avowal would have been an insult, and he looked what he did not dare to utter. Her father came up alone, after some time, shook hands with Mr. Langton as an old acquaintance, and thanked him for his attention to his daughter: he then said, "Come, Catharine, my dear, their Excellencies are just passing through the rooms with their suite, we will go to Saint Patrick's Hall and see the procession, then let us wing our flight homeward." Catharine rose and took her father's arm, bowed to Mr. Langton, and they separated; the young officer watched her till she was lost to his view; he saw something at his foot-stooped-they were the flowers she had dropped from her bijou; he raised and placed them in his bosom; he never for a moment fancied that she had left them intentionally, he might have accused others of a like piece of coquetry, but he could not charge that proud girl with such a motive: he thought right, for Catharine never missed them till she was in the carriage on her way home, and then she never gave it a second thought, such is youth and light-heartedness. Catharine! may your bright sunshine never be dimmed by a cloud of sorrow, or a breath of affliction; may years, as they roll over you, but gild with deeper tint the early glories of your mind, which shall outlast even the graces of your person, thou THE MOON.-I know not that there is anything in nature more soothing to the mind than the contemplation of the moon, sailing-like some planetary bark-amidst a sea of bright azure. The subject is certainly hackneyed; the moon has been sung by poet and poetaster. Is there any marvel that it should be so? Is it possible that the most beautiful ornament of the firmament, the regal gem of night, should remain undescanted on by all who can, or think they can, breathe forth their admiration of her charms? Rather say that he who has never looked upon her light but as a lantern to warn his foot from the ditch, hath not the spirit of feeling, of poetry, nay, of true piety, within him! She never shone forth in more splendid beauty than she does at this moment; and the mild silvery radiance which she flings over the Burmese mountains before me appears, as it were, the shadowy effulgence reflected from the ethereal wings of some pure angel, who has stooped, in the silence of night, to gaze with pity on a world of misery. A calm repose, rich, delicious, and soothing, steals over me, as I watch her brilliant path: soothing it is, but not unmixed with melancholy-a melancholy, however, far more exquisite than mirth in its noisiest mood. Do we not, when we contemplate the moon in perfect loneliness, always revert, almost mechanically-only that nothing so delightful can be mechanical-to former days, former joys, former sorrows? to the past rather than to the future, whilst the present is unheeded? It is ever thus with me. I never behold her pale orb--beautiful though pale, like the wan beauty of a dying girl-without the reminiscence of some moment of bygone bliss, fluttering like a lovely bird of passage before me; the recollection of some happy ramble with a dear-it may be a deceased-friend, beneath a similar moonlight; the memory of some bright frolic, in an hour as quiet; or perhaps the remembrance of a sad farewell, uttered in such a moment, with a heart-with hearts-torn by unspeakable anguish. Alas, such a farewell, in such a night, with the same sad light gleaming over us, has passed my lips-a farewell which was indeed a last one!CALDER CAMPBELL. LOWELL'S POEMS.* nihilate space and time, bringing friends together, expanding hearts with new and generous affections, while they are released from the tight and galling chains of prejudice? Should we have had a penny postage to do this more universally, if in individual cases less forcibly, not to mention the commercial influence of both? Would the people have had a three-halfpenny "Chambers' Edinburgh Journal," circulating eighty thousand a-week? Would Thomas Carlyle, in his own heartreaching words, have pointed out truths and falsities? All very different engines-yet of those, which are working astonishingly together for moral and intellectual improvement. Establishing, therefore, the fact of a nation being best represented by its Literature, we come round to the American Poet, whose name stands at the head of this page. We are among those who believe firmly that an author's real nature is developed in his writings; yea, though the "crutch-like rod" of circumstance control his destiny, so that his mind does sometimes warp aside, and his actual conduct fall far short of his ideal of excellence. It is good for this ideal to exist in the mind nevertheless, and it is good for the reader to exalt his own soul to meet an author's lofty aspirations; even if we for long utterly fail in practice to approach the truly heroic the contemplation of it will best prepare us for its possible fulfilment; and it is trite to say things must be possible before they become probable. In like manner does it seem to us that a Nation is best represented by its Literature; and that an epoch is better marked by the writers it produces It is too much the custom for us to speak in a than by the chronicles of outward actions, which tone of self-gratulation on the fact that America, the world calls History. It is not the march of comparatively speaking, has hitherto produced armies, but the progress of mind which the Litera- but few men of letters and genius; precisely as if ture of a country records; and the reader who in the hiatus there must of necessity have enriched thought glances along the chain of genius will un- ourselves. Would it not be wiser to hail an Amederstand what we mean. From Chaucer-who rican poet, when he does appear, as a noble brolived in an age when might and right wrestled (nother, seeing that he has the same glorious instruinsignificant sign)-through the sterling, golden ment that Shakspere and Milton used, with which glory of Shakspere, who breathed this same atmo- to instruct us-the English language? In our sphere that we inhale in the prosperous Eliza- humble opinion, America in its government, social bethan age (when men had time to think); on to system, and, in fact, in nearly all its relations, is an the license and flippancy of the Stuart era (when, unique experiment in the history of the world. nevertheless, a few geins were stranded from the Surely its people are yet unpoised and vascillating; wreck of a better time); thence to the cutting sareven as the reefs that ocean throws up to become one casms of Pope, who could not see the nobler part day huge islands and mighty continents, are not of the human mind through the falsehoods and at once firm fertile land! And should we judge a fooleries in which it was tricked, any more than people without tradition, without those impulses the human face and form were visible through paint of romantic veneration, undoubtedly induced by and patches, and hoops and sacks. Let us spring the gone-by feudal state, by our own standard? to the dawn of something better. Goldsmith, who, For all such memories they must come back to high as his niche is in the temple of Fame, should, dear Old England, and own they belong to ourif we had our will, step higher; and then to selves; while we, in judging of their present, ought Byron, who sung of his own and the world's sorto divest ourselves entirely of national prejudices, rows so musically that it loved to listen-till find- and try to judge them as if we had wandered to ing that its heart was really a poor, broken, this globe from some distant planet. They cerbruised and bleeding thing, it set vigorously to tainly had a few true Heroes, with which to begin work to mend it. At least we think of late years their History-if only the hero Washington's halfthere have been abundant signs of a healthy re- clad, half-fed followers; and there is one notable thing to this day about them, they seem to know a great man when they have got him. action. We hope from even this rapid glance, that it is evident what we mean by an era being represented by its Literature. Truth is the only indestructable essence of the human mind, and this ever finds an echo. It were a curious and interesting speculation to ponder how greatly our present living literature and scientific advancement are and have been influenced by the blessing of humanizing peace. If brutalizing war had continued for the last quarter of a century devouring human life, warping our notions of right to wrong-stifling the charities with its baleful breath, and expanding and strengthening all that there is of the brute within us-should we have had rail-roads to an James Russell Lowell is, as appears from the preface to his volume of poems, just published in London, only now five and twenty; and even remembering that he belongs to a nation, where boys are men, and every body eats, drinks, thinks, lives at a faster rate than we English approve of doing, we cannot but wonder at so ripe a mind at such an age. "Keats," says the reader," wrote as young?" True, wrote and died, was "snuff'd out," as some say "by an article," at all events his great and teeming mind shattered its frail casket. Lowell is too completely a poet born, to be a copyist of any one; and yet we could fancy he loves Keats, and that both Keats and Shelley have influenced him. Yet through every poem runs the pure gold vein of his own mind, and that without any of the dross for which Shelley, at least, is often C. E. Mudie, 28, Upper King-street, Blooms- shunned. He is a master too, of what we have bury-square. before called "his instrument "-the English lan Poems by James Russell Lowell. guage; and judge if he do not know the poet's ! mission, when he writes thus: "Among the toil-worn poor my soul is seeking, He, who would be the tongue of this wide land, Who as the clear north-western wind is free; Who walks with Form's observances unhampered, And follows the One Will obediently: Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit, Control a lovely prospect every way; Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet, And find a bottom still of worthless clay : Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working, Knowing that one sure wind blows on above; And sees beneath the foulest faces lurking, One god-built shrine of reverence and love: Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches, Around the centre fixed of destiny, Where the encircling soul serene o'er arches The moving globe of being like a sky: Who feels that God and heaven's great deeps are nearer Him to whose heart his fellow man is nigh; Who doth not hold his own soul's freedom dearer Than that of all his brethren, low or high : Who to the right can feel himself the truer, For being gently patient with the wrong; His verse shall have a great commanding motion, And all the pure majestic things that be. To rest contented with the lies of Time. Speak out! and, lo! a hush of deepest wonder Shall sink o'er all his many voiced scene, As when a sudden burst of rattling thunder Shatters the blueness of a sky serene." Again he says: "He, who would win the name of truly great, The future works out great men's destinies ; But we must pause; for as we turn the leaves, beauties so rise to sight and memory, that we are bewildered what to extract. "A Legend of Brittany," the longest poem in the volume, is a thrilling tale, at which the pulse quickens, and it is full of exquisite similes. "Prometheus" is of the order of poetry, which is somewhere called "the passionate language of truth." The shorter pieces are as musical as the thoughts they enshrine are beautiful; and all are earnest in pointing the loveliness of virtue, in teaching the sweet charities of humanity, and in glorifying God through his works. Hail to thee, James Russell Lowell; across the blue Atlantic hail to thee! Thou art a true poet, and shalt be dear to all the English hearts whose love is best worth having. Had not thy music been the voice of many men's thoughts, surely thou wouldst not have found so eloquent a tongue; tithe of the if thou dost represent a tithe of intellect of thy country, there is religion, thought, poetry therein to work out its happiness and greatness, even though they lie deep beneath much that we should lament, rather than rail at. C. T. FAITH IN LIFE AND DEATH. But look again, where borne on azure wings, 'Tis FAITH can cause the bitterest tears to cease, JUDGMENT OF BOOKS.-I have no other rule by which to judge of what I read than that of consulting the dispositions in which I rise up from my book; nor can I well conceive what sort of merit any piece has to boast, the reading of which leaves no benevolent impression behind it, nor stimulates the reader to anything that is virtuous or good.-ROUSSEAU. [May not something of the same sort be said of society?] CLEMENTINA, WHO CALLED HER FIRST one who classes herself as a "thing of light," a CHILD BETSY. BY H. HASTINGS WELD. corporeal nonentity-her sum-total will be what is indicated in the plain word nonsense: pretty nonsense, perhaps, but nonsense still. Clementina Dash, like too many young ladies of more exuberant fancy than just perception, grew to her teens with the idea early implanted, that the If it were not for the making of too extravagant first duty of woman was to find a husband. But an anti-climax in the very title of our sketch, Cle- we do not express it right. She was not to find a mentina's patronymic, as well as her baptismal, husband, but a husband was to find her. In her might be given. The reasons of its suppression own poetical thought, she was to float a thing of rest partly upon that consideration, and partly upon gentle glory in the matrimonial horizon, like the the fact that the writer of this veracious narrative delicate gold-fringed hues of even, until some poetic would, by too unreserved a communication to the young man, sauntering in ecstacy, with his mouth dear public, and too statistical a development of open, and head in the clouds, should run that head names and dates, make a blank in his calendar- against her; around that head, like a balo, she was an erasure in his visiting list. It is not to be sup- gently to hang, sheltering it alike from the hailposed that Mrs. Clementina Blank (she is Mrs. storms of adversity and the too fierce glare of prosnow) would ever thereafter endure the sight of one perity: crowning his life with happiness, and searwho should, too much in the manner of a deposi-ing the hearts of the indefinite millions, nine tion, detail the doings of the teens of Miss Clementina Dash. Take the sketch, therefore, "founded on fact," and charitably believe as much as you can. Though the poet says, "the rose by any other name would smell as sweet," and though every body quotes the sentence, as the very ottar of rose in proverbial wisdom, yet poets are not infallible, nor does every body remember every thing. Consequently, one little circumstance has been overlooked that the rose cannot help being a rose, if it would. It cannot substitute another and less pleasant odour for its own, though we call it by the name of that other Persian plant, which supplies the materia medica with its most villanous aroma. The rose is not a moral agent—a young woman is; and not only self-willed herself, but the cause of double self-will in others, of the other sex, who delight to speak of women as their other selves. Therefore, oh madam! call your roses dahlias, peonies, poppies, if you will, but do not let their god-mothers miscall your daughters. There is no knowing what may come of it. Good, substantial, stately women are apt to be of imposing mental and moral stature, and not addicted to making themselves ridiculous. When we find Sylphinas whose tangible presence has so outgrown early calculation, that their weight in anthracite would warm the parlour for a month, we find such persons too sensible to set up for fairies. But a romantic name, when it happens to jump with a child's whims, disposition, and circumstances, is pretty certain to aggravate that romance in the bearer, with more or less of which all young ladies are born. If Celestina, Seraphina, or the owner of any other specimen of the falsetto in the baptismal gamut, happen to be sylphlike in figure, ethereal in aspect, or petite in proportions, there will be no slaking of her thirst in cups larger than the acorn pattern, no ministering to her hunger in greater than the most orthodox of homeopathic quantities -that is to say, "before folk." She will never walk, but always glide into an apartment--and all the other usual plain realities of life will, with her, be but spiritual apparitions. Her thoughts will be imaginings- her life a vision-her aggregate-if such a positive term may be used in speaking of hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine disappointed other men, in the world with envy. In the choice of a husband, Clementina rightly deemed that there were pre-essentials to be consulted; but in her inventory of these requisites she was a little wild. That she was a sylph was a point fully settled in her own mind; and thence she naturally deemed that none but a gentleman sylph was fit to be her companion. On the arrival of such a phenomenon she fully counted, at the proper melodramatic and romantic point of time. He might come per rail-road-not indeed by a noisy, clattering iron road, supporting heavy trains of cars, and huge smoking locomotives. Nono-her fancy was the Peter Wilkins or Henson patent-parallels of moonbeams, the termini being, the one far off and indefinite, in the chief city of the effulgent realms of fancy-the other at her feet. By such conveyance did she fully believe that her own true-love, by Fate ordained, would some fine evening drop down before her, "all in a heap," to be elevated from his posture of worship at her shrine, with the tip of her feather fan. It is such musings as these which dispose romantic young ladies so much to affect moonlight and solitude; and Clementina was a most assiduous seeker of both. Poor girl! as the French phrase it, "she had reason," for never, except in solitude, came there to cheer her thoughts any of the etherealities on which, fiction-taught, she doated. Every thing and every person which surrounded her, was of most commonplace and unpoetic reality. Her father was wealthy, and none had a better right, for he had himself honestly earned all that he possessed. He was liberal, but at the same time no spendthrift: and his wife was a patternwoman for management and economy. They denied nothing to their only child which she could reasonably desire; and even many unreasonable requests of hers were complied with by their kind indulgence. They denied themselves nothing which fashion dictated, and, being charitable and humane, they purchased often that better than all fashionable enjoyments, the luxury of doing good. In a word, every body respected Mr. and Mrs. Dash,-every body, except their daughter. She had never read of the heroine of a romance, who was not bound, by cruel mischance, either to hate or to despise the persons who had given her birth, and sustained her life; and, as the living representative of the Clementinas of the books, our Clementina was bound to feel as they did. that no possible romance could happen in the dull house at home, she never made a journey without an indefinite hope that some very remarkable departure from the ordinary stale routine would certainly occur to make her happy. Hope, often mocked, would not be defeated, and still the expectation returned to Clementina, after every disappointment, that she certainly would one day be blessed by being made romantically miserable by a dear, delightful, poetical, but forbidden attachment. But nothing occurred on the way to the springs to vary the monotony of all such journeys, except the detection, by her father, of his servant in dishonesty. As he was an old, and hitherto supposed himself with discharging him, with his full arrears and more, to shift for himself, as best he might, at the risk of his next master. Clementina would get up some romance about this, particularly as his theft was her watch. She ran through, in her mind, all the instances of lost trinkets in the novelists' library, and all the cases in which they had been discovered to have been purloined by bashful lovers, who could live only with a token of their lady-dear nearest their hearts. Having thus found for herself a reason stronger than its jewels, why her watch, of all watches, should have been stolen, she asked her father-Who could have induced him to take my watch?" Of course, she found "congenial souls " in other young women, who were placed in like cruel circumstances with herself-that is to say, with every comfort within their reach, which a reasonable heart could desire; but, having parents possessed of common sense, and therefore not possessed of any feeling in common with their refined and poetical children-unable even to understand the occa-to be a faithful servant, the old gentleman contented sional glimpses of their daughters' mental superiority in any other light than as pettish approaches to very unreasonable ingratitude. With these kindred spirits of her own sex, Clementina could pour out her griefs, and accept theirs in interchange, but she found gentlemen sylphs a much more rare variety. She had, in fact, waited in vain for a full realization of her darling hopes in that direction, and, although some moonstruck youths came almost up to her beau-ideal, they were too conscious of their own impudent nonsense, to approach the ordeal of her father's stern common sense; or if, adding the sin of presumption to their ridiculous pretensions, they did venture an attack, they were summarily and unequivocally ejected by Mr. and Mrs. Dash. Thus was our unfortunate maiden as good as sentenced to "unrequited love," for nobody in particular-doomed to single blessedness. However, as she gracefully expressed it in one of her many letters to her kindred minds, "No parental tyranny could deprive her of the communings with the invisible spirit which hovered over her path, anticipating the hour when the sordid calculations of earth-born souls no longer offending his purity, and the barriers of conventional prosaic life no longer paralyzing his golden wings, he could fulfil his destiny, and make her happy." Poor Clementina! The old gentleman answered by repeating the name of him who, in indictments, is charged with procuring all sorts of evil things by his instigation. Clementina was not satisfied, but asked a more leading question," Whom could he have taken it for?" "Why, for himself, child, and a market,” answered the direct old merchant. Poor Clementina! she dared not say what she thought, for she knew her father would have laughed in her face. She took her revenge, however, in a long letter, in which she related to a friend all that had happened, and a great deal more. She expressed her sincere belief that the faithful servant never could have stolen the watch, except for the use of some undeclared and desparing lover of its mistress, kept at a distance by her father's frowns; and she deeply regretted that parent's unreasonable and untimely interference, when, had events been left to themselves, they might have led to an ecclaircissement, and made two fond hearts happy. "But such," she concluded, "my dear Araminta, is our fate; surrounded as our too susceptible spirits are, by minds insensible as clods to the higlier aims, and the finer aspirations of our beings." There was one young man whom, romance aside, Clementina would very willingly have taken for better or worse. But the course of true love in that direction ran altogether too smooth for its truth to be admitted. In the first place, both her parents, instead of opposing would have approved the match -a posture of things unheard of by novel readers, and utterly incompatible with the canons and precedents of Dan Cupid. In the next place, his Christian name was John. John-not Lord John, nor Sir John, nor any other John but plain John, convertible into Jack, in colloquial familiarity, into And then Clementina, having dispatched the letJohnny in endearment. Whoever heard of a John ter, leaned a very pretty chin upon a hand supported in a novel, save John the servant, or an old fusty by a decidedly full and pretty arm, and looked uncle John, good for nothing but to die at the pro- abroad upon the ruralities, to which, as the daughper time, and leave his money to those who knowter of a cit, she was so little accustomed. She saw how to spend it? Marry John! the thing was preposterous. She could have got along with a Theodore Augustus, even if he had been a man without poetry-but John! Never! The Dashes, with the multitude, sought a summering place. These visits to the springs were Clementina's holidays, for, having satisfied herself the discarded servant in conversation with a gentleman, who leaned against a tree-just in the pos ture which a male coquette knows so well how to assume, to set off a handsome figure; for there are men as proud of graceful forms, as ever daughter of Eve could be. She saw that the stranger eamestly listened, and she thought-nay she was con |