of the dead, served to bear her voice to that other world where he slept whom she had come to visit. From time to time she bent over towards this narrow opening; she sang verses, interrupted by her sobs; then she applied the ear once more as if she waited an answer; then she began to sing again and weep. I tried to understand the words which she thus uttered, and which were audible even where I sat, but my Arab drogman could not gather nor translate them. How I regret that loss! What depths of love and grief; what sighs, laden with the very life of two souls torn from each other's fond embrace, must those confused, half smothered words have contained. O! if aught could wake the dead, it were such accents murmured by such lips!

At two steps from this woman, under a piece of black cloth which was held by two reeds fastened in the ground, so as to form a protection from the heat, her two little children were playing with three black Abyssinian slaves, sitting, like their mistress, upon the carpet which covered the sand. These three women, all young and beautiful, with forms erect, and with the marked profile of the Abyssinian negro, were grouped in various attitudes, like three statues cut from a single block. One of them had one knee on the ground, and held upon the other knee one of the children, who was stretching out his arms toward his weeping mother; the other had her two legs bent under her, and both hands clasped upon her blue apron, in the attitude of the Magdalene of Canova. The third was erect, and swinging her body to and fro, lulled to sleep the infant upon her breast. When the sobbing of the young widow reached the infants' ears they began to cry; and the three blacks, after responding by a sigh to the sigh of their mistress, began to chant some soothing airs and simple words of their country to calm the two infants.

It was Sunday. Two hundred feet from me, behind the thick and high walls of Jerusalem, I heard the faint and distant echoes of the evening hymn, proceeding at intervals from the dark cupola of the Grecian convent. It was the hymns and psalms of David that arose; brought back here, after three thousand years, by strange voices and in a strange tongue, to the very scenes that had inspired them; and I saw, on the terraces of the convent, the forms of some old monks of Palestine, going and coming, with breviary in hand, and murmuring those prayers already uttered by so many ages in varied measures and various tongues.

And I, too, was there, to sing of all those things, to study history at its cradle, to ascend to its very source the unknown stream of a civilization, a religion; to become inspired with the genius of the spot, and the hidden sense of the histories and the monuments upon those banks which were the starting point of the modern world, and to nourish with a deeper wisdom and a truer philosophy the grave and thoughtful philosophy of the advanced age in which we live.

This scene, thrown by accident under my eyes and recorded as

one of my thousand reminiscences of travel, presented to me almost the entire destiny and changes of all poetry. The three black slaves, lulling the infants with the simple, thoughtless songs of their country, represented the pastoral and instinctive poetry of a nation's infancy. The young Turkish widow, bewailing her husband and breathing her sighs into the ear of the tomb, represented elegiac and impassioned poetry-the poetry of the heart. The Arab soldiers reciting the warlike, amorous, wild verses of Antar, the epic and warlike poetry of the nomadic and conquering tribes. The Greek monks, singing psalms upon their deserted terraces, the sacred and lyric poetry of the periods of religious enthusiasm and renovation; and I, myself, meditating beneath my tent and collecting historic truths or reflections throughout the earth, the poetry of philosophy and reflection, offspring of an age in which humanity studies itself and analyzes itself in the very songs with which it amuses its leisure.

Such is Poetry in the past.

future?.

But what will it be in the

LITERATURE.

BY REV. ELBERT SLINGERLAND.

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.—OVID.

"These polish'd arts have humanized mankind,

"Soften'd the rude, and calm'd the boist'rous mind."

The cultivation of letters has produced great changes in society. These changes have not been the result of productions of amusement only, but principally of those of science and morals. Barbarous nations have always enjoyed their traditionary tales, in which their heroes are represented as possessing such characteristics as elevated them above the masses of community. These stories are equivalent to the books of romance which now circulate so freely amongst us; and in most instances altogether superior, being founded upon actual occurrences, and only distinguishable from real history by their gaudy embellishments; yet the absence of scientific disquisitions, and the want of refinement both in sentiment and language, has left such nations enveloped in the obscurity of their origin.

In countries where science has been introduced, every generation has refined upon the advances of the preceding, and introduced

state of order in civil, social and military life, such as the world how enjoys. It is true we cannot in every sense approve military organizations as tending to the promotion of human happiness. All we assume to affirm is, that such organizations, when placed under the restraints of refined nations, are far superior to barbaric usages.

We think there can be no difficulty as to the sources of improvement in society. Wherever refinement in literature has existed, such has been its results; not only in this, but in every other age and country. May we not justly anticipate a far greater advance in human happiness in the continued cultivation and development of the principles of science? If such be our expectations we should to the very uttermost encourage literary merit; while we frown upon those bold and daring pretences which seek self-aggrandizement under its imposing name, and have no relation whatsoever to its nature.

It is one of the greatest wonders of this wondering age, that a community distinguished for reading as the American people, and with so many professions of regard for solid worth, should name as literature almost every book or picture that is printed. By some this may be thought in good taste; with others it may be considered as a matter of charity, or may be the result of thoughtlessness; while the more scientific may distinguish between a nominal and essential literature, and call all those productions nominally such which claim neither patronage nor approbation on the ground of essential merit. If so, a great proportion having as many faults as Petruchio's horse, yet claim the distinction of literature: or they may have as many infirmities and gross delinquencies as distinguish man, and still retain his name.

"A man's a man for a' that."

This is a manifest abuse of the subject. Literature is represented as consisting in the cultivation of letters and their appropriate application to works of science and imagination. Such comparisons may excite our ridicule, but do not justify the pretences of quackery.

We must distinguish between nominal and essential literature. Essential literature in any one country, at the same period, has only one definition. What might be esteemed literary in a country partially civilized, could not be appreciated where letters were cultivated, and where comparisons were made with a higher standard of taste.

Just literature consists in well defined sentiment expressed with chaste and appropriate language. This is to be regarded as a general definition embracing every science, and extending to the works of imagination. The introduction of harmonious imagery into works either of prose or poetry, has received the commendation of every age, and wherever decorations are befitting the subject, they never fail to excite our applause. When, however, the

authors of works of imagination invest their heroes whose only design is the accomplishment of some personal gratification, with the robes of learning or the costume of senators and statesmen, or marshals and emperors, we become disgusted with the unseemly array. An individual is represented as possessing talents and acquirements, and taste and learning, which qualify him for the most responsible departments of life, and he expends all this almost unparalleled excellence upon some petty intrigue more becoming the character of a beau, a scoundrel or a buffoon.

To entitle a book a literary production which abounds with such uncongenial characters and actions, is as unseemly as to accord the reward of merit to a professedly scientific production abounding in error, either in reference to principles, facts or reasoning.

By well defined sentiment we mean that which is free from obscurity, and in beautiful harmony in all its relations. Such was the literature of Greece and Rome. Ten thousand productions claiming literary merit were urged upon this fastidious public, but their ephemeral or imagined excellencies destined them to an infant age, instead of immortality.

The works of essential merit then produced have survived the lapse of time, and are morally indestructible so long as there are men of virtue and intelligence to appreciate their claims.

It matters not to what department of literature these observa. tions are applied; essential literature is so near of kin to virtue and truth, that its immortality is not a matter of doubt or apprehension. The modesty of authors may in some instances undervalue their own merit, in others it may be over-rated; time, that great corrector of human opinions, will assign to all their place.

American literature, like its citizens, is either native or adopted Like the genuine literature of every other country, it is the product. of many ages of successive improvement. Place does not change the qualifications for authorship. To speak of American literature as identical with a new country, would have been appropriate if we had not the advantages of the old. Whether productions. originate in our own country, or are translated or reprinted from abroad; when they receive the sanction of our presses, and the approbation of the critics, and become licensed as literature, they have an introduction altogether too favorable, if they do not justify such distinguished notice. It is far better to approve works according to their merit, than to give them indiscriminately the stamp of genuine coin, and pass them into wide circulation. He who does this contributes to vitiate a just taste, and places on the same shelf with the most erudite disquisitions and refined classical literature, the works of such inferior authors as scarce survive their publication.

We cannot readily mislead the taste of scholars, but multitudes aiming at literary attainment may adopt models or embrace principles which come far short of those standard works which have already stood the test of centuries, and whose strong and well

rooted claims to universal admiration time will in vain endeavor to overthrow.

Many of our public papers have a department for literary noti ces, under which is arranged the titles, and in some instances sketches of the merits of the multifarious publications of the day. The bulk of our publications should be noticed as publications, without the prefix literary in any application, as many of them make no pretensions to literature, or if they do, they are so inaudible as not to be heard.

The taste of this day as it respects the multitude does not wish for pure literature. In general it desires narrative, travel, biog. raphy, or something new. It approves pictorial reading. It fastens its superficial attention upon almost any reading which does not seriously feed the mind, and call its powers into active and laborious exercise. While thousands of books are printed promotive of this vitiated and morbid taste, there is no reason why they should all without distinction be named literary productions.

There are instances in which useful books are written where the author neither aims at, nor expects to receive the reputation of a proficient in literature, yet these instances are perhaps fewer than we imagine. The Pilgrim's Progress, and the Saint's Rest, books of no pretension, come far more within the definition of literature than the writings of Bulwer, the beauty of whose style, and the decorations of whose characters, are so distinctly out of keeping with his subjects and the action of his heroes.

It is to be lamented that as a general thing public taste has become so depressed from the standards of Addison and Johnson, and all the writers of this distinguished school. It would serve to

stimulate the industry and excite the special attention of such as admire genuine literature, if we could bring the whole public to adopt a pure standard of taste. It is true that such is adopted by all our literary institutions, and inculcated as indispensable to a liberal education, yet many violate their instructions; while others seem never to have appreciated or understood their importance.

How much we should deplore that so great a proportion of the reading matter of this day designs more to amuse than to instruct; and in how many instances do such designs appeal to passions which had better be left in repose. Of this nature are those thousand foreign productions, and home born curiosities, called novels, so extensively sold in every corner of the United States. To give them wider circulation, newspapers reprint them freely and entire. The popularity of a newspaper in this day depends upon the stories or novels it contains, and this taste is constantly increasing. Not an editor hazards his popularity by reprinting the Spectator or Rambler; they contain too much moral for this age; and until some great revolution changes public opinion, and corrects public taste, this evil will remain uncorrected.

As a general thing men dislike advice or rebuke in any form, and are equally adverse to the task of thinking for themselves;