High up the lashing northern deep, In tropic brightness gleam; They dip their keels in every stream They furl their sails in threatening clouds To link with love, earth's distant bays They deck our halls with sparkling gems IV. CHRISTINE:-A MELODY. She stood, like an angel just wandered from heaven, She looked up and smiled on the many glad faces, The friends of her childhood who stood by her side, But she shone o'er them all, like a queen of the Graces, When blushing, she whispered the oath of a bride. We sang an old song as with garlands we crowned her, And each left a kiss on her delicate brow, And we prayed that a blessing might ever surround her, And the future of life be unclouded as now. V. I'VE LIVED UPON THY MEMORY. I've lived upon thy memory I knew that thou wert mine When first I took that trembling hand, And pressed those lips of thine; I've lived upon thy memory For many a long, long year, Than that which gave me birthWhere blooms the fairest rose of all, Down in a quiet glen; It is mine own-that little flower VI. SACO FALLS. Rush on, bold stream! thou sendest up I stand beneath the sombre hill, I see thy lengthened darkling form; In welcome music, far away. Hath Nature framed a lovelier sight, VII. TO ALEXINE, IN HER FIRST YEAR. To toast quite young their lady loves, But don't you think it very queer, That I should make such speed And yet, and yet it may not be A matter of surprise, For many stranger things befall Young ladies with black eyes. Perchance your own may scan this line, On some far-distant day, When they are glistening in their prime, And will those playful orbs, so bright, And will you come so willingly, When years have decked that brow? And when this cheek has lost the glow Say, sweet one, will you come and sing Some stirring song, or plaintive note Alas! alas! I fear the set Of childhood's radiant star, Yes, dearest! that keen archer's hand But only as a friend.' You'll come to him for sage advice, At that sweet time of life, Ah! at the wedding, I shall be Are gladdened by your smile, THE TREASURED HARP. All the splendid furniture of his late residence had been sold except his wife's harp. That, he said, was too closely associated with the idea of herself; it belonged to the little story of their loves; for, some of the sweetest moments of their courtship were those when he had leaned over that instrument, and listened to the melting tones of her voice. Irving's Sketch Book. Go, leave that harp!-twined round its strings Let that remain !-all else beside, The chords that won my home a bride, It hath a power, though all unstrung And from her hands 'twill ne'er be wrung, It hath no price since that sweet hour A spirit like a summer's night Hangs o'er that cherished lyre, Still on my ear her young voice falls, IX. SONG, OVER THE CRADLE OF TWO INFANT SISTERS, SLEEPING. Sweet be their rest, no ghastly things Unstained by sin, untouched by woe. And shine with yon bright host above. X. SLEIGHING SONG. O swift we go o'er the fleecy snow, When moonbeams sparkle round; When boofs keep time to music's chime, As merrily on we bound. On a winter's night, when hearts are light, And health is on the wind, We loose the rein and sweep the plain, And leave our cares behind. With a laugh and song, we glide along Across the fleeting snow; With friends beside, how swift we ride On the beautiful track below! O! the raging sea, has joy for me, When gale and tempests roar; But give me the speed of a foaming steed, And I'll ask for the waves no more. XI. TO ALMEDA, IN NEW-ENGLAND. Strange, that things which soonest perish, When their bloom has passed away- Then lady, take this idle sonnet, XII. VESPER MELODIES. It falters now! ye rippling waves Oh, wind and wave but serve me fair, And bring Almeda's song to shoreAnd ye may hold your revels there, In noise and foam till night is o'er! XIII. TO ONE BENEATH THE WAVES. Come back from Memory's mourning urn, I bid thy gentle spirit come And look once more on me; But thou art slumbering where the foam Rolls madly o'er the sea. Alas! how soon our better years To tempest winds are blown, And all our hopes and joys and fears Alike, are widely strewn,She rests in yonder village-mound, Who should have been thy bride, And thou art sleeping 'neath the sound Of ocean's flowing tide. XIV. TO A CHURCH STEEPLE. Welcome! my ancient friend! Thrice welcome to my sight. In childhood's thoughtless glee, Old spire, again tow'rd thee I've strayedDost thou remember me? Pleasant the first faint ray Of morning light appears To those who wait the coming day, And sweet the evening star Gleams from the shadowy sky, On mariners, who've wandered far So breaks upon my path Or bird skims o'er the vane, My heart leaped up, when memory caught Thy slender top again. Welcome! my ancient friend! Thrice welcome to my sight, XVI. REMEMBERED MUSIC. "If I could hear that laughing voice again, But once again! how oft it wanders by, In the still hours, like some remembered strain, Troubling the heart with its wild melody!" The fragment of a pleasant song Is murmuring in our ears, And we would fain the sounds prolong, Though much they move our tears. They breathe a low and pensive lay, But one we love full well, For oh! it sends our thoughts away The simple voice that warbled then Yet sometimes Fancy wakes the strain, MR. WASHINGTON IRVING, MR. NAVARRETE, AND THE KNICKERBOCKER. In submitting to our readers, in March 1841, and in May of the present year, our commentaries upon Irving's Life of Columbus, and upon the indebtedness of its author to Don Martin Navarrete, we endeavored to keep ourselves within the strictest limits of critical propriety. Never having known Mr. Irving, save through his works, we were without personal feeling of any kind in regard to him. Having long and ardently admired his exquisite contributions to our literature, and been taught to think highly of his character as a man, we felt and could feel no desire to do him injustice, to wound his feelings, or sully his reputation. On the contrary, we entertained and expressed, as Americans, a high and just pride in his fame; and while we deemed it our duty, as connected with the literary press, severely to scrutinize his course, in the matter to which we referred, we made it our especial care, as it was our obligation, to treat him with that perfect respect, which should mark the literary, not less than the personal deportment of gentlemen. We call our readers to witness, that we have sedulously clung, throughout, to the line of strict propriety, and that we have been rather chary, than otherwise, of couching our conclusions in the language which facts would have justified. It is true, that after more than a year of silence on the part of Mr. Irving and his friends, we did as we thought we righteously might conclude, that the question had been yielded by default, and we resisted, in plain but respectful language, the right of any man, however eminent, to take the high ground of mute complacent critic has inflated." irresponsibility. Notwithstanding that we spoke | (could it have been from the critic-man himself?) without disguise, it was also without discourtesy, calling our attention to the awful exposé, and sugand the daily press, every where, in commenting gesting that Mr. Irving ought to know how his upon our article, adverted most especially to its total reputation had been demolished, and the public, how freedom from unbecoming virulence and harshness. wofully they had been deceived. But we had good With a disposition to do justice, thus fully re- grounds for sharing the indifference of the public cognized, and manifested too, in a course so con- in our knowledge of Mr. Washington Irving, and sistently respectful, we must confess that we felt of the services of his deceased brother, Peter Irving, no little surprise, when our attention was called to who was with him in Spain, and who labored so the July and August numbers of the New-York long and so assiduously for him in the archives of Knickerbocker. We had thought it possible, that, that nation. Hence we dismissed the matter from in the lapse of time, we might hear from some friend our mind entirely, until advised by the same critiof Mr. Irving, and we doubted not that we should cal Nil-Admirari in the 'Messenger' for May, that find in such an individual, abilities and deportment as nobody had thought it worth while to assail his worthy so respectable an association. When, there- position, he considered the truth of his charge confore, we learned that a defence had appeared in the ceded; especially moreover as time enough had periodical, with which Mr. Irving had been espe- elapsed for some obscure Spanish newspaper to cially and confidentially connected, we might have take the cold scent and join in the bay.' We had our doubts as to the strength of its probable shall take present occasion-perhaps in our next positions, but we anticipated no disparaging depar-number-to puncture the bladder which our selfture from controversial decency. We knew, it is true, that the Knickerbocker was a plant of Mr. We are free to confess, that the temptation to Irving's own watering; that it lived and had its administer to the author of such a paragraph the being only in the shadow of his name. We feared, castigation which it so richly deserves, is almost therefore, that we should find allegiance sworn to too strong for our powers of resistance. We are his cause, per fas et per nefas; yet we were dis-only admonished to refrain, by the knowledge that posed to make much allowance for the ardor of such a production must prove its own best antidote, personal friendship. If public opinion had given in the mind of every reader who has not lost in the to the Knickerbocker a right to settle disputed feelings of a partizan, the earliest and best instincts questions by its simple ipse dixit, and to put at de- of a gentleman. The insinuation, which is confiance the established rules of ordinary propriety, veyed by the question in parenthesis, could only the knowledge of prerogatives so unusual and ex- have been conceived by one who would deem the alted, had not penetrated our Boeotian segment of fact insinuated, a legitimate and creditable stratathe Republic. We had, consequently, expected to gem, and who would not hesitate to invent it, in see conclusions based upon argument and fact, as the dearth of better argument or happier illustrahad been customary in such matters, and we had tion. Our readers would follow us no farther, hoped to find the contest, if contest there were, a were we to insult them by pretending to repel it. strife of courtesy no less than of strength. If our How far the Knickerbocker is entitled to the readers can refer, as we trust they will, to the high ground which it assumes, it will be our duty numbers of which we have spoken, they may, per- searchingly to examine. For the present, we will haps, in some degree, realize our disappointment. pass the palpable mistatements and unfounded alThe article of July (p. 97) is so perfectly charac-legations which are contained above. They will teristic, that we crave permission to transcribe it: come up in the due course of things, as we progress "It is amusing sometimes to remark the sensi- with the "puncturing" which follows in the Autiveness of an envious literary non-producer, touch-gust No., (p. 194.) Of that production, it is but ing the indifference with which the public regard fair to say, that it unquestionably supports, to the his querulous fault-findings. We have a pleasant full extent, the high merit of the announcement case in point. Some months since, a writer of this which preceded it. What could have been the class in the Southern Literary Messenger' endea- motive cause of that announcement, is left utterly vored with abundant but very thankless labor, to in the dark; for the article in chief opens by deprove that Mr. Irving made no researches for his claring, that the editor's "promise" in July, was 'Life of Columbus,' but that without acknowledg- the only reason for his exposition in August, and ment he stole his materials ready prepared to his that our anonymous charges" were "evidently so hand, from a 'Collection of Voyages' by Navar- utterly unfounded, as to require no word of refutarete a Spanish author. This highly probable state- tion" at his hands. Why then the "promise" was ment of course excited little attention. Doubtless, originally made, to "puncture" what was “eviseeing at once its drift, few readers of the Mes- dently unfounded," is left to conjecture, and Mr. senger' gave the article any farther thought; for we remember to have received, some months after its appearance, an anonymous letter from the South, 66 Irving's reputation is exposed, by his defender, to the bitter reproach of requiring a bulwark of scurrility, against what needed "no word of refutation.” 66 In what follows of the defence, throughout, the fea- | are assured, have taught him, that such things betures are the same. "Gross charges," "tardy long now only to the worst corners of the worst calumny," malice," "hypocritical disclaimer," papers; that such missiles are universally detected, "spleen," ," "artifice and mystification," "impudent as the solitary arguments of those who feebly deand impertinent," "contemptible," "inflated and fend a miserable cause. He would have known, ungrammatical," "larcenous perceptions," "sting- that it was inexpedient for himself to be quoted by less insect," "impotent and malignant iconoclast"--the Knickerbocker, within a few pages of so such are a few of the phrases, epithets and descriptions, which are lavished upon us in all the "mazes of metaphorical confusion." This too by the editor of a magazine, that claims for itself, at second hand, "the very summit of our periodical literature,” and which quotes, in a page of self-beatification, in the very same number, a letter of Sir Edward L. Bulwer, to prove to the undiscerning public at home," the high station which it enjoys," and "the various and graceful intellect which it displays." trenchant a laudation of his merits, as having "recorded high opinions in favor" of that periodical.3 His prudence would have taught him, that the world might suspect so immediate an interchange of amiable offices, and perhaps exclaim with Tom Moore, "There's reciprocity in that!" Above all things, he would not have permitted Sir Edward Bulwer to be mentioned, in the same volume with so effervescent an article on so delicate a subject, for fear that the ill-natured might remember the Baronet's bright creation, Mrs. Margery Lobkins, Not to question, for one moment, Sir Edward's and taunt both historian and advocate with having sincerity, nor to dispute the palm, which his praise neglected her salutary advice to Paul Clifford-"If entitles the Knickerbocker to hold, jointly with you wants what is not your own, try and do withMcGrawler's renowned Asineum-we must never-out it; if you cannot do without it, take it away by theless humbly enter our protest against such a insinivation, not bluster.” style of defence or controversy. In warfare with Regarding Mr. Irving then as the unconscious such weapons, we are neither willing nor compe- victim of his friend's bad manners, we shall not altent to engage. They have been long surrendered, low ourselves to be provoked into any disrespect by cominon consent, to the monopoly of the ancient towards him, by the rudeness of an attack, which and honorable sisterhood of the fish-market. Any was obviously meant to goad us from our vantage attempt on the part of the Knickerbocker to invade ground of courtesy. As we stated, substantially, their grey prescription, must be left for settlement at first, our attention was originally called to this between the high contending parties. For our-subject, by conversation with several Spanish genselves, we have but one purpose-that of meeting tlemen of high attainments and position, from whom the issue which is framed-manfully, boldly, and directly. we learned that Mr. Irving had suffered much in Spain, from a supposed want of candor towards It must be observed, however, that we should Navarrete. The tributes paid to our countryman take very different position, were it possible for by the American press, and its total silence in reus to suppose, that Mr. Irving could have been, in gard to the Spanish work in that connexion, were any way, privy to either of the articles of which alleged as giving good grounds of confirmation to we have spoken. Far be it from us to do him any the charge. Being unwilling to make such a consuch injustice. We may question the fairness of cession, as to one whom we deemed then the leader his historical dealings, but we will not offer him of our literature, we examined the subject with a the indignity of connecting him with his defender. view to Mr. Irving's defence. Unfortunately, we It is true that there are some facts which might in- were led to a conclusion directly the reverse of our duce us, if we were suspicious, to fancy that he had anticipations. Concurring with Mr. Irving himfurnished his advocate with the material for his de- self, in the expressed opinion, that "were every fence. Of these-the assertion that he was in one to judge for himself, and speak his mind frankly friendly correspondence with Navarrete, up to the and fearlessly, we should have more true criticism time of his departure for Spain-might be instanced than at present"-we determined that our mind as an example. In despite of this, however, we should "frankly and fearlessly" be spoken, upon a will do Mr. Irving the justice to say, that his taste subject so interesting to the literature of our counwould have rebelled against such a defence-his try. We knew Mr. Irving as one of the first wrigorge would have risen at it, whatever might have ters of his day; as the possessor of perhaps the been the aggravation of his feelings. We have purest and richest style in our language. We profoundly mistaken his grade of intellect, if he knew his popularity, and the risk that we should could be deluded into the belief, that he had over-run in endeavoring to sail against its current. We thrown a serious accusation by the a priori method were aware, that every distinguished man has his of calling its author an "insect," an "iconoclast," hangers-on, as every Pacha his "tails;" and we and a "Nil-Admirari,"- "like Cerberus, three knew, that such folks are always prompt to seek the gentlemen at once." His knowledge would, we 3 Aug. Knick., p. 205. 4 Sou. Lit. Mess., March 1841, 'Aug. Knick. 205. * Id. Ib. p. 238. August Knick., p. 206. |