insight, now widely and earnestly affirmed, and often exaggerated, at Boston and other nests of the singing birds, were once scouted as heretical by haters of paradox, and by cui bono men of letters. For his prose writings as well as his verse, a permanent place is assured to him by Griswold, in the literature of America. As a prose writer (though malicious detractors may affect to see nothing but prose in him) he is almost wholly unknown in England. His "Paul Felton" and "Tom Thornton" have been heard of; voila tout. Yet his doings in romance, politics, and criticism, have been considerable, though far from successful in a pecuniary sense ;-his son's graphic narrative of "Two Years before the Mast" has had a run to which he is quite a stranger. It is nearly forty years since he began his contributions to the North American Review, in the editorship of which he afterwards took part. It was in this journal that he excited the opposition of the "Queen Anne's Men" and reigning arbiters in poetical criticism, by his eulogy of the Lake poets. He "thought poetry was something more than a recreation; that it was something superinduced upon the realities of life; he believed the ideal and the spiritual might be as real as the visible and the tangible; thought there were truths beyond the understanding and the senses, and not to be reached by ratiocination."* In a periodical of his own, called the Idle Man, he published his novel of "Tom Thornton," which an able reviewer has pronounced "interesting," and written in a "style of earnestness which holds truth paramount even to taste, and refuses to adorn vice with a veil of beauty." This periodical ceased with the first volume, which did not pay its expenses, owing, it is said, to the absence of laws of protective copyright; and to this "cause defective" is attributed Mr. Dana's discouragement from the literary enterprises which otherwise he would have engaged in. However, by the testimony of Mr. Flint, the hints unutterable things as to the unreadability of rival issues. Although evidently predisposed to poetry of a meditative cast, and of soothing, "all serene" purpose, Mr. Dana's longest and best known effort is in quite a different key, and adventures the treatment of a dramatic theme, with "striking effects," in a suitably rapid and exciting manner. "The Buccaneer" is a legend connected with an island on the New England coast-the oral tradition itself being "added to," and "diminished from," by the poet, according to the supposed exigencies of his art. A murder at sea by a pirate, Matthew Lee by name, and a preternatural process of retribution, are the theme. The distinctive feature in the adjustment of the just recompense of reward, is the introduction of the White Horse, which was cast overboard after its mistress, and whose spectre is the agent of final suffering and penal woe to the reprobate seaman. A fear, half ribald jest, half shrinking apprehension, lest by some wild miracle the white steed should find utterance to reveal bloody secrets, just as in old, old times the diviner's ass had the sudden faculty of speech, constrains Lee to hurl him to the waves alive, and bid him ride them as he may. Then and there, the cry of the struggling brute is appalling to the ruffians on deck, as they watch his wrestlings with the yeasty waters-now sinking, now rearing upwards-" then drifts away: but through the night they hear far off that dreadful cry." To blot out the last vestige of crime, the ship itself is burnt; and the desperadoes settle down on the solitary island "of craggy rock and sandy bay," to enjoy the "much fine gold" for which they have sold ship, business, conscience, and peace. They try to drown reflection in jovial riot: Mat lords it now throughout the isle : All dread alike his frown or smile ;None come within his door, His hand falls heavier than before. Save those who dipped their hands in blood with him; Save those who laughed to see the white horse swim. The anniversary of the crime comes round: the guilty revellers keep high holiday. But at midnight there is a strange vision seen; at midnight, a strange cry heard; across the dark waters flits a ship in flames, riding upright and still, shedding a wild and lurid light around her, scaring the sea-birds from their nests, and making them dart and wheel with deafening screams- -while above the wave uprises, ghastly white, a horse's head. "There, on the sea, he stands-the SpectreHorse! He moves; he gains the sands," and onward speeds, his ghostly sides streaming with a cold blue light, his path shining like a swift ship's wake: onward speeds, till he reaches Lee's blasted threshold, and with neigh that seems the living trump of hell, summons the pirate to mount and away! But the hour of final vengeance is not yet come, and though Lee mounts the spiritsteed and is borne whither he would not, and sees into ocean depths where lie the sleeping dead, done to death by him; yet with the morning he is again quit of the apparition, and left to brood on his sins and await the last scene of all-standing on the cliff, beneath the sun's broad fierce blaze, but himself "as stiff and cold as one that's dead"lost in a dreamy trouble "of some wild horror past, and coming woes." Misery withers the caitiff's existence for another year; and again the burning ship is seen, and the white steed visits him, and gives warning that the next visit shall be the last. Punctual and inexorable visitant!-he comes in his season, and in vain Lee flings and writhes in wild despair; "the spirit-corse holds him by fearful spell;" a mystic fire Illumes the sea around their track The curling comb, and dark steel wave: There, yet, sits Lee the spectre's backGone! gone! and none to save! racy and blood, involving the use of machinery from the spirit-world. The brief introduction to the tragedy is quite in his happiest style, and breathes a melodious tranquillity aptly chosen, by contrast to the advent agitation of struggling passion and savage discord. We see, in a few picturesque lines, a lonely island, all in silence, but for ocean's roar, and the fitful cry, heard through sparkling foam, of the shrill seabird: But when the light winds lie at rest, How beautiful! no ripples break the reach, There are not many verses equal to that in the "Buccaneer"-not many figures so suggestive as that of the silent rocking of the black duck on the gentle cradle of an unvexed sea. The "Changes of Home" is, as the subject demands, meditative and pathetic. The poet revisits the scene of boyhood, and is smitten to his poet's soul by the revolution and decay and innovation it reveals; or rather, by the revolution and decay he discovers in himself, while outward aspects, so far as Nature is concerned, continue much as they were. He meets one, who, like the pastor in the "Excursion," informs him of the chronicles of the They're seen no more; the night has shut them in. village. There are many touching passages May Heaven have pity on thee, man of sin ! The earth has washed away its stain; The legend is a telling one. And Mr. Dana has told it impressively. But in the hands of a more devoted romanticist it would have told much better. It is here a somewhat hard and bald composition-not unfrequently obscure from compression and elliptical treatment. The metre selected, too, requires for success a delicate and varied mastery of musical rhythm on the part of the poet, and some familiarity with its character on that of the reader. Some stanzas are excellent others curt and rugged to a degree. Judging by the rest of his poems, Mr. Dana was out of his element in this stern fancy-piece of legendary lore; and certainly, had we read the others first, we should have been surprised by the imaginative power he has brought to bear on a superstition of pi -as this: To pass the doors where I had welcomed been, And none but unknown voices hear within; Strange, wondering faces at those windows see, Once lightly tapped, and then a nod for me !— To walk full cities, and yet feel alone--From day to day to listen to the moan Of mourning trees--'twas sadder here unknown. A tale of love and bereavement and madness is the mainstay of this poem, and is very feelingly narrated-"soon 'tis told-simple though sad; no mystery to unfold, save that one great, dread mystery, the mind." Sentiment and diction are both pleasing in these verses. The poem entitled "Factitious Life" is founded on Wordsworth's protest, that the world is too much with us, our hearts given away, our powers wasted. But there is more life and heat and meaning in that memorable sonnet of Rydal's bard, than in this protracted effort of didactic philosophy. The satire is so-so; the humor not very genial; the poetry perilously akin to prose, albeit so anti-prosaic and anti-utilitarian in its purpose. That purpose is indeed high and praisewor- | liest production in verse-appearing in 1825, thy; nor do we object, as the author seems in the New York Review, then under Bryto have apprehended, to his commencing in a ant's editorship-and a fine memorial it is, comparatively trifling vein, and falling gradu- tender and true, of a sympathetic nature, ally into the serious, and at last resting "in which has a reverent faith in the truth that that which should be the home of all our He who made us, made also and loveth all. thoughts, the religious." The protest is We watch the poor doomed bird, gasping against reducing man's soul to the limits of its life out, where the grass makes a soft the conventional, cramping his mind by rules couch, and blooming boughs (needlessly of etiquette, substituting respectability for kind) spread a tent above; we hear its mate virtue" to keep in with the world your only calling to the white, piled clouds, and asking end, and with the world to censure or de- for the missed and forlorn one. That airy fend"-it is against a modish existence, where call singularity alone is sin, where manners rather than heart are the subject of education, where the simple way of right is lost, and curious expedients substituted for truth. And the aspiration is for a return of the fresh, inartificial time, in the now dim past, when Free and ever varying played the heart; Great Nature schooled it; life was not an art: A like spirit animates the lines called "Thoughts on the Soul"-the text being, that it exceeds man's thoughts to think how high God hath raised man-the "practical improvement," that man should cast off his slough, and send forth his spirit to expatiate in "immortal light, and life for evermore." We are earnestly reminded that, linked with the Immortal, immortality begins e'en here -the soul once given, as a solemn trust to man, there ne'er will come a date to its tremendous energies, but ever shall it be taking fresh life, starting fresh for future toil, And on shall go, for ever, ever, on, More popular, and charged with more than one home-thrust at the feelings, are the lines called "The Husband's and Wife's Grave." There, folded in deep stillness, in all the nearness of the narrow tomb, lie the partners in life and death Yet feel they not each other's presence now. "The Dying Raven" was Mr. Dana's ear With beating wings, or steady poise aslant, death Are on thee. From Him who heareth the ravens' cry for food comes the inspiration of this elegy. A "Fragment of an Epistle," composed in octosyllabic verse, is an attempt to escape not only what Byron calls the fatal facility, but what the author calls the fatal monotony, of that metre. There is little else to characterize it. characterize it. "A Clump of Daisies" shows dim and diminutive beside the same object in other poets one might name. "Chantrey's Washington" has little of the massive power of either the statesman or the sculptor involved in its memorial verse. "The Moss supplicateth for the Poet," as for one who leaves, ofttimes, the flaunting flowers and open sky, to woo the moss by shady brook, with voice low and soft and sad as the brook itself, and because the moss is of lowly frame, and more constant than the flower, and because it is -Kind to old decay, and wraps it softly round in green, On naked root, and trunk of gray, spreading a garniture and screen. "The Pleasure Boat" goes tilting pleasantly on its way, to a soft breeze and musical murmur of accompaniment. And such, with the "Spirit of the Pilgrims" and a few lyrics, comprise, so far as we are informed, the lays of the minstrel whom we have thus inadequately but impartially, "when found, made a note of." From Sharpe's Magazine. THE TWO PRISONERS OF THE CONCIERGERIE; OR, PARIS ON THE 16TH OCTOBER, 1793, AND ON THE 16TH OCTOBER, 1852. It was a chill autumn morning-a gray fog brooded over the city, and a gloom rested on the people of Paris. A few faint rays of sunshine struggled through the mist and rested on the roof of the Louvre, and the time-honored towers of Notre Dame. The streets were thronged with people; crowds stood as if in anxious expectation of some great event,-in front of the Palais de Justice, on the steps of the Church of St. Roche, and on the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde). And yet it might easily be perceived that it was no festal scene which drew the people from their houses on that 16th of October, 1793. Here and there, it is true, a countenance might be discovered which betrayed marks of sorrow, but those of the great majority wore an aspect either of idle curiosity, cold scorn, or bitter hatred and malignity. the petty consolation of appearing in decent attire before the nation who had once beheld her in all the pomp and splendor of royalty. The damp of the dungeon and long-continued wear, had imparted a soiled and tattered aspect to her garments. Vainly she strove to arrange them to the best advantage ere she quitted her cell. The daughter and the wife of kings must drink the cup of bitterness to its very dregs! When she reached the door of the prison, the first object on which her eye rested was the cart which was to convey her, and some of her fellow-prisoners, to the scaffold. A shudder convulsed her frame! Her husband had at least been allowed the favor of a covered carriage to convey him to the place of execution: but no such privilege was in store for her. She must go forth to meet her doom exposed to the gaze of the multitude in a common open cart, thronged with victims! On that day Marie Antoinette was to be led forth to the scaffold. Separated from her Slowly and reluctantly she entered, and children, and from all who were dear to her the cart drove off. After so many months on earth, she had for some time past dragged spent in solitude and gloom the cheerful out a miserable existence in a gloomy cell of light of day had no charms for the royal the Conciergerie, the prison belonging to the captive; and the sight of the throng of huold Palais de Justice, on the banks of the man beings by whom she was surrounded, Seine. This palace, once the abode of the completely overpowered her. Her exhausted kings of France-the spot whence St. Louis, frame was but ill able to bear the joltings of surrounded by the flower of European chi- the cart as it passed onwards over the rough valry, set forth for the wars of the crusades stones. Vainly she strove to balance herself -this palace it was whose vaults were by grasping the side of the vehicle; alas! doomed to be the living grave of a queen of her hands were bound, and on she went that France-a queen whose sorrows and untime-long and dreary way, suffering in body and ly fate have almost caused the world to forget her follies and her faults. At an early hour of the morning her summons came; the night had been chiefly spent in writing to her children and to the Princess Elizabeth. Exhausted nature at length claimed a few moments for repose; but very brief had been the slumbers of the brokenhearted victim, when her jailer came to announce to her that everything was prepared for her departure. She was not even allowed crushed in spirit, whilst many an insulting jeer fell upon her ear, as she rocked from side to side; and not one in that vast human throng dared to cry, "God bless her!" And yet, even then, in this her hour of misery, the fallen queen was not utterly deserted. It was remarked by many amongst the multitude that, as she drove up the Rue St. Honoré, her eye seemed to wander from house to house; they attributed this to her levity of character, which, even in that awful moment, was attracted by objects of passing interest. But gay and thoughtless as Marie Antoinette had once been, the anxieties which at this moment filled her heart were of no idle cast. She had refused to receive the last sacraments of her church from the hands of the revolutionary priests, who were alone admitted to the prisons; and secret intelligence had been conveyed to her, on the evening preceding her execution, that one of the non-juring priests, concealed in a house of the Rue St. Honoré, would pronounce absolution over her as she passed on her way to the scaffold. Long did her eye wander from house to house in fruitless search for the appointed sign: at last, she discovered it over the door of an obscure dwelling-house. A passing ray of joy lighted up for a moment the pallid features of the fallen queen, and she bowed her head as she passed to receive the sacrament, which was thus alone accessible to her. Soon the Place de la Revolution was reached that scene of terror and of crime. As the queen approached the scaffold, close to the very gate of the Tuileries, she glanced for a moment towards that spot where she had once dwelt in royal splendor. | How many visions of the past may not have crowded through her mind during that brief, sad moment!-visions of the day when she came to that palace, years before, a gay and lovely bride, and during the festivities attendant on her marriage, hundreds were crushed to death on that very Place!-visions of the days of thoughtless levity which followed, when the love of pleasure and admiration alone filled her heart!-visions of a time of better and purer joy, when a mother's love first stirred within her, and with a thrill of delight she had pressed her first-born to her heart!-visions, too, of the hour when the first muttering of the gathering storm reached her ear! All this, and much more,-thoughts of the children she was leaving behind her in pitiless hands and evil days-of the hour of anguish which now awaited her-and the awful future upon which she was about to enter. All this might, and probably did, pass through the mind of the unhappy queen, as she gazed for the last time on the Tuileries-for the first time on the guillotine! Brief, however, was the space afforded her for meditation hurried by the executioner from the cart to the scaffold, the sharp axe swiftly executed its bloody task, and the Veuve Capet was proclaimed to be no more! Other victims followed-the crowd gazed till they were satiated with the sight of blood and then they dispersed, each man to his home, and thus ended the 16th October, 1793! Sixty years had well nigh sped their changing course; anarchy had been succeeded by despotism; legitimacy, restored for a brief space, had yielded up the sceptre it swayed with feeble hand; constitutional monarchy had been tried and failed; organized republicanism, too, had had its day; and then another memorable 16th of October dawned on France. It inaugurated the empire! Once more was a Prisoner of the Conciergerie the hero of the day. Amidst the crash of falling dynasties and all the vicissitudes of time, those old gray towers had stood unchanged on the banks of the smiling Seine. On many a sad heart had the gates of the Conciergerie closed since the day when Marie Antoinette left it for the scaffold; but few more daring spirits were ever confined within those gloomy precincts than Louis Napoleon, nephew of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. After his landing at Boulogne, and the failure of that rash and premature attempt, the son of Hortense was confined in the ancient prison of the Palais de Justice, previous to his removal to the Fortress of Ham. The game seemed utterly lost, and even the most daring and hopeful heart might well have despaired of success. But years rolled on, the prisoner escaped, bided his time, and when France, weary of anarchy and confusion, yearned for order and security, his firm hand grasped the reins of power, and on the 16th of October, 1852, the Prisoner of the Conciergerie entered Paris as the Emperor Elect of the French nation. No fog obscured the sun of Austerlitz on this memorable day-the day which sealed the doom of France, at least during this present phase of her destinies. The air was clear and bright, and all Paris was astir; people were hurrying to and fro on the boulevards in busy preparation; shop-boys looking anxiously at the clock, watching for the hour of twelve, which seemed to them "long-a-coming," for then the shop was to be closed and the rest of the day devoted to festivity; workmen were giving the finishing touch to triumphal arches; hawkers vending by thousands small gilt medals with the effigy of Louis Napoleon stamped on one side, and on the other the imperial eagle, with the inscription, "La Ville de Paris, à Louis Napoleon, Empereur," whilst others |