Calling on man his spirit to attune

To the calm cadence of her parting hymn;
When the sere-leaf by equinoctial gales
Was wafted with a sound scarce audible
To the lone harbor of some sheltering nook;
When summer brooks, swollen by the latter
rains,

Did gush forth with a fuller melody;
When all day long upon the mountain peaks
The fleecy clouds in denser wreaths reposed,
And all around, tinctur'd with graver hues,
The sober livery of the season show'd ;—
Then would my heart its deepest sense confess
Of thy immortal verse, O bard inspired!
Whose holy harpings waked the wondrous song
Of Eden's fair, but sin-polluted, bowers.
The majesty of Nature, veiled in gloom,
The melancholy light of her last smiles-
All emblematic of departed joy,
My mind with kindred pensiveness embued.
In the first blush of renovated bloom
Worn by awakening spring, when bees of flowers
Grow amorous, and insect myriads sport
All the long day on the elastic air;

When birds pour forth their choral songs, and

Like sail of fairy bark athwart her track;
When o'er the earth a great enchanter rules,
Joying in nature's metamorphosis,
The visible working of his viewless wand,
That well in times of eld might be ascribed
To power of fay benign or genius good-
In that sweet time, the blythest of the year,

The heart of man, attemper'd to glad thoughts,

Feels all its pulses beat in unison

With life's reviving call: then would my mind,
Abandon'd to the passionate romance
Of the soft season, yield its senses up
To the illusions of the poet's dream;
Wander with fair Titania o'er the meads,
And through the moon-lit forests resonant
With laugh of mischief-loving elves; no maze,
Howe'er fantastic, by thy spells conjur'd,
Magician great of Avon's gentle shores!
Fail'd to ensnare the homage of my heart-
The humblest mite of all the grateful praise
Admiring ages shall to thee accord

For a rich banquet stored with rarest cates
Which thy unrivall'd genius hath dispread.

Nor let me here withhold thy due award,
O courtly minstrel ! whose kind Fairy Queen
Led my entranced steps through many a bower
And sylvan haunt so wondrously bedight,
None but a poet's eye might image it;
Nor could the splendid hues wherein all things
Were steep'd thy fertile fancy did create,
Have flow'd from aught but an inspired source.
I love the graceful chivalry that hath garb'd
Woman's fair form in attributes so bright,
She may be placed in man's adoring mind,
Upon a pedestal, his baser thoughts
Dare not profane. Mine ear receives
The stately measure of those antique rhymes

With a most deep delight. Whenever I
Do syllable in memory's trance thy verse,
It seems to me as if a thousand lutes
Of fairy sweetness, touched by hands unseen,
With melody filled all the air around ;
Or that I heard some river lapse away
In liquid music o'er Arcadian plains."

"The Wanderer's Early Recollections," however, do not all turn upon these high themes :

"Mine was the mood, aided by impulse warm
Of young credulity, when aught that wears
The female form, to man so justly dear,
If rife with youth's fresh bloom, divine appears;
And if the fair one be exalted too
Above those un-ideal shapes that throng
The ways of vulgar life, if phrase refined,
A voice for music framed, soft blandishments,
And beaming smiles are added thereunto,
She in the sanctuary of the heart is placed,
As though she were the sole existing thing
Worthy man's worship; like a goddess shrined
In the most sacred temple of the land;
Invested too with all that excellence
Born of the fulness of her votary's soul."

The latter part of the Recollections exhibits equal poetical power; but we own that we do not think the subject, -the caprice of a heartless coquette, and its effects on her lover,—deserves the talent bestowed upon it. em superabat opus.

Materi

The next poem, "The Seal Hunters," creates a striking and delightful diversity. Mrs. Godwin paints the rigors of the polar regions with a masterly pencil. One would think she had accompanied Captain Parry in his northern expeditions.

The adventures of two young and gallant Finlanders, their voyage through the stormy Arctic Sea, their disembarkation (we had nearly said landing) on an iceberg, the drifting and destruction of their frail boat, their suffering and despair, and their ultimate deliverance, are told with a truth, a pathos, and an energy, which will greatly surprise as well as gratify the reader.

We have devoted a larger space to extracts from this volume than we can well spare; but there is reality, and strength, and body, in Mrs. Godwin's poetry; and, in these days, a volume of which this can be honestly affirmed, must not be lightly esteemed, or hastily discussed.

REVISED and improved, the second edition of Pelham comes in evidence how much its early praise has been confirmed by public approbation. We believe few novels have been more read, more talked of,-ay, or more criticised, (rather as if the hero were an actual and living person, than the principal character in a book), and his lively impertinences made matters of personal offence by the readers; thereby acknowledging, somewhat unawares, the truth of the delineation. Pelham is the representative of a certain class the question is neither of its mental nor its moral excellence; but does that class exist, and is the likeness taken of it an accurate one? And that, both in his talents and follies, his higher qualities and affectations, Pelham is a picture, as true as it is animated, of a large portion of young men of the present day, no one can deny. We have heard it objected, that it is not a representation of human nature: what human nature actually is at this period, would be a matter of some difficulty to ascertain, modified as it is by education, controlled by circumstance, and compounded of customs and costumes. The novelist must take, not make, his materials; and in all states of society, whether one of furs, feathers, and paint, au naturel,-or of those furs turned into muffs, those feathers waving over helmets and barrettes, and that paint softened into rouge and pearl-powder, the view taken by an acute observer will be valuable as philosophy; and it is as an accurate, lively delineation of existing society, that we hold ourselves justified in predicting that Pelham will be a standard, as well as popular, work. There is a very clever preface, new to this edition, and some very amusing maxims: we will extract two or three for our readers' benefit.

"Do not require your dress so much to fit, as to adorn you. Nature is not to be copied, but to be axalted by art. Apelles blamed Protogenes for being too natural.

"Never in your dress altogether desert that taste which is general. The world considers eccentricity in great things, genius; in small things, folly.

Remember, that none but those whose courage is unquestionable, can venture to be effeminate. It was only in the field that the Lacedemonians were accustomed to use perfumes and curl their hair.

"Never let the finery of chains and rings seem your own choice; that which naturally belongs to women, should appear only worn for their sake. We dignify foppery, when we invest it with a sentiment.

"The most graceful principle of dress is neatness; the most vulgar is preciseness.

"Dress contains the two codes of morality-private and public. Attention is the duty we owe to otherscleanliness that which we owe to ourselves.

"Dress so that it may never be said of you What a well-dressed man !'but, 'What a gentleman-like man!'

"Nothing is superficial to a deep observer! It is in trifles that the mind betrays itself. In what part of that letter,' said a king to the wisest of living diplomatists, did you discover irresolution?' In its ns and gs." was the answer.

"There is an indifference to please in a stocking down at heel-but there may be a malevolence in a diamond ring.

"He who esteems trifles for themselves, is a trifler-he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher."

WE have seldom met with a work which calls for more minute attention than the one now before us. If there be any truth in what some writer asserts, that the most original genius must take its tone from its own times, highly indeed do the present volumes speak for their existing period; for how much must the nature of even amusement be improved, when a novel can be made the vehicle of philosophical discussion and metaphysical discovery, -not the less true and profound for being thrown out in conversations, not in essays in a delightful fiction, instead of a treatise? We ourselves own to liking the plan of the oldfashioned gardens, where the fruits that sustained life were surrounded by borders of the flowers that adorned it. Different systems of conduct, embodied in different characters, are here developed with an accuracy and a variety which the most minute knowledge of human nature alone could have produced: from the humorous delineation of the broker, Mr. Brown, "a most excellent article"-to that of the high-minded Algernon Mordaunt, all bespeak the same power of investigation into the deep recesses of the heart, and the eye of one accustomed not only to see, but to observetwo faculties more distinct than is generally admitted.

With regard to the various characters, we have no terms too high for the praise of their excellent delineation. Perhaps Algernon Mordaunt is as fine a picture of the ideal of excellence in our nature as was ever fashioned by either philosophy or poetry. His whole story is one of the most painful but exciting interest. Clarence Linden is—but let the author speak for his other hero.

"It was neither his features nor his form, eminently handsome as they were, which gave the principal charm

to the young stranger's appearance-it was the strikingly bold, buoyant, frank, and almost joyous, expression which presided over all. There seemed to dwell the first glow and life of youth, undimmed by a single fear, and unbaffled in a single hope. There were the elastic spring, the inexhaustible wealth of energies, which defied, in their exulting pride, the heaviness of sorrow and the harassments of time. It was a face that while it filled you with some melancholy foreboding of the changes and chances which must in the inevitable course of fate cloud the openness of the unwrinkled brow, and soberise the fire of the daring and restless eye, instilled also within you some assurance of triumph, and some omen of success :-a vague but powerful sympathy with the adventurous and cheerful spirit which appeared literally to speak in its expression. It was a face you might imagine in one born under a prosperous star; and you felt, as you gazed, a confidence in that bright countenance which, like the shield of the British prince, seemed possessed with the power to charm into impotence the evil spirits who menaced its possessor."

Then we have the young artist, possessing all the faults and the unhappiness, with all the redeeming beauty of genius; the stern republican feeding his fierce enthusiasm, till crime seems but a harsh necessity,-brought into admirable contrast with Crauford, whose pitiful guilt is but the result of selfish and sensual indulgence. We have also the volunteer gipsy, a lover of liberty too, but satisfied with taking it himself, without either extending it to or abridging it in others;--and last, though not least, Mr. Talbot, votary and victim of vanity, whose story forms one of the most masterly episodes in the work,-the strength and weakness of vanity being exhibited in

very striking colors. There is not, however, more variety of character than of style; the serious reflection of the tasked mind succeeds some even poetical bursts of the imagination; and if there be much of grave and serious converse, it is companioned by the most lively wit. In making our extracts we will open the page and take our chance. The following passage is a beautiful specimen of the author's more serious style:

"How little, when we read the work, do we care for the author! How little do we reck of the sorrow from which a jest has been forced, or the weariness that an incident has beguiled! But the power to fly from feeling, the recompense of literature for its heart-burnings and cares, the disappointment and the anxiety, the cavil and the censure sharp,'-even this passes away, and custom drags on the dull chain which enthusiasm once so passionately wore! Alas, for the age when, in the creation of fiction, we could lose the bitterness and barrenness of truth! The sorrows of youth, if not wholly ideal, borrow at least from the imagination their color and their shape. What marvel, then, that from the imagination come also their consolation and their hope? But now, in manhood, our fancy constitutes but little of our afflictions, and presents to us no avenues for escape. In the toil, the fret, the hot, the unquiet, the exhausting engrossments of maturer years, how soon the midnight lamp loses its enchantment, and the noon-day visions their spell! We are bound by a thousand galling and grinding ties to this hard and unholy earth. We become helots of the soil of dust and clay; denizens of the polluted smoke, the cabined walls, and the stony footing of the inhospitable world. What now have our griefs with the 'moonlit melancholy,' the gentle tenderness of our young years? Can we tell them any more to the woods and waterfalls? Can we make for them a witness of the answering sea, or the sympathizing stars? Alas! they have now neither commune nor

consolation in the voices of nature or the mysteries of romance; they have become the petty stings and the falling drops, the irritating and vexing littlenesses of life; they have neither dignity on the one hand, nor delusion on the other. One by one they cling around us, like bonds of iron; they multiply their links; they grow over our hearts; and the feelings, once too wild for the very earth, fold their broken wings within the soul. Dull and heavy thoughts, like dead walls, close around the laughing flowers and fields that so enchanted us of yore; the sins, the habits, the reasonings of the world, like rank and gloomy fogs, shut out the exulting heavens from our view; the limit of our wandering becomes the length of our chain; the height of our soarings, the summit of our cell. Fools-fools that we are, then, to imagine that the works of our later years shall savor of the freedom and aspirations of our youth; or that amidst all which hourly and momentarily recals and binds our hearts and spirits to the eternal self,' we can give life, and zest, and vigor, to the imaginary actions and sentiments of another!"

It is said a few short sentiments best eluecidate the mind of a man—we will see what they will do for an author.

"We have often thought that principle to the mind is what a free constitution is to a people without that principle, or that free constitution, the one may be for the moment as goodthe other as happy; but we cannot tell how long the goodness and the happiness will continue. There is no dilemma in which vanity cannot find an expedient to develope its form; no stream of circumstances in which its buoyant and light nature will not rise to float on the surface. And its ingenuity is as fertile as that of the player who (his wardrobe allowing him no other method of playing the fop) could still exhibit the prevalent passion for distinction, by wearing stockings of different colors."

How finely, but how truly, are the ensuing varieties of ambition drawn!

"The ambition of Clarence was that of circumstances rather than character; the certainty of having to carve out his own fortunes without sympathy or aid, joined to those whispers of indignant pride which naturally urged him, if disowned by those who should have protected him, to allow no breath of shame to justify the reproach these gave an irresistible desire of distinction to a mind naturally too gay for the devotedness, too susceptible for the pangs, and too benevolent for the selfishness, of ordinary ambition. But the very essence and spirit of Warner's nature was the burning and feverish desire of fame; it poured through his veins like lava; it preyed even as a worm upon his cheek; it corroded his natural sleep; it blackened the color of his thoughts; it shut out, as with an impenetrable wall, the wholesome energies, and enjoyments, and objects, of living men; and taking from him all the vividness of the present, all the tenderness of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and forever upon the dim and shadowy chimeras of a future he was fated never to enjoy."

"But as we have seen that that passion for glory made the great characteristic difference between Clarence and Warner, so also did that passion terminate any resemblance which Warner bore to Algernon Mordaunt. With the former, a rank and unwholesome plant, it grew up to the exclusion of all else with the latter, subdued and regulated, it sheltered, not withered, the virtues by which it was surrounded. With Warner, ambition was a passionate desire to separate himself by fame from the herd of other men; with Mordaunt, to bind him self by charity yet closer to his kind: with the one it produced a disgust to his species; with the other, a pity and a love with the one, power was the badge of distinction; with the other, the means to bless!

*

"Satire is a dwarf, which stands upon the shoulders of the giant IllNature; and the kingdom of verse, 50 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

"Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive feelings; we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep; we vent out little passions the moment they are excited; and so much of novelty have we to perceive, that we have little leisure to reflect. By and by, fear teaches us to restrain our feelings when displeased, we seek to revenge the displeasure, and are punished; we find the excess of our joy, our sorrow, our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden into restraint. From harshness we become acquainted with deceit: the promise made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear falsely excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed; we are surrounded by systematised delusion, and we imbibe the contagion. From being forced into concealing the thoughts which we do conceive, we begin to affect those which we do not so early do we learn the two main tasks of life, to suppress and to feign, that our memory will not carry us beyond that period of artifice to a state of nature when the twin principles of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the philosophers of a modern school into the error of terming them innate.