ligible screechings, in what was claimed to be a foreign tongue, though as uttered it was no earthly language, and to see moustached Signore Somebody, and dark-eyed Signorina Somebody-else, go into convulsions, before some thousand spectators, as if about to give up the ghost, in a great agony of tortured and torturing sound. And even they who had any little remains of heart and soul left, beneath the mountain-burden of conventionalism, had been compelled, by fear of losing caste with reputed people of taste, to affect little less extravagant raptures of admiration, that such unearthly, not to say "angelic" or "divine" notes, could be extorted from the human larynx. But when a gracious Providence, as if intent upon presenting anew, some tokens of its first perfect work, to a world that had forsworn their nature, as well as their God, permitted such people to hear human beings sing again as of old, "of mercy and of judgment," with notes, words and sentiments, that were all recognized at once to be their own language; that were to them the expression of emotions that they had deemed all unutterable; that "open new fountains in the human heart," as well as stirred the old; while thus wrought upon by the combined power of soul enkindled melody, and soul kindling truth, they felt themselves in too awful and holy a presence, to profane its sanctity by any riotous uproar of their own. They felt that they could call that "divine," with less appearance of blasphemy, since there was so much more in it of man as made in God's image, and not in the mould of fashion, or after the code of fantastic, though tyrant custom. Here was music with no pretensions to "high art." But it needed none; for it was nature, human nature. It was felt to be the outpourings of free, generous human hearts. They needed no newly coined, or foreign termin ology, to describe it. Its effect was its only just description. Precisely the same thing may be said of those soul stirring lyrics, that have occasionally found their way, from some source, into the public prints, within the last few years. It were useless labor to attempt to show them consistent or inconsistent, with rules, derived from any of the ancient or modern masters. Their effect upon intelligent,-nay, upon all minds, proves their inspiration. A single instance will sufficiently explain our meaning. One of these fugitive poems, the production, if we mistake not, of the late Thomas Hood, a few years since, fell under the notice of one, whose great mind also now sees in the vast vision of eternity. He was one of the most keen-sighted of all men, most eloquent, with nothing to adorn or give force to his eloquence, but the crystal clearness of his own thought. With sensibilities that were proof against all causes that were not in reality the most moving, with no taste for poetical composition, as such, he commenced reading the piece, consisting only of a few stanzas. It presented in its own vivid and pregnant manner, thoughts which he recognized at once to be things of his own deep and painful experience, and so overcome was he with his own emotions, that, though he repeatedly attempted, he could not for the time read the few stanzas through. Call the odd rhymes, and the irregular versification of Thomas Hood by what name the critic pleases; his lines or the lines of any other, which will produce such effects, upon such a mind, are poetry. And it is only in giving such vivid and touching expression, to just and true sentiments, that poetry is doing its office, is fulfilling its "mission." And the millions of the poor, the "unfortunate," the down-trodden in Britain, have reason to bless the memory of Thomas Hood, that, notwithstanding all his sess more than woman's tenderness, and childhood's innocence, and a prophet's inspiration, he should exhibit in his verses, a heart throbbing with pity for the pangs of any thing that is high enough in the scale of being to suffer, much more for the highest of God's creatures in this world, man; he should shrink with shuddering horror from the praise of successful crime, and he should speak of truth and righteousness, as one sent from God. God be thanked, that in this, our "free" America, we have at least one poet, who seems thus to have understood the proper use of the apparent trifling with the serious things of life, he did yet, in some instances, with a most awful and imploring earnestness, speak in the ears of the rich and mighty, in their behalf and they have to thank him, too, for the utterance of what, to their own breaking hearts, has been the great and growing agony of many years. And the future will show, that he and others, animated with still more of the same spirit of deep sympathy with suffering humanity, have not spoken or written in vain. Their "fugitive pieces' will find their way into the gorgeous mansion of the millionaire, the ancestral halls of the peer, and the pal-"gift and faculty divine." It would ace of the sovereign, where the presence of their authors would have been deemed a profanation. And they will enter there, not like the frowning and licentious minstrel of old, to smile, to flatter, and to sing of love; but to cry, like the voice, thought to have been heard by the conscience-smitten Macbeth, to the fair lady, reclining listlessly on the silken divan, and to the proud lord, whose untasked mind is weary with the burden of finding its own diversion; "sleep no more, for the haggard hand of cold and hungering poverty, murders the sleep of groaning millions. The toilers in garrets, in cellars, in mud hovels, fever smitten and hunger-mad, sleep not. Lean famine, provoked and almost necessitated crime and despairing suicide, sleep not. How canst thou?" Hood's " Song of the Shirt" is still thus speaking, though its author is dead. And it is the appropriate office of poetry, thus to give utterance to the deep woe of the dumb millions, who can only sigh and weep in expression of their misery. It is its office, like the Gospel, to speak for the poor, the heartbroken, the comfortless, and not simply, to pander to the luxuries and vices of those to whom truth is ever a stern and rebuking messenger. If the poet, as is claimed for him, pos not be strange, however, if many readers among his own countrymen need be told that such a man lives, that his name is JOHN G. WHittier. It is very certain that many readers of high-wrought fiction, many weepers over unreal sorrows, many sympathizers with ideal suffering, many haters of imaginary monsters, many fair singers of songs conceived in the prurient brain of the profligate, have never known with what earnest and soul-kindling words, this qui et man of peace has poured out his own deep and deploring commiseration of their great sorrow, into whose souls the torturing iron of bondage has been long and pestilently driven. Certain it is that many such readers have never learned to sympathise with this Friend poet, in the lofty and defiant indignation, with which he has hurled his just and fiery rebuke, in the face of the foul spirit of sect, and selfishness, and iron-hearted wrong. And yet, as the world goes, it is no very strange thing that Whittier's Poems, which are but the written emotions of a most generous and lofty soul, should seldom find their way, in embossed covers and embellished leaves, to the parlor table or the drawing room cabinet. For it is for the most part, artificial, affected emotion, that is studied, and practiced, and exhibited there; not that which comes, bursting like a fire fountain, from a heart thrilling with sympathy for all that is nearest and deepest, and most actual in human woe. Many a gentle mother, who listens with tears to her daughter at her piano, singing the Peri's "Farewell to Araby's daughter," or a legend of some hopeless maiden repining in unrequited love, centuries ago, amid the loathed luxuries of feudal halls, in Andalusia or old Castile, would be ashamed to have that same adored child of hers, learn and sing in the presence of her visitors, "The Farewell of a Virginia slave mother to her daughters, sold into southern bondage." And not because the latter is wanting in poetical sentiment, or in equally touching and beautiful expression. The difference is, that the one is the cold, though glittering frost-work of fiction, while the other is near, present, conscience-smiting truth. Therefore it is, that the one must be received with ecstacies of admiration, while the other must be proscribed and exiled from the realm where custom, and prejudice, and self-styled respectability, hold their tyrant sway. The despairing wail of the slave mother pierces the heart to the depth where the sense of duty dwells-the ballad reaches no farther than the nervous, hysterical region of sentiment. The former rouses emotion, which struggles to vent itself, in noble and benevolent action. The latter excites feeling, only to send it abroad in listless dissipation over far remote time, and distance, and uncertainty; while the starving poor shiver in "un tended raggedness" within hearing of that song, and the weary bondman wears his chain in the same land, with his groans unheeded and his wrongs unredressed. And yet the Farewell of the Virginian mother, and many similar productions of the same writer, are not without their power to move, even such hearts as have long been well nigh insensible to all just and generous feeling. We know nothing of the physical mold of this J. G. Whittier; but if he can speak his poems, breathing into the delivery the same living fire which is embodied in them, and if he will do it, even in the strongholds of conventionalism, in the hearing of "brave men and fair women," the former may restrain their indignation at the wrong upon which he pours his scathing reproof, and the latter may forbid their tears to flow for the suffering which he commiserates, if they can. And here we apply one of the surest tests of the genuineness of all poetical composition. It should be such that it can be spoken, and that when well spoken, its successive thoughts, its unfolding meaning, will tell upon the mind of the hearer, like each well aimed shot of the cannonier, against a wall that has already been shaken, and is falling, stone by stone. Poetry, if it be worthy of the name, loses more than half of its power when deprived of the accompaniment of the voice. The poet even now is under license to speak of himself as a singer, and in the olden time, when his profession and even the present productions in his art received their character, he did actually deliver, not mumble, and mouth, and barbarize, under the pretence of singing his own verse. And for any one in these days aspiring to the name of poet, to write so obscurely, or with sentiments appealing so little to actual convictions and experience in the human heart, as that his lines cannot be rendered doubly effective by delivery, is for him to show himself unfit for his profession. And to attempt to appreciate the full force of the most true and essential poetry, by only glancing the eye silently over the page whereon it is inscribed, is like attempting to feel the power and beauty of the Oratorio of the Messiah, or of the Creation, by reading its notes silently. He who is already a master, may do omething near this, even in music. He can ascertain what emotion the piece is fitted to awaken, but he must hear it, in order that that emotion may be aroused to any thing like its full strength even in his own mind. And so it is with poetry. The poem which is so refined, or so obscure, or so little within the range of human thought, as that it can not be read aloud, and be rendered doubly impressive by such reading, is too much like the music which is so ethereal, or so much the "phantasm of sound," as that it can not be exhibited in actual performance, but must dissolve and die from rude contact with instruments, or the organs of the human voice. Notwithstanding the judgment of some crit ics, whose vocabulary for the description of nonentities is well nigh unlimited and overwhelming, we must believe that such music and such poetry, are as yet unwritten. At any rate, there is none of either in this little volume, entitled, "Voices of Freedom." But of real melody, vigorous, stirring thought, such as leads even the silent reader, who has any heart in him, to spring involuntarily erect, and set himself in the attitude and act of delivery, there is much. And we think it would do good to some grave and reverend gentlemen, who seem to have learned no other method of pronouncing rythmetical lines, than a certain "inarticulate slumberous mumblement," to read the book through aloud, and to endeavor to infuse into their own tones and enunciation, some little of the life, soul, and energy, which breathe and burn in the poems themselves. The author also deserves much praise for his happy choice of language. And very much in this lies the secret of his great strength-of the fact that his poems can be read, and delivered so effectively. makes use of none but vigorous, intelligible, truth-telling words. They seem to have been chosen, not sim ply to complete a stanza, or to give an appearance of depth and mystery to the meaning, or to match a rhyme, but because they carry onward, resistlessly, the fire and impetuosity of the thought. They do not seem to have been culled out from dictionaries, or gathered up from ancient ballad readings, or to have received their collocation and shades of meaning from the idioms of a foreign language. They seem to the reader, rather to have been the result of a first and instinctive choice from the language that is now living in the heart, and speaking on the tongue, of the great Saxon people; and consequently, they carry their meaning to the heart. There are no expressions here, fitted only to play in misty gyration around the region of fancy or conjecture. And consequently, whatever the world may say, justly or unjustly, of these poems, their author will never need to raise that common, deprecatory cry of muddy-brained writers, writhing under criticism, they are not understood.' Would that the poets of coming generations would take example in this, as well as some other respects, from "Friend" Whittier. Surely, the last half century has furnished the world with "cloud. land" and "dream-land" enough, to practice speculation and metaphysical knight-errantry upon, for all time to come. Would that hereafter, authors would spare us the necessity of witnessing the vain effort of their minds to bring forth thoughts which they deem too great for expression-that they would learn, in the third heaven of their own fancy, the unspeakable visions and voices which they struggle, all ineffectually, to report to us, poor inhabitants of this plain matter-of-fact world. There is another, far more important, particular in which we would give this author our most decided He commendation. His sympathies are with the age in which he lives, for the human beings that are living, toiling, suffering, sinning, around him. He does not seem to have been possessed by that most common, yet most mistaken notion of poets, that in order to write what shall live after them, they must keep themselves aloof from the interests, the sentiments and the actual, every day life, of their own time. They think they must vindicate their claim to the name of prophet, or bard, by ever reaching forth, with anxious and empty grasping, for the unseen, the unattained, "the everlasting to be that hath been." And thus when the future becomes the present, and they are numbered with the genera tions of the past, their works shall still live, and exert a controlling influence over the thoughts, and the more spiritual life, of the generations succeeding. Vain dreamers! Could they even speak of the future with oracular authority; of what worth, would their imperfect and enigmatical responses be, to an age which can look on the reality? And besides, are not the most en grossing subjects of thought and feeling among all men, few in number, and similar in character? And will not the poet best vindicate his title to immortality, by the variety, vigor, or power, of his exhibition of them? It is much the same thing in its most essential particulars, to live this life of ours, in all times. And he who can draw no poetry from human life, much as it can be observed and is experienced wherever men are, such as it must be with all its joys and sorrows and infinite responsibilities, is no poet. If then, any would both acquire fame, and accomplish good to man, by this species of writing, and thus be read and revered in other times, let them imbue their verse with the growing spirit, the toiling, struggling life, of their own age. So have the sons of fame done in all the past. Those that are read, and will be read, by generations to come, are those that spoke most truthfully of their own time. What if they VOL. VI. 9 had thought it unfitting that they should so write as to be read and understood by their cotemporaries, would they be read by us? Is not the present momentarily becoming the past, and as distance throws its enchantment over its wide abyss of forgetfulness and uncertainty, will it not become, in the estimate of ages yet to succeed, far more the region of poetry, the haunt of imagination, the golden realm of ideal beauty, than their own practical, mechanical present? And what names shall then be more surely preserved, from the all engulfing abyss of the past, than those, who have enshrined in their clear and glowing thoughts, the most vivid and truthful representation of that admired and studied period. And above all, if it shall be, as we trust in God and in truth it shall, that at some future time, the yoke of bondage shall be lifted from human limbs and human souls; the narrow and covetous spirit of sect, and creed, and all uncharitableness, shall lose its predominant sway, and whatever is most just, and true, and godlike, in principle and in action, shall be most admired and applauded; whose names will then be gathered out from the dark and selfish past, to be cherished in the most honored remembrance, if not those, who, in the midst of the most hollow pretension, heartlessness and gross iniquity, spoke with the most earnest and thrilling words, in rebuke of wrong, in defense of the helpless, in support of all that is even most true, and real and lasting? And if this shall really be the principle, upon which distant posterity will revere or condemn those who have gone before them, then certainly our author has a fair prospect of receiving much of their honor, and what is more, if it come from the good, much of their gratitude. These poems deserve commendation also, because they not only sympathize with the age in which |