England. God grant it! It may revive a sense of glory, long vitiated, and almost dead. Public men, indeed, will exclude him from their houses; their praises are reserved for Haynau, their tables are decorated for O'Ferral. But let us contend with America for the possession of the purest patriot on earth. Let us, who heretofore have taught her many things, teach her now in what manner she may gladden the heart of millions, and raise to herself on an imperishable basis a monument the most worthy of her wealth and virtue. Proposals have been offered to commemorate in bronze and marble the achievements of the Hungarians. So be it. But in what better or more befitting manner can it be done, than in the structure of a plain and simple mansion for the family of their president? No Blenheim is demanded, no column, no prancing horse, but simply a retired and quiet mansion, such as twelve or fifteen thousand pounds could erect and furnish. It would be more honorable for the Americans to contribute toward it in England than in their country; and if their contribution were the larger, as it probably will be, the prouder would be their superiority, over a nation with which they were never to be engaged in any other kind of contest.

I have little money; but I have several pictures; and, as my pride does not often step out of doors, I shall be delighted to indulge it in giving twenty of the best toward the adornment of the house which the only two free nations will erect for the greatest of all free men.

Testimonials to patriotism, true or false, and oftener false than true, have been prodigally exhibited in England recently. The spirit of party has breathed hotly over the land, and has blown foul bubbles into the air. Among the statues in our metropolis, how extremely few are erected to beneficent, to prudent, to temperate, or even commonly honest men! Subverters of law in their own country, disturbers of the public peace in its dependencies, adventurers, gamblers, debtors, defaulters, profligates, constitute the greater part, and almost the whole. Where are our philosophers, our poets, our patriots? In the centre of what square, at the termination of what avenue, stands Shakspeare? What temple is sanctified by Milton's purity? Nature and nature's laws" announce their Newton; we look for him also in

vain.

If jealousy and hatred of the truly great among ourselves have instigated us to substitute the false, let us avoid the sight of such as, coming too near, may inflict on us any uneasiness. Let us prove before the world at large that its virtuous men are dear to us at a distance, and that to them at least we will not be unjust. Parties, our worst seducers from the path of rectitude, are fused, flattened, hardened, and inert. Public virtue no longer is laughed at, as it was in the last century from the beginning to the end, but merely smiled at; sym

five would commend, or countenance, the miscreant who should have driven from the seat of his government men festering under wounds received in defence of their families. But it is not to such people we lift our eyes and voices; it is neither to finality, nor to agitation. We plead before no intriguers, no coiners of counterfeit, no scramblers for tags and trumpery, no brawlers in streets, no whisperers in palace; we plead for the Hungarian defender of venerable institutions, cognate with our own, and bearing a strong family resemblance. It would be criminal to doubt either the ability or the resolution of the two wealthiest nations in the world to raise a few thousand pounds annually, in order to compensate the losses, and to support the dignity, of as pure and energetic a patriot as ever guided the councils of either. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Bath, October 18.

From the Evening Bulletin.

SHAKSPEARE READINGS.

WRITTEN AFTER MRS. KEMBLE'S LAST READING IN PHILADELPHIA, NOV. 5, 1849.

THANKS to the lady of the witching word, For the new soul her wondrous voice has stirredFor the awakened sense which lay asleep In myriad breasts, till she disturbed the deep. The feast is done-in awe and wonder, all The guests go lingering from the banquet hall, With thirst unslaked, and craving still to drink New nectar from this fount's o'errunning brink.

A motley company these feasts createMotley in mind and mien, in garb and gait, All grouped as guests before the crowned lord Of England's letters, at his royal board. See the sweet Quakeress, demure and prim, Beside the belle in dazzling Paris trim; The grave divine, in contrast dark, beside The dandy gay-his tailor's boast and pride; The massive matron, swelling near a place Where beams a merry school girl's laughing face; The gray old-fashioned veteran, hip to hip, Beside an unfledged fop with sprouting lip.

These are thy guests, O Shakspeare! these the souls,

Thy priestess with her godlike art controls,
Some come to pass an evening, or to meet
Again the friend they passed upon the street.
Some from pure love of Shakspeare, other some
To see his famed interpreter-they come
From divers motives, but I fear the mass
Come without any motive-some, alas!
Willing to change their gold, at Fashion's hint,
For the coined wonders of the Shakspeare mint.

Well, whatsoe'er the motive, there's a soul
Hidden behind it, subject to control.
Watch the effect, as the great reader's art
Ope's Shakspeare's mysteries to each waking heart.
The first low music of the matchless voice
To silence lulls, from force as well as choice.

Then comes a burst of passion, and the hall
Rings with applause from young and old-from all ;
Mustachioed lips a cry of Brava" raise,
And white kids patter a most dainty praise.

Well might he fight against
Further maturity;
Yet it does seem to me

Dandy and dame, to sympathy so soon;
Made every selfish soul forget itself,

And lay its world a moment on the shelf.

The royal banquet's done; the queen departs, To show elsewhere her own and Shakspeare's arts. A noble mission! to revive a taste, Through modern clap-trap sadly run to waste. Blest be the fortune that has led her here, To fill the soul with a new atmosphereTo show us gems from England's golden age, Freed from the tarnish of the tainted stage. She's gone, but left no transient stamp impressed On the roused bosom of each various guest; Critics in drab or black, young, aged, all Go re-refined from the great festival ; And wheresoe'er their paths through life may go, In wealth or poverty, in joy or woe, Shakspeare and Kemble, twin in soul, shall be Shrined as one genius in each memory.

From the Knickerbocker.

MY BOY.

There is even a happiness Which makes the heart afraid.

HOOD.

ONE more new claimant for
Human fraternity,
Swelling the flood that sweeps
On to eternity.
I who have filled the cup,
Tremble to think of it;
For be it what it may,
I must yet drink of it.

Room for him into the
Ranks of humanity;
Give him a place in your
Kingdom of vanity;
Welcome the stranger with

Kindly affection,
Hopefully, trustfully,
Not with dejection.

See, in his waywardness,
How his fist doubles;
Thus pugilistical
During life's troubles.
Strange that the Neophyte
Enters existence
In such an attitude,

Feigning resistance.

Could he but have a glimpse
Into futurity,

FA

As if his purity
Were against sinfulness
Ample security.
Incomprehensible,
Budding immortal,
Thrust all amazedly
Under life's portal;
Born to a destiny
Clouded in mystery,
Wisdom itself cannot
Guess at its history.
Something too much of this
Timon-like croaking;
See his face wrinkle now,
Laughter-provoking;
Now he cries lustily-
Bravo, my hearty one!
Lungs like an orator
Cheering his party on.

Look how his merry eyes
Turn to me pleadingly!
Can we help loving him-
Loving exceedingly?
Partly with hopefulness,
Partly with fears-
Mine, as I look at him,
Moisten with tears.

Now then to find a name;
Where shall we search for it?
Turn to his ancestry,

Or to the church for it? Shall we endow him with

Title heroic,
After some warrior,
Poet, or stoic?

One aunty says he will
Soon "lisp in numbers,"
Turning his thoughts to rhyme,
E'en in his slumbers;
Watts rhymed in babyhood-
No blemish spots his fame-
Christen him even so;

Young Mr. Watts, his name'

Dr. Darlington's new work forms a volume of nearly six hundred pages, which the publishers have issued in a very handsome manner. It consists principally of an immense number of letters, the corres correspondence of Bartram with Collinson, Sir Hans Sloan, Kalm, Solander, Michaux, and other celebrated botanists, as well as those which passed between Marshall and Franklin, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Muhlenberg, and other equally well-known savans. It would be superfluous to praise a work like this. Its subjects and the name of the esteemed and accomplished author will commend it to the favor of a very wide circle of readers of botanical and antiquarian tastes, who will be glad to possess such memorials of such men.---Nat. Intelligencer.

8. Dismissal of the French Ministry,

9. The Reception due to Kossuth,

Walter Savage Landor,

525

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The steamship has brought Europe, Asia and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it

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From the Spectator.

BERNARD BARTON'S LIFE AND LETTERS.*

THERE is more of melancholy about the disappearance of the lesser than the greater stars of literature. The author whose works are for "all time" is as much alive to posterity as he was to his contemporaries; the writer whose name is to dwindle away through a slow tradition, and only be preserved for the literary student in literary history, comes more home to the feelings of our common nature-" mentem mortalia tangunt." When accident or satire turns up a name once frequent in the world's mouth, but now forgotten save by those whose trade it is to remember such, a feeling arises akin to that which touches the mind of the wayfarer who lingers over the mementos of mortality in a country churchyard.

The feeling is deeper, or at least fuller, in the case of a contemporary who continually appeared before the public, whose subjects were generally associated with the common sentiments and common feelings of mankind, and whose treatment if deficient in art and study was always pleasingnot too homely for the refined, not too deep or lofty for the humble. Such was Bernard Barton; some of whose strains yet linger in the memory, and who was almost tenderly associated in many minds from his long connection with the Annuals. Indeed, to their better spirit his own was appropriate, and they seem to have perished with if not before him.

The genius of Bernard Barton was probably capable of achieving greater excellence than his poems exhibit. Although he cannot exactly be called the founder of a school, we think he was the first in point of time who practised the domestic or household style of poetry, where the common incidents of daily life, the things or circumstances that are familiar to all of us, and the sentiments which are colored by a high state of civilization, if they are not owing to it, are embodied in

which arise spontaneously in many minds under certain conditions of society, and is therefore rather to be considered as common to many a moderate than peculiar to one original mind. It is natural but obvious.

The biographical information in the present volume lets us into part of the secret of Bernard Barton's acquiescence in a pleasing mediocrity, instead of struggling for excellence. He had little literature and little leisure; his genius was dis cursive rather than concentrated; and he had the fatal gift of easy fluency. "He wrote in numbers for the numbers came;" or if they did not, he poured out his thoughts in prose-always agreeable, it would seem, and with a substratum of reality, but of necessity superficial, and dependent for attraction on the subject, or the felicity of the hour. His rapidity of composition, its injurious effects upon his poetical character, with the outline of his literary career, are well and succinctly told by the friend who arranged and added to the autobiographical papers which Bernard Barton left behind him.

In 1812, he published his first volume of poems, called "Metrical Effusions," and began a correspondence with Southey, who continued to give him most kind and wise advice for many years.

In 1818 Bernard Barton published by subscription a thin quarto volume-" Poems by an Amateur;" and shortly afterwards appeared under the auspices of a London publisher in a volume of "Poems," which, being favorably reviewed in the

ing verse. If this style were carried to the pitch which the style is capable of, the founder might be entitled to the praise of an original poet. As he did not reach, and apparently did not aim at the highest excellence, his merit of priority was lost in a crowd of imitators; while Mrs. Hemans and (perhaps) Miss Landon, by adding the historical and romantic to their humbler themes, have attracted to themselves some of that reputation which rightfully belonged to Bernard Barton. But it must be owned, that if we judge from actual specimens, not from possible excellence, the style was not striking in itself. It was one of those ideas * Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton. Edited by his daughter. Published by Hall and Virtue. VOL. XXIII. 34

CCXCII.

LIVING AGE.

improve. Of this he was warned by his friends, and of the danger of making himself too cheap with publishers and the public. But the advice of others had little weight in the hour of success with one so

inexperienced and so hopeful as himself. And there was in Bernard Barton a certain boyish impetuosity in pursuit of anything he had at heart, that age itself scarcely could subdue. Thus it was with his correspondence; and thus it was with his poetry. He wrote always with great facility, almost unretarded by that worst labor of correction; for he was not fastidious himself about exactness of thought or harmony of numbers, and he could scarce comprehend why the public should be less easily satisfied.

One reason assigned by his biographer for the poet's "mistaken activity" was, that publishing