England, sweet mother! many a fervent prayer There poured its praise to Heaven for all thy love and care. And they who 'neath the vaulted roof had bowed Tinting the pavement with a glorious shade, Now breathed from humblest fane their ancient chime: And learned they not, His presence sure might dwell With every seeking soul, though bowed in lowliest cell? Yet not quite unadorned their house of prayer: The rhododendron, and the snowy thorn, High priestess of the flowers, whose censer fills the air. Might not such incense please thee, Lord of love? Thou, who with bounteous hand dost deign to show Some foretaste of thy Paradise above, To cheer the way-worn pilgrim here below? Bidd'st thou 'mid parching sands the flow'ret meek Strike its frail root and raise its tinted cheek, What groups, at Sabbath morn, were hither led! From castles in the air hurled ruthless down, crown, Stern breasts have locked their purpose and been still, And contrite spirits knelt, to learn their Maker's will. Here, in his surplice white, the pastor stood, Who, 'mid the quaking earth or fiery flood Persuasive wisdom in his thoughtful mien, Music upon the breeze! the savage stays His flying arrow as the strain goes by; He starts! he listens! lost in deep amaze, Breath half-suppressed, and lightning in his eye. Have the clouds spoken? Do the spirits rise From his dead fathers' graves, with wildering melodies? Oft doth he muse, 'neath midnight's solemn sky, On those deep tones, which, rising o'er the sod, Bore forth, from hill to hill, the white man's hymn to God. LIFE'S EVENING. "Abide with us, for it is now evening, and the day of life is The bright and blooming morn of youth O Thou, whose being hath no end, Behold the noonday sun of life Doth seek its western bound, Abide with us, we pray. Dim eve draws on, and many a friend THE EARLY BLUE-BIRD. Blue-bird! on yon leafless tree, Dost thou carol thus to me, "Spring is coming! Spring is here!" Say'st thou so, my birdie dear? What is that in misty shroud Stealing from the darkened cloud? Lo! the snow-flake's gathering mound Settles o'er the whitened ground, Yet thou singest, blithe and clear, Spring is coming! Spring is here!" Strik'st thou not too bold a strain? Spring's a maid of mirth and glee, Ask her, if when storms are long, TALK WITH THE SEA. I said with a moan, as I roamed alone, By the side of the solemn sea,"Oh cast at my feet which thy billows meet Some token to comfort me. 'Mid thy surges cold, a ring of gold I have lost, with an amethyst bright, Thou hast locked it so long, in thy casket strong, That the rust must have quenched its light. "Send a gift, I pray, on thy sheeted spray, To solace my drooping mind, For I'm sad and grieve, and ere long must leave This rolling globe behind." Then the Sea answered, "Spoils are mine, From many an argosy, And pearl-drops sleep in my bosom deep, But naught have I there for thee!" "When I mused before, on this rock-bound shore, The beautiful walked with me, She hath gone to her rest in the churchyard's breast When her cheek to mine was pressed, That could lighten the darkest breast!" But the haughty Sea, in its majesty Swept onward as before, Though a surge in wrath from its rocky path, JONATHAN MAYHEW WAINWRIGHT. J. M. WAINWRIGHT was born at Liverpool, England, February 24, 1792. His father, an Englishman by birth, had settled in America after the Revolution and married a daughter of Dr. Mayhew, the celebrated clergyman in Boston of that era. His residence in England, at the time of his son's birth, was not permanent, and the family not long after returned to America. The future Bishop graduated at Harvard in 1812, and subsequently was Tutor of Rhetoric and Oratory in that Institution. He early chose the Ministry of the Episcopal Church as his calling. When minister at Hartford, Ct., in 1819, he published Chants, adapted to the Hymns in the Morning and Evening Service of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and afterwards, in 1828, issued a volume of Music of the Church, and again, in 1851, in conjunction with Dr. Muhlenberg, The Choir and Family Psalter; a collection of the Psalms of David, with the Canticles of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Episcopal service, arranged for chanting. He was always a devoted lover of music. When Malibran visited America, she sang on several occasions in the choir of Grace Church, with which Dr. Wainwright was long connected as pastor, in New York. His employments in the official duties of his church were various. He left New York for a time to be Rector of Trinity Church, in Boston. When he was chosen Provisional Bishop of New York in 1852, he was connected with Trinity Parish in the city. He would have been elected to that office in the previous year had he not cast his own vote against himself. He was indefatigable in the duties of his Bishopric during the severe heats of 1854, and in the autumn of that year, September 21, he died, prostrated by an attack of severe remittent fever. His chief literary works were two volumes of descriptive foreign travel, published in 1850 and the following year, after his return from a tour to the East. They bear the titles, The Pathways and Abiding Places of Our Lord, illustrated in the Journal of a Tour through the Land of Promise and the Land of Bondage; its Ancient Monuments and Present Condition, being the Journal of a Tour in Egypt. The style is pleasing and flowing, and the devotional sentiment uniformly maintained. Dr. W. also edited for Messrs. Appleton two illustrated volumes, The Women of the Bible, and Our Saviour with Prophets and Apostles. Dr. Wainwright was engaged in a defence of Episcopacy, in a controversy with the Rev. Dr. Potts of the Presbyterian Church of New York, which grew out of a remark let fall by Rufus Choate, at the annual celebration of the New England Society, in New York, in 1843, in which the orator complimented a people who had planted a state without a king, and a church without a bishop." At the dinner which followed, Dr. Wainwright, an invited guest, took exception to the saying, and was challenged to the controversy by Dr. Potts. 66 The discourses published by Dr. W. were few. In 1829 he published a thin octavo of Sermons on Religious Education and Filial Duty. His social influence was great. Courtly and easy in his manners, and taking part in the active interests of the day, he was universally known, and a general favorite in the city in which he resided. He assisted in the formation of the University of the city of New York. His reading in the Church services was much admired, his voice being finely modulated, with a delicate emphasis. As a preacher his style was finished in an ample rhetorical manner. EDWIN C. HOLLAND. EDWIN C. HOLLAND, a lawyer of Charleston, S. C., published in 1814 a volume of Odes, Naval Songs, and other occasional Poems, suggested for the most part by the war with England pending during their first publication in the Port Folio. His style is fluent, and occasionally somewhat too ornate and grandiloquent. One of the most spirited compositions is his prize poem THE PILLAR OF GLORY. Hail to the heroes whose triumphs have brightened The darkness which shrouded America's name; Long shall their valour in battle that lightened, Live in the brilliant escutcheons of fame: Dark where the torrents flow, And the rude tempests blow, The stormy clad spirit of Albion raves; Long shall she mourn the day, When in the vengeful fray, Liberty walked like a god on the waves. The ocean, ye chiefs, (the region of glory, Where fortune has destined Columbia to reign,) Gleams with the halo and lustre of story, That curl round the waves as the scene of her fame : There, on its raging tide, Shall her proud navy ride, The bulwark of Freedom, protected by Heaven; There shall her haughty foe There shall renown to her heroes be given. From the grasp of Old England, the trident of war; The beams of our stars have illumined the world, Unfurled our standard beats proud in the air: Wild glares the eagle's eye, Swift as he cuts the sky, Marking the wake where our heroes advance; Albion is heartless, and stoops to his glance. WILLIAM H. TIMROD Was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1792. In straitened circumstances and of a limited education, and while following the trade of a mechanic, he wrote verses which were received with favor. His conversational abilities are also remembered by his friends with pleasure. In the year 1836 he went to St. Augustine as the captain of a militia corps of Charleston, which had volunteered to garrison that town for a certain period against the attacks of the Indians. In this expedition he contracted, from exposure, a disease which resulted in his death two years afterwards. TO HARRY. Harry! my little blue-eyed boy! I love to see the lines of mirth For gazing on thee do I sigh That these most happy hours will flee, And thy full share of misery Must fall in life to thee. There is no lasting grief below, My Harry, that flows not from guilt- Thou'lt read it when the churchyard clay Is but a state of sinful thrall To keep the soul from Heaven. My boy! the verdure-crowned hills, The vales where flowers innumerous blow, God is no tyrant who would spread Yet teach the hungering child to dread That touching them, he dies. No! all can do his creatures good He scatters round with hand profuseThe only precept understood "Enjoy, but not abuse." Henry Timrod, the son of the preceding, is a resident of the city of Charleston. His verses, which keep the promise of his father's reputation, have usually appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger with the signature "Aglaus." THE PASTA FRAGMENT. To-day's most trivial act may hold the seed Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at lastThe time must come wherein thou shalt be taught The value and the beauty of the Past. Not merely as a Warner and a Guide, “A voice behind thee" sounding to the strife— But something never to be put aside, A part and parcel of thy present life. Not as a distant and a darkened sky Through which the stars peep, and the moonbeams glow But a surrounding atmosphere whereby We live and breathe, sustained 'mid pain and woe. A Fairy-land, where joy and sorrow kiss Each still to each corrective and reliefWhere dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes but grief. Ah me! not dies-no more than spirit diesBut in a change like death is clothed with wings— A serious angel with entranced eyes Looking to far off and celestial things. JOHN HOWARD PAYNE. THE ancestors of JOHN HOWARD PAYNE were men of eminence. His paternal grandfather was a military officer and member of the Provincial Assembly of Massachusetts; and Dr. Osborn, the author of the celebrated whaling song, and Judge Paine, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, were of the family. His father was educated as a physician under General Warren, but soon abandoned the profession, owing to the unsettled state of affairs caused by the Revolution, and became a teacher, a calling in which he attained high eminence. Mr. Payne was the child of his second wife, the daughter of a highly respected inhabitant of the ancient village of East Hampton, Long Island, where his tombstone bears the simple epitaph, "An Israelite, indeed, in whom there was no guile." The oft-repeated story is first told of him, that sending a present of cranberries to a friend in England, he received, with the news of their arrival, the information that the fruit "had all turned sour upon the way." Payne's father, after an unsuccessful mercantile venture, became a resident of East Hampton, and the principal of the Clinton Academy, an institution of high reputation throughout the island, which owed its foundation to the reputation of Mr. Payne as a teacher. He afterwards removed to New York, where John Howard Payne was born June 9, 1792. He was one of John Howard Payne the eldest of nine children-seven sons and two daughters. One of the latter shared to some extent in his precocious fame. At the age of fourteen, after eight days' study of the Latin language, she underwent an examination by the classical professors of Harvard College, and displayed a remarkable skill in construing and parsing. She was afterwards highly distinguished as an amateur artist, and her literary compositions, none of which have been published, and correspondence, were said, by some of the best authorities of the country, to have been " among the most favorable specimens of female genius existing in America." Soon after Payne's birth, his father accepted the charge of a new educational establishment in Boston, and the family removed to that city. Here our author first came before the public as the leader of a military association of schoolboys who paraded the streets, and became the town-talk. On one occasion of general parade, when drawn up in the common near the regular troops, they were formally invited into the ranks, and reviewed by the commanding officer, Major-General Elliott. We soon after hear of him on a scene which was a nearer approach to that of his future fame. His father was highly celebrated as an elocutionist. A nervous complaint, by which the son was incapacitated for two or three years from severe study, was supposed to be benefited by exercises of this character. The pupil showed a remarkable aptitude, and soon became a leader in the school exhibitions in soliloquy and dialogue. A Boston actor, fresh from the performances of Master Betty in London, whose reputation was then worldwide, was so struck with the ability of Master Payne, that he urged his father to allow him to bring out the youth on the stage as the young American Roscius. The offer, much to the chagrin of its subject, was declined. He made his debut, however, in literature, becoming a contributor to a juvenile paper called the Fly, which was published by Samuel Woodworth, from the office where he worked as a printer's boy. At this period, William Osborn, Payne's eldest brother, a partner in the mercantile house of Forbes and Payne, died, and partly with a view of weaning him from the stage, the would-be Roscius was set to 66 cramp his genius" among the folios of the counting-house of Mr. Forbes, who continued the business of the late firm, in the hope that Payne might ultimately fill the deceased brother's place. He was, however, no sooner installed in the new post in New York, than he commenced the publication of a little periodical, entitled The Thespian Mirror. One "Criticus" demurred to some of its statements and opinions, and the announcement in the Evening Post, that his communication would appear in the next newspaper, brought a letter to the editor from his juvenile contemporary, who, fearful of the anger of his relations, who were ignorant of his publication, besought the senior not to allow his incognito to be broken. Mr. Coleman invited Payne to call upon him, naturally interested in a boy of thirteen, who was a brother editor, and, as he states in his paper of Jan. 24, 1806, was much pleased with the interview. "His answers," he says, 66 were such as to dispel all doubts as to any imposition, and I found that it required an effort on my part to keep up the conversation in as choice a style as his own." Mr. Coleman's object in making the incident public, in spite of Payne's objections, was to call attention to his remarkable merits, and to create an interest in his career. In this he was so successful, that a benevolent gentleman of this city, Mr. John E. Seaman, volunteered to defray the youth's expenses at Union College. The offer was gladly accepted, and Payne took his departure for Albany in a sloop, in company with his friend and kind adviser, Charles Brockden Brown. He kept a journal of the tour, of which the following poetical fragment is all that has been preserved: On the deck of the slow-sailing vessel, alone, As I silently sat, all was mute as the grave; It was night-and the moon mildly beautiful shone, Lighting up with her soft smile the quivering wave. So bewitchingly gentle and pure was its beam, woes. And I felt such an exquisite mildness of sorrow, While entranced by the tremulous glow of the deep, That I longed to prevent the intrusion of morrow, And stayed there for ever to wonder and weep. At college he started a periodical, called The Pastime, which became very popular among the students. The busybodies, who had pestered him with their advice after Mr. Coleman's publication in New York, continued their favors to him at Schenectady, especially after the publication of a Fourth of July ode, which was composed by Payne, and sung by the students in one of the churches. The author, as a joke, published an article in one of the Albany papers, berating himself, after the manner of his critics, in round terms. It produced a sensation among his associates, many of whom turned the coll shoulder upon him. The affair came to an issue at a supper party, where an individual gave as a toast "The Critics of Albany," and was, in common with the other carpers, satisfactorily nonplussed by Payne's quietly rising and returning thanks. Soon after Payne's establishment at college, he lost his mother. The effect of this calamity on his father, already much broken by disease, was such as to incapacitate him for attention to his affairs, which had become involved, and his bankruptcy speedily followed. In this juncture, the son insisted upon trying the stage as a means of support, and obtaining the consent of his patron and parent, made his first appearance at the Park Theatre as Young Norval on the evening of February 24, 1809, in his sixteenth year. The performance, like those of the entire engagement, was highly successful. A writer, who had seen Garrick and all the great actors since his day, said, "I have seen Master Payne in Douglas, Zaphna, Solim, and Octavian, and may truly say, I think him superior to Betty in all. There was one scene of his Zaphna, which exhibited more taste and sensibility than I have witnessed since the days of Garrick. He has astonished everybody." From New York Payne went to Philadelphia, and afterwards to Boston, performing with great success in both cities. He also appeared at Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston, where Henry Placide, afterwards the celebrated comedian of the Park Theatre, gained his first success by a capital imitation of his style of acting. On his return to New York, after these engagements, Payne yielded to the wishes of his family by retiring from the stage, and started a circulating library and reading-room, the Athenæum, which he designed to expand into a great public institution. Soon after this, George Frederick Cooke arrived in America. Payne, of course, became acquainted with him, and was very kindly treated by the great tragedian, who urged him to try his fortune on the London stage. They appeared once at the Park Theatre together, Payne playing Edgar to Cooke's Lear. Other joint performances were planned, but He evaded by Cooke, whose pride was hurt at "having a boy called in to support him." The Athenæum speculation proving unprofitable, he returned to the stage. While playing an engagement at Boston, his father died. He afterwards played in Philadelphia and Baltimore. During his stay in the latter city, the printing-office of his friend Hanson, an editor, was attacked by a mob during the absence of its proprietor. offered his services, and rendered essential aid to the paper at the crisis, and Mr. Hanson not only publicly acknowledged his services, but exerted himself in aiding his young friend to obtain the means to visit Europe. By the liberality of a few gentlemen of Baltimore this was effected, and Payne sailed from New York on the seventeenth of January, 1813, intending to be absent but one year. His first experience of England, where he arrived in February, was a brief imprisonment in Liverpool, the mayor of that city having determined to act with rigor in the absence of instructions from government respecting aliens. On arriving in Londen, he spent several weeks in sight-seeing before applying to the managers. By the influence of powerful persons to whom he brought letters, he obtained a hearing from Mr. Whitbread of Drury Lane, and appeared at that theatre as Douglas, the performance being announced on the bills as by a young gentleman, "his first appearance," it being deemed advisable to obtain an unbiassed verdict from the audience. The debut was successful, and he was announced in the bills of his next night as "Mr. Payne, from the theatres of New York and Philadelphia." After playing a triumphant engagement, he made the circuit of the provinces, and, upon his return to London, visited Paris principally for the purpose of seeing Talma, by whom he was most cordially received. Bonaparte returned from Elba soon after his arrival, and he consequently remained in Paris during the Hundred Days. He then repaired to London, taking with him a translation of a popular French melodrama, The Maid and the Magpie, which he had made as an exercise in the study of the language without any view to representation. He was asked to play at Drury Lane, but by the influence of Mr. Kinnaird, one of the committee of stockholders who then conducted the management, his reappearance was postponed until a more favorable period of the theatrical season. Happening to be questioned about the famous new piece in Paris, Payne produced his version, and it was read by Mr. Kinnaird, who was so much pleased that he proposed to the translator to return to Paris for the purpose of watching the French stage, and sending over adaptations of the best pieces for the Drury Lane management, regretting, at the same time, that having engaged a translation of The Maid and the Magpie, it was impossible to produce Mr. Payne's superior version. He accepted the proposal, but before his departure, Mr. Harris, the rival manager of Covent Garden, purchased his manuscript of The Maid and the Magpie for one hundred and fifty pounds. Soon after his arrival, he sent over the play of Accusation, so carefully prepared for the stage, that it was performed six days after its reception, and was suc cessful. Payne remained steadily at work for |