beautiful; the human form from its just proportions, the human face from the harmonious combination of features and coloring; but it is only when this form is living and moving, and when this face is suffused with emotion and animated with intelligence, when the attitude and the look alike express the workings of the heart and mind, that we feel the perfect sentiment of beauty. Thus inanimate nature, and literature in its transcripts of the aspects of nature, become most interesting by association with life and action, and, above all, with man. It is from descriptions of man, considered as a moral being, that even literary taste receives many of its highest gratifications. There is a moral as well as natural beauty and grandeur. A rational agent, animated by high principles of virtue, exhibiting the most generous affections, and preferring on all occasions what is just to what is expedient, is the noblest picture which the hand of genius can present. Very few indeed are insensible to those fine touches of moral feeling which are given in our best writers; but their full effect requires not only an improved mind, but a heart in harmony with whatever is most excellent in our natures, and a lively susceptibility to moral greatness. This susceptibility is moral taste. From Professor Frisbie's beautiful and finished fugitive poetry we select the following little gem : Stay, stay, sweet vision, do not leave me; Thy head was on my shoulder leaning; No word was spoken: all was feeling, And could this be but mere illusion? I'm sure I felt thy forehead pressing, Ah, no! 'tis gone, 'tis gone, and never JOHN PIERPONT. JOHN PIERPONT was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 6th of April, 1785, and received his collegiate education at Yale College, where he graduated in 1804. The next year he went to South Carolina, and was private tutor in the family of Colonel William Allston, where he commenced his legal studies. In 1809, he returned home, entered the celebrated law-school of his native town, and in 1812, having been admitted to the bar of Essex County, Massachusetts, opened an office in Newburyport. He soon, however, as other poets have done, abandoned the law, determining to find his pleasure and his occupation in literary pursuits; and in 1816 he published The Airs of Palestine, which was received with very great favor. At the close of that year, he entered the theological school of Harvard University, determined to devote himself to the ministry, and in April, 1819, was ordained as pastor of the Hollis Street Church, in Boston. In 1835 and 1836, he visited Europe for his health, going through the principal cities of England, France, and Italy, and extending his tour to the East, visiting Athens, Corinth, Constantinople, and Asia Minor. Soon after his return home, he collected and published, in 1840, all his poems, in one volume, in the preface to which he says, "If poetry is always fiction, there is no poetry in this book. It gives a true, though an all too feeble, expression of the author's feelings and faith,—of his love of right, freedom, and man, and of his correspondent and most hearty hatred of every thing that is at war with them; and of his faith in the providence and gracious promises of God." The longest poem of the volume is The Airs of Pales tine. The subject is music, principally as connected with sacred history, but with occasional digressions into the land of mythology and romance. It has no unity of plan, but consists of a succession of brilliant pictures. Though this subject, so congenial to the "poet's verse," had been often handled, from Pindar to Gray, yet our author, nothing daunted, did not shrink from trying his own powers upon it. It is enough to say that he has succeeded. For beauty of language, finish of versification, richness of classical and sacred allusions, and harmony of numbers, we consider that it takes rank among the very first of American poems and will be among those that will survive their century. But Mr. Pierpont has aimed at something more than gratifying his own scholarly tastes and charming his readers with the love of the beautiful. He is a reformer, a whole-hearted and a fearless one; and a large number of his fugitive pieces have been written to promote the holy causes of temperance and freedom. Mr. Pierpont has also prepared an excellent series of reading-books for schools:-The Little Learner, The Young Reader, Introduction to National Reader, National Reader, and The American First Class Book. CLASSICAL AND SACRED THEMES FOR MUSIC. Where lies our path?-though many a vista call, What hills, what vales, what streams, become the lyre? I love to wet my foot on Hermon's dews; And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose. SONG OF THE SHEPHERDS. While thus the shepherds watch'd the host of night, O'er the green hills and vales of Palestine; When that high anthem, clear, and strong, and bold, Peace to the world:"-and in full concert came, All?-all, but one, that hung and burn'd alone, Glow unextinguish'd;-'twas Salvation's Star. LICENSE-LAWS. "We license thee for so much gold," Says Congress,-they're our servants there,— Of this destroyer seize their swords, They're dealing,-will YE cut the cords And will ye give to man a bill Divorcing him from Heaven's high sway; In which is felt the fiercer blast Of the destroying angel's breath? Which binds its victim the more fast? Which kills him with the deadlier death? Will ye the felon fox restrain, And yet take off the tiger's chain? The living to the rotting dead The God-contemning Tuscan2 tied, Till, by the way, or on his bed, The poor corpse-carrier droop'd and died, Lash'd hand to hand, and face to face, In fatal and in loathed embrace. Less cutting, think ye, is the thong That to a breathing corpse, for life, Four hundred dollars is the sum prescribed by Congress-the local legislature of the District of Columbia-for a license to keep a prison-house and market for the sale of men, women, and children. See Jay's "View of the Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery," p. 87. 2 Mezentius. See Virgil, Eneid, viii. 481-491. Lashes, in torture loathed and long, The drunkard's child, the drunkard's wife? Are ye not fathers? When your sons O holy God! let light divine Break forth more broadly from above, The perfect law of truth and love; HYMN.1 O Thou, to whom in ancient time The lyre of Hebrew bards was strung, And prophets praised with glowing tongue; Not now on Zion's height, alone, Thy favor'd worshipper may dwell; From every place below the skies, To heaven, and find acceptance there. In this, thy house, whose doors we now To thee shall Age, with snowy hair, O thou, to whom in ancient time The lyre of prophet-bards was strung, To thee, at last, in every clime Shall temples rise, and praise be sung. 1 Written for the Opening of the Independent Congregational Church in Barton Square, Salem, December 7, 1824. |