ORIGINAL POETRY. THE PERPETUAL YOUTH OF NATURE. A SOLILOQUY. With what a hollow voice these broken ruins To read one legend of the men who reared them, And these are every day, and there is in them Of bright and fair, the heart is never weary A welcoming smile. The wind is very low- Or sends a quiver to the aspen leaf, Or curls the green wave on the pebbled shore, That, like a giant resting from his toil, Sleeps in the morning sun. That flowery palm Has a most glorious aspect, as he bows Fools! and where are they? Not a mark to tell P. A SIMPLE STORY. There never was a gentler creature Or one of lovelier heart and feature, The village loved her, friendship hushed it; Both old and young rose up and crushed it, There came one day, to woo the maiden, She married Jack, he spent his living He died, but not till his last shilling She reached it; scarce her mother knew her, None from the joyful group are missing, Hope and kind nursing to health brought her, But says she better likes the offers, That Willie makes the Widow Gray. J. CRITICAL NOTICES. A Treatise on the Law of Descents in the several United States of America. By Tapping Reeve, Inte Chief Justice of Connecticut. New York, 1825. 8vo. pp. xxvii. and 515. THE design of this book is clearly signified in its title. The author's view of the subject embraces all the Atlantic States, except Maine, whose recent separation from Massachusetts, probaly, induced him to think there was nothing sufficiently peculiar in its laws of descent to require distinct consideration. Of the Western States, he treats of none but Ohio. Whether Mr Reeve omitted the Mississippi states on account of the short time which had elapsed since their settlement, or for what other cause, we know not; but we regret that he past over Louisiana in particular, whose institutions have been influenced so much more than those of other states by the civil law, that the examination of them would have been well worth his attention. Lawyers in this country, we apprehend, are beginning to be satisfied of the importance to them of acquiring a knowledge of the civil law; and to despise the narrow prejudices, which have discouraged the study of it in England. And as nearly every thing estimable in the particular system of descents among us is borrowed from the civil law, while nearly all the defects of that system derive their origin from the common law, we should expect much profit from comparing the peculiarities of Louisiana with those of the Atlantic States. But, within the limits of the author's plan, his book, although less meritorious and important than Mr Stearns's on Real Actions, is, like that, another valuable fruit of the establishment of law schools. It consists, first, of some general explanations of terms and principles in the law of descents, introductory to the main body of the work; then of an abstract of the rules of descent in the several states above described, illustrated by a great variety of cases supposed or collected; and lastly, of a general view of their differences in relation to certain principles, and a general view of all their respective peculiarities. It would be foreign to our purpose to enter into a minute examination of Mr Reeve's work; nor do we feel competent to speak of the accuracy of all the parts of a treatise, containing an abridgment, upon a very nice and intricate subject, of the statute and expository law of fifteen states. But judging more confidently from a knowledge of the introductory matter and of the section on Massachusetts, than from the perusal of the rest of the work, we hesitate not to express an opinion that the profession will find it fraught with curious and useful instruction. Few persons in this country can be ignorant of the immense superiority of our doctrine of descents, compared with the principles which regulate them at common law. The rules in the latter are essentially of feudal extraction. Hence the descent of the land in England to the oldest son to the exclusion of the rest. The feud having been originally granted to one individual, on condition of the grantee's rendering military service to the grantor, the perpetual integrity of the feud was deemed indispensable to the full discharge of that service. The possession of the feud being, also, frequently connected with a title of honour, it was necessary that the lands, which supported the rank, should descend indivisibly like the title. The forfeiture of lands by attainder, the exclusion of the half-blood, and other monstrous features of the common law, may, it is well known, be traced to the same barbarous and monarchical institutions established in the darkness of the middle ages. When the common law came to be, as it is with us, the law of a republican people, of a people whose fundamental maxims are the encouragement of industry, the promotion of general improvement, the abolition of all hereditary distinctions and of all the injurious privileges of birth, this law underwent of necessity very essential changes, in order to accommodate it to our situation, wants, and feelings. The mode of change, in almost every case, has been to adopt, with various modifications, the rule of descents by the Roman law, that much calumniated code, whose genuine doctrines, being the growth of a republic, are certainly much more republican than those of the common law, the product of a monarchy. This |