the new constitution a provision abolishing what is called special pleading in actions at law. This induced Mr. Tyler to address to the convention, of which he was not a member, a written defence of the importance of retaining special pleading in law procedure; and also showing that all law procedure should be simplified. This view of the subject of law reform finally prevailed, and a provision was incorporated in the new constitution requiring the Legislature to elect three commissioners to simplify the pleadings and practice in all the Courts of the State. Mr. Tyler was elected one of these commissioners. In the division of the work amongst himself and his colleagues it was assigned to him to prepare the first report, which should embrace a general discussion of the subject of law reform, and also present a simplified system of special pleading for all the courts of law in the state. When the report was published, its profound discussion on the relative merits of the Common Law and the Civil Law won the approbation of many of the first lawyers of the county, while the propriety of the simplifications in the system proposed has been generally acknowledged.

GEORGE BURGESS.

THE author of a new poetical version of the Book of Psalms, and Bishop of the Diocese of Maine, was born at Providence, Rhode Island, October 31, 1809. Upon being graduated at Brown University in 1826, he became a tutor in that institution, and subsequently continued his studies at the Universities of Bonn, Gottingen, and Berlin. After entering the ministry, he was rector of Christ Church, Hartford, from 1834 to 1847, when he was consecrated to his present office.

In 1840, he published The Book of Psalms, translated into English Verse, an animated and successful version. He is also the author of Pages from the Ecclesiastical History of New England; The Last Enemy, Conquering and Conquered, two academic poems, and several published Sermons.

PSALM XLVII.*

O, all ye nations, clap your hands,
And let your shouts of victory ring,
To praise the Lord of all your lands,
The broad creation's awful King.
He treads the realms beneath our feet,
He breaks the hostile armies down,
And gives and guards his chosen seat,
The home of Jacob's old renown.
God is gone up with shouting throngs;
Before him pealed the trumpet's call !
Oh, sing to God with lofty songs;
Sing praises to the Lord of all!

Oh, sing to God a royal strain,

To earth's high King a raptured cry! God o'er the nations spreads his reign, God lifts his holy seat on high.

"For the chief musician, a Psalm of the Sons of Korah." Whether it was composed for the dedication of the temple, or on any other festival, it is impossible to decide; but it can hardly be read without being referred, in its highest allusion, to the ascension of the Saviour.

God is gone up with shouting throngs. The Son of God, returning to his heavenly throne, with all the pomp of a conqueror, is welcomed by the songs and harps of heaven, and shall soon receive the praises of all the earth.

The heirs of many a Gentile throne, With God's and Abraham's seed adore. The shields of earth are all his own,

As high as heaven his glorious soar.

ALBERT PIKE.

ALBERT PIKE was born at Boston on the 29th of December, 1809. When he was four years old his family removed to Newburyport, where his boyhood was passed, until his matriculation at Harvard in his sixteenth year. Not having the requisite means of support he soon left college, and became an assistant teacher and afterwards principal of the Newburyport Academy. After

a few years passed in teaching in this and other towns, during which he continued his classical studies in private, he started in the spring of 1831 for the West. Arriving at St. Louis, having travelled over much of the intervening distance on foot, he joined a band of forty in an expedition to Santa Fe. He arrived at that place on the 25th of the following November, and passed about a year as a clerk in a store, and in travelling about with merchandise in the country. In September, 1832, he left Taos with a company of trappers, visited the head-waters of the Red river and the Brazos, and with four others, separating from the main party, directed his course to Arkansas, and arrived at Fort Smith in November, well nigh naked and penniless. He passed the winter in teaching near the fort, and after attempting to establish a school at a place in the settlements, which was broken up in consequence of his falling ill of a fever, accepting the invitation of the editor of the Arkansas Advocate, at Little Rock, who had been greatly pleased by some poetical communications he had furnished to the paper, became his partIn 1834 he succeeded to the entire proprietorship of the journal. In 1836 he sold out his newspaper property and commenced the practice of the law, having studied and been admitted to the profession during his editorial career. He also published at Boston a volume containing an account in prose of his adventurous journeyings, and a number of poems suggested by the noble scen ery through which he had passed.

ner.

The rivers toss their chains up to the sun,

And through their grassy banks leapingly run,
When thou hast touched them;-thou who ever art
The goddess of all beauty;-thou whose heart
Is ever in the sunny meads and fields;
To whom the laughing earth looks up and yields
Her waving treasures;-thou that in thy car
With winged dragons, when the morning star
Sheds his cold light, touchest the morning trees
Until they spread their blossoms to the breeze;-
O, pour thy light

Of truth and joy upon our souls this night,
And grant to us all plenty and good ease!

O thou, the goddess of the rustling corn!
Thou to whom reapers sing, and on the lawn
Pile up their baskets with the full eared wheat;
While maidens come, with little dancing feet,
And bring thee poppies, weaving thee a crown
Of simple beauty, bending their heads down
To garland thy full baskets; at whose side,
Among the sheaves of wheat, doth Bacchus ride
With bright and sparkling eyes, and feet and mouth
All wine-stained from the warm and sunny south;
Perhaps one arm about thy neck he twines,
While in his car ye ride among the vines,
And with the other hand he gathers up
The rich, full grapes, and holds the glowing cup
Unto thy lips-and then he throws it by,

And crowns thee with bright leaves to shade thine eye,

So it may gaze with richer love and light
Upon his beaming brow: If thy swift flight
Be on some hill

Of vine-hung Thrace-O, come, while night is still, And greet with heaping arms our gladdened sight!

Lo! the small stars, above the silver wave,
Come wandering up the sky, and kindly lave

The thin clouds with their light, like floating sparks
Of diamonds in the air; or spirit barks,
With unseen riders, wheeling in the sky.
Lo! a soft mist of light is rising high,
Like silver shining through a tint of red,

And soon the queenéd moon her love will shed,
Like pearl mist, on the earth and on the sea,
Where thou shalt cross to view our mystery.
Lo! we have torches here for thee, and urns,
Where incense with a floating odor burns,
And altars piled with various fruits and flowers,
And ears of corn, gathered at early hours,
And odors fresh from India, with a heap
Of many-colored poppies:-Lo! we keep
Our silent watch for thee, sitting before
Thy ready altars, till to our lone shore
Thy chariot wheels

Shall come, while ocean to the burden reels,
And utters to the sky a stifled roar.

FAREWELL TO NEW ENGLAND.

Farewell to thee, New England!

Farewell to thee and thine!

Good bye to leafy Newbury,
And Rowley's hills of pine!
Farewell to thee, brave Merrimac !
Good-bye old heart of blue!
May I but find, returning,

That all, like thee, are true!
Farewell to thee, old Ocean!

Grey father of mad waves! Whose surge, with constant motion, Against the granite raves. Farewell to thee, old Ocean!

I shall see thy face once more,

And watch thy mighty waves again,

Along my own bright shore.

Farewell the White Hill's summer-snow,
Ascutney's cone of green!
Farewell Monadnock's regal glow,

Old Holyoke's emerald sheen!

Farewell grey hills, broad lakes, sweet dells,
Green fields, trout-peopled brooks!
Farewell the old familiar bells!
Good-bye to home and books!
Good-bye to all! to friend and foe!
Few foes I leave behind:

I bid to all, before I go,

A long farewell, and kind. Proud of thee am I, noble land! Home of the fair and brave! Thy motto evermore should stand, Honor, or honor's grave !"

66

Frenchman, and his mother, Louise Cousin, a native of Louisiana. He was born in New Orleans, and received his education in France, at the Royal College of Nantes; studied for the bar but relinquished it for the church, becoming attached to the Catholic seminary at New Orleans, where he officiates on stated occasions during the week, passing the rest of his time in retirement and study at his residence at Mandeville, in the parish of St. Tammany, in that state. He has cultivated poetic writing in both French and

Le Seigneur dit à Osée:" Après cela, néanmoins, je l'attirerai
doucement à moi, je l'amènerai dans la solitude, et je lui par-
lerai au cœur."
(La Bible OSEE.)

Enfant, je dis un soir: Adieu, ma bonne mère!
Et je quittai gaîment sa maison et sa terre.
Enfant, dans mon exil, une lettre, un matin,
(O Louise!) m'apprit que j'étais orphelin!
Enfant, je vis les bois du Kentucky sauvage,
Et l'homme se souvient des bois de son jeune âge!
Ah! dans le Kentucky les arbres sont bien beaux:
C'est la terre de sang, aux indiens tombeaux,
Terre aux belles forêts, aux séculaires chênes,
Aux bois suivis de bois, aux magnifiques scènes;
Imposant cimetière, où dorment en repos
Tant de rouges-tribus et tant de blanches-peaux;
Où l'ombre du vieux Boon, immobile génie,
Semble écouter, la nuit, l'éternelle harmonie,
Le murmure éternel des immenses déserts,
Ces mille bruits confus, ces mille bruits divers,
Cet orgue des forêts, cet orchestre sublime,
O Dieu! que seul tu fis, que seul ton souffle anime!
Quand au vaste clavier pèse un seul de tes doigts,
Soudain, roulent dans l'air mille flots à la fois:
Soudain, au fond des bois, sonores basiliques,
Bourdonne un océan de sauvages musiques;
Et l'homme, à tous ces sons de l'orgue universel,
L'homme tombe à genoux, en regardant le ciel !
El tombe, il croit, il prie; et, chrétien sans étude,
Il retrouve, étonné, Dieu dans la solitude!

A portion of this has been vigorously rendered by a writer in the Southern Quarterly Review.*

'Here, with its Indian tombs, the Bloody Land
Spreads out:-majestic forests, secular oaks,
Woods stretching into woods; a witching realm,
Yet haunted with dread shadows;--a vast grave,
Where, laid together in the sleep of death,
Rest myriads of the red men and the pale.
Here, the stern forest genius, veteran Boon,
Still harbors: still he hearkens, as of yore,
To never ceasing harmonies, that blend,

At night, the murmurs of a thousand sounds,
That rise and swell capricious, change yet rise,
Borne from far wastes immense, whose mingling
strains--

The forest organ's tones, the sylvan choir-
Thy breath alone, O God! can'st animate,
Making it fruitful in the matchless space!
Thy mighty fingers pressing on its keys,
How suddenly the billowy tones roll up
From the great temples of the solemn depths,
Resounding through the immensity of wood
To the grand gushing harmonies, that speak
For thee, alone, O Father. As we hear

The unanimous concert of this mighty chaunt,
We bow before thee; eyes uplift to Heaven,

*July, 1854.

We pray thee, and believe. A Christian sense
Informs us, though untaught in Christian books
Awed into worship, as we learn to know
That thou, O God, art in the solitude!"

In 1846 the Abbé Rouquette pronounced an animated Discourse at the Cathedral of St. Louis, on occasion of the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. In 1848 he published Wild Flowers, a volume of sacred poetry, written in English, in which his style is restrained. It falls in the rank of occasional verses, within the range of topics growing out of the peculiar views of his church, and shows a delicate sensibility in its choice of subjects.

In 1852 a prose work appeared from his pen, entitled La Thebaide en Amerique, ou Apologie de la Vie Solitaire et Contemplative; a species of tract in which the religious retreats from the world supported by the Roman Catholic church, are defended by various philosophical and other considerations, colored by the writer's sentimental poetic view.

THE NOOK.

L'humble coin qu'il me faut pour prier et chanter.
The humble nook where I may sing and pray.
Victor Laprade.

The nook! O lovely spot of land,
Where I have built my cell;
Where, with my Muse, my only friend,
In peacefulness I dwell.

The nook! O verdant seat of bliss,
My shelter from the blast
Midst deserts, smiling oasis,

Where I may rest at last.

The nook! O home of birds and flowers,
Where I may sing and pray;
Where I may dream, in shady bowers,
So happy night and day.

The nook! O sacred, deep retreat,
Where crowds may ne'er intrude;
Where men with God and angels meet
In peaceful solitude;

O paradise, where I have flown;
O woody, lovely spot,
Where I may live and die alone,
Forgetful and forgot!

TO NATURE, MY MOTHER.

Dear Nature is the kindest mother still.-Byron
O nature, powerful, smiling, calm,
To my unquiet heart,
Thy peace, distilling as a balm,
Thy mighty life impart.

O nature, mother still the same,
So lovely mild with me,
To live in peace, unsung by fame-
Unchanged, I come to thee;

I come to live as saints have lived
I fly where they have fled,

By men unholy never grieved,
In prayer my tears to shed.
Alone with thee, from cities far,
Dissolved each earthly tie,
By some divine, magnetic star,
Attracted still on high.

Oh! that my heart, inhaling love
And life with ecstasy,

From this low world to worlds above,
Could rise exultingly?

FRANCOIS DOMINique Rouquette, the brother of the preceding, is also an author. He was born January 2, 1810, at New Orleans, educated there under Prof. Rochefort at the Orleans college, and pursued his classical studies at Nantes, in France. In 1828 he returned to the United States; studied law with Rawle, the author of the work on the Constitution of the United States, at Philadelphia; but preferring the profession of literature, returned to France, where he published a volume of poetry, Les Meschac bennes, and was couraged by Beranger, Victor Hugo, Barthelemy, and others. M. Rouquette has led the life of a traveller or of retirement, and has prepared a work on the Choctaw Nation, which he proposes to publish in French and English, as he writes with ease in both languages.

JONES VERY

en

Is the author of a volume of Essays and Poems published in Boston in 1839. It contains three articles in prose on Epic Poetry, Shakespeare, and Hamlet, and a collection of Poems, chiefly sonnets, which are felicitous in their union of thought and emotion. They are expressions of the spiritual life of the author, and in a certain metaphysical vein and simplicity, their love of nature, and sincerity of utterance, remind us of the meditations of the philosophical and pious writers in the old English poetry of the seventeenth century. The subtle essay on Shakespeare illustrates the universality of his genius by a condition of the higher Christian life.

Jones Very

The author of these productions is a native and resident of Salem, Massachusetts. His father was a sea captain, with whom he made several voyages to Europe. Upon the death of this parent he prepared himself for college, and was a graduate of Harvard of 1836, where he became for awhile a tutor of Greek. "While he held this office," says Griswold, "a religious enthusiasm took possession of his mind, which gradually produced so great a change in him, that his friends withdrew him from Cambridge, and he returned to Salem, where he wrote most of the poems in the collection of his writings."*

TO THE PAINTED COLUMBINE

Bright image of the early years
When glowed my cheek as red as thou,
And life's dark throng of cares and fears

Were swift-winged shadows o'er my sunny brow!

Thou blushest from the painter's page,
Robed in the mimic tints of art;

But Nature's hand in youth's green age
With fairer hues first traced thee on my heart.
The morning's blush, she made it thine,
The morn's sweet breath, she gave it thee,
And in thy look, my Columbine!
Each fond-remembered spot she bade me see.

I see the hill's far-gazing head,
Where gay thou noddest in the gale;
I hear light-bounding footsteps tread
The grassy path that winds along the vale.

Poets and Poetry of America.

I hear the voice of woodland song
Break from each bush and well-known tree,
And on light pinions borne along,

Comes back the laugh from childhood's heart of glee. O'er the dark rock the dashing brook, With look of anger, leaps again, And, hastening to each flowery nook, Its distant voice is heard far down the glen. Fair child of art! thy charms decay, Touched by the withered hand of Time; And hushed the music of that day, When my voice mingled with the streamlet's chime; But in my heart thy cheek of bloom Shall live when Nature's smile has fled; And, rich with memory's sweet perfume, Shall o'er her grave thy tribute incense shed. There shalt thou live and wake the glee That echoed on thy native hill; And when, loved flower! I think of thee, My infant feet will seem to seek thee still.

THE WIND-FLOWER.

Thou lookest up with meek confiding eye
Upon the clouded smile of April's face,
Unharmed though Winter stands uncertain by
Eyeing with jealous glance each opening grace.
Thou trustest wisely! in thy faith arrayed
More glorious thou than Israel's wisest King;
Such faith was his whom men to death betrayed
As thine who hear'st the timid voice of Spring,
While other flowers still hide them from her call
Along the river's brink and meadow bare.
These will I seek beside the stony wall,
And in thy trust with childlike heart would share,
O'erjoyed that in thy early leaves I find

A lesson taught by him who loved all human kind.

DAY.

NIGHT.

I thank thee, Father, that the night is near When I this conscious being may resign; Whose only task thy words of love to hear, And in thy nets to find each act of mine; A task too great to give a child like me, The myriad-handed labors of the day, Too many for my closing eyes to see, Thy words too frequent for my tongue to say; Yet when thou see'st me burthened by thy love, Each other gift more lovely then appears, For dark-robed night comes hovering from above, And all thine other gifts to me endears; And while within her darkened couch I sleep, Thine eyes untired above will constant vigils keep.

THE LATTER RAIN.

The latter rain,-it falls in anxious haste
Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare,
Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste,
As if it would each root's lost strength repair;
But not a blade grows green as in the Spring,
No swelling twig puts forth its thickening leaves;
The robins only 'mid the harvests sing
Pecking the grain that scatters from the sheaves;
The rain falls still,-the fruit all ripened drops,
It pierces chestnut burr and walnut shell,
The furrowed fields disclose the yellow crops,
Each bursting pod of talents used can tell,
And all that once received the early rain
Declare to man it was not sent in vain.

NATURE.

The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,
Because my feet find measure with its call,
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,
For I am known to them both great and small;
The flower that on the lovely hill-side grows
Expects me there when Spring its bloom has given;
And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows,
And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven;
For he who with his Maker walks aright,
Shall be their lord as Adam was before;
His ear shall catch each sound with new delight,
Each object wear the dress that then it wore;
And he, as when erect in soul he stood,
Hear from his Father's lips that all is good.

THE PRAYER.

Wilt thou not visit me?

The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew;
And every blade of grass I see,
From thy deep earth its moisture drew.

Wilt thou not visit me?

Thy morning calls on me with cheering tone;
And every hill and tree

Lend but one voice, the voice of Thee alone.

Come, for I need thy love,

More than the flower the dew, or grass the rain
Come gentle as thy holy dove,

And let me in thy sight rejoice to live again.

I will not hide from them,

When thy storms come, though fierce may be their wrath;

But bow with leafy stem,

And strengthened follow on thy chosen path.

Yes, Thou wilt visit me;

Nor plant nor tree thy eye delight so well, As when from sin set free

My spirit loves with thine in peace to dwell,

MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL

MARGARET FULLER, whose native disposition, studies, association with her contemporaries, and remarkable fate, will secure her a permanent place among the biographies of literary women, was born in Cambridgeport, Mass., the 23d of May, 1810. In a chapter of autobiography which was found among her papers, she speaks of her father as a working lawyer (he was also a politician and member of Congress), with the ordinary activities of men of his class; but of her mother as of a delicate, sensitive, spontaneous nature. During her early years the whole attention of Margaret was confined to books. She was taught the Latin and English grammar at the same time, and began to read the former language at six years of age. Her father set her this task-work of study, which soon grew into a necessity. At fifteen she describes her day's performances to a friend. She was studying Greek, French, and Italian literature, Scottish metaphysics-we may be sure a full share of English reading-and writing a critical journal of the whole at night. The result of this was a forced product of the parental discipline; but it would have been no product at all without a vigorous, generous nature. This the pupil possessed. Her temperament, bold and confident, assimilated this compulsory education; and she extracted a passionate admiration for Rome out of her Latin studies. The passage in which she records this is noticeable as an illustration of her character:

In accordance with this discipline in heroic common sense, was the influence of those great Romans, whose thoughts and lives were my daily food during those plastic years. The genius of Rome displayed itself in Character, and scarcely needed an OCcasional wave of the torch of thought to show its lineaments, so marble strong they gleamed in every light. Who, that has lived with those men, but admires the plain force of fact, of thought passed into action? They take up things with their naked hands. There is just the man, and the block he casts before you,-no divinity, no demon, no unful filled aim, but just the man and Rome, and what he did for Rome. Everything turns your attention to what a man can become, not by yielding himself freely to impressions, not by letting nature play freely through him, but by a single thought, an earnest purpose, an indomitable will, by hardihood, self-command, and force of expression. Architecture was the art in which Rome excelled, and this corresponds with the feeling these men of Rome excite. They did not grow,-they built themselves up, or were built up by the fate of Rome, as a temple for Jupiter Stator. The ruined Roman sits among the ruins; he flies to no green garden; he does not look to heaven; if his intent is defeated, if he is less than he meant to be, he lives no more. The names which end in "us," seem to speak with lyric cadence. That measured cadence,-that tramp and march,-which are not stilted, because they indicate real force, yet which seem so when compared with any other lan guage,—make Latin a study in itself of mighty influence. The language alone, without the literature, would give one the thought of Rome. Man present in nature, commanding nature too sternly to be inspired by it, standing like the rock amid the sea, or moving like the fire over the land, either impassive or irresistible; knowing not the soft mediums or fine flights of life, but by the force which he expresses, piercing to the centre.