I am subject to another's will, and can
Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her!

all its troubles-its phases of whatsoever form, have become distilled into an holy incense, rising ever from your fireside, an offering to your household gods.

The fire is warm as ever; what length of heat in this hard burning anthracite! It has scarce sunk Your dreams of reputation, your swift deteryet to the second bar of the grate, though the termination, your impulsive pride, your deep utclock upon the church-tower has tolled eleven. tered vows to win a name, have all sobered into Aye, mused I, gaily-such heart does not grow affection—have all blended into that glow of feelfaint, it does not spend itself in idle puffs of blaze, ing, which finds its centre, and hope, and joy in it does not become chilly with the passing years, HOME. From my soul I pity the man, whose but gains and grows in strength, and heat, until soul does not leap at the mere utterance of that the fire of life, is covered over with the ashes of death. Strong or hot as it may be at the first, it A home!-it is the bright, blessed adorable loses nothing. It may not indeed, as time ad- phantom which sits highest on the sunny horivances, throw out, like the coal-fire, when new-zon that girdeth Life! When shall it be reachlit, jets of blue sparkling flame; it may not con- ed? When shall it cease to be a glittering daytinue to bubble, and gush like a fountain at its dream, and become fully and fairly yours? source, but it will become a strong river of flowing charities.

name.

It is not the house, though that may have its charms;-nor the fields carefully tilled, and Clitumnus breaks from under the Tuscan streaked with your own foot-paths;-nor the mountains, almost a flood; on a glorious spring trees, though their shadow be to you like that of day I leaned down and tasted the water, as it a great rock in a weary land;—n -nor yet is it the boiled from its sources;-the little temple of white fireside, with its sweet blaze-play;-nor the picmarble, the mountain sides gray with olive or-tures which tell of loved ones; nor the cherishchards,—the white streak of road,—the tall pop-ed books, but more far than all these-it is the lars of the river margin were glistening in the bright PRESENCE. The Lares of your worship are there; Italian sunlight, around me. Later. I saw it the altar of your confidence there; the end of become a river, still clear and strong, flowing serenely between its prairie banks, on which the white cattle of the valley browsed; and still farther down, I welcomed it, where it joins the Arno, flowing slowly under wooded shores. skirting the fair Florence, and the bounteous fields of the bright Cascino;-gathering strength and volume, till between Pisa and Leghorn,-in sight of the wondrous Leaning Tower and the ship-masts of the Tuscan port, it gave its waters to its life's self! grave-the sea.

The recollection blended sweetly now with my musings, over my garret grate, and offered a flowing image, to bear along upon its bosom the affections that were grouping in my Reverie.

your worldly faith is there; and adorning it all, and sending your blood in passionate flow, is the ecstasy of the conviction that there at least you are beloved; that there you are understood; that there your errors will meet ever with gentlest forgiveness; that there your troubles will be smiled away; that there you may unburden your soul, fearless of harsh, unsympathizing ears; and that there you may be entirely and joyfully-your

There may be those of coarse mould-and I have seen such even in disguise of women-who will reckon these feelings puling sentiment.God pity them! as they have need of pity.

That image by the fireside, calm, loving, joyIt is a strange force of mind and fancy, that ful, is there still: it goes not, however my spirit can set the objects which are closest to the heart tosses, because my wish, and every will, keep it far down the lapse of time. Even now, as the it there unerring. The fire shows through the fire fades slightly, and sinks slowly towards the screen, yellow and warm, as a harvest sun. It bar, which is the dial of my hours, I seem to see is in its best age, and that age is ripeness. that image of love-years hence. It still covers A ripe heart! now I know what Wordsworth the same warm, trustful, religious heart. Trials meant, when he said, have tried it; afflictions have weighed upon it; danger has scared it, and death is coming near to subdue it; but still it is the same.

The good die first,

And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust,
Burn to the socket!

The fingers are thinner; the face has lines of care, and sorrow crossing each other in a web- The town clock is striking midnight. The work, that makes the golden tissue of humanity. cold of the night-wind is urging its way into But the heart is fond, and steady; it is the same door and window-crevice; the fire has sunk aldear heart, the same self-sacrificing heart, warm- most to the third bar of the grate. Still my ing, like a fire, all around it. Affliction has tem- dream tires not. but wraps fondly round that pered joy; and joy adorned affliction. Life and image,-now in the far off, chilling mists of age,

growing sainted. Love has blended into rever- But what is paper, and what are words? Vain ence; passion has subsided into joyous content. things! The soul leaves them behind; the pen -And what if age comes, said I, in a new flash staggers like a starveling cripple, and your heart of excitation,—what else proves the wine? What is leading it a whole length of the life-course beelse gives inner strength, and knowledge, and a hind. The soul's mortal longings,-its poor bafsteady pilot-hand to steer your boat out boldly fled hopes, are dim now in the light of those Inupon that shoreless sea, where the river of life is finite longings, which spread over it soft and holy running? Let the white ashes gather; let the as day-dawn. Eternity has stretched a corner of silver hair lie, where lay the auburn; let the eye its mantle toward you, and the breath of its wagleam farther back, and dimmer;-it is but re-ving fringe, is like a gale of Araby.

treating toward the pure sky-depths, an usher to The white ashes were thick upon the darkenthe land where you will follow after! ed coals of my grate.-And all this, mused I, is

It is quite cold, and I take away the screen but a bachelor-dream about a pure, and loving altogether; there is a little glow yet, but present- heart! And to-morrow comes cankerous life ly the coal slips down below the third bar, with again: is it wished for? Or if not wished for, a rumbling sound, like that of coarse gravel fall- is the not wishing, wicked? ing into a new-dug grave!

-She is gone!

Well, the heart has burned fairly, evenly, generously, while there was mortality to kindle it; eternity will surely kindle it better.

other? Is there not a certain store of tenderness, cooped in this heart, which must, and will be lavished, before the end comes?

Will dreams satisfy, reach high as they can ? Are we not after all poor grovelling mortals, tied to earth, and to each other; are there not sympathies, and hopes, and affections which can only find their issue, and blessing in fellow absorption? -Tears indeed; but they are tears of thanks- Does not the heart, steady, and pure as it may giving, of resignation, and of hope. The world be, and mounting on soul-flights often as it dare, slides backward; it is midnight, and the sounds want a human sympathy, perfectly indulged, to of life are dead. You are in the death chamber make it healthful? Is there not a fount of love of life; but you are also in the death chamber of for this world, as there is a fount of love for the care. The clouds, the agonies, the disappointed hopes, the vain expectancies, the braggart noise, the fears now vanish behind the curtain of the past, and the night. All of them roll from your soul like a load. Blissful in the dimness of the ending present, you reach out your prayerful hands toward the viewless Future, where God's eye lifts over the horizon, like sunrise on the ocean. Do you recognize it as an earnest of something better? Aye, if the heart has been pure, and steady-burning like my fire-it has learned it without seeming to learn. Faith has grown upon it, as the blossom grows upon the bud, or the flower upon the slow-lifting stalk.

Does it not plead with the judgment, and make issue with prudence, year after year? Does it not dog your steps all through your social pilgrimage, setting up its claims in forms fresh, and odorous as new-blown heath bells, saying,—come away from the heartless, the factitious, the vain, and measure your heart not by its constraints, but by its fulness, and by its depth? Let it run, and be joyous!

Does it not come to your harsh night-dreams, like a taunting fiend, whispering-be satisfied; keep your heart from running over; bridle those affections; there is nothing worth loving?

-Roll off cares! Come not into the dreamland where I live;-sink away with the street noise; vanish away with the embers of my fire! Does it not hover over your spirit of reverie -Go out Ambition! you make too hot and can- like a beckoning angel, crowned with halo, saykerous a flame. Let the heart now in the dim- ing-hope on, hope ever; the heart and I are ness of the fading fire glow, be all itself. Let kindred; our mission will be fulfilled; nature the memory of what good things have come over shall accomplish its purpose; the soul shall have it in the troubled youth-life, bear it up: and let its Paradise! hope, and faith bear it on!

-I threw myself upon my bed: and as my Here we float now, catching hold on things thought ran over the definite, sharp business of endless,-blending with the infinity toward which the morrow, my Reverie, and its glowing imawe tend; there is no extravagant pulse-flow, no ges, that made my heart bound, swept away, like mad fever of the brain; but only the soul for- those fleecy rain clouds of August, on which the getful of all but its destinies, and its capacities for sun paints rainbows-driven southward by a cool, good. Let it mount higher and higher on these rising wind from the north.

wings of thought, and hope burn strong out of I wonder, thought I, as I dropped asleep, if a the ashes of decaying life, so that the sharp edge married man with his sentiment made actual, is of our grave may be but the foot-scraper at the after all, as happy as we poor fellows, in our wicket of Elysium! dreams?

LINES,

COMPOSED ON THE SEA-SHORE.

"It was an evening, bright and still,
As ever blushed on wave, or bower,
Smiling from Heaven, as if nought ill
Could happen in so sweet an hour."

Moore's Loves of the Angels.

"All was so still, so soft in earth and air,
You scarce would start, to meet a spirit there."
Byron's Lara.

The sun hath reached the horizon's verge,
The waters are sighing their evening dirge,
The light winds fly on their pinions free,
Far over the solemn and silent sea,
And sport with the waves in their joyful way,
Like a band of children at thoughtless play,
With their stern old Grandsire's hoary hair,
Twining his locks in their fingers fair-

And breathing the while in his listening ear,
Songs whose cadence to him doth seem,
The music soft of a fading dream.

O'er the Ocean's distant and misty brim,
Slowly the sunlight is growing dim,
And the shadowy clouds in a dense array
Close over the couch of the dying day,
Like the golden pinions of Angels spread,
In a radiant circle above the bed

Where the Great, their mission of Glory done,
Are passing from earth, like the setting sun.
Now, gathereth 'round me a stillness deep,
A mournful stillness-but not of sleep-
For Nature seems in her hush to pine,
And weep for the Lord of light's decline.

On the billows' darkened and shadowy breast,
The weary zephyrs sink down to rest,
Athwart the sombre, and rayless sky,
Stealthily flitteth the "sea-mew" by,
And faint, o'er the moaning waves are heard,
The desolate tones of the homeless bird.

Let me linger awhile by the lone sea-side,
With the Heavens above-and around the tide,
Whose mysterious music in earlier years,
Hath almost melted my soul to tears,
When I deemed that the ceaseless roll of waves,
Was a funeral-hymn over unseen graves.

The twilight shadows are passing slow,
Like a stately and sable train of wo,
And one by one from the vault of blue,

The stars come timidly peering through,

The waters are trembling beneath the kiss,

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

The works of the late EDGAR ALLAN POE, with notices of his life and genius. By N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell and R. W. Griswold. In two volumes. New York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall, 1850. 12mo. pp. 483, 495.

Here we have at last the result of the long experiment; the residium in the retort; the chrystals in the crucible; the ashes of the furnace; the attainment of fiery trial and of analysis the most acute. How much bitter misery went to write these pages;—what passion, what power of mind and heart were needed to strike these impressions-the only footprints on the sands of time of a vitality in which the lives of ten ordinary men were more than condensed-will never be known save to those who knew in person the man they embody.

These half told tales and broken poems are the only records of a wild, hard life; and all that is left of a real genius,-genius in the true sense of the word, unmistakeable and original. No other American has half the chance of a remembrance in the history of literature. Edgar Poe's reputation will rest in a very small minority of the compositions in these two volumes. Among all his poems, there are only two or three which are not execrably bad. The majority of his prose writings are the children of want and dyspepsia, of printer's devils and of blue devils. Had he the power of applying his creative faculties-as have had the Miltons, the Shakspeares and all the other demiurgi-he would have been a very great man. But there is not one trace of that power in these volumes; and his career and productions rather resemble those of the Marlowes, the Jonsons, the Dekkers, and the Websters, the old dramatists and translunary rowdies of the Elizabethan age, than the consistent lives and undying utterances of those who claim the like noble will and the shaping imagination. Had Mr. Poe possessed mere talent, even with his unfortunate moral constitution, he might have been a popular and money-making author. He would have written a great many more good things than he has left here; but his title to immortality would not and could not have

Of their soft, white beams-as if thrilled with bliss-been surer than it is. For the few things that

The earth wherever their white rays pour,
Seemeth a dreamy, and weird-like shore,
And the cool, calm air of the noiseless night,
Is sparkling with silvery shafts of light.

Let me linger awhile by the lone sea-side,
And list to the music of wind and tide,
For it whispereth peace to the toil-worn breast,
And calmeth the heart's wild chords to rest,
Serene my soul as the Heaven's pure brow!
Holy spirits are near me now.

P. H. H.

this author has written which are at all tolerable, are coins stamped with the indubitable die. They are of themselves,-sui generis,—unlike any diagrams in Time's Kalaidescope, and gleam with the diamond hues of eternity.

But before passing to a consideration of the amber, convention and circumstance require an examination of the dirty little fleas and flies who have managed to embalm themselves therein. The works of Edgar Allan Poe are introduced to the

world by no less than three accredited worldlings-volume, to grant the privilege of their names or as the public would have us say no less than three to miserable translations, and to compiled mecelestial steeds of the recognized Pegasean pedi-moirs still more miserable-so doth the emigree are harnessed to drag the caput mortuum of nent Griswold give his imprimatur to the amthe unfortunate Poe into the light of public favour.aranthine verse and to the fadeless prose of Mr. Rufus Griswold had seen the poor fellow.' Edgar Poe! The Life, &c., with the details of Mr. N. P. Willis had also seen and pitied the Poe's adventures in Russia, his letters, and his man; had gone so far as to give him the post of personal history, which were repeatedly promised sub-critic to himself—N. P. Willis, Esq.-in one through the press, and for which those already of his newspapers; Mr. James Russell Lowell owning nearly all of Poe's writings have been inhad found his sable sympathies sufficiently ex-duced to purchase this new edition-is no where. tensive to take in the distressed master of the In the place thereof, we have a counterfeit shinRaven, in spite of his colour and birth-place ;-he plaster, ragged, dirty, ancient and worn, which could spare enough affection from Brother Fred- Mr. James Russell Lowell had palmed upon the erick Douglass and Brother William Brown to publisher of a Magazine very many years ago. make a Brother Poe out of him too. The three | Mr. James Russell Lowell belongs to a minute felt quite pitifully sentimental at his dog's death; species of literary insect, which is plentifully proand with the utmost condescension they heark-duced by the soil and climate of Boston. He ened to the clink of the publisher's silver, and has published certain "Poems;" they are copies agreed to erect a monument to the deceased ge- of Keats, and Tennyson, and Wordsworth; nius, in the shape of Memoir and Essay prelimi- and baser or worse done imitations the imitative nary to his works. Their kindness and their tribe have never bleated forth. He has also writgenerosity has been published to the world in ten some very absurd prose-a volume entitled every newspaper. The bookseller's advertise- "Conversations on the Old Dramatists," &c. Into ment, that all persons possessing letters and cor- this he has managed, together with a great deal respondence of Poe should send them straight- of false sentiment and false criticism, to stow a way to him, has gone with the news. The pub-a large amount of transcendentalism, socialism, lication of the works of Poe were kept back from and abolition. For Mr. Lowell is one of that litethe public for a long time, that they might be rary set, which has grown up in the Northern brought out in a blaze of glory by this mighty trium- States of this Union, who find no delight in the virate of patrons. Troy was not built; composition science and the philosophy of this earth save like theirs is not finished in a day. Here it is at when it is wrong and wicked-save when it sets last-and duty compels us to say, that this is the common sense and common humanity at defiance. rawest, the baldest, the most offensive, and the most If there is anything that ought not to be believed, pudent humbug that has been ever palmed upon these people go and believe it for that very reaau unsuspecting moon-calf of a world. These son. But the book and its teachings are alike three men have managed to spin into their nine- forgotten and unknown. With the name of Mr. teen pages and a half of barren type more to call James Russell Lowell the public is better acforth the indignation of all right feeling and seeing quainted from its frequent appearance in the propeople than we have ever seen before in so little ceedings of abolitionist meetings in Boston, cheek space; and they have practised in the publication by jowl with the signatures of free negroes and as complete a swindle on the purchaser as ever sent runaway slaves. His seven pages in this preseut a knave to the State prison. Mr. Rufus Griswold compilation contain none of his great political we know to be the dispenser of literary fame-principles, but they contain not one single fact of the great Apollo of our literary heavens. Through Poe's history accurately stated. They furnish the successive editions of those big little books, a very happy exemplification of the style in the "Prose and Prose Writings of America," and which his "Conversations" are written-which the "Poets and Poetry" of the same, he lifts either is that of a broken merchant's ledger, all figures the head of the miserable American to the stars, signifying nothing save the number and variety or sinks him into the ignominious chills and of his pickings and stealings. shadows of Hades. Why his name goes forth Six pages by the man milliner of our literato the world on the title page of these volumes rature, Mr. N. P. Willis, constitutes in reality the we are totally unable to say;—for not one word only original writing in the be-heralded “Notices of his do they contain. We are forced to be- of Edgar A. Poe by Rufus Griswold, James Ruslieve that he is stuck into the frontispiece for the sell Lowell, and N. P. Willis,"—and of these purpose of giving respectability to the author six, three are taken up with extracts from the whose writings follow. As Smollet, Voltaire, New York Tribune. The rest are occupied rather Johnson and other names celebrated on the door-with N. P. Willis than with Edgar Allan Poe. posts of booksellers, were wont, for so much a It is here explained how all Poe's celebrity came

from the good-natured patronage of N. P. Wil-images of memory and passion are gathered in lis-and how N. P. Willis rescued the Raven" the years when the child approaches the youth. from oblivion and spread its wings to all the It is then that the idiosyncracy receives its peworld by consenting to its insertion in his Home culiar tinge, genius its individuality, and expresJournal,―the weekly newspaper of mantua-ma-sion its ground-colors. Those of Poe differ reker's girls, and of tailor's boys. Such is the tone markably from all other of American Literature. and air of the entire editorial work of this pub-One would scarcely deem him American at all— lication. These three horny-eyed dunces come be- and yet he is not English. The circumstances fore the world as the patrons and literary vouchers under which these five years were past. throw of the greatest genius of the day. But with all their light upon many of his peculiarities. In one of parade, as we before mentioned, these edi- his very best but least noted tales, he gives a sintors make no pretence of informing the reader in gular account of his life at this school of Stoke relation to the facts of Mr. Poe's Life. So far as Newington. We allude to the sketch entitled we are able it shall be our endeavour to supply the" William Wilson." Nearly all of Poe's tales deficiency. The sketch which follows is a com- are biographical-all the best are. The characpilation of the facts contained in the New York ters and the incidents are but the drapery of some Tribune's obituary of Poe; in Griswold's Prose memory of himself. The tale in question is peWriters; one or two others which we pick from culiarly so. We have been often told by himMr. Willis's three pages; and several furnished self, that the following picture of Dr. Bransby's by our own recollections of and conversations school is accurate to the letter. with the subject of discourse.

His family was a very respectable one in Baltimore. His grandfather was a QuartermasterGeneral in the Revolution, and the esteemed friend of Lafayette. During the last visit of that personage to this country, he called upon the widow to tender her his acknowledgments for services rendered him by her husband. His greatgrandfather married a daughter of the celebrated British Admiral McBride. Through him they are related to many of the most illustrious families in England. Edgar Poe's father was reputably brought up and educated. Becoming enamored with a beautiful young actress, he made

town.

"My earliest recollections of a school life, are connected with a large, rambling, Elizabethan where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarlhouse, in a misty-looking village of England, ed trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded and asleep.

up a runaway match with her, and was disowned It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as by his friends therefor. He then went upon the I can now in any manner experience, to dwell stage himself. But neither he or his wife pos-upon minute recollections of the school and its sessed mimetic genius, and they lived precarious- concerns. Steeped in misery as I am-misery, ly. They came to Richmond in pursuit of their alas! only too real-I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in profession. She was somewhat of a favorite on the weakness of a few rambling details. These, our boards-but more on account of her beauty moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in than her acting. They both died in Richmond-themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious both of consumption, and within a few weeks of importance, as connected with a period and a loeach other, and left here without a friend or home cality when and where I recognise the first amtheir gifted but most miserable and unfortunate biguous monitions of the destiny which afterson. Mr. John Allan, a wealthy and kind heart-remember. wards so fully over-shadowed me. Let me then ed merchant of this place, having no children of his own, taking a natural fancy to the handsome, clever child, adopted him as son and heir. He was consequently brought up amidst luxury, and received the advantages of education to their fullest extent. In 1816 he accompanied his adopted parents in a tour through England. Scotland and Ireland. They returned to this country, leaving him at Dr. Brandsby's High School, Stoke Newington, near London, where he continued five years.

Those accustomed to self-consciousness and mental analysis, will know that nearly all the

The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prisonbeyond it we saw but thrice a week-once every like rampart formed the limit of our domain; Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighboring fields and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our re