Embroidered Handkerchief, and Henrietta Harrison, or the Blue Cotton Umbrella, in one volume; and, each in a separate pamphlet, Kitty's Relations, Leonilla Lynmore, The Maid of Canal Street, and The Dennings and their Beaux. During her career as a tale writer Miss Leslie has not forgotten the unctuous and delectable teachings of Mrs. Goodfellow, and has followed up the success of the seventy-five receipts by a much greater number, in The Domestic Cookery Book, 1837, of which over forty thousand copies have been sold; The House Book, 1840; and The Lady's Receipt Book, 1846, which have also had great success. In 1853 she published The Behavior Book, one of her pleasantest volumes, combining the solid good advice of her works on domestic duties with the happy vein of humor of her sketches. THE MONTAGUES IN AMERICA-FROM MRS. WASHINGTON POTTS. 66 "Pray, sir," said Mrs. Quimby, "as you are from England, do you know anything of Betsey Dempsey's husband?" "I have not the honor of being acquainted with that person," replied Mr. Montague, after a withering stare. Well, that's strange," pursued Aunt Quimby, "considering that she has been living in London at least eighteen years-or perhaps it is only seventeen! And yet I think it must be near eighteen, if not quite. May be seventeen and a half. Well, it's best to be on the safe side, so I'll say seventeen. Betsey Dempsey's mother was an old schoolmate of mine. Her father kept the Black Horse tavern. She was the only acquaintance I ever had that married an Englishman. He was a grocer, and in very good business; but he never liked America, and was always finding fault with it, and so he went home, and was to send for Betsey. But he never sent for her at all; for a very good reason, which was that he had another wife in England, as most of them have no disparagement to you, sir." Mrs. Marsden now came up, and informed Mrs. Potts in a whisper that the good old lady beside her was a distant relation or rather connexion of Mr. Marsden's, and that though a little primitive in appearance and manner, she had considerable property in bank-stock. To Mrs. Marsden's proposal that she should exchange her seat for a very pleasant one in the other room next to her old friend Mrs. Willis, Aunt Quimby replied nothing but "Thank you, I'm doing very well here." Mrs. and Miss Montague, apparently heeding no one else, had talked nearly the whole evening to each other, but loudly enough to be heard by all around them. The young lady, though dressed as a child, talked like a woman, and she and her mother were now engaged in an argument whether the flirtation of the Duke of Risingham with Lady Georgiana Melbury would end seriously or not. "To my certain knowledge," said Miss Montague, "his Grace has never yet declared himself to Georgiana, or to any one else." I'll lay you two to one," said Mrs. Montague, "that he is married before we return to England." "No," replied the daughter, "like all others of his sex he delights in keeping the ladies in suspense." What you say, Miss, is very true," said Aunt Quimby, leaning in her turn across Mr. Montague, "and considering how young you are you talk very sensibly. Men certainly have a way of keeping women in suspense, and an unwillingness to answer questions even when we ask them. There's my son in-law Billy Fairfowl, that I live with. He married my daughter Mary eleven years ago, the 23d of last April. He's as good a man as ever breathed, and an excellent provider too. He always goes to market himself; and sometimes I can't help blaming him a little for his extravagance. But his greatest fault is his being so unsatisfactory. As far back as last March, as I was sitting at my knitting in the little front parlor with the door open (for it was quite warm weather for the time of year), Billy Fairfowl came home carrying in his hand a goodsized shad; and I called out to him to ask him what he gave for it, for it was the very beginning of the shad season; but he made not a word of answer; he had just passed on, and left the shad in the kitchen, and then went to his store. At dinner we had the fish, and a very nice one it was; and I asked him again how much he gave for it, but he still avoided answering, and began to talk about something else; so I thought I'd let it rest awhile. A week or two after, I again asked him; so then he actually said he had forgotten all about it. And to this day I don't know the price of that shad." The Montagues looked at each other-almost laughed aloud, and drew back their chairs as far from Aunt Quimby as possible. So also did Mrs. Potts. Mrs. Marsden came up in an agony of vexation, and reminded her aunt in a low voice of the risk of renewing her rheumatism by staying so long between the damp newly-papered walls. The old lady answered aloud, "Oh! you need not fear, I am well wrapped up on purpose. And indeed considering that the parlors were only papered to-day, I think the walls have dried wonderfully (putting her hands on the paper)—I am sure nobody could find out the damp if they were not told.” "What!" exclaimed the Montagues; only papered to-day (starting up and testifying all that prudent fear of taking cold, so characteristic of the English). How barbarous to inveigle us into such a place!" "I thought I felt strangely chilly all the evening," says Mrs. Potts, whose fan had scarcely been at rest five minutes. The Montagues proposed going away immediately, and Mrs. Potts declared she was most apprehensive for poor little Lafayette. Mrs. Marsden, who could not venture the idea of their departing till all the refreshments had been handed round (the best being yet to come), took great pains to persuade them that there was no real cause of alarm, as she had large fires all the afternoon. They held a whispered consultation, in which they agreed to stay for the oysters and chicken salad, and Mrs. Marsden went out to send them their shawls, with one for Lafayette. By this time the secret of the newly-papered walls had spread round both rooms; the conversation now turned entirely on colds and rheumatisms; there was much shivering and considerable coughing, and the demand for shawls increased. However nobody actually went home in consequence. Papa," said Miss Montague, "let us all take French leave as soon as the oysters and chickensalad have gone round." Albina now came up to Aunt Quimby (gladly perceiving that the old lady looked tired), and proposed that she should return to her chamber, assuring her that waiters should be punctually sent up to her "I do not feel quite ready to go yet," replied Mrs. Quimby. "I am very well. But you need not mind me. Go back to your company, and talk a little to those three poor girls in the yellow frocks that nobody has spoken to yet except Bromley Cheston. When I am ready to go I shall take French leave, as these English people call it." But Aunt Quimby's idea of French leave was very different from the usual acceptation of the term; for having always heard that the French were a very polite people, she concluded that their manner of taking leave must be particularly respectful and ceremonious. Therefore, having paid her parting compliments to Mrs. Potts and the Montagues, she walked all round the room, courtesying to everybody and shaking hands, and telling them she had come to take French leave. To put an end to this ridiculous scene, Bromley Cheston (who had been on assiduous duty all the evening) now came forward, and, taking the old lady's arm in his, offered to escort her up stairs. Aunt Quimby was much flattered by this unexpected civility from the finestlooking young man in the room, and she smilingly departed with him, complimenting him on his politeness, and assuring him that he was a real gentleman, and trying also to make out the degree of relationship that existed between them. "So much for Buckingham," said Cheston, as he ran down stairs after depositing the old lady at the door of her room. "Fools of all ranks and of all ages are to me equally intolerable. I never can marry into such a family." The party went on. "In the name of heaven, Mrs. Potts," said Mrs. Montague, "what induces you to patronize these people?" "Why, they are the only tolerable persons in the neighborhood," answered Mrs. Potts, "and very kind and obliging in their way. I really think Albina a very sweet girl, very sweet, indeed; and Mrs. Marsden is rather amiable too, quite amiable. And they are so grateful for any little notice I take of them that it is really quite affecting. Poor things! how much trouble they have given themselves in getting up this party. They look as if they had had a hard day's work; and I have no doubt they will be obliged in consequence to pinch themselves for months to come: for I can assure you their means are very small, very small, indeed. As to this intolerable old aunt, I never saw her before, and as there is something rather genteel about Mrs. Marsden and her daughter-rather so, at least, about Albina-I did not suppose they had any such relations belonging to them. I think, in future, I must confine myself entirely to the aristocracy." "We deliberated to the last moment," said Mrs. Montagne," whether we would come. But as Mr. Montague is going to write his tour when we return to England, he thinks it expedient to make some sacrifices for the sake of seeing the varieties of American society." "Oh! these people are not in society," exclaimed Mrs. Potts, eagerly. "I can assure you these Marsdens have not the slightest pretensions to society. Oh! no; I beg of you not to suppose that Mrs. Marsden and her daughters are at all in society." RICHARD HENRY DANA. THE family of Mr. Dana is one of the oldest and most honored in Massachusetts. The first of the name who came to America was Richard Dana, in 1640; he settled at Cambridge, where six generations of the family have since resided. The poet's grandfather on this side of the house, Richard, was a patriot of the times preceding the Revolution, and known at the bar as an eminent lawyer. His son was Francis Dana the Minister to Russia, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, a man of honor, high personal sense of character, and of energetic eloquence. He married a daughter of William Ellery of Rhode Island, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, by which union his son and the celebrated Dr. Channing were cousins. Judge Ellery once described to his grandson, the poet, the aroused sense of honor which he witnessed in Francis Dana, in his rebuke of an impudent lawyer at the bar, who had charged him with an unfair management of the case. "In opening his reply to the jury," said Mr. Ellery, "he came down upon the creature; he did it in two or three minutes' time, and then dropped him altogether. I thought," added he, "I felt my hair rise and stand upright on my head while he did it."* On the mother's side Dana's family runs up to the early poetess Anne Bradstreet, the daughter of Governor Dudley. His grandfather Ellery married the daughter of Judge Remington, who had married the daughter of that quaint disciple of Du Bartas. Dana's uncle, Judge Edmund Trowbridge, also married one of the Dudley family. The writer of the biographical notice of R. H. Dana, Jr., in Livingston's Sketches of Eminent American Lawyers (Part iv. 762), thus characterizes the old school of Federalism to which Francis Dana belonged. "He possessed a large fortune for that day, chiefly in lands, and kept up, in his manner of life, the style of the olden time, which has almost passed out of the memory of our degenerate age. He used to ride to court in his coach, and would have thought it undignified to travel the circuits unattended by his private servant. In politics he was what would now be styled a high-toned Federalist of the old school-though the words imply far more than the mere adherence to certain political views, and siding with a particular political party. They have a much broader signification. The old Federal gentry of New England was chiefly composed of educated men, whose minds had been cultivated by the study of the eminent English lawyers, and who still retained some of the feelings of their own immediate ancestors. It must be confessed that they looked upon themselves less as the representatives, than as the temporal guardians of the people. They endeavoured to preserve what they conceived to be necessary distinctions in society, and in the municipal movements of government. They had a notion that the accidents of birth and education imposed upon them peculiar duties in the commonwealth-the duties of restraining the mass of the people by the force of dignity, and elevating them by their example. The honor of the state, the direction of its energies, the regulation of its manners, the security of its laws, and the solemnities of its religious observ. Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge, November 15, 1787. His early years were passed at Newport, in the midst of the associations of the Revolution and the enjoyments of the fine sea views and atmosphere of the spot. He entered Harvard, which he left in 1807. He studied law in the office of his cousin Francis Dana Channing, the eldest brother of Dr. Channing. After admission to the Boston bar he spent about three months in the office of Robert Goodloe Harper at Baltimore, where he was admitted to practice. He returned home in 1811 and became a member of the legislature, where he found a better field for the exercise of his federal politics and opinions. His first literary public appearance was as an orator on the Fourth of July celebration of 1814. The North American Review was commenced in 1815. It grew out of an association of literary gentlemen composing the Anthology Club who for eight years, from 1803 to 1811, had published the miscellany entitled The Monthly Anthology. Dana was a member of the club. The first editor of the Review was William Tudor, from whose hands it soon passed to the care of Willard Phillips, and then to the charge of an association of gentlemen for whom Mr. Sparks was the active editor. In 1818 Edward T. Channing became editor of the Review, and associated with him his cousin Richard H. Dana, who had left the law for the more congenial pursuits of literature.* When Channing was made Boylston professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard he resigned the editorship of the Review, and Dana, who was considered too unpopular to succeed him, left the club. Dana wrote in the period of two years five papers, one an essay on "Old Times," the others on literary topics, chiefly poetical. In 1824 Dana began the publication of The Idle Man, a periodical in which he communicated to the public his Tales and Essays. Six numbers of it were issued when it was discontinued; the author acquiring the experience hitherto not uncommon in the higher American literature, that if he would write as a poet and philosopher, and publish as a gentleman, he must pay as well as compose. Bryant, with whom Dana had become acquainted in the conduct of the North American Review, was a contributor of several poems to the Idle Man; and when this publication was discontinued Dana wrote for his journal, the New York Review of 1825, and afterwards the United States Review of 1826-7. In the latter he published ar ances, were committed to them. This was not confessedly, but pretty nearly in fact, their idea of their position and its consequent responsibilities." *Edward Tyrrel Channing was Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in Harvard College from 1819 to 1551, where the exactness of his instruction, his cultivated taste and highly disciplined mental powers gave him an eminent reputation with his pupils. His editorship of the North American Review extended over the seventh, eighth, and ninth volumes in 1818 and 1819. The following are among his articles in the Review: On Thomas Moore and Lalla Rookh, vol. vi.: Rob Roy, vol. vii.; Charles Brockden Browne's Life and Writings, vol. ix.: Southey's Life of Cooper, vol. xliv.; Prior's Life of Goldsmith, vol. xlv.; Sir Richard Steele's Life and Writings, vol. xlvi.: Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, vol. 1. These papers show the author's refined culture and vigorous pen. Professor Channing also wrote the life of his grandfather, William Ellery, in Sparks's American Biography, First Series, vol. vi. It is understood that he is about sending to the press a volume of Lectures read to the classes in Cambridge. They were Old Times," 1517. Allston's Sylph of the Seasons. 1817. Edgeworth's Readings on Poetry, 1818. Hazlitt's English Poets, 1819. The Sketch Book, 1819. ticles on Mrs. Radcliffe and the novels of Brockden Brown. From 1828 to 1831 he contributed four papers to The Spirit of the Pilgrims.* An Essay on The Past and the Present in the American Quarterly Observer for 1833; and another on Law as suited to Man, in the Biblical Repository for 1835, conclude the list of our author's contributions to periodical literature. The first volume of Dana's Poems, containing The Buccaneer, was published in 1827. In 1833 he published at Boston a volume of Poems and Prose Writings, reprinting his first volume with additions, and including his papers in the Idle Man. In 1839 he delivered a course of eight lectures on Shakespeare at Boston and New York, which he has subsequently repeated in those cities and delivered at Philadelphia and elsewhere. In 1850 he published an edition of his writings in two volumes at New York, adding several essays and his review articles, with the exception of a notice of the historical romance of Yorktown, in Bryant's United States Review, and the paper on Religious Controversy in the Spirit of the Pilgrims.t These are the last public incidents of Mr. Dana's literary career; but in private the influence of his tastes, conversation, and choice literary correspondence, embraces a liberal field of activity. He passes his time between his town residence at Boston and his country retirement at Cape Ann, Mr. Dana's Residence. where he enjoys a roof of his own in a neat marine villa, pleasantly situated in a niche of the rocky coast. Constant to the untiring love of nature, he is one of the first to seek this haunt in spring and the last to leave it in autumn. His writings possess kindred qualities in prose and verse; thought and rhythm, speculation and imagination being borrowed by each from the other. The Buccaneer is a philosophical poem; a tale of the heart and the conscience. The villany of the hero, though in remote perspective to the imagination, appeals on that account the more powerfully to our own consciousness. His remorse is touched with consummate art as the rude hard earthy nature steps into the region of the supernatural, and with unchanged rigidity embraces its new terrors. The machinery is at once objective and spiritual in the vision of the horse. The story is opened by glimpses to the reader in the only way in which modern art can attain, with cultivated minds, the effect of the old ballad directness. The visionary horror is relieved by simple touches of human feeling and sweet images, as in the opening, of the lovely, peaceful scenes of nature. The remaining poems are divided between the description of nature and a certain philosophical vein of thought which rises into the loftiest speculative region of religion, and is never long without indications of a pathetic sense of human life. The prose of Dana has similar characteristics to his verse. It is close, elaborate, truthful in etymology; and, with a seeming plainness, musical in its expression. There is a rare use of figures, but when they occur they will be found inwrought with the life of the text; no sham or filigree work. In the tales of Tom Thornton and Paul Felton there is much imaginative power in placing the mind on the extreme limits of sanity, under the influence of painful and engrossing passion. The story of the lovers, Edward and Mary, has its idyllic graces of the affections. In these writings the genius of our author is essentially dramatic. The critical and philosophical essays, embracing the subtle and elaborate studies of human life in Shakespeare, show great skill in discrimination, guided by a certain logic of the heart and life, and not by mere artificial dialectics. They are not so much literary exercises as revelations of, and guides to character. This character is founded on calm reverence, a sleepless love of truth, a high sense of honor, and of individual worth. With these conditions are allied strong imagination, reaching to the ideal in art and virtue, and a corresponding sympathy with the humanity which falls short of it in life. THE LITTLE BEACH BIRD. L Thou little bird, thou dweller by the sea, Why takest thou its melancholy voice? And with that boding cry Along the waves dost thou fly? O rather, Bird with me Through the fair land rejoice! II. Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, Thy cry is weak and scared, The doom of us: Thy wail- III. Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, Of waves that drive to shore, One spirit did ye urge The Mystery-The Word. IV. Of the thousands, thou, both sepulchre and pall, Old Ocean, art! A requiem o'er the dead, From out thy gloomy cells A tale of mourning tells And do our loves all perish with our frames? And make it send forth winning harmonies,- O, listen, man! 66 Hymn it around our souls: according harps, -O, listen ye, our spirits; drink it in From all the air! "Tis in the gentle moonlight; 'Tis floating in day's setting glories; Night, Wrapt in her sable robe, with silent step Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears: Night, and the dawn, bright day, and thoughtful eve, All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse, As one vast mystic instrument, are touched By an unseen, living Hand, the conscious chords Quiver with joy in this great jubilee: -The dying hear it; and as sounds of earth Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls To mingle in this heavenly harmony. THE BUCCANEER. Boy with thy blac berd, I rede that thou blin, Ze met with the merchandes For when ze stode in sowre strenkith, LAURENCE MINOT. The island lies nine leagues away. Of craggy rock and sandy bay, No sound but ocean's roar, Save where the bold, wild sea-bird makes her home, But when the light winds lie at rest, The black duck, with her glossy breast, How beautiful! no ripples break the reach, And inland rests the green, warm dell; Mingling its sound with bleatings of the flocks, Nor holy bell, nor pastoral bleat, In former days within the vale; Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet; Curses were on the gale; Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men ; But calm, low voices, words of grace, Each motion gentle; all is kindly done.- Twelve years are gone since Matthew Lee Beneath his thick-set brows a sharp light broke Cruel of heart, and strong of arm, Yet like a dog could fawn, if need there were; Amid the uproar of the storm, And by the lightning's sharp, red glare, Whose corpse at morn lies swinging in the sedge! "Ask him who floats there; let him tell; I make the brute, not man, my mark. Think ye the lashing waves will spare or feel? He wiped his axe; and turning round, Or give him Christian burial on the strand? Lee's waste was greater than his gain. 'Tis fearful, on the broad-backed waves, Yet 'mid this solemn world what deeds are done! And wanton talk, and laughter heard, Pray ye, when ye rejoice! "Leave prayers to priests," cries Lee: "I'm ruler here! The ship works hard; the sens run high; A wild and shifting light. "Hard at the pumps!-The leak is gaining fast! Lighten the ship!-The devil rode that blast!" Ocean has swallowed for its food Spoils thou didst gain in murderous glee; It had been well for thee. Crime fits for crime. And no repentant téar The sea has like a plaything tost Torn spars and sails,her lading in the deep,- Within a Spanish port she rides. Angry and soured, Lee walks her deck. Il luck in change!-Ho! cheer ye up, my men! A sound is in the Pyrenees! Whirling and dark comes roaring down On field and vineyard, thick and red it stood; And wrath and terror shake the land: Awake ye, Merlin! Hear the shout from Spain! Too late for thee, thou young, fair bride! He cannot hear thy wail, Whom thou didst lull with fondly murmured sound He fell for Spain,-her Spain no more; And wait amid her sorrows till the day Lee feigned him grieved, and bowed him low, He meekly, smoothly said. With wealth and servants she is soon aboard, The sun goes down upon the sea; My home, how like a tomb! O, blow, ye flowers of Spain, above his hend! And now the stars are burning bright; Ye're many, waves, yet lonely seems your flow; Sleep, sleep, thou sad one on the sea! |