The

dying deer. He has loved, and he laments | Suabia possesses men in plenty who are his lost love in verses which have much well informed, well intentioned, clever, pathos, and form the nearest approach to and eloquent enough to be members of a sentiment in the whole of the volume. council; but she has only one poet of the The end is in keeping with the sadness stamp of Uhland." A noble engine to which prevails through the poem. We stir up a people to war or to resistance of learn from the watch-fire talk of an Indian oppression poetry may be, and has been band that the poet is dead, and has been occasionally, in every age from the days laid, at his own request, where his face of Tyrtæus to the days of Körner; but it may turn eastward, even in death, to the is a very different thing to make it the land he loved and was never to see more. organ of strictly political opinions, and to We must bound our excerpta within produce leading articles in verse. reasonable limits. Many other poems, feeling which impels a poet to devote his such as the Dead in the Sea, The Dweller genius to forward what he believes a great in the Forest, The Sword-cutter of Da- political cause deserves honor: but it is mascus, and others, tempt us, but their doubtful whether any such cause has thus claims must be resisted. been truly served, and it is tolerably certain that poems so produced have rarely secured for themselves a permanent vitality. Some men have been fashioned by nature for war-poets, and some for lovepoets; but we doubt whether nature ever sent out a born political poet. The fame of Freiligrath at least must depend upon those poems which had no purpose, political or patriotic, to serve. His political ballads, although just those for which he is naturally most admired by large classes of his own countrymen, seem to us among the only productions bearing his name which Time has destined for that wallet wherein he carries scraps for oblivion.

As yet, we have given scarcely any thing but praise to the contents of this little volume. Many of them, however, deserve other judgment. The poet has, as we have said already, a strong tendency towards the extravagant and the horrible; and another inclination, scarcely less repelling to natural and simple taste, towards the fantastic. The graceful fancy displayed in Amphitrite and The Flowers' Revenge, degenerates into such poor conceits as that which closes The Frog-Queen. The ardent imagination of the Desert poems wantons into the extravagance and hideousness of Anno Domini, and the revolting horrors of Scipio. In the first of these, the poet indulges his fantasy in describing the final fate of our earth, which, according to him, is to be trailed along at the tail of some avenging comet, through unknown spaces and by nameless planet-fires, as Brunhault, in early French history, was dragged, by order of the second Clotaire, at the heels of a wild horse through the icy waters of the Marne and among the camp-fires of Chalons.

It is scarcely necessary to our present purpose to enter upon any consideration of the political ballads upon whose publication so much which was personally important to the poet turned. In all, save earnest feeling, they seem to us far inferior to his miscellaneous poems. Despite Fletcher of Saltoun, and his incessantly quoted maxim, it may be reasonably doubted whether the poet's art is on the whole, at least in modern days, a very valuable political instrument. When Uhland became a member of a German council, Goethe wrote with great truth, "I fear the politician will absorb the poet.

VOL. XLVIII.-NO. II.

Freiligrath has been a laborious translator from English, French, Italian, and Spanish. Most poets of late years begin as translators, and we believe Freiligrath's earliest publication was his version of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. He has translated from Byron, Shelley, Coleridge

encountering even the Ancient Mariner, and succeeding, save in one or two passages, with singular accuracy as well as fluency-Burns, Campbell, Moore, Scott, Charles Lamb, Felicia Hemans, Southey, Tennyson, and others. He has displayed a wonderful facility in rendering gracefully almost the literal meaning of his authors, and a peculiar and enviable skill in mastering and reproducing their precise forms of metre.

This is not a day of great poets. No country in the world probably has any man now living and writing whose lyric fame is destined to go on to all posterity, as that of many in the past era will, spreading and growing broader as it descends deeper down in time. England, France, Germany, Italy, have no worldpoet singing now. It would be idle to

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claim any such place for Ferdinand Frei-ing to admit of help or development from ligrath. The highest honor we can as- his intellectual faculties. It sometimes sign to him is to say that, on the whole, overleaps all restraints of culture, and we believe him not inferior in many im- runs wild upon its own strength, to colportant elements of the poetic to any con- lapse at last, as undisciplined powers usutemporary; and, in some peculiar charac- ally must, in exhaustion and feebleness. teristics, superior to all. He has a vivid- There are, therefore, not many of these ness and a realizing power of fancy wholly poems whose shafts have been sunk so his own, in which no other living writer deeply that their influence promises to be we know of can be likened to him. He a perennially renewing power. Any readis probably the most picturesque poet of ers who can not be contented with less our age. We have shown that he is not than the great qualities of genius which possessed of well controlled and equally most tend to intensify and make eternal sustained power. Side by side with some the influence of the highest poets will brilliant, glowing piece of fancy, which turn away from Freiligrath with disapmakes the reader doubt whhether natue pointment. But they who, with less exhad not gifted the poet with a range of acting demand, can derive enjoyment from imagination far beyond any thing he has a very rare combination of high and realized, comes not unfrequently some special poetic qualities may be delighted trifling piece of poor conceit far below and improved by this volume of poems. mediocrity of thought, or far beyond the They who can appreciate a true "Pictureuttermost stretch which can be conceded book without Pictures," as Hans Christian to the fantastic and the bizarre. He is Andersen entitles one of his works, will not a thinking poet. Whenever he touch- find in the productions of Ferdinand es, as he very rarely does, upon themes Freiligrath a store of beautiful and wonwhich involve deep sinking into human derful proups, scenes, and visions, such as nature and man's relation to creation, he the magic mirror of no other poet of his falls at once into inferiority. Poetic feel- own day can rival. ing is an instinct with him, scarcely seem- !

THE BALL THAT KILLED NELSON.-The fatal shot that deprived England of her greatest naval hero, was fired (contrary to the received account) at random from the top of the Redoubtable, by a French soldier named Robert Guillemarde, who escaped unwounded, and when his ship struck, was taken on board the Victory. The fatal bullet was not discovered until the Victory reached Spithead. It had struck the forepart of the hero's epaulette and entered his left shoulder. It then descended obliquely into the thorax fracturing the second and third ribs, and after penetrating the left lobe of the lungs and dividing a large branch of the pulmonary artery, entered the left side of the spine, passed through the muscles of the back, and lodged there. A considerable portion of the gold lace, pad, and silk cord of the epaulette, with a piece of coat, were found attached to it. whilst the gold lace was as firmly fixed as though it had been inserted into the metal whilst in a state of fusion. The ball, together with the lace, was mounted in crystal and silver, and presented by Capt. Hardy to the surgeon of the Victory, who died in 1842.

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THE PECUNIARY VALUE OF LOMBARDY.-We read in the Paris journals, from a German source:-"It is not without interest to estimate the pecuniary loss which Austria will suffer from giving up Lombardy. This province, which has a superficies of 377 German miles, contains 2,903,874 inhabitants. It has contributed to the total receipts of Austria, in direct and indirect taxes, which in 1856 amounted to 335,976,150fl., a sum of 36,185,641fl. That part is proportionally very considerable; for whilst in the whole monarchy the tax is on an average 8fl. 53kr. per head, it amounts in Lombardy on an average to 12fl. 28kr. Both in an agricultural and industrial point of view, Lombardy was one of the richest provinces of the monarchy. The value of landed property is estimated officially, according to the net produce, at a capital of 1,054,722,666fl., and the value of the soil only at 159,409,925fl. The annual industrial revenue of the Lombards, among whom the lists of the contributions reckon 7,304 dealers and manufacturers, 1.216 hawkers, 60,700 workmen in manufactories, 56,388 servante, and 357,489 journeymen, is estimated at 61,858.

From the Eclectic Review

THE PLAINS OF LOMBARDY THE BATTLE-GROUND OF NATIONS.

Ir is a melancholy fact that the richest | have been the theater; and it may not be and fairest spots on earth's surface are uninteresting, in the present crisis of their also those where human blood has been destiny, to glance at some of the more most frequently and lavishingly shed. momentous struggles that have marked What waves of invasion have successively their past history. rolled over the fertile plains of Persia and Hindostan, the prolific valley of the Nile, the fruitful provinces of Asia Minor, Turkey, and Hungary! What battles, what sieges, what massacres, almost from the birth of history, have drenched their soil with gore! Andalusia, too-the garden of Spain was for eight centuries the battle-ground of Christian and Moor, whose blood, according to the Spanish historians, was poured forth in thirty-seven hundred battles. But, perhaps, no country has been more blessed by the gifts of God, or more cursed by the strife of man, than the wide and beautiful plains of Lombardy, guarded by Alp and Apennine, a very garden in fertility, watered by innumerable_streams, and with a thousand towns and villages glittering like sails amidst a sea of verdure. It has been the battle-field of nations, from the time when Bellovesus, nearly six centuries before Christ, led his Celtic legions across the Alps, until yesterday, when the French and Austrian eagles were striving for supremacy. Romans and Cimbri, Goths and Romans, Lombards and Franks, Germans and Italians, French, Spaniards and Swiss, Austrians and French, have again and again met in deadly strife on these wide-spread plains, and have been successively swept down, in bloody swaths, by the scythe of the grim mower, Death.

On the thirtieth of July, one hundred and one years B.C., a desperate and bloody combat, and one productive of most important results, was fought on the dusty plains of Vercellæ. On one side were Marius and Catullus at the head of the Roman legions, the defenders of civilization; on the other, the savage hordes of the Cimbri, the champions of barbarism. The former had little more than fifty thousand men, while the Cimbric infantry were drawn up in a vast square, each side of which extended for more than a league, and the warriors of the front rank were joined together by cords passing through their belts, in order to prevent their line from being broken. Besides this enormous mass of infantry, there were fifteen thousand cavalry, whose steel breastplates, white and glittering shields, and plumed helmets, made a glorious show as they rode forth into the plain. The heat of the weather, and the clouds of dust raised by the shock of the hostile armies, fought for the Romans, who were trained to endurance, while their antagonists, bred in shady and frozen countries, and proof against the severest cold, could not bear the ardor of the Italian sun which shone full in their faces. In spite of this, however, they made a gallant resistance, and the strife was long and doubtful, though in the end, the star of Rome triumphed. Bogorine, one of the bravest princes of the Cimbri, died sword in hand, and around him fell ninety thousand of his followers and comrades; sixty thousand were taken prisoners, and many Many a grand and warlike figure, many killed themselves in despair. Even their a tale of suffering, and cruelty, and wrong, women made a noble stand behind the many a heroic action, present themselves wagons which formed the Cimbric camp, to our view as we try to recall a few of slaying those who fled, and at length, the more important battles and episodes when all resistance was hopeless, destroyof battle of which these Lombard plains | ing their children and killing themselves.

"So passes man,
An armed spectre o'er a field of blood,
And vanishes! And other armed shades
Pass by; red battle hurtling as they pass."

This victory rescued Italy from the grasp of the barbarians, and procured for Marius the title of "The Third Founder of Rome."

Nearly three hundred years after the destruction of the Cimbri, the German tribe of the Allemanni made an irruption into Italy, with forty thousand horse and eighty thousand foot, and, at Placentia and Lombardy, inflicted so terrible a defeat on the Romans, under the Emperor Aurelian, that the dissolution of the empire was apprehended. That gallant leader, however, reänimated the courage of his troops, and defeated the Allemanni in two subsequent engagements, in the last of which, fought near Pavia, the Germans were almost exterminated.

In the beginning of the fourth century after Christ, Constantine the Great, during his campaign against his rival Maxentius, besieged Verona, then, as now, one of the strongest cities of Lombardy, and, in a bloody battle, which lasted during the close of day and through the whole night, defeated and killed Ruviens Pompeianus, the ablest general of Maxentius, who had come to the relief of the beleaguered city.

of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body, of nervous strength, though of disproportioned form. Yet, with all this ugliness, he possessed much majesty of demeanor, and an air which expressed the consciousness of superiority over the rest of mankind. Along with the terrible King of the Huns comes the nobler and more graceful shade-that of his antagonist and conqueror Etius, thus depicted by a contemporary historian: The graceful figure of Etius was not above the middle stature; but his manly limbs were admirably formed for strength, beauty, and agility, and he excelled in the martial exercises of managing a horse, drawing the bow, and darting the javelin. He could patiently endure the want of food and sleep, and his mind and body were alike capable of the most laborious efforts. He possessed the genuine courage that can despise not only dangers but injuries; and it was impossible either to corrupt, or deceive, or intimidate the firm integrity of his soul." About the middle of the fifth century Attila invaded Italy, sending, by his ministers, to the weak grandson of Theodosius at Ravenna, the hanghty mandate, "Attila, my lord A hundred years later, Alaric, at the and thy lord, commands thee to provide a head of a number of German tribes, and palace for his immediate reception. Atof his confederates the Allemanni, poured tila's ravages wasted the rich plains of over the Alps into Italy. There he was Lombardy. He stormed and sacked some encountered by Stilicho, the accomplished of its principal towns, and received the general of the weak Emperor Honorius, submission and the gold of others. It is who, at Pollentia, twenty-five miles south-related of him, that when he took posseseast of Turin, and at Verona, entirely defeated him. At Verona the Gothic king owed his escape solely to the fleetness of his horse. At this period the Goths had embraced Christianity; and, at Pollentia, Stilicho took advantage of their devotion to surprise them while engaged in celebrating Easter Sunday, entrusting the attack to Saul, a barbarian and pagan, but a veteran leader. The invaders were put to flight, their camp stormed, and Alaric's wife, who had impatiently claimed his promise of Roman jewels and patrician hand-maids, was taken prisoner. Pollentia is about sixty miles from the plains where Marius so terribly defeated the Cimbri.m

sion of the imperial palace at Milan, he was surprised and offended at the sight of a picture which represented the Cæsars seated on their thrones, and the Princes of Scythia prostrate at their feet. Upon which, he commanded a painter to reverse the figures and the attitudes; and the emperors were delineated, on the same canvas, approaching in a suppliant posture to empty their bags of tributary gold before the throne of the Scythian monarch.

Two warlike figures next approach from the long-vanished past-Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, and commander of the Roman mercenaries, and Theodoric the Ostrogoth, known in German poetry and legend as Dietrich von Bern, or Dietrich of Verona. Odoacer dethroned Romulus Augustulus, the last of the Roman emperors, and was proclaimed King of Italy A.D. 476. In 489, however, he was himself defeated by Theodoric, in the neighborhood of Verona, on the steep banks of