England exceed the tempests which fall from their milder sky. The crimson fire throwing its warm red light through the room, the low beating of the flames, the hollow roar of the north wind over the chimney, the snow-drift gathering in wild and fanciful forms, the ice-plain silvered by the clear full moon, the evergreens with their snowy fringes, the sublime and beautiful forms of winter, which, desolate as its aspect is, cause it to be welcomed by many, and make it a time of delight to a few, all these things are here presented with perfect faithfulness, and therefore with beauty and power. For the benefit of those who have not seen the work we will cite a portion of this lively and truthful sketch. - "An event common in New England is at its height. It is snowing, and has been for a whole day and night, with a strong northeast wind. Let us take a moment when the storm intermits, and look in at Margaret's and see how they do. But we cannot approach the place by any of the ordinary methods of travel; the roads, lanes, and by-paths are blocked up; no horse or ox could make his way through those deep drifts, immense mounds, and broad plateaus of snow. If we are disposed to adopt the means of conveyance formerly so much in vogue, whether snow-shoes or magic, we may possibly get there. The house or hut is half-sunk in a snow-bank; the waters of the Pond are covered with a solid enamel as of ivory; the oxen and the cow in the barn-yard look like great horned sheep, in their fleeces of snow. All is silence and lifelessness, and if you please to say, desolation. Hens there are none, nor turkeys, nor ducks, nor birds, nor Bull, nor Margaret. If you see any signs of a human being, it is the dark form of Hash, mounted on snow-shoes, going from the house to the barn. Yet there are the green hemlocks, and pines, and firs, green as in summer, some growing along the flank of the hill that runs north from the Indian's Head, looking like the real snow-balls, blossoming in mid-winter, and nodding with large white flowers. But there is one token of life, the smoke coming from the low gray chimney, which, if you regard it as one, resembles a large, elongated, transparent balloon; or if you look at it by piecemeal, it is a beautiful current of bluishwhite vapor, flowing upward unendingly; and prettily is it striped and particolored, as it passes successively the green trees, the bare rocks, and white crown of the hill behind; nor does its interest cease, even when it disappears among the clouds. . . . "Flourishing in the centre of these high-rising and broadspreading snows, unmoved amid the fiercest onsets of the storm, comfortable in the extremity of winter, the family are all gather ed in the kitchen, and occupied as may be. In the cavernous fireplace burns a great fire, composed of a huge green backlog, a large green forestick, and a high cob-work of crooked and knotty refuse-wood, ivy, hornbeam, and beech. Through this the yellow flame leaps and forks, and the bluish-gray smoke flows up the ample sluiceway of the chimney. From the ends of the wood the sap fries and drips on the sizzling coals below, and flies off in angry steam. Under the forestick great red coals roll out, sparkle a semibrief, lose their grosser substance, indicate a more ethereal essence in prototypal forms of white, down-like cinders, and then fall away into brown ashes. To a stranger the room has a sombre aspect, rather heightened than relieved by the light of the fire burning so brightly at mid-day. The only connection with the external air is by the south window-shutter being left entirely open, forming an aperture through the logs of about two feet square; yet when the outer light is so obscured by a storm, the bright fire within must anywhere be pleasant. In one corner of the room sits Pluck, in a red flannel shirt and leather apron, at work on his kit mending a shoe; with long and patient vibration and equipoise he draws the threads, and interludes the strokes with snatches of songs, banter, and laughter. The apartment seems converted into a workshop; for next the shoemaker stands the shingle-maker, Hash, who with froe in one hand and mallet in the other, by dint of smart percussion, is endeavoring to rive a three-cornered billet of hemlock, on a block. In the centre of the room sits Brown Moll, with still bristling and grizzly hair, pipe in her mouth, in a yellow woollen long-short and black petticoat, winding a ball of yarn from a windle. Nearer the fire are Chilion and Margaret, the latter also dressed in woollen, with the Orbis Pictus, or World Displayed, a book of Latin and English, adorned with cuts, which the Master lent her; the former with his violin, endeavouring to describe the notes in Dr. Byles's Collection of Sacred Music, also a loan of the Master's, and at intervals trailing on the lead of his father in some popular air.”. pp. 157 - 159. "Chilion whispered his sister, and she went out for the purpose in question. It was not excessively cold, since the weather moderated as the storm increased, and she might have taken some interest in that tempestuous outer world. Her hens, turkeys, and ducks, who were all packed together, the former on their roost under the shed, the latter in one corner, also required feeding; and she went in and got boiled potatoes, which they seemed glad to make a meal of. The wind blazed and racketed through the narrow space between the house and the hill. Above, the flakes shaded and mottled the sky, and fell twirling, pitching, skimble-scamble, and anon slowly and more regularly, as in a minuet; and as they came nearer the ground, they were caught up by the current, and borne in a horizontal line, like long, quickspun, silver threads, afar over the white fields. There was but little snow in the shed, although entirely open on the south side; the storm seeming to devote itself to building up a drift in front. This drift had now reached a height of seven or eight feet. It sloped up like the roof of a pyramid, and on the top was an appendage like a horn, or a plume, or a marble jet d'eau, or a frozen flame of fire; and the elements in all their violence, the eddies that veered about the corner of the house, the occasional side-blasts, still dallied, and stopped to mould it and finish it; and it became thinner, and more tapering, and spiral; each singular flake adjusting itself to the very tip, with instinctive nicety; till at last it broke off by its own weight; then a new one went on to be formed. Under this drift lay the wood Margaret was after, and she hesitated to demolish the pretty structure. The cistern was overrun with ice; the water fell from the spout in an ice tube, the half-barrel was rimmed about with a broad round moulding of ice, and where the water flowed off, it had formed a wavy cascade of ice, and under the cold snows the clear cold water could he heard babbling and singing as if it no whit cared for winter. Her great summer gobbling turkey attempted to mount the edge of the cistern to drink, but the wind blew, his feet slipped, and back he fell. She took a dish and watered her poultry. From the corner of the house the snow fretted and spirted, in a continuous stream of spray. While she looked at this, she saw a flock of snow-birds borne on by the winds, endeavouring to tack their course, and run in under the shelter of the house, but the remorseless elements drifted them on, and they were apparently dashed against the woods beyond. One of the birds was seen to drop, and Margaret darted out, waded through the snow, caught the luckless or lucky wanderer, and amid the butting winds, sharp snow-rack, and smothering sheets of spray, carried it into the house. In her Book of Birds, she found it was a snow-bunting, that it was hatched in a nest of reindeer's hair near the North Pole, that it had sported among eternal solitudes of rocks and ice, and come thousands of miles. It was purely white, while others of the species receive some darker shades. She put it in the cage with Robin, who welcomed the travelled stranger with due respect." — pp. 162, 163. If the impressions of the readers of this book are like ours, they have thought the author superior to his work, which, though it abounds in proofs of talent, has many things that to some must impair, to others utterly destroy, its attraction. If he is one of those who feel no respect for prevailing sentiments in matters of taste, he may persist in his own way, which, as it is now, will not lead him to a throne in men's minds and hearts. But if he will pay deference to established modes of communication, which, though they might be improved, are, at present, the only channels through which extensive influence can be exerted, he may gain for himself a brilliant reputation, and, what is more to his purpose, he may be a powerful and successful instrument for bringing about those reforms which he evidently has at heart, and which will be triumphantly accomplished in happier days than ours. ART. VI.-1. Biographical, Literary, and Philosophical Essays, contributed to the Eclectic Review. By JOHN FOSTER, Author of Essays on Decision of Character, Popular Ignorance, and Christian Morals. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1844. 12mo. pp. 419. 2. Miscellaneous Essays on Christian Morals, Experimental and Practical. Originally delivered as Lectures in the Broadmead Chapel, Bristol, England. By JOHN FOSTER. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 12mo. pp. 252. 1844. Ar the latest glimpse that we can get of the distinguished author whose name has drawn our attention to the above-mentioned publications, we find him an infirm, retired octogenarian, long, gaunt, and ghastly, careless and slovenly in dress, with a countenance deeply furrowed by a life of intense thought, and indicating great mental vigor and rigid inflexibility of character. He was revered and cherished as the last of a constellation of luminaries, that had for half a century or more shed lustre on the previously obscure and overshadowed denomination of Particular or Calvinistic Baptists. He, too, has now gone to his rest; and, as his finished life and testimony pass to be matters of record and history, we avail ourselves of the opportunity to present such imperfect sketches of his person and character as we can obtain, and to de scribe that compact and strongly marked individuality which has so stamped itself upon his works, as to give us, in the least of them, a perfect daguerrotype of the man. John Foster was, we believe, born in Bristol, was educated at the Baptist Academy there, and spent most of his days in that city or its vicinity. He entered in early life upon the clerical profession, but was never a popular, or, to a promiscuous audience, even an endurable preacher. He was two or three times settled, either over very small societies, or over congregations that dwindled rapidly under his ministrations. His failure as a public teacher was to be ascribed, in part, to the uncompromising rigidity of his character, which forbade his becoming "all things to all men," even in that apostolic and Christian sense in which these much abused words were first used, and in part to great personal awkwardness, and to feeble and unadorned elocution; though, as a speaker, he is said, by his skilful and graphic emphasis, to have exercised the power, denied to his vivâ voce readers, of rendering his own cumbrous and clumsy sentences intelligible to a patient hearer. He was fond of the company of intellectual men, and conversed with animation and interest on high themes; but in ordinary social and domestic intercourse was, in early and middle life, austere and stern, commanding more reverence than love. His own household are said to have regarded him with a distant veneration amounting almost to awe; and a domestic picture given of him by a visiter some twenty years ago reminded us of our own Jonathan Edwards, who dined in state from silver, while his household cowered around his table over pewter. But later informants, who have seen him in his bereaved and diminished family, represent him as not insensible to the amenities, or unobservant of the courtesies, that make home graceful and happy. Thus the hard, crabbed fruit, which the summer sun cannot ripen, grows mellow as the oblique rays of autumn reach it through thinned and withered foliage. Possessed of a moderate competence, sufficient for his frugal tastes and habits, he lived for many of his last years in retirement, from which he emerged only when solicited for special services, occasionally preaching ad interim in a vacant church, and now and then delivering courses of lectures to an evening audience composed of the cultivated and spiritual from the various denominations in Bristol. He had, it is said, of late, even used |