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can scarcely be considered poetical, since the sharpness and scorn which it is necessary for it to possess before it can be satire, are inconsistent with that tenderness and beauty which are the soul and body of poetry. It is the office of poetry to build up and support; it is the office of satire to cast down and destroy the one is a scoffer and image-breaker, the other an imagemaker, and the very priest of nature; not dealing in bitter laughter and stinging sarcasms, but in gentle smiles and loving words, and whatever else is beautiful and good.

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Again, and this is to us proof positive that it is not poetry, its effect does not depend upon the rhythm and rhyme in which it is commonly embodied. True, there are occasions when they seem to deepen its effect, and to give it additional force, poisoning, as it were, the already barbed arrow; but for the most part it is just as effective in prose as in verse, as any one can convince himself by turning from Pope and Dryden, our greatest English poetical satirists, to the prose comedies of Congreve and Sheridan. Indeed, comedy seems its most natural mode of expression; for, not forming the groundwork of plot or dialogue, it is relieved by both, and dropping as it does from the mouths of many different speakers, its opposing phases and very natural exaggerations are laid to their peculiar idiosyncrasies, and understood accordingly; while in poetry it is always general, and often too sweeping in its denunciations, condemning weakness and folly as harshly as error and crime. Besides, what right has the poet, an individual, to satirize us, a class? to say to the world, with whom he is equally culpable, "Go to, I am holier than thou!" But if satire is not poetry, she is her bond-slave and handmaiden, and often her pioneer, clearing away whole forests of evil and prejudice, and whatever "wounds the tender palms of her invisible feet;" and from the earliest time she has been a favorite of poets. Indeed, we fear they are frequently too fond of her society, so prone are they to irascibility and ill-humor. From the Roman poets, to whom we have already traced her, she passed to the Troubadours, who satirized the abuses of the Romish clergy; and thence, grave and stern, to Dante, whose Divina Commedia is a stupendous satire against an irrational, unreasoning dogma. Then she became light VOL. III, No. 6.--NN

and sparkling with Boardo and Pulci ; mirthful and wise with immortal Cervantes and Le Sage; strong and coarse with Dryden; polished and elegant, yet bitter and revengeful, with Pope; personal and scurrilous with Churchill, Gifford, and Byron; and so on, and down, with occasional intervals of dullness, till she at last. crossed the water, and made her appearance in our midst in the person of Oliver Wendell Holmes. From the antique comedian in his rude go-cart, to the modern doctor in his stylish buggy, the chain is complete. Thespis at one end and Holmes at the other, with Horace and Juvenal, and Dryden and Pope as intermediate links. What shocks have they not given, these electric geniuses!-those who have been rash enough to venture within reach of their batteries-and what shocks are yet to come!

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Of Holmes, the satirist, we cannot say much that is new, so often and so well has he been reviewed within the last few years. He looks at folly and pretension, says one of his critics, from the highest pinnacle of scorn. They never provoke his indignation, for to him they are too mean to justify anger, and hardly worthy of petulance. His light glancing irony and fleering sarcasm are the more effective from the impertinence of his benevolent sympathies. He wonders, hopes, wishes, titters and cries with his victims. practices on them all the legerdemain of contempt. He kills with a sly stab, and proceeds on his way as if "nothing particular" had happened. He picks his teeth with cool unconcern while looking down on the captives of his wit, as if their destruction conferred no honor on himself, and was unimportant to the rest of mankind. He makes them ridicule themselves by giving a voice to their notions and manners. He translates the conceited smirk of the coxcomb into felicitous. words. The vacant look and the trite talk of the bore he links with subtile analogies. He justifies the egotist unto himself by a series of mocking sophisms. He expresses the voiceless folly and affectation of the ignorant and brainless by cunningly-contrived phrases and apt imagery. He idealizes nonsense, pertness, and aspiring dullness. The movement of his wit is so swift that its only when it strikes. as it were, blind the

presence is known He will sometimes, eyes of his victims.

with diamond dust, and then pelt them helplessly with scoffing compliments. He passes from the stinging gibe to the most grotesque exaggerations of drollery with a bewildering rapidity.

It is not in single passages however striking, but in their general unity and effect, that Holmes's satires appear to the most advantage. A few scattered lines, however, like those below, may be detached without injury to the main design; they run up and down the gamut of wit and humor, and over the whole world of ludicrous poety and satire.

"Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun, A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one."

"Shave like a goat, if so your fancy bids, But be a parent, don't neglect your kids.” "Virtue may flourish in an old cravat, But man and nature scorn the shocking hat; Mount the new castor, ice itself will melt:

Boots, gloves may fail, the hat is always felt!"

"For only water flanks our knives and forks, So sink or float, we swim without the corks!"

"Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

Close at my elbow stir their lemonade."

"The speaker, rising to be seen, Looks very red, because so very green!" "And crippled couplets spread their sprawling

charms,

As half-taught swimmers move their legs and

arms."

"Your hat once lifted, do not hang your fire,
Nor like slow Ajax, fighting still, retire;
When your old castor on your head you clap,
Go off, you've mounted your percussion cap.'
"The song. But this demands a briefer line,
A shorter muse, and not the old long nine;
Long metre answers for a common song,
But common metre does n't answer long."

"Thus great Achilles, who had shown his zeal
In healing wounds, died of a wounded heel;
Unhappy chieftain! who, in childhood doused,
Had saved his bacon had his feet been soused."

"Essays so dark, Champollion might despair To what mummy of a thought was there; guess Where our poor English, striped with foreign phrase,

Looks like a zebra on a parson's chaise! Lectures that cut our dinners down to roots, And show (by monkeys) men should stick to fruits;

Mesmeric pamphlets which to facts appeal, Each fact as slippery as a fresh-caught eel." Admirable as are the satires of Holmes, it is, we think, in burlesque and humorous poetry that his strength and originality mostly lie. The prominent signs of his

art are common to all satirical writers, but his humor is exclusively his own. He has both wit and humor, but on the whole more true humor than wit, and of a richer kind. His nature is too fresh and genial, too full of the milk of human kindness, to be witty long.

There is often something ill-natured and unscrupulous in wit, while humor is always pleasant and cheerful, and always beautiful-the twin of pathos and feeling. Wit is sharp and keen, humor broad and deep; the one often the result of education, the other always soul-born. We can conceive communion with the world, but never of of a man's being made a wit by books and his being made a humorist, no matter how skillfully he may be cultivated, and in what intellectual green-house. Wit is to humor what a jet of gas-light is to the worldembracing, space-pervading sunshine. There is an inimitable air of freshness and jollity in Holmes's humorous poetry, a feeling of sound health and a good conscience. We feel that we should like to know the man who wrote it; he is, we say to ourselves, a good fellow, a fine fellow, and we give him our hearts at once. We are not afraid of his laughing at us, for he is “one of us" himself. But even if he does laugh, we care not; we can afford a joke at our own expense when Holmes is the little joker!

To classify his humorous poetry, and give the reader an idea of what it is, would require too many subtile distinctions, and too many different specimens. How fine in its way is the poem Evening, by a Tailor. Notice the poor snip's inability to "sink the shop," and the pompous simplicity of his blank verse. We warrant him a sincere fellow who reads The Excursion in his leisure moments.

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Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright
As these thy puny brethren, and thy breath
Sweeten'd the fragrance of the spicy air;
But now thou seemest like a bankrupt bear,
Stripp'd of thy gaudy hues and essences,
And growing portly in thy sober garments.

"Is that a swan that rides upon the water?
no, it is that other gentle bird

Which is the patron of our noble calling.
I well remember, in my early years,
When these young hands first closed upon a
goose:

I have a scar upon my thimble finger
Which chronicles the hour of young ambition.
My father was a tailor, and his father,
And my sire's grandsire, all of them were
tailors:

They had an ancient goose, it was an heirloom
From some remoter tailor of our race.
It happen'd I did see it on a time
When none were near, and I did deal with it,
And it did burn me, 0, most fearfully!

"It is a joy to straighten out one's limbs,
And leap elastic from the level counter,
Leaving the petty grievances of earth,
The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears,
And all the needles that do wound the spirit,
For such a passive hour of soothing silence.
Kind nature, shuffling in her loose undress,
Lays bare her shady bosom; I can feel
With all around me; I can hail the flowers
That sprig earth's mantle; and yon quiet bird,
That rides the stream, is to me as a brother.
The vulgar know not all the hidden pockets
Where nature stows away her loveliness.
But this unnatural posture of the legs
Cramps my extended calves, and I must go
Where I can coil them in their wonted fashion."

Of a different stamp is the characterpoem My Aunt, reminding us of the everyday characters of Praed, between whom and Holmes are many points in common. Its tone of half-contempt and good-natured pity are very effective. Different again, and perfectly unique as a mock heroic poem, is The Ballad of the Oysterman. It is the poem par excellence of the kind; as complete a burlesque and as pungent a satire on a certain style of ballads as the best things in the Rejected Addresses, or Ben Gaultier. Ranging from the broadest burlesque to the quietest humor, and equally good in their various styles, are the poems To an Insect, The Mysterious Visitor, The Spectre Pig, Lines by a Clerk, Daily Trials, To the Portrait of a Gentleman, The Comet, A Noontide Lyric, The Hot Season, The Height of the Ridiculous, The Treadmill Song, The September Gale, The Music-Grinders, and On Lending a Punch-Bowl. But Holmes does not confine himself to wit and humor. As is the case with all truly comic writers, he

has a deep vein of serious sentiment in his nature, and a broad undercurrent of pathos and feeling. Pathos and feeling often seem to us the truest expression of his soul, the flower and fruit of his genius, and wit and humor merely grafts thereon. Perfect gems are many of his songs and lyrics; such, for instance, as The Last Reader, Our Yankee Girls, Qui Vive, La Grisette, and The Last Leaf. The Last Leaf is probably Holmes's most successful poem, for in it he best exemplifies and unites his two distinguishing traits, humor and pathos. It is merry enough to make one smile, and, in its essence, sad enough to make one weep ;—the smile and tear are blended as we read it.

The serious part of the machinery of verse in Holmes's poetry is not always equal to, nor proportionate with, the comic; he has more fancy than imagination, and is apt to overlay his subject with it. Instead of a blaze of light, a full picture, he gives us shooting gleams, streaks and clouds of color; isolated bits of fancy, like the many-hued pieces of tinsel in a kaleidoscope. When he is happy, however, he comes near "the perfect loveliness of art." Altogether, he is one of the sweetest and rarest poets that America has yet produced -certainly the finest satirist-and has not yet reaped his full fame. Poetry such as his, of no school and no one age, is always sure to be popular-to be popular at once and forever. Witness that of Gray and Collins. Success, then, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet, physician, and goodfellow generally!

CURIOSITY.-Whenever M. de la Condamine, the French mathematician, visited a friend, he would employ his time in inspecting and handling every article in the cupboard and drawers. One day being at Chanteloup, in the study of M. de Choiseul, the prime minister of Louis XV., at the time of the arrival of the letters and dispatches, he, during the momentary absence of the minister, opened the letters on the table, some of which doubtless treated of the most secret interests of the different states of Europe. "Ah, Monsieur,” cried M. de Choiseul, in horror, what are you about?

You are opening my letters." "Pooh! it's nothing at all," replied his visitor, with the utmost unconcern; "I was only looking to see if there was any news from Paris!"

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ROMANCE.

ON

Na brilliant morning about the beginning of the autumn, we waked up and found ourselves in Mount Vernon, quite in the interior of Ohio; we had been whirled thither with hardly any "note of time" from the State of New-York, as we had been whirled about for months before by "lightning trains" in various other parts of the Northern States. Raising ourself on our elbow after a sweet night's repose, we rubbed our eyes with a momentary and an agreeable bewilderment, then leaped out of bed and thrust our head rather ostensibly out of the half-open window, for the air was genial with the morning sun and fragrant with the perfume of flowers. We were in the commodious mansion of our friend Sapp, who, we regret to say, has had the foolish patriotism to leave his beautiful home temporarily for a seat in Congress, and a residence in the limbo of the capital. Gazing for a moment at the tastefully laid out gardens belowwhich were laughing with gay flowers and swarming with bees and humming birdsand up at the skies, which seemed exultingly responsive with smiles, we drew in our head with a tolerable consciousness of our whereabouts, and a remarkably agreeable sense of satisfaction with "all the world" and ourself"besides." Our brother editor of the Repository, (Cincinnati,)—our“ chum" for the nonce, was greeted as he opened his eyes that morning with our very blandest salutation.

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We had bestirred ourself during the day, and at "the evening tide" was lounging in a good arm-chair, book in hand, under a tree amid the flowers that had regaled us in the morning, when we espied approaching us, with something of the "rolling gait" which Boswell ascribes to "the majestic Samuel Johnson," a gentleman of unusually respectable dimensions. We confess a profound respect for corpulent men.

Our pen has, indeed, sometimes caricatured them, but-let us acknowledge it-only through envy. Fatness is physical, to be sure, and therefore no substitute for virtue; but if there is any corporeal index of a big soul, it is a big body. Who ever knew an habitual crimi

nal to be fat? Was there ever a fat man known to be hung? We do 'nt venture an affirmative on the subject; we only ask a question. We doubt very much whether there are any fat demons. The old painters, while they give a very puff to the cheeks of their cherubs, always paint evil spirits as sadly lacking in facial integument. Shakspeare makes Cæsar tremble almost at the lean aspect of Cassius :— "Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

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for politics or polemics, and, above all, for a traveling companion.

With such sentiments, we set ourselves aright to receive, with all possible cordiality, the approaching personage. He turned out to be our personal friend F., a gentleman whose capacious cheeksrounded and tinted with health, and surmounted by eyes which are really beautiful with kindliness—are a genuine index to his capacious heart. We had last met him in another part of the West, and was then entreated by him to go some hundred miles to his home to "eat salt " under his roof. He was now come to repeat the same invitation, and to propose an excursion among the Indians of upper Michigan. We were in a mood for any adventure with such a man; and as we had been working desperately hard for some months in our official duties, and had some days of leisure before us, we accepted both his propositions.

The next day-another brilliant morning -we were on board the cars and away; but while flying out of Ohio, let us "drop the thread" of our sketch and bethink ourselves a little. We are an old traveler, good reader, and two things we always do when we get fairly seated in a car or steamboat-they are not unworthy, perhaps, of your imitation. One is to take off our hat, as a good Quaker would, and inwardly pray a little. Uncle Toby says that a soldier, above all men, should be a saint, and always ready to die. Had he

lived in our day he would have qualified
the remark and applied it to the traveler.
Every man should make his will, and mend |
fully his conscience, when he undertakes
a steam excursion, whether by land or
water, now-a-days. "The spirit of the age"
is abroad, and cannot stop for so trivial a
consideration as the safety of human life.
Having thus committed ourselves to the
divine protection, we next banish all anxiety
whatever, and adjust ourself in our seat for
a brief siesta, and then for the wide-awake
observations of a trained traveler.

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Our first observation was of the superb cars which were bearing us along-as commodious and as elegant even as we Those had seen anywhere in the East. of the "State of Camden and Amboy would hardly be fit for "second passenger pretensions in the same train. Everywhere in the West we notice this improvement—a mark of not only good taste but of The good sense and good enterprise. roads, too, what grand ones they are! They have the advantage, to be sure, of the level of the prairies in many places; but where they have it not, they are constructed, especially the more recent ones, on that scale of grand ideas and calculations with which everything else is founded and destined in the West. How comfortably and magnificently is one borne onward in the lightning trains along the shore of Lake Erie, or across the wide prairie-sweep from Lake Erie to Lake Michigan, or down the long lines of iron that stretch over the whole length of Ohio and Indiana. The Michigan Southern and Central Roads are the most finished and most noble passages in the nation. They are even beautified-grassed as a protection against dust, their depôts located and constructed with reference to landscape and architectural effect as well as convenience, and planted about with the beautiful locusttree-the ornament and shelter of the north-western prairie farm-house generally. And then where can you find the ends of all these magnificent roads? They are stretching everywhere. In the greater Western States you are lost in a maze of them, and it is becoming a problem with even a veteran traveler how to choose his route. The neighing of the steam-horse sounds into the cities of Cleveland and Sandusky at every angle on the land, while steam leaves continually its cloud-trace on the skies, or cuts its wake on the waters, to their

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north. Ohio and Indiana are intersected
everywhere with iron lines. They enter
Cincinnati from every point except the
south, and they fairly radiate from Indian-
apolis. As you pass through the chief
places of the West-the great junction
points-you are stunned with the din of
enterprise. It reminds you of the high-
It seems a
ways of advancing armies in the campaigns
of the great European wars.
national outburst of energy, as if to over-
throw at once and forever every obstruc-
tion to the purposes of men; and in the
jostling fray and hilarious excitement,
you feel like throwing up your hat and
huzzaing for your country and your age.
There is one question that comes to you
especially with power: What will the future
be here? What will the little fellow
sitting there before you witness, when,
with spare gray locks, he shall pass over
this highway of the march of the world
at that day which, according to the laws
of statistics, he, with at least eight hundred
thousand now living, shall behold when the
population of this republic shall equal that
of all present Europe? God be with our
children in that day!

Looking out of our flying vehicle, our
next observation was of the glorious
country-the realms of natural opulence
through which we were passing. What
fields extended right and left! Why, your
What think you,
eastern farms are but garden-patches in
comparison with these.
"lots," of a
Brother Jonathan, amid your obstinate
rocks and narrow-sliced
six-hundred-acre corn-field, and miles of
scarcely interrupted golden grain, "shak-
ing like Lebanon,”-waving, exulting with
an out-bursting luxuriance that might
feast the eyes of gods and the mouths of
nations!

And then look down at the soil, especially on this "Grand Prairie;" it has never known manure, it will never need to know it; it is a vast field of richest manure itself, a continent of the best guaOpen the surface, put in the seed, and next shout the " harvest home;" that's farming here.

no.

66

It is a great country," this, for agriculture, doubtless; but not that only. You blunder egregiously when you complacently look upon it as a mere granary for you, the manufacturers of the East. Why, here, with a surface upon which Ceres and the "jocund Hours" may riot forever, is an underground foundry where Vulcan

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