of the heart, like the heroic deeds of olden time wrought gorgeously upon their rich tapestries, is woven into the intellectual fabric. Their holiest and best moments are therefore visibly recorded. The heart has been laid open and copied like a book, and the feelings to which we cling in death, and which we cherish, living, like a vestal fire, are inwrought and storied in poetry. It is the world to which the poet has fled from everything which troubled his peace. He has been slighted by the proud, or neglected by his friend, or hurt by the severity of the unfeeling, and in poetry he has forgiven and forgotten them. He has been depressed by the many nameless and unaccountable influences that settle so heavily and without warning upon the spirit, and poetry has lifted and dispersed them. He is indebted to it for his daily cheerfulness-nay-for his very endurance of life. How should he throw aside its sybilline leaves because a blind world cannot see their mystic meaning?

Throughout this delightful book there are traces of liberality in judging of the works of others a freedom from the disposition to criticise, which are no less evidences of the author's goodness of heart than of elevation of genius. He says in one place, "It is a most fortunate thing for the young when they can defend themselves from the spirit of criticism, and yield up their minds to the impression of the beautiful and excellent without troubling themselves to discover and separate the accompanying dross." And again of Shakspeare, "I was the first to comprehend his genius with the liveliest enthusiasm, and my friends caught the contagion which lifted me above myself. All we wished for at the time was to enjoy him at our ease, and yield ourselves up to his fascination. We could not bear to scrutinize the talents of the man who afforded us so much pleasure, or to look for his defects. We took pleasure in greeting him with unbounded admiration." What a beautiful trait is this of intellectual greatness! How few there are who are thus willing to be pleased and to render to genius an unqualified and generous admiration. Who is there besides Goethe, who would not have taken so fair an opportunity to shew critical knowledge-who would not have found fault with the noble bard, and coldly analized the magnificent light of his mind, instead of dwelling on its influence, and opening his heart to it before the world for the entrance of its delightful offices. The carping, complaining spirit of criticism is at a far remove from such magnanimity. It is not the result of a healthful, clear vision. It is not the language of feelings willing to be wrought upon, or a fancy free to listen implicitly to the "voice of the charmer." It is the jaundiced eye, and the dull ear, and a

taste embittered and perverted, that can see and hear the beauty and harmony of genius, and not be ravished sometimes from the professional coldness. Not that we are advocates for indiscriminate praise. Goethe himself has criticised Shakspeare, and let him who would see a just and splendid criticism read his analysis of the character of Hamlet. He dwells upon its beauties, not its blemishes. He descends, like others, into the mine of poetical invention, but it is for its gems. The common earth and the baser minerals in which they are imbedded are thrown by and forgotten, not spread out and dwelt upon, and the fair crystals are separated, and held up exultingly to the light, that others may see and admire their perfection. This is the natural and true use of criticism. The abusive and sarcastic temper which has prevailed in the last age of reviewing was of a peculiar school, whose masters were embittered and unsuccessful authors-men who had talent to be severe upon what they had not genius to equal, and who, after walking in a vain competition with superior minds the scenes of the poetical drama, had come out with a bitter envy, to betray its secrets and destroy the pleasant illusion of its admirers. We are glad that this temper is passing away. We rejoice that, on this side the water at least, criticism must be fair and dignified not to meet with silent contempt. It begins well in a country whose pride is its clear-seeing and unprejudiced judgment, and we are proud when we remember that Wordsworth, and Shelley and Keats, had their first full harvest of fame with us. Even Byron preferred his American reputation, and Mrs. Hemans looks to our land for her fairest portion; and at this moment, Coleridge, and Southey, and the subject of our present remark, have a far more undivided and generous appreciation here than in England. It is natural that it should be so. We have no personal, no political animosities with them. They stand on their mere, abstract, literary merit. Their books are read with enthusiasm because they are true to the great universal standard-a standard which is in every human bosom, and which sits in candid and unfallible judgment whenever it is not warped by the immediate and unworthy atmosphere of personal prejudice. We sincerely believe that no durable wrong can be done to any writer in this country. There is an independence of dictation, a general and cultivated capacity for individual opinion among us, which turns back an ill-shot arrow upon its sender, like a silver shield. Scurrility and malignity only make their authors infamous, and there is no instance from one end of the land to the other of an abusive writer either successful or respectable. We look forward with sincere satisfaction to the coming age of litera

ture. The arena is clear and open. The candidates for its honors are sure of a fair award. In the general diffusion of knowledge and free thought, there is not a spectator incapable of judgment—no manyvoiced and rude mob to take up the cry of the envious and discourage the timid aspirant. If there is strength, or grace, or fair proportion among us, it will surely come out in so golden an era.

One of the most winning peculiarities of our author, to us, and one for which he has been more severely criticised than for any other, is his fondness for dwelling on the history of his childhood. This delightful evidence of a heart kept young and fresh under the wear of the world, has been made matter of amusement by the English critics -a class of men, who, with all their acuteness and real ability, never yet did justice to real feeling till the voice of universal sympathy with the writer became too audible to be misunderstood. We might be diffident enough to suppress our opinion before such authority, were it not that Wordsworth, the noblest and purest mind that has shone upon the world since Milton, betrays the same feeling and has breathed its beautiful spirit into an Ode whose majesty and harmony are unsurpassed in the whole compass of English poetry. We can easily conceive that men like Jeffrey and Gifford, who seemed to have been born with their hearts full of gall, were never happy till they arrived at an age when it was relieved by a discharge upon the fine and sensitive spirits whose life it poisoned. We can believe that their childhood was not happy. There must have been a smothered feeling within them, mistaken, we dare say, for the stirrings of ambition-a suppressed fever in their hearts-which could not be allayed under the retributive justice of boyhood, and which colored with its own bile every impression of loveliness. There was no corner for a safe and covert exercise of their noble faculties in the simple laws which governed that republic. Their sullen mien and bad temper were visited upon them with too sudden a retribution, and the mutual action of hate and cowardice, inseparable qualities in such minds, must have made it any thing but an age to be remembered pleasantly. We can easily forgive them for their want of power to comprehend the beauty and exalted happiness of the young! Goethe and Wordsworth were born with no such unhappy natures. To them, childhood was truly the morning of life, with all its natural and dewy freshness. The generous and loving elements of their character had a constant and spontaneous action. Care had not deadened, nor shame concealed, nor selfishness smothered them. Without knowing their names, or inquiring whence they came, the sunshine and the wind and the visible beauty

of the world, were let into their hearts like the expected and unquesed light of Heaven. They were happy they knew not why, and generous because it was the first impulse, and brave and beautiful without consciousness or vain glory. They had no mistrust of their fellows, no misgiving of the love of those who fed and blessed them. They awoke with glad and gay hearts, and spent the day in their cheerful employments, and laid down at night with a happy prayer for the love and protection of which they did not realize the need, because they had never failed them. Who does not look back on such a period with delight? Who that has had his ingenuousness abused, his generosity repaid by ingratitude, his pity scorned, his confidence and love returned with hate and suspicion-who, in short, that has lived to be a man, and breathed the atmosphere of this grown up world, does not look back on his boyhood with irrepressible regret-dwell upon it, and linger on its recollections, and recount its simple pleasures with a feeling akin to that of a spirit receding from his sphere. We are aware that to many it seems but a period of crude and unripe impressions-a time of weakness and ignorance. We know that the mind strengthens with age, that the faculties are developed, and that the proportions of the body become fitter for use and labor. But we know also, that the better qualities of the heart are blunted in proportion to its illumination-that the refinement of these crude and imperfect opinions fritters away their freshness and beauty, and that the strength of the intellect and the vigor of the body are often bought by a loss of all the fervor of the one, and the exquisite enjoyment of mere life and motion which was the property of the other. We are not attempting now to prove that the child is superior to the man, (though we think it would admit of a fair argument;) we would only justify the retrospection-the regret of manhood. It is the course of Providence that we should mature and change; but if we were happier in our earlier days we would be allowed to remember and speak of them. We would do our duty as men-but in the intervals of severe labor, we would refresh ourselves with the memory of those

"First affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day."

We are not sure that toil, and knowledge which is but a knowledge of evil, and bad passions, and disease, and care, are a fair exchange for virtue, and health, and fine impulses, and innocent pleasures. We are not sure that the dove which has soiled and broken its white wings

in keeping company with the owl is better for her wisdom. We would not exchange the feeling of the child who exclaimed "God has made a star," when he saw it spring suddenly in the west, for the maturer knowledge of the man, that it is a part of a system and revolves in its orbit.

We wish we could lend the reader our copy of Goethe. We would have him sympathize with us fully in our admiration. We have marked passages all over it which we would have him admire, and which we should delight to dwell upon. His childhood, his youth, his manhood, his literary experience, his singularly graphic daawings of his great contemporaries, his various adventures in the belle passion-all are full of nature and originality and interest. The episode of Frederica, the history of the "Betrothed," his intimacy with Madame Von Klettenburg, his naïve and fascinating description of his sister, are among the parts which at this moment recur delightfully to our recollection.

In a faithful history of a human life, there will be, necessarily, material for objection. But unless the faults are more apparent, and more calculated to have a wrong tendency, than those in the book before us, we should deem it a most unnecessary presumption to attempt their exposure. We are sure that no virtue can be endangered by reading it. We are sure that there are few books from which those who are disposed can gather more valuable maxims for life. We are positive that no person, of any susceptibility to moral beauty can read it without turning down its leaves, and marking its many pleasant passages, and laying it up as a resource from depression and a topic of conversation.

MARY.

I saw a tear run down her fading cheek

Like to a dew-drop from the red rose shaken;

It seemed a pearl, of sorrow's own, to speak

What yet her tongue could not-"I am forsaken!"

I saw her in that dreary lapse of doubt,

When shades of wo and night were spread above her,
When every gleam of hope was prisoned out,

And none but me was left on earth to love her.

I would not own that she had ever sinned,

I

That Heaven's pure veil had there been rent and broken,
gave those dreamings to the idle wind,

And the sad girl my trusting heart in token.