after his long and persevering struggle, and his sacrifice of health and means, he surely has a virtual if not a legal right, for the present, to exclusive patronage. The pages of the present Journal are open to every able contributor, and with the Editor's known professional liberality, and his unquestionable power to make his work better than any other of a similar nature, there can be none but sectional reasons to influence a new establishment. We feel that every lover of his country's reputation, and every general reader should patronize this work unhesitatingly.

There are lying before us three or four numbers of the "Mercury," a daintily printed paper, edited (the secret is out) by Kettell the compiler of Specimens of American Poetry. Mr. K. is a scholar, and a "ripe and rare one," with a taste for the bijouterie of literature which will cover the talaria of Mercury with gems of the first water. The numbers already published contain several of our pet scraps--things we have copied till our fingers ached from thumbed manuscripts and choice books. It is not every-body, for instance that has got a copy of Keats's "Lamia," and the "Eve of St. Agnes," and here they are printed as if for a lady's sofa reading, on the fairest of type and paper. This praise is generous of us, for our rarities will no longer be rare; but we are not hero enough to let it go altogether without qualification. We do not think Ozias Polyglot entitled to the good society he is in, either from his talent or refinement, and we think our friend Whittier's abilities were much underrated, to say nothing of the uncourteousness of the mode. His "address to a star" deserves a leaf of Mr. Kettell's own Olio, and we are by no means sure that if Mr. K. (by the assistance of Mercury) ever gets where

"Who can tell how hard it is to climb"

he will not find his "sutor" there also, and, of course, "ultra crepidam." Mr. Whittier has retired to his "farm." He is happier than any poor-devil-Editor of us all. His crop will not be criticised. He may grow cabbages or turnips as he pleases, and his investments in mother Earth, unlike those in some of her children, will come to light again. It will not cost him so much, either, to entertain his extravagant friends, the Muses; for, difficult as it is to content them in the city, he has only to write over his door (what we pray his condition may never belie) that winning inducement of master Corydon, "Lac mihi non æstate novum, non frigore defit."

and they will be with him. We fear, however, that, Quaker though he be, the country will be too quiet for him after his busy Editorship. Pascal says wisely "we think we are seeking repose when all we are

seeking is agitation," and Touchstone with all his philosophy, could not abide the forest of Arden. "In respect that it is solitary," says that miracle of wisdom "I like it very well: but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life." We wish him content, but even that not quite unmingled, remembering that

"Wretched men

Are cradled into poetry by wrong

And learn in suffering that they teach in song."

We hoped to have had the pleasure before this of criticising a volume long ago announced as forthcoming from our friend Rufus Dawes. He is one of those men whom every one acknowledges to be a genius, and a real one, without being able to quote a stanza to prove it-a dilemma he is bound in honor to relieve. The truth is, that the main part of Dawes's celebrity, like Coleridge's, is based upon his conversation. He is one of the most brilliant of our cotemporaries, and for susceptibility to every kind of beauty, for nice senses, and all those exquisite endowments which are the material of genius he is known not to be surpassed. He has published some few things, but they were evidently more the result of ennui than exertion, and fall as far short of the poetry of his conversation as his worst enemy could desire. He is out of our reach, editing a paper in Baltimore or we should have whispered the suggestion in his private ear. We wait for his volume.

The papers announce that Mrs. A. M. Wells, the poetess, has opened a school for young ladies in Windsor, Vermont. We speak of it here because we consider it valuable information. If we knew nothing else of this lady, there is something in the character of her poetry which, we should think, peculiarly warranted her fitness for the business of education. It is eminently pure and instructive. Every sentiment conveyed in her simple and delicate stanzas has that chastened maternal purity about it which distinguishes the poetry of Jane Taylor and others of that school. But Mrs. Wells is better known than by her poetry. The delicacy due her private station forbids us to enlarge upon this; but we will say, and we do it with the most ample knowledge of its truth, that aside from a certainty of attainment in every direct purpose of education, influences of refinement in character and manner will be felt by her pupils which are rarely met. We assure those of our friends who are interested in this subject that the opportunity is an invaluable one.

Our poetical friends, this month, fairly overwhelm us. We fear we shall die the death of the maid in the story who was heaped with jewels

till she was smothered. Our prose friends are crowded quite out of the drawer-stanzas on moonlight, and thoughts to the fair, usurping entirely that grave department. We are certainly, above all the nations of the earth, a poetical people. Handwritings indicating every possible grade of education may be selected from our manuscripts. Here is the end of a brownish sheet peeping out, sealed with the wax of the contemplative craft of St. Crispin-and there is the impression of a thimble—and under it a magnificent coat of arms with a dainty superscription, and, from the remoter corner, a colored note sends out from its rosy folds a breath of musk, "sweeter than Araby." Here is a clerkly flourish, such as we know, any distance, in a tradesman's bill, indicating its writer to vibrate between Castaly and the counter-here a Freshman's abominable hieroglyphics-here a gentlemanly illegibility-here the traces of a delicate crowquill-here a sonnet delicate and yet careless, evidently dashed off in the intervals of a toilet (only one fair foot in its slipper perhaps,) and here a great up-and-down, who-cares sort of an autograph, upon which the very Genius of Exegesis himself would be puzzled to decide. There is one verse that has no limp in it, and is pretty.

I stand upon thy shelving banks,

The sun is on his trackless way,
And there is not a breeze to break
The breathing silence of the day.
Thy bed of waters calmly flows

In still waves to the ocean's deep

As if but now their murmurings rose

With the faint zephyrs from their sleep.

The best of the remaining dozen we will quote to show the lovers of harmony what our abused fraternity lives through.

I have not long to live on earth

I feel it in my throbbing breast,

And I would that here, on this beauteous spot
My soul might sink to its heavenly rest,
I would breathe my last in the open sky
Upon thy banks, bright river!

Yet here twould be too hard to die

And leave thee thus forever!

What a pity that a man who can write one good verse will write ten bad ones! But here is a ballad on a stirring theme-"The French soldiers in Russia burned their Eagles, and drank the ashes in wine to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy,"-a glorious thought indeed! It is not done as well as it might be, but a part of it is graphic.

But where a watchfire of the night,

Gleamed o'er the snow-white plain,
Around its red and fitful light,

Were gathered weary men.
With clenched hand upon the brow,
In mute despair they stood-
They wished, yet feared to meet the foe,
Whose path was trod in blood.

But one, his frown was past;

What means that joyous smile!
His look was on the standards cast,
And thus he spake the while,-
'What! comrades shall we yield,
Our honor tamely here,

While yet our arms a blade can wield,
And our hearts thrill not with fear?

No-burn each banner staff!

Their ashes mix with wine!

And then, the last sad health we'll quaff,
Ere we our lives resign,"

Then flash'd their swarthy faces o'er

A deep and meaning smile,

And each his furled banner tore,
And cast it on the pile.

Sadly they watch the tow'ring blaze,

That o'er the fatal plain,

Shot forth in mockery, its rays,

And sunk to earth again.

Then gathering its ashes up

With a slow and mournful care

They mix'd them in the sparkling cup,

And pledg'd each other there.

With so much poetry in hand, our correspondents will comprehend the necessity of delay in publishing their favors. correspondents to allow us a little of the same grace.

We beg our prose

We believe that is all. If there is anything more to be noticed What an insufferable we have not strength enough to remember it. state of the thermometer! We knock under to Heraclitus, that fire is the first principle of all things. Fahrenheit at 100 in the shade! Our curtain in the attic unstirred ! Our japonica drooping its great white flowers lower and lower, and "L. E. L." our pet spaniel, who never before left her lair among the rejected articles till the racing of her master's pen was silent, stands with her curled feet upon the

window, looking out upon the bay with the wistfulness of a captive knight. It is a fair scene indeed!—not a ripple from the pier to the castle, and the surface of the water, as Shelley says, "like a plane of glass spread out between two heavens"-and there is a solitary sloop, with the light and shade flickering on its loose sail, positively hung in the air and a gull, it is refreshing to see him, keeping down with his white wings close to the water, as if to meet his own snowy and perfect shadow. Was ever such intense, unmitigated sunshine? There is nothing on the hard, opaque sky, but a mere rag of a cloud, like a handkerchief on a tablet of blue marble, and the edge of the shadow of that tall chimney is as definite as a hair, and the young elm that leans over the fence is copied in perfect and motionless leaves like a very painting on the broad sidewalk. How delightful the night will be after such a deluge of light! How beautiful the modest rays of the starlight, and the cool, dark blue of the heavens will seem after the dazzling clearness of this sultry noon! It reminds one of that exquisite passage in Thalaba, where the spirit-bird comes, when his eyes are blinded with the intense brightness of the snow, and spreads her green wings before him! But the noon is past,—the hour, as the poet says,

"When work is none in the bright silent air,"

and L. E. L. (she is no disgrace to her namesake, the gracefu! creature,) is getting impatient-a sure sign that we have sat too long at the EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE DISMANTLED CABINET.

Go, beautiful creations of the mind,

Fair forms of earth and heaven, and scenes as fair,
Where art appears with nature's loveliest air,-
Go glad the few upon whom fortune kind
Yet lavishes her smiles.-When calmly shin'd
My hours, ye did not fail a zest most rare

To add to life; and when oppress'd by care,

Or sadness twin'd, (as she hath often twin'd,)

With cypress wreath my brow, even then ye threw
Around enchantment. But though I deplore

The separation, in the mirror true

Of mind I yet shall see you as before.

Then go; like friends that vanish from our view,
Though ne'er to be forgot-we part to meet no more!

X.