A life celestial here, on earth,-e'en here! What canst thou give for this, and call it dear? O, it is past all count! Pray, throw thee by Thy tables; trust the heart; the tables lie. Let not thy fresh soul wither in its spring. Water its tender shoots, and they shall bring Shelter to age. Then sit and think how blest Have been thy days, thank God, and take thy

rest.

Sell not thy heart for gold, then, not for lands; 'Tis richer far than all Pactolus' sands; And where on earth would run the stream to lave

The curse away, and thy starved soul to save?

We have often thought that our women, whose duty it is to be the comforters and preservers of the race, ought to reverence above all other men, a true Anglo-Saxon poet; we do not mean a mere verse maker, but one who is a poet in his whole being. For such as he are the great conservators of the family; as women give shape and character to our bodies, so do the poets mould and direct our souls; if our women were to turn untrue, then in a few generations we should grow loutish, uncouth, French-like; and should finally dwindle away as other nations have done. So, if we had no poets to stand up for the old heroism, the mean souls would get the upper hand, and the result would be that we should have to fight over again with the sword, for all that has been gained through the long triumphs of the noble qualities of our blood. Through the hearts of all true souls runs this essence of the poet's being, this ineradicable love of beauty, this firm integrity and confidence in men and women; the air about them is clear, the sky blue above, and all the flowers that beguile our way through this vale of tears, spring up around them-lover's trust, household affections, the beauty of nature, friendship, mutual reliance among men in the affairs of life, respect for age, reverence for law, faith in God.

"Nay, look on Nature's face, and find Kind, gentle graces, thoughts to raise The tired spirit, hope and praise.

O, kind to me, in darkest hour She led me forth, with gentle power, From lonely thought, from sad unrest, To peace of mind, and to her breast The son, who always loved her, pressed; Called up the moon to cheer me; laid Its silver light on bank and glade,

And bade it throw mysterious beams
O'er ice-clad hill, which steely gleams
Sent back, a knight who took his rest,
His burnished shield above his breast.
The fence of long, rough rails, that went
O'er trackless snows, a beauty lent;
Glittered each cold and icy bar
Beneath the moon, like shafts of war.
And there a lovely tracery

Of branch and twig that naked tree
Of shadows soft and dim has wove,
And spread so gently, that above
The pure white snow it seems to float
Lighter than that celestial boat,
The silver-beaked moon, on air,—
Lighter than feathery gossamer;
It held from thing so saintly clear.
As if its darkening touch, through fear,

Thus Nature threw her beauties round me; Thus from the gloom in which she found me, She won me by her simple graces, She wooed me with her happy faces.

There is a delightful music in this. The "Pleasure Boat" with its " crinkling mast," and the "thresher's flail," is another still livelier strain, yet with a touch of sadness.

The "Little Beach Bird" is just one of those memory-haunting things, like Bryant's "Water-fowl." The "Clump of Daisies" has the true Herrick melody. The "Early Spring Brook" is one of those sad, low chants peculiar to Dana; it is less Husband and Wife's Grave," but it is lofty than the "Dying Raven," or the breathed from the same suffering, patient spirit. It seems a sacrilege to quote a line of it. Most of those minor pieces have been long familiarized to the popular ear through school reading books, and various Griswoldian publications.

from the Idle Man, Tom Thornton, EdWe now come to the tales and essays ward and Mary, Paul Felton, and The Son. Tom Thornton is full of that which Dana only could have written; the weak mother, the passionate father-all the characters are analyzed and their thoughts and motives explained while they are developed; yet as a whole this story has always seemed to us heavy-because, perhaps, it is too gloomy, too sadly life-like, and makes us think too much. Edward and Mary is an old favorthe love scenes in it are as refined, delicate, and touching as any that ever were written; but we used to think, and still do, that the mere loss of fortune should never have occasioned the separation.

ite;

"Better is a dinner of herbs"—and young men and women ought never to marry if they are afraid to take each other "for better or worse." A husband one loves is worth the sacrifice of a piano or a shawl; and to toil for such a young lady as Mary would be pleasanter than to be waited on by Aladdin's genii-at least so some school-boys feel when they read this tale.

Paul Felton is justly considered the best of the stories, and one of the most, if not the most, remarkable production of Dana's genius. It is a kind of Puritan Hamlet, in developing a character wrought upon to insanity, by allowing us to follow his reflections: we mean, that the peculiar self-tormenting habit of the hero is like what is forced upon sensitive natures by the old New England system. When we remarked, above, that Dana seemed to have struggled through the mental diseases entailed upon New England, we had reference to this tale particularly, though we can trace the same in all his other writings. It would be easy, though hardly proper in this review, to show how it is that the old religious austerity tended directly to separate men into vain, spiritually proud, selfdeceived, or hypocrites, and, on the other hand, into self-reproachers, or unbelievers, according to temperament. The doctrines of the unpardonable sin, the damnation of infants, the joy of the righteous in contemplating the fate of the impenitent, etc., etc., together with the cold family discipline, transmitted from the days of the Salem bonfires; they who ever had the experience of being thrown suddenly from those icy haunts of superstition into the common light of day; who have emerged from a youth spent under the shadow of Hopkinsianism (let the reader who never saw the word before, imagine anything that inspires horror to stand in place of it,) to a manhood that must be wasted in the thick of city life-they only can know what New England education in other days has transmitted to the minds of her children. It has made some morbidly reflective; some it has hardened; the weaker it has driven to vague speculation: we do not refer to the religious effect wholly, but to the general influence of the old system on the mind.

Paul Felton's disease is more common in New England than elsewhere. Had he

been a clergyman he would have kept a diary, which would have resembled those Dana has a review of in the second volume. We cannot fancy that one educated in respectable society in England, or here in New York, can fully comprehend the character. They may congratulate themselves upon their inability, while we may indulge a gratitude to Dana for having thought so much for us that we can better distinguish the light from the darkness, in the recesses of consciousness.

Suspicion haunts other than guilty minds. To be thrown among the hard and minutely speculative, excites in one a terrible vigilance. From being questioned and “ speered" at on account of his individuality, he begins to examine this individuality himself, and if he incline to a modest opinion of himself, the chance is that he will argue himself into a condition as wretched as poor Paul's. Woe to his peace when once the current sets that way! For the rest of his life he must either dare everything at every step, or wear himself out in attempting to discriminate. In spite of the everrecurring first view, and in spite of repeated experience, he must boldly take for his motto, "every body likes me," and walk on with an assumed unconcern, doing his work as well as he is able, with this dread burden upon his spirits bearing him down to the gates of death. He must live in a secondary nature, his original, free nature having become so weakened by the intolerable pressure from without, that he must forever prop it up and sustain it with the energy of despair. How grateful must such spirits be to a poet like Dana, who sings with no feeble voice, as in the passage we have quoted, "Up from the dust!"-all compacted of resolution, and in faith invincible!

When we speak of the pain the minutely speculative inflict upon a frank and sensitive spirit, we have in our mind's eye a life in Boston. There they go about like the Athenians of old, inquiring for new things and new religions. It would be a curious inquiry, the annual number of novelties in faith which that city produces. There all that the rest of the world has gone over and considered settled is forever agitated. There all the first principles and causes, elsewhere taken for granted, are forever talked over and argued upon. There are

planted the roots of things, and the inhabitants are forever taking them up and resetting them, and fertilizing them in the usual modes. There also a man shall hear the points of his character told him twenty times a day, and be inquired of by his friends concerning theirs. There, every man, whether in the intercourse of business or domestic society, is trying to seem good; better, we should say, than his neighbor. There every one thinks that in what every other one observes, more is meant than meets the ear." There a friend shall tell you, "You say this, because you fancy I said that, because you said the other," or, "You make this remark in order to discover whether I was not about to question if you did not imply more than said in what you you remarked previously."

Imagine such a home for a sensitive man! Happy will such a one be if he fall into no sadder "musings" than the following:

"To the man of fine feeling, and deep and delicate and creative thought, there is nothing in nature which appears only as so much substance and form, nor any connections in life which do not reach beyond their immediate and obvious purposes. Our attachments to each other are not felt by him merely as habits of the mind given to it by the custom of life; nor does he hold them to be only as the goods of this world, and the loss of them as merely turning him forth an outcast from the social state; but they are a part of his joyous being, and to have them torn from him is taking from his very nature.

"Life, indeed, with him, in all its connections and concerns, has an ideal and spiritual character which, while it loses nothing of the definiteness of reality is ever suggesting thoughts, taking new relations, and peopling and giving action to the imagination. All that the eye falls upon and all that touches the heart run off into airy distance, and the regions into which the sight stretches are alive and bright and beautiful with countless shapings and fair hues of the gladdened fancy. From kind acts and gentle words and fond looks there spring hosts many and glorious as Milton's angels; and heavenly deeds are done, and unearthly voices heard, and forms and faces, graceful and lovely as Uriel's, are seen in the noonday sun. What would only have given pleasure for the time to another, or, at most, be now and then called up in his memory, in the man of feeling and imagination lays by its particular and short-lived and irregular nature, and puts on the garments of spiritual beings, and takes the everlasting nature of the soul. The

ordinary acts which spring from the good-will of social life take up their dwelling within him and mingle with his sentiment, forming a little society in his mind, going on in harmony bors, and tasteful pursuits. They undergo a with its generous enterprises, its friendly lachange, becoming a portion of him, making a part of his secret joy and melancholy, and wandering at large among his far-off thoughts. All that his mind falls in with, it sweeps along in its deep, and swift, and continuous flow, and bears onward with the multitude that fills its shoreless and living sea. So universal is this operation in such a man, and so instantly does it act upon whatever he is concerned about, that a double process is going on within him, and he lives, as it were, a twofold life. Is he, for instance, talking with you about a Northwest Passage, he is looking far off at the ice-islands, with their turreted castles and fairy towns, or at the penguin, at the southern pole, pecking the rotting seaweed on which she has lighted, or he is listening to her distant and lonely cry within the cold and barren tracts of ice,-yet all the while he reasons as ingeniously and wisely as you. His attachments do not grow about a changeless and tiring object; but be it filial reverence, Abraham is seen sitting at the door of his tent, and the earth is one green pasture for flocks and herds; or be it love, she who is dear to him is seen in a thousand imaginary changes of sitution, and new incidents are happening, delighting his mind with all the distinctness and sincerity of truth. So that while he is in the midst of men, and doing his part in the affairs of the world, his spirit has called up a fairy vision, and he is walking in a lovely dream. It is round about him in his sorrows for a consolation; and out of the gloom of his afflic tion he looks forth upon an horizon touched with a gentle morning twilight, and growing brighter to his gaze. Through pain and poverty and the world's neglect, when men look cold upon him and his friends are gone, he has where to rest a tired spirit that others know not of, and healings for a wounded mind which others can never feel.

"And who is of so hard a nature that he would deny him these? If there are assuagings for his spirit which are never ministered to other men, it has tortures and griefs and a fearful melancholy which need them more. He brought into the world passions deep and strong, senses tremulous and thrilling at every touch, feelings delicate and shy, yet affectionate and warm, and an ardent and romantic mind. He has dwelt upon the refinements and virtues of our nature, till they have almost become beauties sensible to the mortal eye, and to worship them he has thought could hardly be idolatry.

"And what does he find in the world? Perhaps, in all the multitude, he meets a mind or

two which answer to his own; but through the crowd, where he looks for the free play of noble passions, he finds men eager after gain or vulgar distinctions, hardening the heart with avarice, or making it proud and reckless with ambition. There is so little of nature and sincerity, of ardor and sentiment of character, such a dulness of perception, such a want of that enthusiasm for all that is great and lovely and true, (which, while it makes us forgetful of ourselves, brings with it our highest enjoyments,) such an offensive show and talk of factitious sensibility, that the current of his feelings is checked; he turns away depressed and disappointed, and becomes shut up in himself; and he, whose mind is all emotion, and who loves with a depth of feeling that few have ever sounded, is pointed at, as he stands aloof from men, as a creature cold, selfish, and reserved."

But the world is not so utterly hard with such spirits that they have no where but within to look for consolation. (Wc beg pardon of both author and reader for thus garbling this exquisite essay :)

"And there are beautiful souls, too, in the world, to hold kindred with a man of a feeling and refined mind: and there are delicate and warm and simple affections, that now and then meet him on his way, and enter silently into his heart, like blessings. Here and there, on the road, go with him for a time some who call to mind the images of his soul,—a voice, or a look, is a remembrancer of past visions, and breaks out upon him like openings through the clouds; and the distant beings of his imagination seem walking by his side, and the changing and unsubstantial creatures of the brain put on body and life. In such moments his fancies are turned to realities, and over the real the lights of his mind shift and play; his imagination shines out warm upon it, and it changes, and takes the airiness of fairy life.

Religion, to such a one, has thoughts and visions and sensations tinged, as it were, with a brighter light than falls on other men. The love and reverence of the Creator make their abode in his imagination, and he gathers about

them earth and air and ideal worlds. His heart is made glad with the perfectness in the works of God, when he considers that even of the multitude of things that are growing up and decaying, and of those which have come and gone, on which the eye of man has never rested, each was as fair and complete as if made to live forever for our instruction and delight.

Freedom and order, and beauty and grandeur are in accordance in his mind, and give largeness and height to his thoughts; he moves among the bright clouds; he wanders away into the measureless depths of the stars,

and is touched by the fire with which God has lighted them. All that is made partakes of the eternal, and religion becomes a perpetual delight."

In this short piece, which is an unique in our literature, and for refinement of style and beauty of thought, unapproached by any prose composition of its length, the poet has unconsciously drawn a portrait of himself, as he appears in all his writings, "the man of fine feeling, and deep, and delicate, and creative thought." In the extracts we have given, the flow of thought is so broken that the reader will not be able, probably, to lose himself sufficiently in the style to be enough unconscious of its rhetoric to appreciate its fullness and poetic beauty; nor will he be able to judge rightly of it from a hurried reading of the whole essay; it is a piece to be read and re-read, and never forgotten.

We have now reached the second volume of Mr. Dana's book, the contents of which may be considered quite new to our public, as they consist mainly of articles which now for the first time appear collected out of the confined circulation of sundry extinct magazines. It would be pleasant to converse about them, and quote from them here and there to give them such an introduction to our readers as would induce them to extend the acquaintance; and we might do so as well to their gratification as our own, we think, but for the vulgar obstacles of time and space. As it is, we must content ourselves with little more than an enumeration of their titles; some of them are reviews, and the idea of reviewing reviews puzzles the

reason.

The first, "Old Times," from the North American Review for 1817, is an essay in its author's earlier and more careful style, reflective and poetic, like the one from which we have quoted above. It is a beautiful, tender expression of the reverent love of the past which all of us, even in these hurry skurry-times, we hope, feel in turning our minds back to the days of youth, and which is with Dana a characteristic instinct. "The Past and Present,' "" from the American Quarterly Observer for and one which it would be well that no 1833, is an essay of a very different caste, reader should form an opinion of, for or against, till he is sure he fully compre