the meaning of these technical words the sole effect to them is through an indistinct idea of the meaning, just enough to hold the mind interested, joined with a rich flow of language whose words and cadences had their birth in the musical element that very heaven of the fancy, the region of pure RAPTURE, which lies above the plain of things, and whick Music alone can reach. We might multiply instances out of the poets, from Chaucer and Spenser, who abound in them, down to the best of our own time and country. Marvell, perchance, caught the lyric power from him whom he called friend; Collins was a sweet singer; Gray called the Eolian lyre to awake, and under his hand it did awake. Nearer us we have Campbell, Wordsworth, and one of the greatest natural masters of musical effect, if Scotchmen tell us truly, Burns ; the power of his broad Scotch cannot be properly estimated by any but his countrymen; but there is one little change of a word in Tam O'Shanter which shows the genius: "Or, like the rainbow's lovely form, Who could have taught him to use that almost obsolete word with such power? For it really sets the whole line quivering like a flash of lightning. Coleridge's Kubla Khan is the first instance, that we are aware of, in which an attempt is made by an assumed, yet not unnatural, indistinctness of meaning, to portray a phase of feeling too subtle and evanescent to be touched with definites. About his time, the same thing was done by Beethoven in music; among his trifles, bagatelles," as they are rightly named, for the piano, are some which begin sanely and run off into actual wildness; in his last symphony, and in some of his posthumous works, he is thought to have ventured too far unintentionally. In painting, too, the notion of aiming at only a single effect has arisen, and is a favorite one with a numerous class of artists. And in literature, we have, at last, Poe, who writes poems that move us deeply, but in which the meaning is only hinted at, and even that sometimes so obscurely that it is impossible to find out an unbroken connection; but there is always an evident design and an extremely artistic construction. And to counterbalance him, we have, as before observed, writers, and their name is legion, whose minds appear to have lost the power of sequent thought, whose writing is bald, unjointed, without form, and void. Between all such as these (a portion of whom even declined, as we have seen, to reimburse him for the funeral expenses of his friend Mr. D.,) and Poe, there was, necessarily, a wide gulf. Poe's mind, though it would have to do with only the fragilest ideas, and though ever grasping, and never comprehensive, yet worked beautifully within its range, while it remained unbroken. When he chose, there is no writer who ever had a more perfect command of his native style, or could pursue a flight of subtle thoughts more closely and rapidly. The minuteness of his description never wearies. His taste, also, was like the tunica conjunctiva of the eye, sensitive to the least motes; we never know, in the "Gold Bug," whether the scarabeus is a supernatural insect or only a mechanical contrivance; we never know who sent the Raven from "the Night's Plutonian Shore!" it would have been less mysterious in either case if we had been told. In some of his later things we see where his physical strength was failing him, and his mental power getting enfeebled through แ too much conceiving;" we see it, as we can see it, in a greater or less degree, in the working of all minds which are or have been overwrought. But even in these things-even in Eureka-to read is like wandering through the ruins of a fair city that has been pillaged by barbarians; there are sacred things wantonly mutilated, beautiful images broken and scattered, and yet still enough left to show the original structure. What rank Poe is to take in the catalogue of our poets, Time will assign him, in the face of all that might be urged by the most sagacious reviewer. But as Time never tells his secrets till they are found out, we may be excused for offering an opinion. That Poe will long be considered, as he is now, a poet of singular genius, there can be no question. What he attempted, had never been attempted before; and he succeeded in it. He wrote poems addressed to the feelings, wherein the meaning is designedly vague and subordinate. As long as our language retains its present shape and inflection, we think the musical effects of these poems will be felt and acknowledged. But when the next change comes over it-and that might be very soon, by the sudden uprising of a great poet, with a new song in his mouth, they will be forgotten. For they have no power to stay change. Their indistinctness does not arise, like the indistinctness of Milton and Shakspeare, from the reader's ignorance, and hence there is nothing in them to keep them forever in the world's eye; no learning, nor any powerful burden of true philosophy to overawe the majority who have no perception of poetic beauty. Hence, also, though Poe succeeded, marvellously succeeded, yet we cannot find it in our heart to wish what he accomplished ever to be undertaken again. We would prefer to keep the old lines distinct; to have neither poetry or music, the brother or the sister, infringe upon each other's domain. The mind is never permanently satisfied with single effects; when the first glow has passed, we look deeper, and if there is no fuel the fire goes down. Hence, also, again, though we now feel the excellence of Poe so strongly, it is with a sort of misgiving that we may outgrow or become indifferent to him hereafter. We will quote one or two of his pieces, which may be new to our readers, to illustrate an observation upon some of his peculiarities of construction. The following has much of the form and effect of a wild rondo in music : "6 DREAM-LAND. By a route obscure and lonely, From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Bottomless vales and boundless floods, Into seas without a shore; By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily,— By the mountains-near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,By the grey woods,-by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp,By the dismal tarns and pools Where dwell the Ghouls,- But the traveller, travelling through it, By a route obscure and lonely, The repetition with which the third stanza, or strophe, commences, "By the lakes that thus outspread," &c., is one of Poe's obvious peculiarities. It occurs in every stanza of the Raven, &c. "Eagerly I wished the morrow;-vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." The same repetition makes "Ululume" nearly twice as long as it would be without it : "The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crisped and sere: feeling. A fine example of it is suggested by Wordsworth from the song of Deborah, "At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, there he fell down dead." There is some reason for supposing that this form is peculiarly suited to the melody of our language. For it is so uniform a peculiarity of all ancient English tunes to commence the second strain with a repetition of the last phrase of the first, that they may be as readily distinguished by it as Scottish or Irish tunes by their character istics. The tune of Chevy Chase (always sung, or rather murdered, by the gravedigger in Hamlet) has this form; another, the words of which begin, "When I was bound apprentice in famous Linconshire," &c., is perhaps a more familiar instance.* The third stanza of Dream-Land is but an imitation in language of a new strain in melody. style and construction. But beyond and This is the secret of his peculiarities of above all this there was a soul of poetry in him. As we glance over these volumes to satisfy ourself that we have said all we intended, (for even this article, gentle reader, is constructed " on a plan,") there are two short things which it would be unjust not to quote. The first is less peculiar in Where this repetition is at shorter inter-structure than most of his pieces, but it is vals, and with variations, as in Ululume full of exquisite fancy:passim, it bears a curious analogy to the structure of the phrases in very many of Beethoven's melodies. One little point is taken up, repeated, augmented, varied, and so beaten upon the brain with the force of the most intense passion. We think of no instance likely to be known to the general reader; the opening to the andante of the first symphony may be remembered by some. But, indeed, this repetition, growing out of "imitation," runs through all music, and is at once the symmetry of its movement and the life of its expression. Poe has a singular paragraph upon music which is worth quoting in this connection: "The perception of pleasure in the equality of sounds is the principle of Music. Unpractised ears can appreciate only simple equalities, such as are found in ballad airs. While comparing one simple sound with another they are too much occupied to be capable of comparing the equality subsisting between these two simple sounds, taken conjointly, and two other similar simple sounds taken conjointly. Practised ears, on the other hand, appreciate both equalities at the same instant-although it is absurd to suppose that both are heard at the same instant. One is heard and appreciated from itself: the other is heard by the memory; and the instant glides into and is confounded with the secondary In this the second strain only reverses the phrases of the trt; thus: 1, 2,-2, 1. "THE HAUNTED PALACE. By good angels tenanted, Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair! Banners yellow, glorious, golden, And every gentle air that dallied, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, Through two luminous windows, saw To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. And all with pearl and ruby glowing A troop of echoes, whose sweet duty In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. And round about his home the glory Of the old time entombed. And travellers, now, within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see To a discordant melody, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh-but smile no more." As we write these lines a review of Poe lies before us, which we were pained to see, and in which the writer says he has been led to believe Poe "mainly destitute of moral and religious principle," and "certain it is that the most careful student of his works will search in them vainly for elevated and generous sentiment." We cannot see any reason in these volumes for so harsh an opinion; and we feel very sure the world will not, either. As to sentiment, it was not Poe's province to deal in sentiment; but surely he could give expression to elevated emotion. As to his At morn-at noon-at twilight dimMaria! thou hast heard my hymn! In joy and woe-in good and illMother of God, be with me still! When the hours flew lightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast Darkly my Present and my Past, Let my Future radiant shine With sweet hopes of thee and thine!" Feb. 11, 1850. G. W. P. CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY. THE interests of the State are becoming daily more involved in the great subject of Slavery. Prominent political questions that have served hitherto to distinguish parties, seem to have lost all their vitality, and are either not heard of at all, or are merely introduced as affairs of form, and are then postponed to some future season of leisure and tranquillity. In truth, the old party lines, that were marked out by economical principles, have, to a great extent, been erased, and a new line, one of the most dangerous that could possibly be formed, is taking their place. The country has been accustomed to see men divided on points of general legislation; now they are separating on geographical boundaries. The Slave States are organizing a firm, united, compact opposition to the Free. It is a great Southern interest no less than a political principle, opposed to a moral principle asserted where slavery does not exist. On the one hand, human bondage is denounced as the most intolerable of all evils, inconsistent with the political axioms of our government, with the doctrines of the people, with the common rights of humanity, with the opinions of the enlightened world, and with Christian morality and religion, and, therefore, while it must be permitted where it already is established, its exclusion from territories that are yet free from it is believed to be demanded by every benevolent consideration, and to be sanctioned by the law and by precedent. The South replies to such reasons by reasons of a more practical kind. She is willing to admit, that taking a merely moral view of the question, bondage is a wrong to the slave, but that in effect it is not half so bad as it is commonly represented. She alleges that if it were abolished, the actual condition of the negro would be rendered far worse than it is at present, while the whites would inevitably be ruined. The Wilmot Proviso, or any similar measure, although it does not pretend to meddle with slavery in States already established, would do a great injustice to the South, both by denying to her equal constitutional privileges, and by the fatal moral effects that such legislation would produce among the slave population as well as among the free. She declares that slavery was one of the essential conditions of the country when the Union was organized, that its political rights were at that time acknowledged, and that, under the constitution, every territorial acquisition that the nation may make, belongs as fully to the people owning slaves as to those who are horror-struck at such an enormity. She adds, with them rest all the evils-on their heads be the guilt. They are willing to take all the responsibility-all they desire, and which they are resolved to contend for to the last extremity, are equal legal privileges to go where they choose with their possessions. We shall endeavor to furnish in a condensed form, such a view of this subject as can be obtained from the Congressional manifestations within the last month. In answer to a call made by the House of Representatives for information respecting the new territories, the President transmitted to that body, on the 21st of January, a special Message, which he begins by saying, that in coming into office and finding the military commandant of the department of California exercising the functions of a civil governor, he had thought it best not to disturb the arrangement that had been made by his predecessor, until Congress should take some action on the subject. With a view to the faithful execution of the treaty, so far as lay in the power of the Executive, and to enable Congress to act at the present session, with as full knowledge and as little difficulty as possible, on all matters of interest in those territories, he sent the Honorable Thomas Butler King, as bearer of despatches to California, and certain officers to California and New Mexico. He proceeds to say: "I did not hesitate to express to the people of those Territories my desire that each Territory should, if prepared to comply with the requisitions of the constitution of the United States, form a plan of a State constitution, and submit the same to Congress, with a prayer for admission into the Union as a State; but I did not anticipate, suggest, or authorize the establishment of any such government without the assent of Congress, nor did I authorize any government agent or officer to interfere with or exercise any influence or control over the election of delegates, or over any convention, in making or modifying their domestic institutions, or any of the provisions of their proposed consti |