O'er frozen brooks, that flow unsheathed
From icy thraldom to the sea.
A blissful vision, through the night
Would all my happy senses sway
Of the Good Shepherd on the height,
Or climbing up the starry way,
Holding our little lamb asleep,

While, like the murmur of the sea,
Sounded that voice along the deep,

Saying, "Arise and follow me.'

It is to the death of Maria Lowell, at Cambridge, that Mr. Longfellow alludes in his poem published in Putnam's Magazine in April, 1854, entitled

THE TWO ANGELS.

Two angels, one of Life, and one of Death,

Passed o'er the village as the morning broke; The dawn was on their faces, and beneath, The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white; But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame, And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way,

Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, "Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray The place where thy beloved are at rest! And he who wore the crown of asphodels, Descending, at my door began to knock, And my soul sank within me, as in wells The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recognised the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain, That oft before had filled and haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again. The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice, And knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best,

Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile that filled the house with light,
"My errand is not Death, but Life," he said,
And ere I answered, passing out of sight
On his celestial embassy he sped.
'Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.
Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A shadow on those features fair and thin,
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God! If he but wave his hand,
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud. Angels of Life and Death alike are His;

Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who then would wish or dare, believing this, Against his messengers to shut the door?

In 1854 Mr. Lowell delivered a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute on English Poetry, including the old ballad writers Chaucer, Pope, and others, to Wordsworth and Tennyson. They were marked by an acute critical spirit and enlivened by wit and fancy.

Mr. Lowell has edited the poems of Andrew

Marvell and Donne in the series of Messrs. Little & Brown's standard edition of the English poets.

Early in 1855 he was appointed to the Belles Lettres professorship lately held by Mr. Longfellow in Harvard College, with the privilege of. passing a preliminary year in Europe before entering on its duties.

MARGARET-FROM THE LEGEND OF BRITTANY.

Fair as a summer dream was Margaret,-
Such dream as in a poet's soul might start
Musing of old loves while the moon doth set:
Her hair was not more sunny than her heart,
Though like a natural golden coronet

It circled her dear head with careless art, Mocking the sunshine, that would fain have leat To its frank grace a richer ornament.

His loved-one's eyes could poet ever speak,

So kind, so dewy, and so deep were hers,— But, while he strives, the choicest phrase too weak, Their glad reflection in his spirit blurs; As one may see a dream dissolve and break Out of his grasp when he to tell it stirs, Like that sad Dryad doomed no more to bless The mortal who revealed her loveliness. She dwelt for ever in a region bright,

Peopled with living fancies of her own,
Where nought could come but visions of delight,
Far, far aloof from earth's eternal moan;

A summer cloud thrilled through with rosy light,
Floating beneath the blue sky all alone,
Her spirit wandered by itself, and won
A golden odge from some unsetting sun.
The heart grows richer that its lot is poor,-
God blesses want with larger sympathies,-
Love enters gladliest at the humble door,

And makes the cot a palace with his eyes;So Margaret's heart a softer beauty wore,

And grew in gentleness and patience wise,
For she was but a simple herdsman's child,
A lily chance-sown in the rugged wild.
There was no beauty of the wood or field
But she its fragrant bosom-secret knew,
Nor any but to her would freely yield

Some grace that in her soul took root and grew; Nature to her glowed ever new-revealed,

All rosy-fresh with innocent morning dew, And looked into her heart with dim, sweet eyes That left it full of sylvan memories.

O, what a face was hers to brighten light,
And give back sunshine with an added glow,
To wile each moment with a fresh delight,
And part of memory's best contentment grow!
O, how her voice, as with an inmate's right,
Into the strangest heart would welcome go,
And make it sweet, and ready to become
Of white and gracious thoughts the chosen home!
None looked upon her but he straightway thought
Of all the greenest depths of country cheer,
And into each one's heart was freshly brought
What was to him the sweetest time of year
So was her every look and motion fraught

With out-of-door delights and forest lere;
Not the first violet on a woodland lea
Seemed a more visible gift of spring than sh.

AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR.

He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough Pressed round to hear the praise of one Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff As homespun as their own.

And, when he read, they forward leaned,
Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears,
His brook-like songs whom glory never weaned
From humble smiles and tears.

Slowly there grew a tender awe,
Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard,
As if in him who read they felt and saw
Some presence of the bard.

It was a sight for sin and wrong
And slavish tyranny to see,

A sight to make our faith more pure and strong
In high humanity.

I thought, these men will carry hence
Promptings their former life above,
And something of a finer reverence
For beauty, truth, and love.

God scatters love on every side,
Freely among his children all,

And always hearts are lying open wide,
Wherein some grains may fall.

There is no wind but soweth seeds
Of a more true and open life,

Which burst, unlooked-for, into high-souled deeds,
With wayside beauty rife.

We find within these souls of ours
Some wild germs of a higher birth,
Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers
Whose fragrance fills the earth.
Within the hearts of all men lie
These promises of wider bliss.
Which blossom into hopes that cannot die,
In sunny hours like this.
All that hath been majestical
In life or death, since time began,
Is native in the simple heart of all,
The angel heart of man.

And thus, among the untaught poor,
Great deeds and feelings find a home,
That cast in shadow all the golden lore
Of classic Greece and Rome.
O, mighty brother-soul of man,
Where'er thou art, in low or high,
Thy skyey arches with exulting span
O'er-roof infinity!

All thoughts that mould the age begin
Deep down within the primitive soul,
And from the many slowly upward win

To one who grasps the whole:

In his broad breast the feeling deep
That struggled on the many's tongue,
Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap
O'er the weak thrones of
wrong.

All thought begins in feeling,-wide
In the great mass its base is hid,

And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified
A moveless pyramid.

Nor is he far astray who deems

That every hope, which rises and grows broad In the world's heart, by ordered impulse streams From the great heart of God.

God wills, man hopes: in common souls
Hope is but vague and undefined,

Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls

A blessing to his kind.

Never did Poesy appear

So full of heaven to me, as when

I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

It may be glorious to write

Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century ;—

But better far it is to speak

One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men;

To write some earnest verse or line,
Which, seeking not the praise of art,
Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine
In the untutored heart.

He who doth this, in verse or prose,
May be forgotten in his day,

But surely shall be crowned at last with those
Who live and speak for aye.

THE FIRST SNOW FALL

The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch-deep with pearl.
From sheds, new-roofed with Carrara,
Came chanticleer's muffled crow,
The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down,
And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood,
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
And I told of the good Allfather

Who cares for us all below.

Again I looked at the snowfall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high

I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of that deep-stabbed woe.
And again to the child I whispered
"The suow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father

Alone can make it fall?"

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her And she, kissing back, could not know That my kiss was given to her sister Folded close under deepening snow.

THE COURTIN'.

Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown,
An' peeked in thru the winder.
An' there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.

Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung,
An' in amongst 'em rusted

The old queen's arm thet gran'ther Young
Fetched back from Concord busted.

The wannut logs shot sparkles out
Towards the pootiest, bless her!
An' leetle fires danced all about
The chiny on the dresser.
The very room, coz she was in,

Looked warm from floor to ceilin', An' she looked full as rosy agin

Ez th' apples she was peelin'.

She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu,
Araspin' on the scraper,-
All ways to once her feelins flew
Like sparks in burnt-up paper.
He kin' o' l'itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o' the seekle;
His heart kep' goin' pitypat,

But hern went pity Zekle.

WILLIAM W. STORY,

THE poet and artist, is the son of the late Judge Story. He was born in Salem, February 19, 1819. He became a graduate of Harvard in 1838, and applied himself diligently, under his father's auspices, to the study of the law. He was a frequent contributor, in prose and verse, to the Boston Miscellany, edited by Mr. Nathan Hale, in 1842. In his legal career he published Reports of Cases argued and determined in the Circuit Court of the United States for the First Circuit, 2 vols. Boston, 1842-5, and A Treatise on the Law of Contracts. not under Seal, Boston,

1844.

In the last year he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, Nature and Art, an indication of the tastes which were to govern his future life.

His single volume of Poems was published by Messrs. Little and Brown in 1847. They are the productions of a man of cultivated taste, and of a quick susceptibility to impressions of the ideal.

In 1851 Mr. Story discharged an honorable debt to the memory of his father, in the publication of the two diligently prepared volumes of The Life and Letters of Joseph Story, a full, genial biography, written with enthusiasm and fidelity.

It was at this period, or earlier, that Mr. Story turned his attention particularly to art, in which he has achieved much distinction as a sculptor. He has resided for some time in Italy. Among his works, as an artist, are an admired statue of his father, and various busts in marble, including one of his friend Mr. J. R. Lowell. He has modelled a "Shepherd Boy," "Little Red Riding Hood," and other works. Besides achieving success in these varied pursuits of law, letters, and art, Mr. Story is an accomplished musician.

For a space the hum and tumult of the busy day are o'er.

Streets are lonely and deserted, where the sickly lamplights glare,—

And the steps of some late passer only break the silence there.

Round the grim and dusky houses, gloomy shadows nestling cower,

Night hath stifled life's deep humming into slumber for an hour.

Sullen furnace fires are glowing over in the suburbs far,

And the lamp in many a homestead shineth like an earthly star.

O'er the hushed and sleeping city, in the cloudless sky above,

Never-fading stars hang watching in eternal peace and love.

Years and centuries have vanished, change hath come to bury change,

But the starry constellations on their silent pathway range.

Great Orion's starry girdle-Berenice's golden hair

Ariadne's crown of splendor-Cassiopeia's shining chair;

Sagittarius and Delphinus, and the clustering Pleiad train,

Aquila and Ophiucus, Pegasus and Charles's Wain; Red Antares and Capella, Aldebaran's mystic light, Alruccabah and Arcturus, Sirius and Vega white; They are circling calm as ever on their sure but hidden path,

As when mystic watchers saw them with the reverent eye of Faith.

So unto the soul benighted, lofty stars there are,

that shine

Far above the mists of error, with a changeless light divine.

Lofty souls of old beheld them, burning in life's shadowy night,

And they still are undecaying 'mid a thousand centuries' flight.

Love and Truth, whose light and blessing, every

reverent heart may know,

Mercy, Justice, which are pillars that support this life below;

These in sorrow and in darkness. in the inmost soul we feel,

As the sure, undying impress of the Almighty's burning seal,

Though unsolved the mighty secret, which shall thread the perfect whole,

And unite the finite number unto the eternal soul, We shall one day clearly see it-for the soul a time shall come,

When unfranchised and unburdened, thought shall be its only home;

And Truth's fitful intimations, glancing on our fearful sight,

Shall be gathered to the circle of one mighty disk of light.

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

WAS born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, March 8, 1819. His father, Matthew Whipple, who died while the son was in his infancy, is described as possessing "strong sense, and fine social powers." One of his ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His mother, Lydia Gardiner, was of a family in Maine noted for its mental powers. She early removed to Salem, Massachusetts, where her son was educated at the English High School. At fourteen he published articles in a Salem newspaper; and at fifteen, on leaving school, became a clerk in the Bank of General Interest in that city. He was next employed, in 1837, in the office of a large broker's firm of Boston, and shortly was appointed Superintendent of the News Room of the Merchants' Exchange in State street. He had been a prominent member of the Mercantile Library Association, and one of a club of six which grew out of it, which held its sessions known as "The Attic Nights," for literary exercises and debate. There Whipple was a leader in the display of his quick intellectual fence and repartee, extensive stores of reading, and subtle and copious critical faculty. In 1840 he was introduced to the public by the delivery of a poem before the Mercantile Association, sketching the manners and satirizing the absurdities of the day, according to the standard manner of these productions, which will be hereafter sought for as valuable illustrations of the times. A critical article from his pen, on Macaulay, in the Boston Miscellany for February, 1843, attracted considerable attention. In October of that year, his lecture on the Lives of Authors was delivered before the Mercantile Library Association, and from that time he has been prominently before the public as a critic and lecturer, in the leading journals, and at the chief lyceums in the country. He has written in the North American Review, The American Review, Christian Examiner, Graham's Magazine, and other journals, extensive series of articles on the classical English authors and historical. biographical, and social

topics, marked by their acute characterization and fertility of illustration. His lectures, embracing a similar range of subjects, are philosophical in their texture, marked by nice discrimination, occasionally pushing a favorite theory to the verge of paradox; and when the reasoning faculties of

his audience are exhausted, relieving the discussion by frequent picked anecdote, and pointed thrusts of wit and satire.

He is greatly in request as a lecturer, has probably lectured a thousand times in the cities and towns of the middle and northern states, from St. Louis to Bangor, has on numerous occasions addressed the literary societies of various Colleges, as Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst, the New York University; and in 1850 was the Fourth of July orator before the city authorities of Boston. Two collections of his writings have been published by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields,-Essays and Reviews, in two volumes, and Lectures on Subjects Connected with Literatu e and Life.

THE GENIUS OF WASHINGTON.*

How

This illustrious man, at once the world's admiration and enigma, we are taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong opinion to misjudge. The might of his character has taken strong hold upon the feelings of great masses of men, but in translating this universal sentiment into an intelligent form, the intellectual element of his wonderful nature is as much depressed as the moral element is exalted, and consequently we are apt to misunderstand both. Mediocrity has a bad trick of idealizing itself in eulogising him, and drags him down to its own low level while assuming to lift him to the skies. many times have we been told that he was not a man of genius, but a person of "excellent common sense," of "admirable judgment," of " rare virtues;" and by a constant repetition of this odious cant, we have nearly succeeded in divorcing comprehension from his sense, insight from his judgment, force from his virtues, and life from the man. Accordingly, in the panegyric of cold spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots he expires in the agonies of rant. Now the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the beginning of wisdom. He had no genius, it seems O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches, or some versifier, whose supported states on his arm, and carried America in muse can "Hail Columbia," but not of the man who his brain. The madcap Charles Townsend, the motion of whose pyrotechnic mind was like the whizz of a hundred rockets, is a man of genius; but George Washington, raised up above the level of even eminent statesmen, and with a nature moving with the still and orderly celerity of a planet round its sun, he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of angelic dunce? What is genius? Is it worth any thing? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit,-that which it recedes from, or tends towards? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble, the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in himself a transcendant character, indestructible as the obligations of Duty, and beautiful as her rewards?

Indeed, if by the genius of action you mean will enlightened by intelligence, and intelligence ener

* From an oration, "Washington and the Principles of the Revolution."

gised by will,-if force and insight be its characteristics, and influence its test,-and, especially, if great effects suppose a cause proportionably great, that is, a vital, causative mind,-then is Washington most assuredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equalled in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius, it is true, was of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought and the objects of thought, solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare class of men,-rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons,-who have impressed their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts. Washington, in short, had that greatness of character which is the highest expression and last result of greatness of mind, for there is no method of building up character except through mind. Indeed, character like his is not built up, stone upon stone, precept upon precept, but grows up, through an actual contact of thought with things, the assimilative mind transmuting the impalpable but potent spirit of public sentiment, and the life of visible facts, and the power of spiritual laws, into individual life and power, so that their mighty energies put on personality, as it were, and act through one centralizing human will. This process may not, if you please, make the great philosopher, or the great poet, but it does make the great man,-the man in whom thought and judgment seem identical with volition, the man whose vital expression is not in words but deeds,-the man whose sublime ideas issue necessarily in sublime acts, not in sublime art. It was because Washington's character was thus composed of the inmost substance and power of facts and principles, that men instinctively felt the perfect reality of his comprehensive manhood. This reality enforced universal respect, married strength to repose, and threw into his face that commanding majesty, which made men of the speculative audacity of Jefferson, and the lucid genius of Hamilton, recognise, with unwonted meekness, his awful superiority.

CHARLES WILKINS WEBBER

Was born on the 29th May, 1819, at Russelville, Kentucky. His mother, Agnes Maria Webber, was the daughter of General John Tannehill, and niece of the Hon. William Wilkins, both of Pittsburg. General Tannehill had served with distinction as an officer of the Revolution. His eldest son, Wilkins Tannehill, is known as the author of a book entitled Sketches of the History of Literature from the Earliest Period to the Revival of Letters in the Fifteenth Century,* remarkable for its various reading and the spirit which animates it, and the singularity of its production at an early date west of the Alleghanies. The Preface modestly states the author's design, "Prepared during intervals of occasional leisure from the duties of an employment little congenial with literary pursuits, and without any opportunity for consulting extensive libraries, it aspires only to the character of sketches, without pretending to be a complete history. It is an attempt by a backwoodsinan,' to condense and

Sketches of the History of Literature. from the Earliest Period to the Revival of Letters in the Fifteenth Century. Indocti discant, ament meminisse periti. By Wilkins Tannehill. 8vo. pp. 844. Nashville: John S. Simpson, 1827.

comprise within a narrow compass, the most prominent and interesting events, connected with the progress of literary and scientific improvement, from the earliest period through a long succession of ages, and amidst a great variety of circumstances." As such it is an exceedingly creditable production. Its author was also for many years editor of the Nashville Herald, the first Clay-Whig paper ever published in Tennessee. This learned, modest, and useful man, having spent the greater portion of his life in close and unremitting literary labors, is now (in 1854) blind and rapidly declining in years. It is understood that his most valuable researches have been in the field of American antiquities.

The grandfather, General Tannehill, having met with heavy reverses of fortune, died leaving his family comparatively helpless. In this strait they found a home in the house of a brother of his wife, Charles Wilkins of Lexington, a wealthy and generous gentleman, whose memory is warmly cherished by the older families of that portion of Kentucky. The children were educated with great care, and the daughters grew up to be accomplished women. After the death of their uncle they removed with their mother to Nashville, to reside with her eldest son, Wilkins Tannehill. Here the eldest daughter married, and on her removing to the new town of Hopkinsville, Ky., was accompanied by her young sister Agnes, who became the wife of a physician from North Kentucky, Doctor Augustine Webber.

Of this marriage C. W. Webber was the second child, and first son. For forty years past Dr. Webber has stood prominent in his profession in South Kentucky, and has been noted as an intelligent, liberal, and devoted churchman and Whig.

It is, however, to his mother, a lady of great beauty of character, that C. W. Webber is most indebted for his early tastes. The education which her son received as the companion of her artistic excursions, for she possessed a natural genius for art, into the natural world, determined in a great measure the character of his future pursuits.

His early life, to his nineteenth year, was spent in miscellaneous study and the sports of the field, when, after the death of his mother, we find him wandering upon the troubled frontier of Texas.

He soon became associated with the celebrated Colonel Jack Hays, Major Chevalier, Fitzgerald, &c., whose names are noted as forming the nucleus around which the famous Ranger Organization was constituted. After several years spent here, in singular adventures-many of which have been given to the world in his earlier books, Old Hicks the Guide, Shot in the Eye, and Gold Mines of the Gila-he returned to his family in Kentucky. He now further prosecuted his study of medicine, upon which he had originally entered with the design of making it his profes

sion.

Becoming, however, deeply interested in controversial matters during a period of strong religious excitement which prevailed throughout the whole country, he entered the Princeton Theological Seminary as a candidate for the ministry. He, however, remained there but a short time.