For the first time for many weeks, Lucia once more left her chamber, and was able to receive the congratulatory visits of her friends. It was not long ere Mr. Gadsby took advantage of her convalescence to express in person his own pleasure at her recovered health.

She had never looked more lovely in his eyes than when he thus met her. If, at the moment when he first looked upon her, her paleness pained him, the bright color which instantly mantled her cheek, and the agitation of her manner, sent a thrill of happiness to his heart. He took her small, attenuated hand, and pressed it tenderly, as, in an agitated voice, he told the happiness it gave him to see her again; and as Lucia raised her eyes to reply, she saw his fine countenance beaming with an expression which deepened her bloom and increased her embarrassment.

“You have been very kind, Mr. Gadsby, during my illness,” she said, at length, averting her face, “and I have to thank you for the many beautiful flowers with which you have cheered my sick chamber.”

These kind words from her—from the proud Lucia, rendered Gadsby almost beside himself with joy.

“Do not thank me for so trifling a favor, when, if I could, I would so gladly have poured out my life’s blood to have saved you a moment’s pain! O, my dear Miss Laurence—”

Now spare me, kind reader; I was never good at a love scene. Only just fancy as pretty a declaration of love as you ever listened to, or poured from your own throbbing heart, and you will have the result of Mr. Gadsby’s interview with the fair Lucia, the self-styled “champion of her sex”—yet proving herself a recreant, after all her boasting; for I have been told, confidentially, that, so far from spurning this “hollow-breasted Frank Gadsby” from her feet, when Miss Atwood rather abruptly entered the drawing-room, she actually found her with her beautiful head resting on his shoulder, while his manly arm was thrown around her delicate waist—you must remember she was an invalid, and required support!

There is a snug little house not a stone’s throw from the residence of Mr. Laurence. It is furnished with perfect neatness and taste, and there, loving and beloved, our two coquettes have settled themselves down, in the practice of those domestic virtues and kindly affections which contribute so largely to the happiness of life. Frank Gadsby is now respected as an able lawyer, and bids fair to attain to great eminence in his profession; and never did Lucia, even in the most brilliant assembly, receiving the homage of so many eyes and hearts, look more lovely than now, as in her neat morning dress, with her beautiful hair in “braided tramels ’bout her daintie ears,” and

she goes about dispensing order in her cherished home.

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BY REV. J. N. DANFORTH.

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Twenty-five years ago it was announced, in an Edinburgh Journal, by Sir Walter Scott: “That mighty genius, which walked among men as something superior to ordinary mortality, and whose powers were beheld with wonder, and something approaching to terror, as if we knew not whether they were of good or of evil, is laid as soundly to rest as the poor peasant, whose ideas never went beyond his daily task. The voice of just blame, and that of malignant censure, are at once silenced; and we feel almost as if the great luminary of heaven had suddenly disappeared from the sky, at the very moment when every telescope was leveled for the examination of the spots which dimmed its brightness.” Thus did the great “Wizard of the North” open his beautiful tribute to the memory of the Noble Enchanter of the South, within whose fascinated circle had been drawn the beauty, fashion, genius and literature of England. It was as if the light of one star answered to that of another, or as if the music of the one responded to the dying strains of the other—each in his exalted sphere, when the “Great Unknown” thus uttered his voluntary eulogy on a kindred genius, not to say imperial rival, of the first magnitude, if the magnanimous spirit of the former could so conceive of any cotemporary. The first fervor of admiring enthusiasm of the genius of Byron having been cooled by the lapse of time, we are enabled to form a more judicious estimate of it, and of the treasures it poured forth with such lavish profusion. It is not now the image of the young lord we see in the brilliant saloon, surrounded by gay admirers, with a face of classic beauty, expressive eyes, an exquisite mouth and chin, hands aristocratically small and delicately white, while over his head strayed those luxuriant, dark-brown curls, that seem to constitute the mystery of finishing beauty about the immortal brow of man and womankind, and quite to defy the art of the sculptor. It is not such an one we see—a living, moving form, like our own; but we think of the ghastly image of death, we revert to the form mouldering in its subterranean bed, relapsing into as common dust as that of the poorest beggar. But the MIND remains—that which has stamped its burning thoughts on the poetic page; it survives, imperishable, in another, an etherial sphere. It has sought congenial companionship in one of the two states of perpetual being, as inevitably demonstrated by reason as taught by revelation. Byron himself might scorn to aspire after celestial purity and glory, but he could draw with a dark and flagrant pencil the terrors of remorse and retribution. He believed in the future existence of the soul, whatever words of ominous meaning might at times be inserted to complete a line or to indulge a whim of fancy. “Of the immortality of the soul,” said he, “it appears to me there can be but little doubt, if we attend for a moment to the action of mind; it is in perpetual activity. I used to doubt it, but reflection has taught me better. It acts also so very independent of the body—in dreams, for instance... I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy, but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which appears to me essentially founded on the soul. For this reason Priestly’s materialism always struck me as deadly. Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, but not without the soul.” Thus there were times when the “divinity stirred within him,” and the soul asserted its regal prerogatives, and vindicated its own expectations of the future. Nay, the sentiment must have been habitual, for how often is it naturally implied in the ardor of composition, as in those beautiful lines:

But our chief concern is with the Poet Byron, not with the Philosopher or the Peer. It has been said that in reviewing the lives of the most illustrious poets—the class of intellect in which the characteristic features of genius are most strongly marked—we shall find that, from Homer to Byron, they have been restless and solitary spirits, with minds wrapped up, like silk-worms, in their own tasks, either strangers or rebels to domestic ties, and bearing about with them a deposit for posterity in their souls, to the jealous watching and enriching of which most all other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed. In accordance with this theory, Pope said: “One misfortune of extraordinary geniuses is, that their very friends are more apt to admire than to love them.” True, they have often “dwelt apart,” have been so engaged in cultivating the imaginative faculty, as to become less sensible to the objects of real life, and have substituted the sensibilities of the imagination for those of the heart. Thus Dante is accused of wandering away from his wife and children to nurse his dream of Beatrice, Petrarch to have banished his daughter from his roof, while he luxuriated in poetic and impassioned ideals, Alfieri always kept away from his mother, and Sterne preferred, in the somewhat uncouth language of Byron, “whining over a dead ass to relieving a living mother.” But did not Milton love his daughter with an intense tenderness? Than Cowper who a more filial and devoted son to the memory of his mother? A fond father as well as faithful son was Campbell. Burns, too, delighted in his “fruitful vine,” and “tender olive plants.” In Wordsworth the beauty and purity of domestic life shone forth to the end. Southey had a home of love and peace. Scott was a model of a husband and father. Nothing can exceed the exquisite tenderness of some passages in his diary at the death of his wife. Goldsmith was neither husband nor father, yet his fine poetry never alienated his heart from the softer scenes and sympathies of life. It seemed rather to augment their claims, and the clear current from the fountain of the imagination is seen to flow right through the channel of the heart, sparkling with beauty and murmuring natural music in the enchanted ear. Even the voluptuous Moore is said to have repaired his fame and prolonged his days by settling down into the sobrieties of domestic life.

To return to Byron. He might be said to be unfortunate in his cradle. His young days were brought under sinister influences and associations. The youth that is deprived of a healthy maternal guardianship, is to be pitied. Such was Byron’s lot. Alternately indulged and abused, petted and irritated, his temper was formed in a bad mould. Never could he forget the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a “lame brat.”

Now, as men of genius, being by a law of genius itself susceptible of strong impressions, are in the habit of reproducing those impressions in their works, a man of a sensitive poetic temperament, like Byron, and one so highly, so dangerously endowed with intellect, and a vigorous power of expression, would give to all these thoughts and associations a local habitation, a living permanence in poetry, romance, and even in history, so far as it could be turned to such a purpose. In his Deformed Transformed, Bertha says: “Out, hunchback!” Poor Arnold replies: “I was born so, mother!” If, then, we find the traits of misanthropy, scorn, hate, revenge, and others of the serpent brood, so often obtruding themselves in his poetry as to compel us to believe they were combined with the very texture of his thoughts and the action of his imagination, imparting to it a sombre and menacing aspect, we must refer much of this melancholy idiosyncracy to his early education. He was always grieving over the malformation of his foot. Far more lamentable was the malformation of his mental habits. But this, unlike the other, could be corrected. He should have exerted himself to achieve so noble a victory. Instead of this he resigned himself to the strength of the downward current, and was finally dashed among the rocks, where other stranded wrecks uttered their warning voice in vain. There did he take up the affecting lamentation:

Goethe said of him, that he was inspired with the genius of Pain. The joyous, cheerful spirit that pervades the works of men who, like Scott and Southey, were educated under auspicious influences, and by a healthy process grew up to manhood with an habitual regard to the sacred sanctions annexed to their physical and moral being, contrasts strongly with the morbid, gloomy, and often bitter and sarcastic temper of that poetry, which seems to flow as if from some poisoned fountain of Helicon. Sometimes, indeed, he forgets his fancied wrongs and real woes, as when walking amid the ruins of imperial Rome, and kindred contiguities, he throws himself back into the very bosom of classic antiquity, and pours out the purest strains of eloquence, enriched with the glowing sunlight of poetry. For a time the shadow of the evil spirit appears to depart from him, and the true glory of his genius shines forth without a cloud, while the sentiments that rise in his soul ascend to a pitch of moral sublimity beyond which the ambition of the human imagination could not desire to go. In the fourth canto of Childe Harold his power of conception and expression culminated, and the publication of that poem called forth a judgment of the Lord Chief Justice of the Bench of Literature, Francis Jeffrey, which almost deserves a coequal immortality with the poem itself, and it is impossible to account for this splendid piece of criticism being left out of the recent collection of the elegant Critic and Essayist, except on the supposition that the most accomplished judges of other men’s works are some times incompetent to fix the right estimate of their own. Genius does not always accurately weigh its own productions, since Milton preferred his Paradise Regained to his Paradise Lost, and Byron himself was inveterately attached to a poem, or rather a translation, to restrain him from publishing which cost the strongest efforts of his most influential friends.

He was then a voluntary exile from his native land, that noble England, which should be dear to all great men, because the mother of so many; he was nursing many fictitious sorrows; affecting a scorn for his country he could not feel; defying the judgments of men to which he was painfully sensitive; mourning over the blasted blossoms of domestic happiness; seeking new sources of gratification, or old gratifications in new forms; in the midst of all he plunges into the arcana of classic lore; he dives into the crystal depths of classic antiquity, to draw forth beautiful gems, dripping with the sparkling element, untainted by its passage through centuries of time. He reconstructs the whole scene to our view, mingling his illustrations from those severer arts with the sweet and graceful touches of a pencil that seems capable of catching and delineating every form of beauty that can engage the fancy or awaken the imagination. We have been filled with admiration, we have been fired with enthusiasm, at some of these magnificent strains of poetry, noble ideas, burning thoughts, assuming precisely the dress, the costume, which best became them. Whether the poet takes us along the bank of some classic stream, places us before some romantic city, flies over the battle-field, luxuriates in a moonlight scene, lingers amid broken columns and bubbling fountains, gazes on the splendid remnants of statues that almost seem instinct with the breath of life, conducts us to the roaring of the cataract, across whose dread chasm, “the hell of waters,” is arched here and there the lovely Iris, with her seven-fold dyes, “like Hope upon a death-bed,” then upward passes and beholds the solemn mountains, the Alps or Appenines, scenes of heroic daring and suffering, contemplates the mighty ocean, “dark, heaving, boundless, endless and sublime, the image of eternity,” over whose bosom ten thousand fleets have swept, and left no marks; finally, if he leads us back to the Eternal City, not as in her pride of place and power, but as oppressed with the “double night of ages,” as the “Niobe of nations,” the “lone mother of dead empires,” sitting in solitude, “an empty urn within her withered hands,” and draws mighty lessons from all these objects, in all this we behold the splendor of true genius; we feel its power; we wonder at the gifts of God thus bestowed; we tremble at the responsibility of the man thus rarely endowed by his Creator. That regal imagination, disdaining at times the vulgarities to which a depraved heart would subject it, asserts its native dignity, and as it ranges among more quiet scenes utters, with the solemnity of a prophet, such a lesson as this:

Besides that ORIGINALITY, which is a distinguishing attribute of the genius of Byron, there is in his language a power of concentration, which adds greatly to its vigor; some condensing process of thought is going on, the result of which is much meaning in few words, and those words kept under the law of fitness with more than military precision, yet without constraint. Few feeble words or straggling lines disfigure his poetry. That infamous effusion of a putrid mind, Don Juan, has most of them, while it has also some exquisite gems of beauty. As the last offspring of a teeming mind, it evidences a progress in sensual depravity, and an effrontery in publishing it to the world, seldom adventured by the most reckless contemner of the opinion of his fellow men, or the most impious blasphemer of the majesty of God. Indeed, his moral sense must have reached that region said to be inhabited by demons, who “impair the strength of better thoughts,”

It was of this last, deeply characteristic work, that Blackwood’s Magazine said, at the time: “In its composition there is unquestionably a more thorough and intense infusion of genius and vice, power and profligacy, than in any poem which had ever been written in the English, or indeed in any other modern language.” No poem, perhaps, ever exhibited a more remarkable mixture of ease, strength, fluency, gayety, mock-seriousness, and even refined tenderness of sentiment along with coarse indecency. Love, honor, purity, patriotism, chastity, religion, are all set forth or set at naught, just as suits the present, vagrant fancy of the author. The Edinburgh Review justly said: “We are acquainted with no writings so well calculated to extinguish in young minds all generous enthusiasm and gentle affection, all respect for themselves, and all love for their kind; to make them practice and profess hardly what it teaches them to suspect in others, and actually to persuade them that it is wise and manly, and knowing, to laugh, not only at self-denial and restraint, but at all aspiring ambition, and all warm and constant affection.”

The opinion of admiring and impartial critics, indeed, was, that the tendency of his writings was to destroy all belief in the reality of virtue, to make constancy of devotion ridiculous; not so much by direct maxims and examples of an imposing or seducing kind, as by the habitual exhibition of the most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had been represented as actuated by the purest and most exalted emotions, and in the lessons of that same teacher who, a moment before, was so pathetic and eloquent in the expression of the loftiest conceptions.

How nobly different was Burns, the peer of Byron in genius—analogous to him, as well in the strength of passion as in the beauty of imagination; attracted, like him, by the Circean cup, absorbed at times in his convivialities, but never jesting with virtue, jeering at religion, or scorning the recollections of a pious home and a praying father. They rose by the force of their genius—they fell by the strength of their passions; but the fall of the one was only a repetition of the lapses of apostate humanity—guilty, indeed, but profoundly self-lamented, often expiated in tears wept on the bosom of domestic affection. The fall of the other was like that of the arch-angel ruined, defying Omnipotence, even when rolling in agony on a sea of fire. Even when feeding his fancy and invigorating his imagination amid the rural charms and sublimities of Switzerland, Byron thus writes in his journal: “I am a lover of nature and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue and welcome privation, and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. But in all this, the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of more recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory around, above, and beneath me.” Or, as expressed in another form:

Why all this? A part of the secret is disclosed by himself, in a letter to his friend Dallas: “My whole life has been at variance with propriety, not to say decency.... My friends are dead or estranged, and my existence a dreary void.” It had not been so had passion been held in check by principle, instead of principle being subjected to passion. There is, indeed, too much reason to believe the truth, that in connection with great versatility of powers, there is too often found a tendency to versatility of principle. So the unprincipled Chatterton said: “he held that man in contempt who could not write on both sides of a question.” Byron delights in sketching the most odd and opposite sorts and styles of pictures, and in abruptly bringing into rude collision the most opposite principles, as if he would amuse himself with the shock while he distresses the sensibilities of others. His powers were mighty, various, beautiful; but they needed adjustment. There was no regular balance-wheel in his intellectual and moral system. In another, or more painful sense, than the pensive and drooping genius of Cowper expressed it, might Byron say:

His refined and exquisite sense of the beautiful in poesy could not be surpassed. His pictures of mortal loveliness are quite inimitable, and there is at times in the strains of his muse, in the very structure of his language, a tenderness, which it would seem impossible could co-exist with that severity so often, so naturally sharpening into sarcasm, as if it were a part of the staple of his mind. The lash of criticism having first roused up the dormant energies of his genius, his first impulse was to seize the sharpest weapons of satire he could find, and even the poisoned arrows of vituperation and slander, and with a power and precision of archery seldom surpassed, to take his full measure of retaliation. Nay, he became so fond of the sport, or so unable otherwise to satisfy his revenge, that he multiplied innocent victims, assailing his own relations, and even the noble, generous, genial Scott, whose maxim it was never to provoke or be provoked, especially in his intercourse with the irritable tribe of authors. Firmly and calmly Scott resolved to receive the fire of all sorts of assailants, who were engaged in the “raving warfare of satire, parody, and sarcasm.” This sudden, bellicose production of Byron’s impulsive genius—English Bards and Scotch Reviewers—cost even him shame and sorrow the rest of his life. But still he was ever fond of sailing on that quarter. His impulses must ever be of the fiery, fitful kind. It is a wonder that, among all his paradoxes and peregrinations, he did not pay a visit to the Dead Sea. That would have been a congenial pilgrimage for Childe Harold; and, then, for such a drake as he was to swim in its waters! The exploit of Leander was only repeated by him from Sestus to Abydos. The other would have been an original feat, worthy of the taste of a man who preferred drinking out of a skull to the usual mode of potation out of the ordinary goblets of civilization.

Severe, scornful, passionate, vengeful, as he often was, how do those stern features relax, and the milder sensibilities rise into tender exercise, when, as a father in exile, he writes:

Thus, with a certain style of uniformity everywhere observable, especially in his characters, there is much variety of thought, emotion and passion, evidential of great fertility of mind. If he does reproduce the same hero under different names, and even give strong indications of his identification with himself, still the wand of the enchanter invests him with so many brilliant aspects, places him in so many imposing attitudes, as to produce all the effect of novelty. His muse less delights in planning incidents and grouping characters, than in working out, as with the sculptor’s energetic art, single, stern, striking models of heroic humanity, albeit stained with dangerous vices. His very genius has been declared to be inspired with the classic enthusiasm that has produced some of the most splendid specimens of the chisel; “his heroes stand alone, as upon marble pedestals, displaying the naked power of passion, or the wrapped up and reposing energy of grief.” Medora, Gulnare, Lara, Manfred, Childe Harold, might each furnish an original from which the sculptor could execute copies, that would stand the proud impressive symbols of manliness or of loveliness, satisfying even those intense dreams of beauty which poets and lovers sometimes indulge in their solitary musings.

This poem, indeed, is a perfect gallery of art, whose paintings and statues are drawn and fashioned from the life, with the skill of a consummate master and the facility of a powerful creative, divinely endowed genius. He places his hand on the broad canvas of life, and behold the figures that rise under his magic pencil! They are, indeed, too often dark, stern, mysterious and awful, stained with vices, and pre-doomed, for their guilt, to the pains of a terrible reprobation. With such characters the genius of Byron had a strange sympathy. Hence his admiration of that historical passage in the Scriptures, in which the crime and the doom of Saul is so solemnly set forth at the tomb of the prophet Samuel, whose sepulchral slumbers were so rudely disturbed by the intrusion of the anxious and distressed monarch, now forsaken by his God. Shakspeare, having finished off one of these dark and repulsive pictures, as in his Macbeth or Lear, passes to the sketching of more cheerful and even humorous portraits; but Byron, for the most part, delights to dwell in darkness. Thus, in this poem, when the curse is imprecated, the time midnight, the scene the ruined site of the temple of the Furies, the auditors the ghosts of departed years, the imprecator a spirit fallen from an unwonted height of glory to the depths of wo. Principals and accessaries assume the sombre coloring of his imagination, from which, however, at times, shoots a gleam of beauty, that imparts loveliness to the whole scene. Milton, with his almost perfect sense of beauty, and the fitness of things, would never have put such words as these in the mouth of his Eve:

It was quite suitable for Byron to talk so in his Cain, but he has not unsettled the position of the world’s estimate of its first mother, so firmly established by Milton. He was, at the time, perhaps, thinking of himself as Cain, and of his own mother as in one of her imprecating paroxysms. Alas, that he should have gone on in lawless indulgence, insulting, both in poetry and practice, the sanctity of domestic, heaven-constituted, earth-blessing ties, until, after an abortive, ill-directed struggle for poor Greece, he sunk into an early grave, at 36 aet., the very meridian of life! He was never satisfied with his earthly lot, not even with the rare gifts of his genius, nor with the achievements it made. He professed to consider a poet, no matter what his eminence, as quite a secondary character to a great statesman or warrior. As he had failed in the first character, he resolved to try the second, and strike for the liberty he had sung. But Fame had no place for him in this part of her temple. With the rest of the tuneful tribe, he descends to the judgment of posterity as a Poet; with all men of genius above the million, as more deeply responsible than they to the author of all mercies; with all men whatever, as a MORAL AND IMMORTAL BEING, accountable at the tribunal of God.

The mind would fail in any attempt to estimate the immense influence of his genius and writings upon the youthful mind and morals of the past generation—an influence to be augmented in a geometrical ratio in the future. What is written, is written, constituting a portion of the active influence circulating in the world—not to be recalled, not to be extinguished, but to move on to the end of time, and finally to be met by its originator, where all illusions will vanish, and all truth, justice and purity be vindicated.

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BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

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[WITH AN ENGRAVING.]

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BY C. SWAIN.

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BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF FRANK FORESTER’S “FIELD SPORTS,” “FISH AND FISHING,” ETC.

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With the present month commences the pursuit of this singular and delicious species of game, and, although as a sport it is not to be compared with the bolder and more varied interest of shooting over dogs on the upland, still the great numbers which are killed, and the rapidity with which shot after shot is discharged in succession, render Rail-shooting a very favorite pastime, more especially with the sportsmen of Philadelphia, in the vicinity of which city this curious little bird is found in the greatest abundance.

Of the rallidÆ, or Rail family, there are many varieties in America, all of them more or less aquatic in their habits, and none of them being, as the Corncrake, or Land Rail, of Europe, purely terrestrial; though the little Yellow-Breasted, or New York Rail, Rallus Noveboracencis, approaches the most nearly to that type, being frequently killed in upland stubble or fallow fields.

The principal of these species, and those most worthy of notice, are—the Clapper Rail, or great Salt-Water Rail, variously known as the Meadow Hen, or Mud Hen; found very extensively along all the tide morasses, and salt meadows of the Atlantic coast, but more especially on the shores of Long Island, and in New Jersey, at Barnegat and Egg Harbor. This, the scientific name of which is Rallus crepitans, is the largest of the species; it is shot from row boats in high spring tides, when the water has risen so much as to render it impossible for the Rails either to escape by running, which they do at other times with singular fleetness, baffling the best dogs by the celerity with which they pass between the thick-set stalks of the reeds and wild oats, constituting their favorite covert, or to lurk unseen among the dense herbage.

This Rail, like all its race, is a slow and heavy flyer, flapping awkwardly along with its legs hanging down and a laborious flutter of the wings. It is, of course, very easily shot, even by a bungler, and there is little or no sport in the pursuit, though its flesh is tender and delicate, so that it is pursued on that account with some eagerness.

Second to the Clapper Rail, in size, and infinitely superior to it in beauty and excellence of flesh, is the King Rail, Rallus elegans, which is by far the handsomest of the species. It is commonly known as the Fresh-Water Meadow Hen, though it is not with us to the northward a frequent or familiar visitant, the Delaware river being for the most part its northeastern limit, and very few being killed to the eastward of that boundary. A few are found, it is true, from time to time, in New Jersey, and it has occurred on Long Island, and in the southern part of New York, though rather as an exception than as a rule.

Next to these come the Virginia Rail, which is represented to the right hand of the cut at the head of this paper, and the Sora, which accompanies it.

The Virginia Rail, Rallus Virginianus, notwithstanding its nomenclature, which would seem to indicate its peculiar local habitation, is very generally found throughout the United States, and very far to the northward of the Old Dominion. I have myself killed it in the State of Maine, as well as in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, at the marsh of the Aux Canards river, in Canada East, and on the head waters of the Lake Huron Rivers. In the great wild rice marshes of the St. Clair river, the Virginia Rail, like most of the aquatic birds and waders, is very common. It is rather more upland in its habits than its companion, the Sora, which delights in the wettest tide-flowed swamps where the foot of man can scarcely tread, being frequently killed by the Snipe-shooter in wet inland meadows, which is rarely or never the case with the Sora.

The Virginia Rail is, however, not unfrequently found in company with the other on the mud flats of the Delaware, and, with it, is shot from skiffs propelled by a pole through the reed beds at high water.

The Virginia Rail is a pretty bird, measuring about eight inches in length. The bill is about an inch long, slightly decurved, red at the base and black at the extremity; the nostrils linear. The top of the head is dark-brown, with a few pale yellowish streaks; a blackish band extends from the base of the bill to the eye, and a large, ash-colored spot, commencing above the eye posteriorily, occupies the whole of the cheeks. The throat, breast, and belly, so far as to the thighs, which partake the same color, are of a rich fulvous red, deepest on the belly. The upper parts, back of the neck, scapulars, and rump, are dark blackish-brown, irregularly streaked and dashed with pale yellowish-olive. The wing-coverts are bright bay, the quills and tail blackish-brown. The vent black, every feather margined with white. The legs are red, naked a little way up the tibia. It is a very rapid runner, but flies heavily. It affords a succulent and highly flavored dish, and is accordingly very highly prized, though scarcely equal in this respect to its congener, the Sora, which is regarded by many persons as the most delicious of all game, though for my own part I would postpone it to the Canvas-Back, Fuligula valisneria, the Upland Plover, Totanus Bartramius, and the Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Fowl, Tetrao cupido.

The Sora Rail, Rallus Carolinus, which is more especially the subject of this paper, is somewhat inferior in size to the last species, and is easily distinguished from it by the small, round head, and short bill, in which it differs from all the rest of its family. This bill is scarcely half an inch in length, unusually broad at the base, and tapering regularly to a bluntly rounded point. At the base and through nearly the whole length of the lower mandible it is pale greenish-yellow, horn-colored at the tip. The crown of the head, nape, and shoulders, are of a uniform pale olive-brown, with a medial black stripe on the crown. The cheeks, throat, and breast, pale rufous brown, fading into rufous white on the belly, which is mottled with broad transverse gray lines. The back, scapulars, wing-coverts, and rump, are olive-brown, broadly patched with black, and having many of the feathers margined longitudinally with white, the quills dark blackish-brown, the tail dark reddish-brown. The lower parts from the tail posteriorily to the vent transversely banded with black and white. The legs long and slender, bare a short way up the tibia, of a pale greenish hue. The iris of the eye is bright chestnut. The male bird has several black spots on the neck.

This bird is migratory in the United States, passing along the sea-coast as well as in the interior; a few breed in New Jersey, on the Raritan, Passaic, and Hackensack rivers; but on the Delaware and its tributaries, which abound with wild rice, it is exceedingly abundant, as it is also in the great northwestern lakes and rivers which are all plentifully supplied with this its favorite food. It is rarely killed in New York or to the eastward, though a few are found on the flats of the Hudson. It winters for the most part to the south of the United States, although a few pass the cold season in the tepid swamps and morasses of Florida and Louisiana. All this is now ascertained beyond doubt, but till within a few years all sorts of strange fabulous tales have been in circulation concerning the habits of this bird; arising from the circumstance of its very sudden and mysterious arrival and disappearance on its breeding-grounds, the marshes being one day literally alive with them, and the next solitary and deserted. Add to this its difficult, short, and laborious flight, apparently so inadequate to the performance of migrations thousands of miles in length, and it will be easy to conceive that the vulgar, the ignorant, and the prejudiced, should have been unable to comprehend the possibility of its aËrial voyages, and should have endeavored to account for their disappearance by insisting that they burrow into the mud and become torpid during the winter, as I have myself heard men maintain, incredulous and obstinate against conviction. Audubon has thought it necessary gravely, and at some length, to controvert this absurd fallacy, and in doing so has recorded the existence of a planter on the James River, in Virginia, who is well convinced that the Sora changes in the autumn into a frog, and resumes its wings and plumage in the spring, thus renewing the absurd old legend of Gerardus Cambrensis in relation to the tree which bears shell-fish called barnacles, whence in due season issue barnacle geese.

The Sora Rail arrives in the Northern States in April or May. I saw one killed myself this spring in a deep tide marsh on the Salem creek, near Pennsville, in New Jersey, on the 25th of the former month, which was in pretty good condition. They migrate so far north as to Hudson’s Bay, where they arrive early in June, and depart again for the south early in the autumn. They breed in May and June, making an inartificial nest of dry grass, usually in a tussock in the marsh, and laying four or five eggs of dirty white, with brown or blackish-white spots. The young run as soon as they are hatched, and skulk about in the grass like young mice, being covered with black down. The Sora Rail is liable to a curious sort of epileptic fit, into which it appears to fall in consequence of the paroxysms of fear or rage to which it is singularly liable.

The following account of the habits and the method of shooting this bird, from Wilson’s great work on the Birds of America, is so admirably graphic, truthful, and life-like, that I prefer transcribing it for my own work on Field Sports, into which I copied it entire as incomparably superior to any thing I have elsewhere met on the subject, to recording it myself with, perhaps, inferior vigor.

“Early in August, when the reeds along the shores of the Delaware have attained their full growth, the Rail resort to them in great numbers, to feed on the seeds of this plant, of which they, as well as the Rice-birds, and several others, are immoderately fond. These reeds, which appear to be the Zizania panicula effusa of LinnÆus, and the Zizania clavulosa of Willenden, grow up from the soft muddy shores of the tide-water, which are, alternately, dry, and covered with four or five feet of water. They rise with an erect tapering stem, to the height of eight or ten feet, being nearly as thick below as a man’s wrist, and cover tracts along the river for many acres. The cattle feed on their long, green leaves, with avidity, and wade in after them as far as they dare safely venture. They grow up so close together, that except at or near high water, a boat can with difficulty make its way through among them. The seeds are produced at the top of the plant, the blossoms, or male parts, occupying the lower branches of the panicle, and the seeds the higher. The seeds are nearly as long as a common-sized pin, somewhat more slender, white, sweet to the taste, and very nutritive, as appears by their effects on the various birds that feed on them at this season. When the reeds are in this state, and even while in blossom, the Rail are found to have taken possession of them in great numbers. These are generally numerous, in proportion to the full and promising crop of the former. As you walk along the embankment of the river, at this season, you hear them squeaking in every direction, like young puppies. If a stone be thrown among the reeds, there is a general outcry, and a reiterated kuk, kuk, kuk—something like that of a Guinea-fowl. Any sudden noise, or discharge of a gun, produces the same effect. In the meantime, none are to be seen, unless it be at or near high water—for when the tide is low, they universally secrete themselves among the insterstices of the reeds; and you may walk past, and even over them, where there are hundreds, without seeing a single individual. On their first arrival, they are generally lean and unfit for the table, but as the seeds ripen, they rapidly fatten, and from the 20th September to the middle of October, are excellent, and eagerly sought after. The usual method of shooting them in this quarter of the country is as follows.

“The sportsman furnishes himself with a light batteau, and a stout, experienced boatman, with a pole of twelve or fifteen feet long, thickened at the lower end, to prevent it from sinking too deep in the mud. About two hours or so before high water, they enter the reeds, and each takes his post—the sportsman standing in the bow, ready for action, the boatman on the stern-seat, pushing her steadily through the reeds. The Rail generally spring singly as the boat advances, and at a short distance a-head, are instantly shot down, while the boatman, keeping his eye on the spot where the bird fell, directs the boat forward, and picks the bird up, while the gunner is loading. It is also the boatman’s business to keep a sharp look out, and give the word ‘Mark,’ when a Rail springs on either side, without being observed by the sportsman, and to note the exact spot where it falls, until he has picked it up; for this once lost sight of, owing to the sameness in the appearance of the reeds, is seldom found again. In this manner the boat moves steadily through and over the reeds, the birds flushing and falling, the gunner loading and firing, while the boatman is pushing and picking up. The sport continues an hour or two after high water, when the shallowness of the water, and the strength and weight of the floating reeds, as also the backwarkness of the game to spring, as the tide decreases, oblige them to return. Several boats are sometimes within a short distance of each other, and a perpetual cracking of musketry prevails above the whole reedy shores of the river. In these excursions, it is not uncommon for an active and expert marksman to kill ten or twelve dozen in a tide. They are usually shot singly, though I have known five killed at one discharge of a double-barrelled piece. These instances, however, are rare. The flight of these birds among the reeds, is usually low, and shelter being abundant, is rarely extended to more than fifty or one hundred yards. When winged, and uninjured in their legs, they swim and dive with great rapidity, and are seldom seen to rise again. I have several times, on such occasions, discovered them clinging with their feet to the reeds under the water, and at other times skulking under the reeds, with their bills just above the surface; sometimes, when wounded, they dive, and rising under the gunwale of the boat, secrete themselves there, moving round as the boat moves, until they have an opportunity of escaping unnoticed. They are feeble and delicate in every thing except the legs, which seem to possess great vigor and energy; and their bodies being so remarkably thin, and compressed so as to be less than an inch and a quarter through transversely, they are enabled to pass between the reeds like rats. When seen, they are almost constantly jetting up the tail, yet though their flight among the reeds seems feeble and fluttering, every sportsman who is acquainted with them here, must have seen them occasionally rising to a considerable height, stretching out their legs behind them, and flying rapidly across the river, where it is more than a mile in width. Such is the mode of Rail shooting in the neighborhood of Philadelphia.

“In Virginia, particularly along the shores of James River, within the tide-water, where the Rail, or Sora, are found in prodigious numbers, they are also shot on the wing, but more usually taken at night in the following manner:—

“A kind of iron grate is fixed on the top of a stout pole, which is placed like a mast in a light canoe, and filled with fire. The darker the night, the more successful is the sport. The person who manages the canoe, is provided with a light paddle, ten or twelve feet in length; and about an hour before high water, proceeds through among the reeds, which lie broken and floating on the surface. The whole space, for a considerable way round the canoe, is completely enlightened—the birds start with astonishment, and, as they appear, are knocked over the head with a paddle, and thrown into the canoe. In this manner, from twenty to eighty dozen have been killed by three negroes in the short space of three hours.

“At the same season, or a little earlier, they are very numerous in the lagoons near Detroit, on our northern frontier, where another species of reed, of which they are equally fond, grows in shallows, in great abundance. Gentlemen who have shot them there, and on whose judgment I can rely, assure me that they differ in nothing from those they have usually killed on the shores of the Delaware and Schuylkill; they are equally fat, and exquisite eating.”

To this I shall only add, that a very light charge of powder and three-quarters of an oz. of No. 9 shot will be found quite sufficient to kill this slow flying bird. I have found it an excellent plan to have a square wooden box, with two compartments, one holding ten lbs. of shot, with a small tin scoop, containing your charge, and the other containing a quantum suff. of wadding, placed on the thwarts of the boat, before you, and to lay your powder flask beside it, by doing which you will save much time in loading; a great desideratum where birds rise in such quick succession as these will do at times, a couple of hundred being some times killed by one gun in a single tide.

A landing net on a long light pole will be found very convenient for recovering dead birds. No rules are needed for killing rail, as they lie so close and fly so slowly that a mere bungler can scarce miss them, unless he either gets flurried or tumbles overboard. When dead he is to be roasted, underdone, like the snipe, served on a slice of crisp buttered toast, with no condiment save a little salt and his own gravy. If you are wise, gentle reader, you will lay his ghost to rest with red wine—Burgundy if you can get it, if not, with claret. For supper he is undeniable, and I confess that, for my own part, I more appreciate the pleasure of eating, than the sport of slaying him; and so peace to him for the present, of which he surely will enjoy but little after the twentieth of September, until the early frosts shall drive him to his asylums, in the far southern wilds and waters.

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Twenty-Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.—Viewed in all its bearings and relations, we believe this to have been the most important exhibition of this excellent institution. Not that we think the present by any means the best collection of paintings we remember to have seen in these same rooms. We believe it is generally known that for some time past a considerable business has been done in the way of importing paintings, statues, etc., for purposes of speculation. Through the exertions of the individuals engaged in this traffic, scores of foreign pictures have been scattered over the country. With this business it is not our purpose to meddle. Undoubtedly these gentlemen possess the right to invest their money in whatever will yield the largest per centage, and we are glad to perceive that a fondness for art exists to such an extent as tempts shrewd speculators and financiers to enter into operations of this description. But, keeping in view the state of affairs induced by the exertions of these gentlemen, no surprise will exist in the mind of any one at the unparalleled interest created in the public mind by the announcement that the Directors of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, impelled by a laudable desire to patronize art and artists, had offered certain “prizes or sums of money,” to be competed for by artists all over the world. The mere announcement put public curiosity on the qui vive. Expectation was on tip-toe. At length, after protracted delay, on the 16th of May last, the Academy was thrown open to the public.

The two galleries—the south-east and the north-east—those usually appropriated to the new works, contained one hundred and eighty pictures, which, with some half dozen scattered through the old collection, made about one hundred and ninety new pictures, by modern artists. Of this number some seventy or eighty were foreign—the majority of these German. How many were submitted for the “prizes or sums of money” we are not informed.

328 of the catalogue—Death of Abel, etc., by Edward du Jardin, is probably, so far as subject is involved, the most important work in the collection. As a whole, we look on these pictures as a failure, as a dead failure. Parts of the works are well drawn, and carefully, even laboriously studied, but what could be more absurd than the habiliments, attitude and expression of the angel in the first of the three? The Adam in the centre is a regular property figure—one of those stock studies which embellish the portfolio of every young artist who has ever been to Europe. The attitude and expression are such as can be purchased by the franc’s worth from any one of the scores of models to be found in almost every city in Europe. The Eve possesses more of the character of a repentant Magdalene than the “mother of mankind.” The third picture is to our mind the best; but, taken all together, the works are barely passable—not by any means what we should have expected from a professor of painting in one of the first schools in Europe. Religious art requires abilities and perceptions of the first order—feelings different from any manifested in this production.

Of a different order is 56—Rouget de Lisle, a French officer, singing for the first time the Marsellaise Hymn, (of which he was the author,) at the house of the Mayor of Strasburg, 1792—Painted by Godfroi Guffens. Every thing here is fire and enthusiasm—the enthusiasm that ought to pervade every work of art—which makes the intelligent spectator feel as the artist felt in its production. We have heard various and conflicting remarks made upon this work, and the general feeling among competent judges is that it is the best of the foreign works. In our opinion it is, perhaps, the best modern picture in the collection. The grouping, actions, and expressions of the figures are in admirable keeping with the subject, and the color is rich, agreeable, and subdued.

Murray’s Defense of Toleration.—P. F. Rothermel. If to the exquisite qualities of color, composition, etc., Mr. Rothermel would add (we know he can) expression, he would unquestionably be the historical painter of America. In a refined, intellectual perception of the general character of his subject, Mr. R. is unsurpassed, perhaps unapproached by any painter in the country. His pictures give evidence of the greatest care and study—no part is slighted—nothing done with the “that will do” feeling, which dreads labor. The picture under consideration embraces a great number of figures—in fact the canvas is literally covered, but not crowded, every inch giving evidence of intelligence and design. Concerning the work, we have heard, from the public press as well as from individuals, but one expression, that of the strongest commendation—in which we heartily concur.

150, from the Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV., Scene 1st., also by Mr. Rothermel, is conceived in the true feeling of the great poet. The figures of Bottom, and Titania and the other fairies, are fine conceptions. Some comparatively unimportant defects in drawing might be remedied, without injuring the general effect.

Mr. Winner contributes a large work—Peter Healing the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. This picture possesses great merit, and evinces a most commendable ambition. The grouping is well managed—the expressions of Peter and John are good—the cripple capital. A stumpy shortness of the figures mars the general character of this otherwise beautiful production. Mr. Winner paints drapery well, and perhaps unconsciously loads his figures with it. This defect is conspicuous in his grand work of “Christ raising the Daughter of Jairus,” now in our Art Union Gallery. The heads and extremities of Mr. Winner’s pictures are perfect studies of color and modeling, and evince a masterly knowledge of anatomy. We should be rejoiced to see the efforts of our artists liberally sustained, as they ought to be, in the higher departments of art.

41, The Happy Moment—105, The Recovery—Carl Hubner. These, no doubt, are popular works—as works of certain classes always will be. We have heard much said in praise of them. They are beautifully, exquisitely painted—especially the “Happy Moment,” in which the color and execution are admirable. But in sentiment, or any of the ideal qualities of such subjects, they are lamentably deficient. Like nearly all the German painters, Carl Hubner possesses much greater executive than imaginative powers—he is more of a mechanic than an artist. He gratifies the eye at the expense of the mind. Surely rustic love is suggestive of something more than any thing hinted at in the “Happy Moment.” “The Recovery” is composed of the usual conventional material of such subjects—a simpering physician, with a nice diamond ring on his finger, friends, with the old, upturned eyes and clasped hands, are mechanically put together—all standing or sitting evidently on purpose to be painted.

In landscape, the best works in the collection are Nos. 35 and 136, by Diday, a Geneva artist—a Moonlight, No. 46, B. Stange, and No. 78, a Roman Aqueduct at Alcala, with caravans of muleteers, F. Bossuet. The two first are grand and imposing representations of scenery in the High Alps—in color they are deep and rich in tone. The Moonlight, by Stange, is the best we have ever seen. The tremulous luminousness of the moonshine is rendered with matchless truth. The Roman Aqueduct, by Bossuet, is, beyond question, the finest landscape in the collection. Sunlight, local color, and texture were never painted with greater truth than in this splendid production. Light and heat pervade every nook and corner of the picture, from the dry, dusty foreground, off to the distant mountains which close the scene. The work furnishes a grand example of artistic execution and detail. No 52—Lake George—Russel Smith—is a beautiful piece of open daylight effect, possessing great truth. A Scene on the North River—Paul Weber—possesses much merit. The color is fresh and natural, and the sky is the best we have seen by this artist.

In the Marine department we have works from Schotel, De Groot, Pleysier, Mozin, and other foreign artists, and from Birch, Bonfield, and Hamilton, American. Hamilton stands preeminent in this department—his “Thunder Storm,” and a poetic subject from Rogers’ Columbus, are the best marines in the Academy. All his works in the present exhibition have been so minutely described in the daily and weekly papers, and so universally commended, that we deem it unnecessary to do more than add our unqualified acquiescence in the favorable judgment thus far expressed concerning them. Not one of our artists is attracting so much attention at the present moment as Mr. Hamilton. We have no doubt he is fully able to sustain the high expectations created by his works within the last two years. Birch and Bonfield, each, maintain their well-earned and well-deserved reputations. Of the foreign marines, those of Pleysier and De Groot are the best—but there is nothing remarkable in either.

A Still Life piece by Gronland, a French artist, is a splendid example of its class—as is, also, one of a similar character by J. B. Ord, the best painter of such subjects in the United States.

Want of space prevents our entering into the discussion of the comparative merits of native and foreign works. We feel no hesitation, however, in saying that our artists, as a body, have every reason to congratulate themselves upon the probable results of the present exhibition.

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The Madonna del Velo.—Among the many works of art, which the unsettled state of the Continent has brought into the London market, are a collection formerly the property of the Bracca family of Milan. The gem of the gallery is a remarkably fine and beautifully finished Madonna del Velo by Raffaelle. This attractive picture derives its title from the Virgin being represented as lifting a transparent veil from the face of the sleeping Jesus. She is gazing on the infant with all the devoted love of a mother, and with all a Madonna’s reverence beaming from her eyes and depicted in her countenance and her posture; while the young St. John is standing by, an attentive and interested spectator of the proceeding. The colors are very beautiful, and are blended with the highest taste and judgment. The details of the painting bear the closest examination, and every new inspection brings to view some unobserved charm, some previously undetected beauty. The figures are worthy in all respects of the highest praise, and the landscape forms a delightful and effective back-ground. To mention one little example of the singular skill and finish displayed in this beautiful work, the veil which the Virgin is represented as lifting from the sleeping infant’s face, is marvelously painted. It is perfectly transparent, and seems so singularly fine, filmy and light, that it has all the appearance of what a silken cobweb might be imagined to be. It is a remarkable specimen of the skill of the great artist even in the most difficult and delicate matters. Indeed, the whole painting is a “gem of purest ray.”

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“La Tempesta”—a new opera, the joint composition of Halevy and Scribe, has been produced in London, with Sontag as Miranda, Lablache as Caliban, Coletti as Prospero, and Carlotta Grisi as Ariel. Whether its original source, the renown of the author of the libretto, the reputation of the composer, or the combination of artistic talent engaged, be considered, the opera is a work of unprecedented magnitude, and naturally excited unusual interest on the part of all lovers of art. Monsieur Scribe has made legitimate use of Shakspeare’s “Tempest” in its transmutation into a libretto—supernatural agency and music are employed, even Caliban sings, and Ariel, besides being an essentially musical part, heads a band of sprites and elves “who trip on their toes, with mops and mows.” But it was necessary, for lyrical purposes, that a greater intensity of human interest should be added. M. Scribe has found means of drawing these new points from Shakspeare’s own text. He says in a letter to the lessee of Her Majesty’s Theatre, “I have done the utmost to respect the inspirations of your immortal author. All the musical situations I have created are but suggestions taken from Shakspeare’s ideas; and as all the honor must accrue to him, I may be allowed to state that there are but few subjects so well adapted for musical interpretation.” We hope before long to have this last work from Halevy transferred to the boards of the American Opera.

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A Drama Thirty Centuries Old Revived.—A recent great theatrical wonder of the hour in Paris, has been the revival of a piece from the Hindoo theatre, “which was performed for the first time” some three thousand years ago, in a city which no longer has an existence on the earth, and written by the sovereign of a country whose very name has become a matter of dispute. The piece was translated from the original Sanscrit by Gerald de Nerval, and met unbounded success. All Paris has been aroused by this curious contemplation of the ideas and motives of these remote ages, and a whimsical kind of delight is experienced at finding the human nature of Hindostan of so many centuries ago, and the human nature of modern Paris, so exactly alike in their puerility and violence, their audacity and absurdity, that the play may verily be called a piÈce de circonstance. King Sondraka, the author, seems to have anticipated the existence of such men as Louis Blanc and Proudhon, of Louis Bonaparte and Carlier; so true it is, that there is nothing new under the sun, and that not an idea floats on the tide of human intelligence but what has been borne thither by the waters of oblivion, where it had been already flung.

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Statue of Calhoun.—The marble statue of the late John C. Calhoun, executed by Hiram Powers, at Leghorn, for the State of South Carolina, was lost on the coast of Long Island, in July, by the wreck of the brig Elizabeth.

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Horace Vernet, the great historical printer, has been to St. Petersburg, having been requested by the Emperor of Russia to furnish several battle pieces illustrative of the principal scenes in the Hungarian campaign.

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[WITH AN ENGRAVING.]

“The Mandans are a vigorous, well-made race of people, rather above the middling stature, and very few of the men could be called short. The tallest man now living was Mahchsi-Karehde, (the flying war eagle,) who was five feet ten inches two lines, Paris measure, (above six feet English.) In general, however, they are not so tall as the Manitaries. Many of them are robust, broad-shouldered and muscular, while others are slender and small limbed. Their physiognomy is, in general, the same as that of most of the Missouri Indians, but their noses are not so long and arched as those of the Sioux, nor have they such high cheek-bones. The nose of the Mandans and Manitaries is not broad—sometimes aquiline, or slightly curved, and often quite straight. Their eyes are, in general, long and narrow, of a dark brown color; the inner angle is often rather lower in childhood, but it is rarely so in maturer age. The mouth is broad, large, rather prominent, and the lower jaw broad and angular. No great difference occurs in the form of the skull; in general I did not find the facile angle smaller than in Europeans, yet there are some exceptions. Their hair is long, thick, lank, and black, but seldom as jet and glossy as that of the Brazilians; that of children is often only dark brown, especially at the tips; and Bradbury speaks of brown hair among the Mandans. There are whole families among them, as well as among the Blackfeet, whose hair is gray, or black mixed with white, so that the whole head appears gray. The families of Sih-Chida and Mato-Chiha are instances of this peculiarity. The latter chief was particularly remarkable in this respect; his hair grew in distinct locks of brown, black, silver gray, but mostly white, and his eyebrows perfectly white, which had a strange effect in a tall, otherwise handsome man, between twenty and thirty years of age. They encourage the growth of their hair, and often lengthen it by artificial means. Their teeth, like those of all the Missouri Indians, are particularly fine, strong, firm, even, and as white as ivory. It is very seldom that you see a defect or a tooth wanting even in old people, though, in the latter, they are often worn very short, which is chiefly to be attributed to their chewing hard, dry meat. The women are pretty robust, and sometimes tall, but, for the most part, they are short and broad-shouldered. There are but few who can be called handsome as Indians, but there are many tolerable and some pretty faces among them.”

The engraving shows them in one of their celebrated dances, and is beautifully done by the artists.

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———

BY T. HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.

———

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WRITTEN AND COMPOSED FOR

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

BY R. J. DE CORDOVA.

Come Love with me, the moonlit sea

Invites our barque to wander o’er

Its glassy face where e’en a trace

Of angry

wave is seen no more.

Let Love repeat in accents sweet,

The joys which only Love can tell

And Passion’s strain sing o’er again,

In those fond tones I love so well.

SECOND VERSE.

Put fear away, and in the lay

Of love be all but love forgot;

Renounce the care of worldly glare.

Oh heed its glittering falseness not,

But come with me, with spirit free,

United, never more to part,

We’ll seize the time of youth’s gay prime.

The summer of the heart.

THIRD VERSE.

Then dearest rise, and let thine eyes,

Where shine Love’s softest mightiest spells.

Reveal the bright refulgent light

Which in their lustrous beauty dwells.

Let blissful song our joy prolong

While gliding o’er the sparkling wave,

And be the theme affection’s dream

Which ends but in the grave.

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The author of this exquisite volume, the finest ever laid on the altar of friendship, is Alfred Tennyson, the most subtle and imaginative of living poets. It derives its title from the circumstance of being written in memory of Arthur Hallam, son of the historian of the Middle Ages, friend of the poet, and lover of his sister. In a hundred and eight short poems, all in one peculiar measure, Tennyson expresses not merely his grief for the loss of his friend, but touches on all those topics of sorrow and consolation kindred to the subject, or which the character of young Hallam suggests. It may be said by some that the object of the volume is unnatural and unmanly; that grief does not express itself in verses but in tears; that sorrow vents itself in simple words not in poetic conceits; and that the surest sign of the deficiency of feeling is a volume devoted to its celebration. But if we study the structure of Tennyson’s mind, we shall find that, however much these objections will apply to many mourners, they are inapplicable to him. The great peculiarity of his genius is intellectual intensity. All his feelings and impressions pass through his intellect, and are steadily scanned and reflected upon. In none of his poems do we find any outburst of feeling, scorning all mental control, or rapidly forcing the intellect into its service of rage or love. He has never written any thing in which emotion is not indissolubly blended with thought. There can be no doubt that he loved the person whom he here celebrates, but he loved him in his own deep and silent manner; his loss preyed upon his mind as well as heart, and stung thought and imagination into subtle activity. The volume is full of beauty, but of beauty in mourning weeds—of philosophy, but of philosophy penetrated with sadness. To a common mind, the loss of such a friend would have provoked a grief, at first uncontrollable, but which years would altogether dispel; to a mind like Tennyson’s years will but add to its sense of loss, however much imagination may consecrate and soften it.

This volume, accordingly, contains some of the finest specimens of intellectual pathos, of the mind in mourning, we have ever seen, and, in English literature, it has no parallel. The author is aware, as well as his critics, of the impossibility of fully conveying his grief in verses, and has anticipated their objection in a short poem of uncommon suggestiveness:

The following poem touches on the mind and character of young Hallam; and, if a true picture, the world, as well as the poet, has reason for regret at his early death:

In the poem which we now extract, we think our readers will recognize the force which pathos receives by its connection with intense and excursive thought:

The ringing of the Christmas bells prompts a grand poem, in which the poet rises out of his dirges into a rapturous prophecy of the “good time coming.” It is altogether the best of many good lyrics on the same general theme:

After these extracts we hardly need to commend the volume to our readers as worthy of the genius of Tennyson. It will not only give sober delight on its first perusal, but it contains treasures of thought and fancy which a frequent recurrence to its pages will alone reveal.

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This volume, invaluable to merchants and brokers, should be in the hands of all who have reason to be interested in the secrets of stock-jobbing, or who have a natural curiosity to understand the philosophy of the whole system as now practiced in all civilized countries. It gives a complete history of the National Debt of England, from the reign of William the Third to the present day, with sketches of the most eminent financiers of the Stock Exchange, and large details of the political corruption attending the making of loans. To these are added stock tables from 1732 to 1846; dividends of the Bank of England stock from 1694 to 1847; and descriptions of the various panics in the English money market, with their causes and effects. The sketch of Rothschild is a gem of biography, and while his avarice and cunning are deservedly condemned, more than usual justice is done to the remarkable blending of amplitude with acuteness in his powerful understanding. It is said that on one loan he made £150,000. Though profane, knavish and ferocious, with bad manners, and a face and person which defied the ability of caricature to misrepresent, his all-powerful wealth and talents made him courted and caressed, not only by statesmen and monarchs, but by clergymen and fastidious aristocrats. It was his delight to outwit others, but he himself was very rarely outwitted; and the few cases given by Mr. Francis, of his being overreached by the cunning of other brokers, are probably the only ones that the London Stock Exchange can furnish. Though he lived in the most splendid style, gave expensive entertainments, and occasionally subscribed to ostentatious charities, he was essentially a miser; and his mind never was so busy in calculations, in which millions of pounds were concerned, as to lose the power of estimating within a sixpence, the salary which would enable a clerk to exist.

Some curious anecdotes are given in this volume of the corruption of members of Parliament. It is well known that during the reigns of William the Third, Anne, George I. and George II., and a portion of the reign of George III., a seat in the House of Commons was considered, by many members, as a palpable property, from which a regular income was to be derived by selling votes to the ministry in power. Sir Robert Walpole and the Duke of Newcastle, were the greatest jobbers in this political corruption; but Lord Bute, who entered office on the principle of dispensing with the purchase of Parliamentary support, carried the practice on one occasion to an extent never dreamed of by his predecessors. He discovered that the peace of 1763 could not be carried through the House without a large bribe. Mr. Francis quotes from Bute’s private secretary, a statement of the sum distributed among one hundred and twenty members. “I was myself,” says Mr. Ross Mackay, the secretary in question, “the channel through which the money passed. With my own hand I secured above one hundred and twenty votes. Eighty thousand pounds were set apart for the purpose. Forty members of the House of Commons received from me a thousand pounds each. To eighty others I paid five hundred pounds a piece.” This system has been varied of late years. The mode of purchase at present is by patronage. Offices and pensions are now the price of votes.

It would be impossible in a short notice to convey an idea of the variety of curious information which this book contains. To people who have money to lose, it is a regular treatise on the art of preserving wealth. Every private gentleman, smitten with a desire to speculate in stocks, should carefully study this volume before he makes the fatal investments.

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This volume, in paper, binding, and illustrations, is the most beautiful and unique we have seen from an American press. We hardly know, however, if we are right in giving it an American origin, as its illustrations are most assuredly English, and its typographical execution is exactly similar to the English edition. No better evidence is needed of Longfellow’s popularity abroad than the appearance of an edition of one of his poems, embellished like the present, with engravings so beautiful in themselves, and so true to the spirit of the scenes and characters they illustrate. The book is a study to American artists, evincing, as it does, the rare perfection to which their English brethren have carried the art of wood engraving, and the superiority of the style itself to copper-plate in many of the essential requisites of pictorial representation. The poem thus illustrated, is more beautiful than ever, its exquisite mental pictures of life and scenery being accurately embodied to the eye. As a gift-book it will doubtless be very popular among the best of the approaching season, as its mechanical execution is in faultless taste, and as the poem itself is an American classic.

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Many of our elderly readers will recollect the sensation which this admirable novel created on its original appearance. It was the first work which gave Mrs. Child, then Miss Frances, her reputation as a writer and thinker. The scene is laid in Boston, just before the revolution, and contains a fine picture both of the characters and events of the time. Many scenes are represented with great dramatic effect, and there are some passages of soaring eloquence which the accomplished authoress has never excelled. We cordially hope that the novel is destined for a new race of popularity.

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We presume that our readers know that “Talvi” is the assumed name of Mrs. Robinson. The present novel is a story of German and Russian life, written by one to whom the subject is familiar, and will well repay perusal. We think, however, that the accomplished authoress appears to more advantage in works of greater value and pretension—such as her late history of the literature of the Slavic nations.

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Life of Jean Paul Frederic Richter. Compiled from Various Sources. Together with his Autobiography. Translated by Eliza Buckminster Lee. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.