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very time meditating such a retirement, on account of the very evils that he assigns for the retreat of his hero.

The reception of "London" by the public was highly flattering to its author. In the learned circles especially, it produced a profound impression, and, as it appeared anonymously, the question was everywhere current: "Who is this unknown poet, who surpasses even Pope ?" The first impression was exhausted, and a second ordered in the course of a week. It is said that General Oglethorpe was especially delighted with it, agreeing as it did with his political antipathies and the generous sympathies of his heart, and long afterward Johnson was heard to express his indebtedness to the favor of that truly benevolent gentleman for this, his early production, though at that time he was an entire stranger to the author. Pope, at this period, was the unrivaled leader of the devotees of the muses, and, of course, could not fail to share in the public interest on such an occasion; but to his honor, be it recorded, he manifested a kindly interest to the unknown candidate for poetic fame-perhaps a future rival to himself. Having made diligent inquiry as to who the author was, and being able to learn no more than that he was an obscure scholar by the name of Johnson, he remarked that he would not long be concealed.

Johnson had thus fairly broken his way into the literary arena of London. Here commences that career of success and renown which has rendered him the most familiar, perhaps the most interesting, if not the most gigantic character in our literature; and here we may appropriately take our leave of him for the present.

THER

GIBBON.

HERE is an Hôtel Gibbon here, (Lausanne,) partly standing on the site of that garden in which the historian took his evening-walk, after writing the last lines of the work to which many years had been devoted; a walk which alone would have hallowed the spot, if, alas! there had not been those intinations in the work itself of a purpose which, tending to desecrate the world, must deprive all associations attendant on its accomplishment of a claim to be dwelt on as holy. How melancholy is it to feel that intellectual congratulation

which attends the serene triumph of a life of studious toil, chilled by the consciousness that the labor, the research, the Asiatic splendor of illustration, have been devoted, in part at least, to obtain a wicked end-not in the headlong wantonness of youth, or in the wild sportiveness of animal spirits-but urged by the deliberatehearted purpose of crushing the light of human hope, all that is worth living for, and all that is worth dying for, and substituting for them nothing but a rayless skepticism! That evening-walk is an awful thing to meditate on; the walk of a man of rare capacities, tending to his own physical decline among the serenities of loveliest nature, enjoying the thought, that in the chief work of his life just accomplished, he had embodied a hatred to the doctrines which teach men to love one another, to forgive injuries, and to hope for a diviner life beyond the grave; and exulting in the conviction, that this work would survive to teach its deadly lesson to young ingenuous students when he should be dust. One may derive consolation from reflecting that the style is too meretricious, and the attempt too elaborate and too subtile, to achieve the proposed evil, and in hoping that there were some passages in the secret history of the author's heart which may extenuate melancholy error; but our personal veneration for successful toil is destroyed in the sense of the strange malignity which blended with its impulses, and we feel no desire to linger over the spot where so painful a contradiction is presented as a charm.— Sergeant Talfourd.

PLAGUE CUSTOM AT CONSTANTINOPLE.— The Turks have a touching custom when the plague rages very greatly, and a thousand corpses are carried out daily from Stamboul, through the Adrianople gate, to the great groves of cypress which rise over the burial grounds beyond the walls. At times of terror and grief, such as these, the Sheikh Ul Islam (high-priest of the Mohammedans) causes all the little children to be assembled on a beautiful green hill, called the Oc Maidan-the Place of Arrows-and there they bow down upon the ground, and raise their innocent voices in supplication to the Father of Mercy, and implore his compassion on their afflicted city.-Curzon's Levant.

THE CHAINED BIBLE.

WITHIN the old cathedral dim,

A solemn group are met;

And hearts are glowing in their heat,
And cheeks with tears are wet.
The book is chained to the desk,
And from its page the throng

Listen to Him of Nazareth,

Or Zion's holy song.

Ah! well may tyrants fear the truth

That sets the spirit free;

And fain would they have quench'd in blood Its glorious liberty.

But kindled was a beacon light,

That higher tower'd, and higher;
Ho! people, answer with a shout,
"Is not my word a fire?"

And kindled were a thousand hearts,
And quenchless was the flame;
The spirit it had call'd to life

Nor rack, nor stake could tame.
'Twas folded 'neath the bloody plaid
Of him who grasp'd the sword,
And fought for kirk and covenant
The battles of the Lord.

The chainless truth, our country's boast
Through many a glorious age;
The truth that gilds her high renown,
And lights her letter'd page;

A

66

BOUT the time of the Reformation, when Bibles were scarce, a copy was usually chained to a convenient place in the church, that the people might read it. It was strongly bound, literally in boards," and was chained to the desk on which it was placed, that it might not be removed. In those days he who could read "occupied the place of the learned" among his neighbors; and to him the task was allotted of reading aloud for the public good. And deeply interesting were the scenes that often presented themselves. On Sabbaths and holidays all the parishioners that could leave their homes would congregate in the "convenient place," where the book of God, the food of their souls, was placed; and would listen earnestly and devoutly to the "words whereby they might be saved."

Our cut illustrates the scene as it probably actually appeared at the time.

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That teaches no commands of men,
But wisdom from above;

And needs no weapons, but its own
Strong faith and holy love.

The chainless truth, we 'll speed it forth,
Till, like electric chords,

Shall land to land transmit its glad,

Its everlasting words.

And nations blinded and enslaved

Shall rouse as from a sleep;

And error for her fallen shrines
And broken idols weep.

The chainless truth, we 'll speed it forth,
Till all the isles shall sing,

And China's millions peal the strains
Of Israel's shepherd King;
And in our hands, and to our hearts
And at our altars pure,

Our strength, our glory, and our shield,
We'll hold it fast and sure.
O'er all our holiest sympathies,
Its holier light we'll shed;
A blessing on the baby brow,
A hope above the dead.

Its page first taught our childish lips
Themes that are sung on high;
And kindred hands shall find it near
Our pillows when we die.

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WE

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

E know not how it may be with shade; the sculptor by the turn of a limb, others, but for our single selves, we or the fold of a robe; and the poet, or have great faith in our being able to dis- prose-writer, by the cadence of his sencover authors in their books; to discover tences, or even by some favorite word, their peculiarities of mind and person, and which has become a part and parcel of his oftentimes the circumstances of their soul. A tone, an atmosphere, a certain lives; building, as it were, complete forms Je ne sais quoi lies under, broods over, from their fragmentary members scattered and is the informing soul of every work in many places. It may not be always of art. We speak now of works of artintentional-in most cases we fancy it is of all true works of true artists-be they not-but there is always something of an books, statues, pictures, or linked sounds: author in his books, even when he is most with the patch-work imitations of the false to himself, or disguises himself the mere copyist, and the lifeless original of most. Any perfect and impenetrable dis- the still more lifeless original, we have guise is impossible. For when we no nothing to do. There are certain qualilonger see the distinctive impress of his ties in a true work of art which it is imstyle, his cast and peculiarity of thought, possible to mistake; certain more or less or in fact any of his acknowledged at- recondite qualities which relate to, and retributes, we are able, if we have ever felt late the thoughts and life of its author. Try the soul which these embody, to detect it Virgil and Horace by their works, and then still, and still to trace by the accounts of their lives as written in the scholiasts; they are the same. one is an epic dilettante, a play-at-work farmer; the other, an elegant satirist, a brilliant trifler, whose finest things "Play round the head, but come not near the heart."

"The mind, the spirit, the Promethean spark."

Disguise himself as he may, the musician is still revealed by some chord or combination of sound; the painter by some bit of color, some gleam of light or VOL. II, No. 1.-B

The

Try Dante and Milton by their works, and then by their lives; they, too, are the same, in all the same; a pair of grand old fellows, inflexible and strong, yet stern and gloomy withal, great thunder-clouds in the heaven of song. Try the moderns, any of them, by the same rule, and it is the same with them; and will be the same with all men evermore. No man is more and otherwise than he has been and is. We write, we paint, we carve, we sing from our own hearts, be they deep or shallow, and from our hearts' experience and wisdom. From nothing else; from no trick, no hearsay, no second-hand report. Wo be to the man who trusts in any of these things! who builds on other than his own foundation; follows other than his own soul's light. He is chasing a Will-o'-the-Wisp, which will mock him, and lead him into all sorts of bogs and marshes; and is building upon unstable sand, which the rains will wash away:

ing to delicate health, (which he made the most of for the purpose,) and partly because much of the time there were no schools within reach.

When he was eight or nine years old, his mother, with her three children, took up her residence on the banks of the Sebago Lake, in Maine, where the family owned a large tract of land; and here Hawthorne ran quite wild, and would, we doubt not, have willingly run wild till this time, fishing all day long, or shooting with an old fowling-piece, but reading a good deal too, on the rainy days, especially in Shakspeare and the " Pilgrim's Progress," and any poetry or light books within his reach. Delightful days must those have been; for that part of the country was wild then, with only scattered clearings, and nine-tenths of it primeval woods. But by-and-by his good mother began to think it was necessary that her boy should do something else; so he was sent back to Salem, where a private instructor fitted him for college. He was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College, Maine, as were also Professor Longfellow and General Franklin Pierce. What progress he made in his studies we know not; judging from the scholarly air of his books, we should say no mean one. There was some talk, we have heard from his friends, of a good proficiency in languages, esLet us glance at what little we know pecially Latin, and a knack of writing of his life, and then at his books.

"From his nest every rafter

Will rot, and his eagle home Leave him naked to laughter,

When leaves fall, and cold winds come."

If what we have advanced be true, and it will be granted, we think, in most cases, it is especially and emphatically true in the case of Nathaniel Hawthorne. If ever author was revealed in his books, Hawthorne is the man.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in or about the year 1807, in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, in a house built by his grandfather, who was a maritime personage. The old household estate was in another part of the town, and had descended in the family ever since the settlement of the country; but this old man of the sea exchanged it for a lot of land situated near the wharves, and convenient to his business, where he built the house, (which is still standing.) and laid out a garden where the future author rolled on a grassplot under an apple-tree and picked abundant currants. This grandfather (about whom there is a ballad in Griswold's "Curiosities of American Literature") died long before young Hawthorne was born. One peculiarity of Hawthorne's boyhood was a grievous disinclination to go to school, and (Providence favoring him in this natural repugnance) he never did go half as much as other boys, partly ow

English themes; but he himself, they say, insists upon it that he was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to brood over and nurse his own fancies than to dig into Greek roots, and be numbered among learned Thebans. If he did think so, we cannot help thinking he was not far from right. No learned Theban, no Greek roots, could have given him his present pure English style, and his subtile and profound knowledge of the heart.

It was the fortune or misfortune, just as the reader pleases, of Hawthorne to have some slender means of supporting himself; and so, on leaving college, in 1825, instead of immediately studying a profession, he sat himself down to consider what pursuit in life he was best fit for. His mother had now returned, and taken up her abode in her deceased father's house, a tall, ugly, old, grayish building, (it is now the residence of half a dozen

Irish families,) in which Hawthorne had a room; and year after year he kept on considering what he was fit for, and time and his destiny decided that he was to be the writer that he is. He had always a natural tendency (it appears to have been on the paternal side) toward seclusion, and this he now indulged to the utmost; so that, for months together, he scarcely held human intercourse outside of his own family, seldom going out except at twilight, or only to take the nearest way to the most convenient solitude, which was oftenest the seashore, the rocks and beaches in that vicinity being as fine as any in NewEngland. Once a year, or thereabouts, he used to make an excursion of a few weeks, in which he enjoyed as much of life as other people do in the whole year's ! round. Having spent so much of his youth and boyhood away from his native place, he had very few acquaintances in Salem, and during the nine or ten years that he spent there, in this solitary way, we doubt whether so much as twenty people in the town were aware of his existence. Meanwhile, strange as it may seem, he had lived a very tolerable life, always seemed cheerful, (was he indeed so with the weight of all that solitude on his heart?) and enjoyed the very best of bodily health. He had read endlessly, all sorts of good and good-for-nothing books, and in the dearth of other employment, had early begun to scribble sketches and stories, most of which he burned. Some, however, got into the magazines and annuals; but being anonymous, or under different signatures, they did not soon have the effect of concentrating any attention upon the author. Still they did bring him into contact with certain individuals. Mr. S. G. Goodrich (a gentleman of many excellent qualities, although a publisher!) took a very kindly interest in him, and employed his pen for "The Token," an annual. Old copies of "The Token" may still be found in antique boudoirs, and on the dusty shelves, of street book-stalls. It was the first and probably the best-it could not possibly be the worst-annual ever issued in this country, and numbered among its contributors many young writers who have since become famous. N. P. Willis was at one time its editor. It was a sort of hothouse, where native flowers were made to bloom like exotics. Had we, the writer hereof, lived in those days!

From the press of Monroe & Co., Boston, in the year 1837, appeared "The Twice-told Tales," Mr. Hawthorne's first acknowledged volume. "The Twicetold Tales" was a collection of essays, allegories, and stories contributed to various magazines and periodicals. In 1842 was added a second volume.

The success of "The Twice-told Tales" was a disgrace to public taste. The foreign novels of James and Bulwer, the home manufactures of Simms and Ingraham, and hosts of other standard writers created "sensations," and sold by whole editions, while the finest and purest tales ever written in America-the most spiritual creations of a beautiful genius-dropped from the press almost still-born ; or, to say the most, attracted a quite limited share of attention. Something similar was the success of Poe's "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque." And so it frequently happens with anything fine and peculiar. A new author-half the book-makers of all ages are as old as literature-has to force his way before the public, or has to have it forced for him; and then has to create the proper taste in the minds of his reluctant readers. But by-and-by all comes right, as it should, and has with Hawthorne. Within the last year or so, a new edition of the "Twicetold Tales" has been published by Ticknor & Co.; and they are now on the road to general and permanent popularity.

Though not widely successful in their day and generation, the "Twice-told Tales had the effect of making Hawthorne known in his own immediate vicinity; insomuch that, however reluctantly, he was compelled to come out of his owl's nest, and lionize in a small way. Thus he was gradually drawn somewhat into the world, and became pretty much like other people. His long seclusion had not made him melancholy or misanthropic, nor wholly unfitted him for the bustle of life; and perhaps it was the kind of discipline which his idiosyncrasy demanded, and chance and his own instincts, operating together, had caused him to do what was fittest.

In 1839, Mr. Bancroft, the historian, without solicitation, gave him a situation in the Boston Custom-house, which proved considerably lucrative, and of which Hawthorne discharged the duties like a man of this world. After two years he resigned and went to the Brook-Farm Community,

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