From out her ancient place, and leave-a void.

Yet haply by that void the saints redeem'd
May sometimes stray; when memory of sin
Ghost-like shall rise upon their holy souls;
And on their lips shall lie the name of earth
In paleness and in silentness; until,
Each looking on his brother, face to face,
And bursting into sudden happy tears,
(The only tears undried) shall murmur-
"Christ!"

WHAT ARE WE SET ON EARTH

FOR ?

WHAT are we set on earth for? Say to toil!
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines
For all the heat o' the sun, till it declines,
And death's mild curfew shall from work
assoil.

God did anoint thee with his odorous oil
To wrestle, not to reign-and he assigns
All thy tears over like pure crystallines
Unto thy fellows, working the same soil,
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labor, to their heart and
hand,

From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,

And God's grace fructify through thee to all!

The least flower with a brimming cup may stand

And share its dew-drop with another near.

DESPAIR.

I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the mid-
night air

Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In hearts, as countries, lieth silent, bare
Under the blenching, vertical eye-glare
Of the free charter'd heavens. Be still!
express

Grief for thy dead in silence like to death,
Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless wo,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it spectator? Are its eyelids wet?
If it could weep, it could arise and go!

P. J. BAILEY, the author of "Festus," is one of the most remarkable men among the poets of the present century. His egotism almost approaches that point of the sublime where it topples over into the ridiculous. He chooses the most lofty subjects, without seeming to doubt his capacity to grapple with their mysteries. He plagiarises from authors, whose names he would not condescend to mention. He hardly realizes the existence of others, except so far as they are relat

ed to himself. In "Festus" he displays at times a certain "lust of power, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of imagination unhallowed save by its own energies," which well indicates the element of daring in which his nature moves. To most readers, the poem would appear a monstrous compound of blasphemy and licentiousness. Though evincing power, and variety of power, it excites the most wonder from its disregard of all the moral, religious and artistical associations of others. Pantheism

and fatalism, in their most objectionable forms, are inculcated as absolute truth. The two flaming ideas in his mind, are God and Lucifer. One of his scenes occurs " where." The merest common-place of Any where," and another "Every antagonistical systems of philosophy and religion, are all mingled together in the chaos of his theory. Occasionally all regard for the proprieties of the diabolic is eschewed. The Devil falls violently in love in one place; and in another scolds the damned like a Billingsgate fishwoman. He reproves his friends for laziness, telling them that they do not earn enough to pay for the fire that burns them up. Human passions and human ideas are continually blending with Docthings superhuman and divine. trines of the most monstrous import, and doctrines of the utmost purity and holiness, so follow each other that the author evidently sees no discord in their connection. He can delineate the passion of love with great refinement, without seeming to distinguish it from the most unhallowed lust. If he be not mad, it is certain that all the rest of the world are. To accept the poem of "Festus" as the product of a sane mind, would be to declare all other literature superficial, and P. J. Bailey the most miraculously gifted of all created men. madness is not altogether fine madness, but half comes from Parnassus and the rest from Bedlam. It is the madness of a mind unable accurately to distinguish the moral and intellectual differences of things.

Its

The interest of the poem arises from its power of imagination and intensity of sensibility. Numerous passages might be selected of the greatest beauty and majesty. The author's insight into particular truths is often very acute, and his command of expression seemingly despotic. He has no fear of startling his

reader with a grotesque image, or a strange verbal combination, or downright bombast and buffoonery. So intense and lofty is his egotism, that he seems to think all minds will bend their tastes and their common sense to him. He ends his poem, at the age of 23, with saying, "Take it, world." He swaggers and bullies his readers into panegyric. There is no instance in English literature of so much self-exaggeration on the part of any author, untrammeled by a strait jacket. The poem indicates the last result of the "Satanic School," in the triumph of sensibility over reason. A German prince, whose taste was of the "classical" school, once said, that if he were the Almighty, and could have foreseen before creating the world, that Schiller's "Robbers" would have been written in it, that alone would have prevented him from creating the world. What this gentleman would have said of Bailey's "Festus," it would task exaggera

tion itself to tell.

Amidst the chaos of this work, are passages of great grandeur and beauty. The intense seriousness of the author gives to the whole a character of sincerity, which redeems it from the charge of intentional irreverence or immorality. We quote a few of Mr. Griswold's extracts from the poem, in partial illustration of its spirit and power.

FESTUS DESCRIBES HIS FRIEND.

He had no times of study, and no place; All places and all times to him were one. His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved,

And sounded only when the spirit blew, Sometimes in feasts and follies, for he went Life-like through all things; and his thoughts then rose

Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still,

Sometimes in dreams, and then the shining words

Would wake him in the dark before his face.

All things talk'd thoughts to him. The sea went mad

To show his meaning; and the awful sun Thundered his thoughts into him; and at night

The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers;

He spake the world's one tongue; in earth and heaven

There is but one, it is the word of truth. To him the eye let out its hidden meaning;

I LOVED her, for that she was beautiful,
And that to me she seem'd to be all nature
And all varieties of things in one ;
Would set at night in clouds of tears, and
rise

All light and laughter in the morning ; fear
No petty customs nor appearances;
But think what others only dream'd about;
And say what others did but think; and do
What others would but say; and glory in
What others dared but do; it was these
which won me;

And that she never school'd within her breast

One thought or feeling, but gave holiday
To all; and that she told me all her woes
And wrongs and ills; and so she made them
mine

In the communion of love; and we
Grew like each other, for we loved each

other;

She, mild and generous as the sun in spring; And I, like earth, all budding out with love. The beautiful are never desolate ;

The dead have all the glory of the world.

We might easily fill up this number of our review by continuing our observations on individual poets in Mr. Griswold's volume. But we must pause here, and look forward to some more fitting time for a continuation of our remarks. In what we have said, we have not aimed at any thorough criticism on the poets we have separately considered, but have merely thrown off such observations on their life and poetical character as were suggested by their present relation to the public, and to current codes of criticism. Of course, in so large a tract of thought and imagination, variegated by so many individualities of character, there is room for the exercise of different opinions. We are sorry if ours have been tainted with an oracular tone. The estimate we form of a poet, is generally determined by the point of view from which we look at him. In

the survey of a considerable number, there is danger that we may not shift our position with a change in the objects to be seen. Every original poet should doubtless be judged by the laws which inhere in his own writings, and not by laws evolved from other and different writings. But it is difficult to decide at exactly what point a poet becomes a law unto himself; and difficult also, to estimate the exact value of his originality, and consequently his relative position among men of genius, after it is decided. The poetic faculty is exceedingly elastic, and all its manifestations in individuals cannot be included in a general criticism. In poems of moderate merit, we are occasionally struck with fine imaginations, which seem to give the lie to the charge of mediocrity. After a critic has most painfully elaborated his opinion of an author, any tyro can quote lines or passages which seem to conflict with it. From the extreme sensitiveness of the imagination, a poet of small original capacity, sometimes catches the tone of the great authors he has read, and by blending it with what individuality of thought and feeling there is in him, often contrives to puzzle reviewers and delude readers. In a literature like that of the present century, in which sensibility and ments, imitators are more likely to make personal feeling are such prominent elefrom Spenser or Pope. a respectable show, than if they copied A few grains of fancy, whirled about in a gust of simu lated passion, will often pass as poetry. Many of the deep and delicate imagina. tions, which Wordsworth and Shelley originated, have now become common property, and are reproduced in common poems. The spirit of both colors the thoughts of many poets, who, without being deficient in genius, have still look. ed at man and nature, not with their own eyes, but with those of the poets whose genius has conquered theirs. In this blending of minds, our object should be to discriminate between what the disciple has obtained from the master, and what he has added to the master. According to the force of being which a poet possesses, will be his resistance of influences coming from other minds. Many of the poets from whom Mr. Griswold has selected, have more of the repeater than the creator. In others there is a mingling of what has grown up in their minds, with what has been caught from other minds. Consequently, in

reading a volume with so many claimants on our attention, it is important to keep in view the character and spirit of the originating intellects, in order rightly to dispose the others in the sliding scale of merit. In reviewing so many poets in succession, a critic must consider their relative as well as intrinsic excellence; and in doing this he is ever liable to disappoint the admirers of each.

With all abatements, however, no one can glance at Mr. Griswold's volume, without being impressed with the fertility of the present century, in original poetry. There is one view in which the editor of a work like the present may be considered fortunate. Through his diligent labors large bodies of people, who could not or would not read extensively, are enabled to obtain an image of the imaginative literature of a great age. And what a world of thought and feeling does its contemplation reveal to us! Here are garnered up chronicles of the insight and experience of highly-gifted natures, many of them sorely tried by sorrow and temptation, and uttering words of profoundest meaning, while bending beneath the burden of actual life. Here flame the woes and wrongs that stung their spirits; here shine the majestic and ennobling thoughts by which calamity was consecrated. Here Passion revels in fantasies of maddening beauty; here the unselfish affections beam on our souls in the softest and most witching hours of fancy; here imagination illumines the page with light from heaven, and sheds on the hut and the palace, a glory not of earth; here Religion beckons to the skies. Love is here, Love," whose familiar voice wearies not ever," speaking a language which

"Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy;" and here are suffering and pain and death. Wise words are here, words

which "beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked"-which bear messages of measureless import to thrill our souls with gladness, or awe them into meekness-which teach us the awful significance of God's hand-writing on the heart. All grades of beauty are herefrom the sylvan quiet of pastoral scenery to the tempestuous loveliness of terror," all aspects of sorrow, from the most pensive melancholy to that agony and anguish which cries aloud in bitterness of spirit. The veil which conceals the workings of powerful but perverted hearts, is rent; and we gaze with shuddering interest into the chaotic depths of passion, wrought into consuming inten sity by maddening calamities. That a poetry so various, so "rammed with life," must contain much exaggerated representation, much false and morbid feeling, much varnishing of vice and beautifying of corruption, is true; but then it contains much more to purify and exalt; to give us knowledge and power; to infuse into our souls a thirst to promote human liberty and happiness; to make us feel the holiness of disinterested affection; to kindle in our hearts a passionate love for all that is beautiful and good; to lift our thoughts into serener regions of existence than actual life furnishes; to fill our imaginations with images of loveliness and grandeur, which shall solace disappointment and people solitude; to enable us to interpret aright the sublime language, written all over the universe, in which nature teaches her lessons of wisdom and power; and to penetrate our whole being with an intense enthusiasm for virtue and truth, which shall bear the soul bravely up amid the coldness and baseness of the world, and eternal realities, before which all the inspire it with a lofty confidence in those world's games and gauds, shrivel into ashes.

THE American Revolution, like all important events, formed or developed extraordinary characters. The country has not yet compared and rightly estimated all these characters. It has not done this, because the country has not yet fully understood the Revolution itself. Even at this period it is too much surrounded by the smoke and din of the contest. Our attention is too exclusively directed to the results of the Revolution, to admit a just understanding of the relative importance of particular events, or the moral involved in them. The period is approaching, when its history will be written, and when the country will understand all the principles involved in the Revolutionestimate at its true value every important event, and assign to each prominent actor in those events, his appropriate distinction.

When this is done, it will appear that the true glory of the Revolution does not rest upon the successful issue of the contest with the mother country. We find the seeds of the Revolution in the circumstances and character of the early colonies. Events that occurred from time to time, during the whole of that forming period, were singularly prophetic of all that was to come. After the colonies became united in resistance, the conflict could hardly have terminated otherwise than with success. England was too much divided and distracted at home, was too far from the theatre of the war, and withal too much in the wrong, to conquer a sparsely settled, but united country, defended with the enthusiasm which characterised that protracted struggle. The contest ended in triumph. A victorious and unpaid soldiery, were disbanded to seek their homes of poverty. The "Rebellion" had given birth to a nation without a national government. A people exhilarated by the successful resistance of authority and law, were called upon to be a law unto themselves, while both the glory and poverty incident to war conspired to distract them. Then it was that there was danger such as had depended upon no battle of the Revolution. When the war and its excitement had passed, leaving no perceptible fruits but the deso

lation which it had occasioned, and the debt which it had cost; when, with the country convulsed by the jealousies of great men, and discontent scattered broadcast among the people, an attempt was made to form a national goverment, a crisis impended more fearful than that involved in the declaration of Independence. And the events which followed-no one can read them, without trembling, though knowing how they terminated.

When a people whose only bond of union was sympathy, flowing from common suffering and common resistance of authority, voluntarily adopted a form of government which made them one nation, and combined liberty with security-when the discontented avoided anarchy, and the ambitious yielded up their schemes of individual power, seeking and finding a remedy in a peaceable submission to authority, the crowning glory of the Revolution was consummated. As "he who ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who taketh a city," so was the adoption of the Federal Constitution a greater event than the renowned declaration of rights, or the great victory which terminated the contest.

The country will ultimately take this view of the subject, and draw from it those sober and practical views of duty which it is suited to inculcate. It will then learn that there is much to imitate, as well as to praise. It will learn to venerate those extraordinary men who gave a right direction to public opinion; who subdued local and individual jealousies; and from the chaos of jarring elements, formed and established a government suited to their country.

When great men are estimated by what they do for others, rather than what they accomplish for themselves, the country will then have advanced to his standard, and will appreciate the character and actions, of John Jay. When the country learns to consider, as it ought-and as it will-its duties as well as its rights, and discovers, as it will, that its internal passions need more guards than its external enemies-when it learns to bear, and rightly to improve the trials of prosperity, Mr. Jay will enjoy a popularity, not bois