of the anarchy which reigned at home, he has for the present directed his steps. Of all his late writings, this appears to us the most touching and impressive. It has his early elevation and intensity, with less of his vagueness; the majestic movement of Rousseau's Odes, with a more vivid infusion of personal feeling.

TO THE ACADEMY OF MARseilles.

If to the fluttering folds of the quick sail
My all of peace and comfort I impart,
If to the treacherous tide and wavering gale
My wife and child I lend, my soul's best part;
If on the seas, the sands, the clouds, I cast
Fond hopes, and beating hearts I leave behind,
With no returning pledge beyond a mast,

That bends with every blast of wind;

"T is not the paltry thirst of gold could fire
A heart that ever glow'd with holier flame,
Nor glory tempt me with the vain desire
To gild my memory with a fleeting fame.
I go not like the Florentine of yore,
The bitter bread of banishment to eat;
No wave of faction in its wildest roar
Broke on my calm paternal seat.

Weeping I leave on yonder valley's side
Trees thick with shade, a home, a noiseless plain,
Peopled with warm regrets, and dim descried

Even here by wistful eyes across the main,

Deep in the leafy woods a lone abode,
Beyond the reach of faction's loud annoy,

Whose echoes, even while tempests groaned abroad,
Were sounds of blessing, songs of joy.

There sits a sire, who sees our imaged forms,
When through the battlements the breezes sweep,
And prays to Him who stirs or lays the storms
To make his winds glide gentler o'er the deep;
There friends and servants masterless are trying
To trace our latest footprints on the sward,
And my poor dog, beneath my window lying,

Howls when my well-known name is heard.

There sisters dwell, from the same bosom fed,
Boughs which the wind should rock on the same tree;
There friends, the soul's relations dwell, that read
My eye, and knew each thought that dawned in me;
And hearts unknown that list the muses' call,
Mysterious friends that know me in my strain, -
Like viewless echoes scattered over all
To render back its tones again.

But in the soul's unfathomable wells,
Unknown, inexplicable longings sleep;

Like that strange instinct which the bird impels
In search of other food athwart the deep.
What from those orient climes have they to gain?
Have they not nests as mossy in our eaves,
And for their callow progeny, the grain

Dropt from a thousand golden sheaves?
I too, like them, could find my portion here,
Enjoy the mountain slope, the river's foam;
My humble wishes seek no loftier sphere,
And yet like them I go,— like them I come.
Dim longings draw me on and point my path
To Eastern sands, to Shem's deserted shore,
The cradle of the world, where God in wrath
Hardened the human heart of yore.

I have not yet felt on the sea of sand

The slumberous rocking of the desert bark,
Nor quenched my thirst at eve with quivering hand
By Hebron's well, beneath the palm-trees dark;
Nor in the pilgrim's tent my mantle spread,
Nor laid me in the dust where Job hath lain,
Nor, while the canvass murmured overhead,
Dreamt Jacob's mystic dreams again.

Of the world's pages one is yet unread :
How the stars tremble in Chaldea's sky,
With what a sense of nothingness we tread,
How the heart beats when God appears so nigh;
How on the soul, beside some column lone,
The shadows of old days descend and hover,
How the grass speaks, the earth sends out its moan,
And the breeze wails that wanders over.

I have not heard in the tall cedar-top
The cries of nations echo to and fro;
Nor seen from Lebanon the eagles drop
On Tyre's deep-buried palaces below:

--

I have not laid my head upon the ground
Where Tadmor's temples in the dust decay,
Nor startled, with my footfall's dreary sound,

The waste where Memnon's empire lay.

*

I have not stretched where Jordan's current flows,
Heard how the loud-lamenting river weeps,
With moans and cries sublimer even than those
With which the mournful Prophet stirred its deeps;
Nor felt the transports which the soul inspire
In the deep grot, where he, the bard of kings,
Felt, at the dead of night, a hand of flame

Seize on his harp, and sweep the strings.

I have not wandered o'er the plain, whereon,
Beneath the olive-tree, THE SAVIOUR Wept;
Nor traced his tears the hallowed trees upon,
Which jealous angels have not all outswept;
Nor, in the garden, watched through night sublime,
Where, while the bloody sweat was undergone,
The echo of his sorrows and our crime

Rung in one listening ear alone.

Nor have I bent my forehead on the spot
Where His ascending footstep pressed the clay,
Nor worn with lips devout the rock-hewn grot,
Where, in his mother's tears embalmed, he lay;
Nor smote my breast on that sad mountain-head,
Where, even in death, conquering the powers of air,
His arms, as to embrace our earth, he spread,
And bowed his head, to bless it there.

For these I leave my home; for these I stake
My little span of useless years below;
What matters it, where winter-winds may shake
The trunk that yields nor fruit nor foliage now!
Fool! says the crowd. Their's is the foolish part!
Not in one spot can the soul's food be found,
to the poet thought is bread,- his heart
Lives on his Maker's works around.

No!

Farewell, my sire, my sisters dear, again!
Farewell, my walnut-shaded place of birth!
Farewell, my steed, now loitering o'er the plain!
Farewell, my dog, now lonely on the hearth!
Your image haunts me like the shade of bliss,
Your voices lure me with their fond recall;
Soon, may the hour arise, less dark than this,
The hour that reunites us all!

And thou, my country, tossed by winds and seas,
Like this frail bark on which my lot is cast,
Big with the world's yet unborn destinies,
Adieu, thy shores glide from my vision fast!
O! that some ray would pierce the cloud that broods
O'er throne and temple, liberty and thee,
And kindle brighter, o'er the restless floods,
Thy beacon-light of immortality!

And thou, Marseilles, at France's portals placed,
With thy white arms the coming guest to greet,
Whose haven, gleaming o'er the ocean's breast,
Spreads like a nest, each winged mast to meet ;
Where many a hand, beloved, now presses mine,
Where my foot lingers still, as loth to flee,·
Thine be my last departing accents,

My first returning greeting be!"

thine

We have but little to say in regard to the other work, the title of which we have prefixed to this article, the collected edition, now first published, of the Novels, Tales, and Essays of Charles Nodier. Nodier is undoubtedly a man of warm and sensitive imagination, and master of a passionate and eloquent style, which gives a certain charm even to the merest trifle from his hand. But we cannot persuade ourselves that he is a man of that commanding talent which would justify the encomiums which have been lavished upon him by some friendly critics in France. The truth is, that his mind, though plastic, and readily adapting itself to seize, reembody, or modify the ideas of others, has little of originality. Give him a hint and he works it up with much taste and effect; but there is a want of solidity and self-reliance about all that he has written, which will prevent his name from ever being a favorite with the next generation.

This imitative turn pervades almost all his works of imagination. The Werther of Goethe strikes the first chord on his youthful fancy; and the passionate energy and wild complaints of the German are immediately reproduced in that which to us appears, after all, the most successful of his works, Thérèse Aubert. The dynasty of Goethe, now grown more tranquil and self-balanced, like a long established monarchy, is succeeded by the more stormy rule of Byron;—and the spirit of the Corsair and Lara passes by a new metempsychosis into the bandit Jean Sbojar. This romance, not without invention and force, would perhaps have appeared to more advantage, had not a long succession of such monsters, "with one virtue and a thousand crimes," made the public think with absolute loathing on them

and their authors. From Byron he flies to Scott, but alas, his Trilby, ou le Lutin d'Argail, is a strange failure. Sir Walter's White Lady, with her material bodkin, was a whimsical conception; but Nodier's spirit Trilby is ten times worse. In his Smarra, a Thessalian story, in the manner of the sorceries and diableries of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, he is more at home; he certainly does contrive to produce an unpleasant night-mare effect, - a cloud of misty phantoms, and murky and loathsome forms, moving before us in a ghastly dance, which produces the effect of an indigestion or an uneasy dream. But in this walk he must hide his diminished head beside the modern masters of the terrible, Messrs. Balzac, Janin, and Sue, the chiefs of the epileptic and anatomical school.

We really are very much disposed, therefore, to agree with Nodier himself, that the public would not have been great sufferers, if his works had never reached a second edition. Some of them are powerfully, and others gracefully, written, and as an essayist he is frequently very successful; but we have looked through them in vain for an ably or consistently drawn character, or an ingenious novel of incident.

[From "The Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 17."]

[The main object of our work is to present a selection of those articles in the periodical literature of the times, which are most worthy of preservation, as being of the greatest permanent interest. We would separate them from the mass of perishable matter with which they are connected, and bring them together into volumes in which they may be easily accessible, such volumes as may form a valuable addition to a collection of books, great or small, and be recurred to with pleasure at a distant period. The style of mechanical execution in which our work is executed, it may be perceived, corresponds to this design.

Entertaining this purpose, we have felt some regret, at having heretofore omitted the following article, than which none could be more suitable to our object. It gives a vivid picture of Louis XIV. and his court, a monarch the most royal of his day, and a court once regarded as presenting the very flower of European civilization; and this picture is derived from a voluminous work of the highest authority. The work made use of is at the same time so extensive, that few would themselves search it for the information and entertainment here collected. Articles which thus furnish us with the distilled essence, if one may so speak, of such publications, are, to the generality of readers, among the most useful contributions of the periodical press. EDD.]

ART. II. Mémoires complets et authentiques du Duc de SAINTSIMON sur le Siècle de Louis XIV. et la Régence; publiés pour la première fois sur le Manuscrit original, entièrement écrit de la main de l'auteur, par M. le Marquis de SAINT-SIMON, Pair de France, &c. &c. Paris. 1829-30. 21 vols. 8vo. [The Complete and Authentic Memoirs of the Duke of SAINT SIMON respecting the Age of Louis XIV. and the Regency;