Alternately they sing, alternate flow The obedient tears, melodious in their woe: While beating sorrows groan from each full heart, When it arises to the dignity of art, revealing the infinite and the pure in its grandeur and harmonies, it should make its appeal to the nation's heart; but in its quiet, subdued moments, when it is pervaded with friendly sentiments and gentle thoughts, let it sing to the Lares and embrace the circle about their shrine-anon to gather up the grandeur of the storm, and move the people's hearts, or sway their spirits with the ocean's august murmurs-anon shedding her mild moods about the domestic hearth,—as nature leaves the zephyrs to garden walks, to emerge from her retreat, and mid the stern collected martial group send forth her clarion notes, wherein peal on peal flash out the soul's brief history, to do, to dare, to die; or higher still, and nobler, above nature's voices, above crowned art, in the swelling and falling notes of a full-toned rapt strain, pervading the lowest depths of the spirit with a religious sanctity and awe, on whose bosom of infinite silence is upborne a voice of all the humanities in one inexpressible, inarticulate, and almost unconscious, Amen. Art is double-faced, turning one towards what a people are, and the other heavenward towards what they would be. It is both formed and forming. If the German music so far partake of our national character as to render it wholly acceptable, it will become engrafted among us, to the exclusion of an original product. The present is emphatically an age of culture rather than creative. Not for the reason of any inability, but from overmastering circumstances. What soul in love with the ocean's music can reproduce it with any honesty of originality, while Von Webber's compositions are ringing in his ears, and every murmur of our majestic forests is associated with the gorgeous Mozart? Still we despair not--a composer yet to come, whose very being sets to nature's music, will become an American lyre, from whose chords drop as bird-notes all wild and weird sounds of nature, as though for the first time they had known a virgin echo. When that day comes, let the anthem that arises from this side of the sea ascend heavenward in its majesty, pure, stern, godlike, as the tones of our orator whose voice lingers among our granite hills, as his of old, who thundered to the Egean, still echo around her shores-nature and art struggling which shall immortalize the other. Our landscape painters and poets have drunk deep of home fountains, and the noblest American scenery is hallowed anew in poetry and painting; sculpture must emerge from the sensuousness of the Greeks before it can accomplish anything surpassing in the ideal. It treats our national subjects with great power, but is unimposing when it stoops to echo foreign products. Grecian art is born of and baptized in its own clime, and will not flourish in a soil so foreign as ours. Its masterpieces were representations of its divinities, and the idol before which it offered its adoration was sensuous beauty. Whether the arts of Greece preceded a certain culture, or came after, would be an interesting subject for speculation; whether the Apollo was an expression of humanity or of one mind in advance of the general culture. We believe it to have been the former. Rude specimens existed long before it among other nations; the sublime ideas of religion, kept in mystery by the priests, yet flashing out in glimmerings among the people, found in this a fit representation of the marriage of the earthly with the spiritual in our natures. We have products in sculpture, painting, and poetry that will vie with those of any nation and almost any clime; and from past analogies we may hope, in the not distant future, to greet compositions in music breathing the soul and genius of the masters, yet truthful, American.* Though without culture the simplest, even infancy delights in melodies; and though it is readily perceived that music is a science, that in the higher region of harmonies it is an art, is yet in this country to be learned and appreciated. Easy as it is to value music, rhyme and painting, the cultivated few alone value poetry and art. The nation's development must be aided by pure compositions in the past. They must be frequently placed before it in oratorios and concerts, and especially the harmonies of Beethoven introduced to the family circle. The groundwork of the structures of art exists in the appreciation of the public heart. No genius is ever so far in advance of its time, as not to be listened to at all. The broader the genius the truer the appreciation; even Milton would be lost to fame, save for the cultivated few, while the uneducated seaman would clasp the dramas of Shakspeare to his heart, as though with those he could keep afloat on the ocean of humanity. Let the nation's prayer go up for a great national music, to *We would here beg leave to thank Mr. Fry for his lectures on music, so truly a benefit to the city--and ask Mr. Abbott why we may not have the privilege to hear his oratorio; and also ask the Philharmonic Society why the public may not oftener hear their noble performances. They can do much to ennoble the public taste. which its humanity shall respond, as now its heart leaps at its revolutionary airs, and the very pulsing of that prayer whose only speech is a secret yearning, yet not inaudible, shall cause that lyre to thrill, whose chords are the soul of mighty intellect, embodying the great wants of the national heart in devotional harmonies. AMERICAN POETRY AND FOREIGN REVIEWS. North British Review, August, 1852. IN the number of the "North British" which we have placed at the head of this article, was an essay on American poetry. It purported to show the state and defects of poetry in this country, and for that purpose selected four of our poets whom it termed our best. The four so chosen were Longfellow, Bryant, Reed and Poe. As, however, the article we allude to has been noticed to an unusual degree by the American press, we may presume that there are none of our readers who are not aware of the tenor of its remarks, and we shall quote them much less often than we should otherwise be compelled to do. We have never, we regret to say, seen an article that contains in so short a space so many inconsistencies. The first position taken is, that "in the art and criticism of America we generally behold the errors of" English "art and criticism exaggerated," and that the Americans have a "filial. reverence for Britain" which is not without its disadvantages," as reverence begets imitation, and the imitator most often copies the 66 deformities of his model first." After this we were greatly surprised to find that though Mr. Bryant was charged with copying, and Mr. Reed with excelling the beauties of English poetry, not a single fault of either of the four authors criticised was traced to its British model. Instead of this, Mr. Longfellow was attacked on account of "his model Goethe," whose "lighter sins of false pretension and charlatanism" he has imitated. As these were grave charges to bring against so popular an author as Mr. Longfellow, we expected to find them sustained by some illustrations. But we were again surprised by finding the proof narrowed down to the following sentence: Judging from Mr. Longfellow's works, we feel pretty well convinced that his ideal of a great poet is Goethe, and that the poems of Goethe we have named are his favorite models." There are two things in poetry which are perfectly distinct and separate. The one is the production of an original poem, and the other the founding of an original school. We think that the North British (from its own statements) has confounded the two. To employ the same class is one thing; to portray the same objects is another. Mr. Longfellow was at perfect liberty to do the one, but was inexcusable if he descended to the other. A follower may be allowed, but a copyist can never be forgiven. For our own part, we neither consider Mr. Longfellow as the follower of Goethe, nor the founder of a new school. Our readers can best satisfy themselves, if they have any doubts on the subject, by a comparison of the two authors. But in connection with Goethe, the North British makes several charges of heartlessness against Mr. Longfellow, and these we cannot leave unnoticed. It will be found that all descriptive poems are characterized by one of two distinctive traits. The one class selects attractive objects and appeals to our admiration, while the other selects humble ones, and appeals to our sympathy. If the appeal is the mere affectation of feeling, the heart of the reader will inevitably detect the cheat; and if the appeal thus fails to awaken sympathy, the poem is a failure. Now in nearly all of Mr. Longfellow's poems we find the second characteristic. Evangeline is a village girl-a homeless wanderer. Her lover is the blacksmith's son. Unlike Claude Melnotte, he does not rise to distinction. Unlike De Argentine, he does not die in battle. The cheerless wards of a public hospital is the scene where the curtain drops over the struggles of his obscure life. She who bends over him is the heroine of the poem, but not as we first saw her. The black eyes no longer softly gleam. "Beneath the brown shade of her tresses." Those tresses are tinged with gray. The bloom has left her cheek. "God's benediction" is still upon her, warmer, stronger, than when she had numbered her "seventeen summers," but no "ethereal beauty" shines on the wrinkled brow, and encircles the bent form. No friends with sobs and tears are grouped around to awaken the reader's sympathy. The diseased, the dying, and the dead are only there. Thus aged, wearied, poor and forsaken, the lovers have their last meeting. Let the readers of the poem say whether this scene calls out their sympathy. If it does not, the poem is but empty affectation. If it does, it contains that essence of true poetry which the mere artist never gives. 6 Apart from the general remark that "Evangeline" would be a "notable work had Hermann and Dorothea' never been written," the North British, in reviewing that poem, puts in "a few complaints" intended to "smite Mr. Longfellow's artistical conscience." The first of these is, that "The scenery of village, forest and prairie are given with distinctness enough to please, though with none of that more than scientific accuracy of observation and description which is characteristic of the great poet." Wordsworth has insisted that the great end of the poet is to please. Without endorsing this doctrine generally, we still think it true as regards one branch of descriptive poetry. The picture of the Stygian march in the sixth book of the Eneid, the "Inferno" of Dante, and the first two books of "Paradise Lost," can hardly please, though they may deeply interest. In such descriptions the poet has another object: yet when describing the fairer views of nature, then his great end, as Wordsworth has said, is to please. But though the end may often be attained, there are of course different degrees in the amount of pleasure which is awakened. This depends not upon accuracy, but upon those lights and shadows which the poet throws over his piece. Of the merits of a poem in this particular, the lovers and students of nature are much better judges than the critics of a Review, and to them we leave "Evangeline." The remainder of the remark appears to us wholly erroneous. The sentence is somewhat vague, and the italicising of the words that modify the term "accuracy" only renders it more so. It is difficult to conceive of "more than scientific accuracy." Science requires all the accuracy that human observation, care, and skill can give. If the Review meant to say that great naturalness was the requisite, that would be well enough. But the appendage of "more than scientific," shows that such is not the meaning of the Review, and leads us to the conclusion that it means exactitude. The context, and the neglect to point out inaccuracies in Mr. Longfellow's descriptions, prove that the term is used in this sense. The meaning of the passage, therefore, is, that there is breadth and distinctness enough of description, without sufficient precision. It is at best an extremely loose term, which might much better have been retained for facts and figures where its meaning is known, than |