what she has felt. Her theory of morals does not seem to have come into her soul through the inlet of the ear. Her truthfulness is a prominent characteristic of her genius.

The poems of Mrs. Sigourney are very numerous and popular. According to Mr. Griswold, she has published six or seven volumes, of which the last appeared in 1841. The moral character of her writings is unexceptionable. She possesses great facility in versification, and is fluent both in thoughts and language. But much that she has written is deformed by the triteness and irregularity consequent upon hasty composition, and hardly does justice to her real powers. Niagara," "The Death of an Infant," "Winter," and "Napoleon's Epitaph," are favorable specimens of her talents.

Mrs. Child has written little verse, but the few metrical pieces which pass under her name are almost as good as her best prose. Hannah F. Gould is a name so pleasantly interwoven with pure fancies and good thoughts, that it is an unpleasant task to sift her productions, for the purpose of selecting those of enduring value. She is responsible for three volumes of verse, all of which have been read. Mrs. Amelia B. Welby, a young poetess of the west, has considerable force of expression, delicacy of fancy, and the poetic feeling in large measMrs. Elizabeth Hall has acquired much reputation by her dramatic poem of "Miriam." Elizabeth F. Ellett, Anne Peyre Dinnies, (author of that noble expression of high feeling, "The Wife,") Emma C. Embury, Lucy Hooper, Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, receive the due honors of Mr. Griswold's pen and scissors. He makes numerous selections from the female poets.

ure.

We wish that we had space to do some justice to the quick, teeming fancy of Willis, a quality which he exercises in the service both of sentiment and humor. But we have noticed his poems at length in a former number of this journal, to which we must refer our readers for an estimate of his powers. Pierpont has displayed much lyrical enthusiasm and forcible expression, which are worthy of more than a passing tribute. Drake's delicate creation, "The Culprit Fay," and his stirring lyric on "The American Flag," deserve commemoration. Hillhouse has written much which will not be forgotten. Hadad" is a chaste and beautiful production, evincing skill and taste in composition, and pure and melodious in its tone. The "sunset-tinted haziness" through which the fine humanity and suggestive imagination of Lowell are seen, would delay the course of any critic who was not in desperate haste. Mr. Griswold has hardly done him justice in the selections contained in this volume. There are many excellent thoughts and imaginations scattered over the compositions of Brainard, Pike, Dawes, Wilde, Ware, Wilcox, Neal, Peabody, Sands, Lunt, Clarke, and others in Mr. Griswold's collection, which if the reader cannot discover himself, he will be assisted in his search by the editor's kindly and genial notices. Had we room for extracts, we might select many pieces of merit from the writings of American poets of the second class; but time and space are particularly inexorable to reviewers, and we must pause.

We can hardly conceive that a reasonable being should look with coolness or dislike upon any efforts to establish a national literature, of which poetry is such an important element. The man whose heart is capable of any patriotic emotion, who feels his pulse quicken

when the idea of his country is brought home to him, must desire that country to possess a voice more majestic than the roar of party, and more potent than the whine of sects, a voice which would breathe energy and awaken hope wherever its kindling tones were heard. The life of our native land, the inner spirit which animates its institutions, -the new ideas and principles of which it is the representative, these every patriot must wish to behold reflected from the broad mirror of a com

prehensive and soul-animating literature. The true vitality of a nation is not seen in the triumphs of its industry, the extent of its conquests, or the reach of its empire; but in its intellectual dominion. Posterity passes over statistical tables of trade and population, to search for the records of the mind and heart. It is of little moment how many millions of men were included at any time under the name of one people, if they have left no intellectual testimonials of their mode and manner of existence, no "foot-prints on the sands of time." The heart refuses to glow at the most astounding array of figures. A nation lives only through its literature, and its mental life is immortal. The capricious tyranny of Dionysius might well inspire fear in those whose lives and fortunes were subject to his passions and whims; but it can exercise no control over us. It died with the feeble arm of him who wielded it. But the power of Plato passed not away with his corporeal frame. Homer still sings, Socrates still speaks to us. Greece yet lives in her literature, more real to our minds, nearer to our affections, than many European kingdoms. The true monarchs of a country are those whose sway is over thought and emotion. They are

"The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule

Our spirits from their urns."

Its

America abounds in the material of poetry. history, its scenery, the structure of its social life, the thoughts which pervade its political forms, the meaning which underlies its hot contests, are all capable of being exhibited in a poetical aspect. Carlyle, in speaking of the settlement of Plymouth by the Pilgrims, remarks that, if we had the open sense of the Greeks, we should have "found a poem here; one of nature's own poems, such as she writes in broad facts over great continents." If we have a literature, it should be a national literature; no feeble or sonorous echo of Germany or England, but essentially American in its tone and object. No matter how meritorious a composition may be, as long as any foreign nation can say that it has done the same thing better, so long shall we be spoken of with contempt, or in a spirit of impertinent patronage. We begin to sicken of the custom, now so common, of presenting even our best poems to the attention of foreigners with a deprecating, apologetic air; as if their acceptance of the offering, with a few soft and silky compliments, would be an act of kindness demanding our warmest acknowledgements. If the Quarterly Review or Blackwood's Magazine speaks well of an American production, we think that we can praise it ourselves, without incurring the reproach of bad taste. The folly we yearly practise, of flying into a passion with some inferior English writer, who caricatures our faults, and tells dull jokes about his tour through the land, has only the effect to exalt an insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life

had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling of a pert coxcomb, who was discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain, who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which has not yet been fitly expressed, gives poignancy to the least ridicule launched at faults and follies which lie on the superficies of our life. Every person feels that a book which condemns the country for its peculiarities of manners and customs does not pierce into the heart of the matter, and is essentially worthless. If Bishop Berkeley, when he visited Malebranche, had paid exclusive attention to the habitation, raiment, and manners of the man, and neglected the conversation of the metaphysican, and, when he returned to England, had entertained Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot, with satirical descriptions of the "complement extern" of his eccentric host, he would have acted just as wisely as many an English tourist, with whose malicious pleasantry on our habits of chewing, spitting, and eating, we are silly enough to quarrel. To the United States, in reference to the pop-gun shots of foreign tourists, might be addressed the warning which Peter Plymley thundered against Bonaparte, in reference to the Anti-Jacobin jests of Canning: Tremble, oh thou land of many spitters and voters, "for a pleasant man has come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, and thou shalt be no more!"

In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general