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of literary labor, that after selecting one answer for each leading author, enough remain to furnish a volume, which from its character must prove an intellectual gem.

This work will be entitled, Thoughts of Poets on the Poets, and will embrace every passage from that fascinating department of literature which can be gracefully woven into its pages. Here it will be seen how Milton rivals Shakspeare among his brethren, how Wordsworth nearly reaches the fame of both, while by some accident reminding us of the lost Pleiad, no notice can be found of Shelley. Several rich minds among the living poets, are kindly supplying for me such deficiencies, as yet unpublished, and will add additional interest to the work, by their thoughts on their chosen Bards.

I have endeavored to make the two volumes of the Oracles a complete work, where the young may become familiar with something in an attractive form from the whole range of Poetry, and where the more advanced may refresh themselves with a glimpse of their old favorites, while being introduced to the minds that are rising around them.

Some individuals seem alarmed at the rapid increase of rhymers in the United States, where nine in a recent number of the North American, are reviewed at one swoop; and they think that literature must become effeminate, when an almost undefined

Galaxy of Bards daily swell the advertising columns of Great Britain. The question is asked, how many of all these will give oracles to future years; and why endeavor to cultivate a taste for such ephemeral literature?

As an humble student of the Poets, with whom I have dwelt daily for three years, I say no matter for their fame. "As sings a bird sings"-a nation.* It cannot help it, and how beautiful is it to see a people make a sabbath-day pause for poetry, doff the artisan's apron, assume the bay, and walk forth with nature, even though it may not reach the

stars.

Let the stream of poesy, then, rise where and when it will; fall over rocks, tend the field-flower, or spring up in fountains; the critic may rest easy that spots of verdure will dwell everywhere in its track, though he may not be at the stand-point to command the entire view.

As sings a bird sings Lucy.

The New Timon.

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