dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, with the gulf which separates principles from actions. Men are struggling to realize dim ideals of right and truth, and each failure adds to the desperate earnestness of their efforts. Beneath all the shrewdness and selfishness of the American character, there is a smouldering enthusiasm which flames out at the first touch of fire,- sometimes at the hot and hasty words of party, and sometimes at the bidding of great thoughts and unselfish principles. The heart of the nation is easily stirred to its depths; but those who rouse its fiery impulses into action are often men compounded of ignorance and wickedness, and wholly unfit to guide the passions which they are able to excite. There is no country in the world which has nobler ideas embodied in more worthless shapes. All our factions, fanaticisms, reforms, parties, creeds, ridiculous or dangerous though they often appear, are founded on some aspiration or reality which deserves a better form and expression. There is a mighty power in great speech. If the sources of what we call our fooleries and faults were rightly addressed, they would echo more majestic and kindling truths. We want a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thought; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions: which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle, and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom. from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all selfsacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new

consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions of conventionalism and expediency; vindicate the majesty of reason; give new power to the voice of conscience, and new vitality to human affection; soften and elevate passion; guide enthusiasm in a right direction; and speak out in the high language of men to a nation of men.

TALFOURD.*

AMONG the many gifted minds who have been influenced by the spirit which Wordsworth infused into the literature of the present age, there is hardly one who approaches nearer, in the tone and character of his writings, to the bard of Rydal Mount, than Thomas Noon Talfourd, the poet and essayist. He belongs to that class of authors, who manifest so much purity and sweetness of disposition, that our admiration for their talents is often merged in our love for their qualities of heart. Criticism shrinks from a cold analysis of their powers. Wherever they find a reader, they find a friend. A spirit of affectionate partisanship mingles with most criticisms on their writings. All who have partaken of their intellectual companionship have a deep sympathy in their personal welfare. We may be almost said to joy in their joy, and grieve in their grief. If they be not bound to us by the ties of consanguinity, they are still the brethren of our minds and hearts. Oceans cannot separate them from our love. National differences cannot alienate them from our affections. Wherever they go, they have the "freedom of the city." Wordsworth, Lamb, Dickens, Talfourd, Frederika Bremer, allowing for their intellectual diversities, and the differ

*Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of T. Noon Talfourd, Author of "Ion." Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1842. 12mo. pp. 354.-, North American Review, October, 1843.

ent influences which have modified their genius, are all authors who make personal friends wherever their writings penetrate.

In the

In speaking of Talfourd as a mental pupil of Wordsworth, we do not mean to say that he is an imitator of his master's manner, or that he closely copies any of his prominent beauties or defects; but merely that the tone and aim of the writings of the two are similar. spirit and essence of his genius, and not in its outward form and expression, is he a Wordsworthian. He, indeed, often adopts expressions and images which Wordsworth, in the severe simplicity of his taste, would reject with disdain. His style is richly laden with ornament, and almost monotonously musical in its flow. His thoughts are more often seen in the imperial robes of rhetoric, than in its suit of "homely russet brown." The rich flush of imagination colors his whole diction. At times, he is fastidiously nice in his choice of language, and a fondness for dainty and delicate epithets too often gives to his style an appearance of prettiness. He luxuriates too much in the "nectared sweets" of language and imagery, and is apt to impair the manliness and vigor of his diction by redundant fancies and sugared words. When his own stores of sweetness fail him, he avails himself of those belonging to others. His diction is studded with apt quotations, teeming with richness of sentiment and style. But still he shares in all the essential characteristics of the school of Wordsworth, and gives evidence on every page of that "quiet eye, which sleeps and broods on his own heart." The mingling spirits of meditation and imagination are the inspiration both of his poetry and criticism. His manner is almost always quiet, even when he is severe.

There is

nothing in his general style to interrupt the calm and steady flow of his thoughts and feelings, no glare, no rush, no epigrammatic point, no "agony” and “wreaking " of mind upon expression. His temper is kindly, and averse to any use of sarcasm and denunciation. There is even little evidence in his writings of that directness and dogmatism which sometimes spring from the untrammelled exercise of a sharp, clear intellect, seeing objects in the white light of reason. His logic is often held in bondage to his affections or associations, and accommodates itself to the wishes of his heart. He is apt to consider matters of reasoning and observation as though they were matters of taste. As a logician, he has many of those faults which poets who aspire to the honors of dialectics experience so much difficulty in avoiding. He would probably be a more pleasing writer, if his fine humanity were accompanied with greater strength of passion, or more grasp and independence of understanding.

The prose essays, the title of which we have chosen as a caption for our notice of Talfourd, abound in beauty. Indeed, the author's mind seems hardly to apprehend the mean and the deformed. His heart and imagination flow out in his compositions, and color and consecrate whatever they touch. It is difficult to resist their pleading tones, even when they appear as advocates for critical fallacies. The sophistry of their warm goodness is more pleasing than the logic of passionless reasoning. They seem to have been nurtured on the "selectest influences of creation," and to have been preserved from the "contagion of the world's slow stain." Love, beauty, goodness, sincerity, pure thoughts and fine sympathies, all in human character which is sweet and