YES, a good old custom, which the new people of our Babylonian city are every year trying to put down among us; it is for that we ask your aid, dear Ammon; and by giving a place to the following extract from a fashionable novel of some three centuries hence, you may put an end to all such attempts in future, and oblige many

A DAUGHTER OF ST. NICHOLAS.

"The sun shone brightly, as it always ought to shine on the first of January, when young Osceola Fitzjacksonhoff ordered up his airiole, and stepping lightly into it from the skylight of his library, slipped the check of the propeller, and commenced his morning peregrinations. It was new year's day of the year 2000, and the observance of one of the most time-honoured customs of the metropolis seemed to have called all the male population abroad. The air immediately above the city was alive with gay aëripages, and groups of well-dressed alestrians continually flying to and fro; while the wild and not unpleasing notes of the steam flutes with which each pleasure car was supplied, executing some lively strain of our best Colonic composers, gave the highest animation to the scene. Vehicles of every kind appeared to be in requisition. Here might be seen the lumbering but roomy and comfortable cloud-coach, tracking its way with huge air buckets and ponderous

piston to convey a fur-wrapped party of veteran visitors to their destination. There the light single-cylinder-volant with its well imitated wings, might be discovered hovering around a balcony to land its fashionable owner. Now a tawdry aëricle would flaunt up from the unknown regions below Union Place, and now the trim and clean-built vis-air-vis or dashing flaërup, with its brace of mustachoed bloods, would catch the delighted eye as they reined up near some lofty portico. The sky-omnibuses were as usual dressed up with evergreens ; and the mirth called out by the stable wit of their racing drivers was echoed by peals of laughter from the door of some floating restaurant, where a covey of winged urchins were regaling themselves. Mirth and good humour, indeed, seemed the order of the day; and our hero felt his spirits rise as he gradually mounted to a sufficient height to take a survey of the scene we have attempted to describe. Bevies of alestrians were continually flying past him, and Fitzjacksonhoff recognized more than one of his friends, who, having no vehicle of his own, was compelled to go on wing. "Smith," he cried, as a young gentleman of that ancient and extensive family flew slowly by him, " Smith, my dear fellow, a happy new year to you-What! alone are you? Pray jump in and take a seat beside me."

"Thank you, thank you-happy new year to you-with plea. sure," answered the other, as, somewhat out of breath, he accepted the offer and seated himself in the airiole. "The truth is," con. tinued Smith," that I've just been longing for an offer of this kind— it's impossible to engage an air hack on this day; and as I have nine hundred visits to pay, I'm really tired of trudging along on wing." "Nine hundred, my boy," cried Osceola, "a mere trifle; let me look at your visiting list, and I will drop you just where you please."

IMPROMPTU.

TO A LADY WHO TALKED OF COMMUNING WITH THE STARS WHEN SHE WAS SAD.

OH, tell not the stars-the gay stars, of thy sadness—
If moments there be, when the feeling steals o'er thee-
They may shine like the world o'er thy moments of gladness,
And gild each bright thought with a ray of their glory.
But their beams are too cold, and too far off, for sorrow
To awaken a sigh from their chorus of mirth;
And the soul that in sadness would sympathy borrow
Must look for a lender much nearer the earth.
Then lavish no more on those chilly orbs yonder

The treasures of feeling they cannot return;
Awhile on the planet from which thy thoughts wander,

There is one heart at least will with sympathy burn.

H.*

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Poems. By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Co.

1836.

Boston: Otis, Broaders and

THE day when the principal poem in this collection was delivered at Cambridge will not soon pass from our memory; and if the Phi Beta Kappa Society had produced no other poems-as it has many others as good, and one or two superiorthan the one before us, it would deserve well of the poetical literature of the country. A brilliant, airy, and spirituel manner, varied with striking flexibility to the changing sentiment of the poem-now deeply impassioned, now gaily joyous and nonchalant, and anon springing up almost into an actual flight of rhapsodyrendered the delivery of this poem a rich, nearly a dramatic entertainment, such as we have rarely witnessed. A grave, learned, and most intellectual discourse * formed the solid part of this feast; and when this had been finished, the cloth cleared, and the entremets of a little music had been discussed, on came the mellow wine, the ingenious, heterogeneous "Trifle,” the fine-grained crystals of "Ices," and the golden fruit of a Desert, in the shape of this beautiful poem. They did these things well at the Olympic games; but probably no better. Toil-stained and engrossed with business as we are-we Yankees-we can still go up to some of our favourite old shrines on a gala day, out of the warehouse, the forum, the crowded thoroughfares of Gain; and shaking off the dust of our lives' drudgery, sit down to the enjoyment of intellectual pleasures, than which the civilization of the world, ancient or modern, has invented nothing higher or more refined. Yes, we can do it. There are minds-scattered units in the great multitude of the common mind, no matter how devoted that great multitude is to its worldly goodscapable and ready, at any and at all times, to furnish these exquisite intellectual repasts. And they do furnish them. Let a tradition of some such institution as the Phi Beta Kappa go down to after-times, with perhaps a fragment or two of some orations or some poem luckily preserved, with dim notions of their reference or connection to the times, and "what a refined—what an intellectual people were those Americans! How they delighted in the feasts of reason! How they basked themselves in the flow of soul!"

"Poetry; a Metrical Essay,” is the title of the principal piece; and in the preface its scope and connexion are pointed out as intended to illustrate the progress of poetry through different stages, answering to different epochs in the history of the human race. First comes Pastoral or Descriptive Poetry, which allows a digression upon home and the introduction of a descriptive lyric. Second, the period of Martial Poetry, in which a national and patriotic lyric is introduced. Third, the Epic or Historic period of Poetry. Fourth, the period of Dramatic Poetry, the highest reach of the Art. We shall go along through the poem, marking the beauties and defects as they occur under each head. We commend the * By Dr. Wayland of Brown University.

whole piece for its brilliancy, vigour, and finish, the beauty of its imagery, and the very happy adaptation of language to sentiment, and of sound to sense, which, with a few exceptions, prevails throughout. One thing has particularly struck us in reading this poem as well as the whole volume, -that the writer is one of that class of poets who look upon Nature with an accurate and scientific, as well as a poetical eye. None but a close and well-informed observer of the external world would pen such passages as the following.

"THE morning light, which rains its quivering beams
Wide o'er the plains, the summits, and the streams,
In one broad blaze expands its golden glow

On all that answers to its glance below;
Yet, changed on earth, each far reflected ray
Braids with fresh hues the shining brow of day;
Now, clothed in blushes by the painted flowers,
Tracks on their cheeks the rosy-fingered hours;
Now, lost in shades, whose dark, entangled leaves
Drip at the noontide from their pendent eaves,
Fades into gloom, or gleams in light again
From every dew-drop on the jewelled plain."

The same remark may be made of an extremely delicate idea in the second stanza of the Lyric introduced into the first topic or era of the poem. He is speaking of the two churches at Cambridge.

"Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep

Their vigil on the green;

One seems to guard, and one to weep,

The dead that lie between:

And both roll out, 30 full and near,

Their music's mingling waves,

They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear,

Leans on the narrow graves."

We cannot avoid quoting three other stanzas from this beautiful lyric; and in doing so would remind the reader that the speaker stood, when they were uttered, within sight of the home of his childhood, and but a few feet from the grave of her who is so touchingly apostrophised, and who lies in the ancient churchyard, where "all that a century left above" may be read of in an hour.

"And one amid these shades was born,

Beneath this turf who lies,

Once beaming as the summer's morn,
That closed her gentle eyes;·

If sinless angels love as we,
Who stood thy grave beside,

Three seraph welcomes waited thee,
The daughter, sister, bride!

"I wandered to the buried mound
When earth was hid, below
The level of the glaring ground,
Choked to its gates with snow,
And when with summer's flowery waves
The lake of verdure rolled,

As if a Sultan's white-robed slaves
Had scattered pearls and gold.

"Nay, the soft pinions of the air,
That lift this trembling tone,
Its breath of love may almost bear,
To kiss thy funeral stone;

And, now thy smiles have past away,
For all the joy they gave,

May sweetest dews and warmest ray
Lie on thine early grave!"

We hail with peculiar pleasure the thrilling stanzas which were first known to the public by the title of "Old Ironsides." And here we have to relate an anecdote, which is as striking an illustration as ever came to our knowledge, of the truth of that saying, "Let me make the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes their laws." They were printed in the " Boston Daily Advertiser," at the time when the frigate Constitution lay at the navy yard in Charlestown, and it was proposed to break her up as unfit for service; and had it not been for these indignant stanzas, the old ship would have been dismantled. We state this on undoubted authority. The department had actually determined upon breaking up the ship. The order was about to be issued when these verses appeared. They ran through every newspaper in the Union, and were circulated through the city of Washington in handbills; and so loud and indignant became the public opposition to the measure, that Mr. Secretary Branch, not choosing to encounter the odium which would have followed the destruction of the venerable old frigate, ordered her to be refitted for sea.*

We commend the following description to the whole race of the pseudo geniuses, who will find in it their own characteristics well set forth.

"There is a race, which cold, ungenial skies
Breed from decay, as fungous growths arise;
Though dying fast, yet springing fast again,
Which still usurps an unsubstantial reign.
With frames too languid for the charms of sense,
And minds worn down with action too intense;
Tired of a world whose joys they never knew,
Themselves deceived, yet thinking all untrue;
Scarce men without, and less than girls within,
Sick of their life before its cares begin; -
The dull disease, which drains their feeble hearts,
To life's decay some hectic thrills imparts,
And lends a force, which, like the maniac's power,
Pays with blank years the frenzy of an hour.

"And this is Genius! Say, does heaven degrade
The manly frame, for health, for action made?
Break down the sinews, rack the brow with pains,
Blanch the bright cheek, and drain the purple veins,
To clothe the mind with more extended sway,
Thus faintly struggling in degenerate clay?

"No! gentle maid, too ready to admire,
Though false its notes, the pale enthusiast's lyre;
If this be genius, though its bitter springs
Glowed like the morn beneath Aurora's wings,
Seek not the source whose sullen bosom feeds
But fruitless flowers, and dark, envenomed weeds.

"But, if so bright the dear illusion seems,
Thou wouldst be partner of thy poet's dreams,
And hang in rapture on his bloodless charms,
Or die, like Raphael, in his angel arms;

These spirited stanzas have already appeared in this Magazine. See Vol. I., (New Series,) page 307. Critical Notice of the Laurel.