This volatile air. How light and thin it floats—
Methinks I now can pass into the depths
Of yon wide firmament, it lies so open,

And shows so fair. The stars are hung below it,
And they are moving in a vacancy,

Like the poised eagle. How the studded moon,
All dropped with glittering points, rolls on its way
Between the pillowy clouds, and that which seems
A crystalline arch—a dome that rests on air,
Buoyed by its lightness. Can thy heavy eyes
Still pore on the discoloured earth, and choose
Their home in darkness? Something weighs upon thee
With no light burden, if thou hast no heart

To mingle with the beautiful world around thee.
B. Thou talk'st of clouds and skies. Has the sweet face
Of spring a power to charm away the fiends
That riot on the soul? Will the foul spirit
Go, when the cock crows, like a muttering ghost,
To find his kindred shades, and leave the heart
To gladden through the day, and dares he not
To fill it with his terrors, when the Sun
Is out in Heaven? Is there a sovereign balm
In cloudless skies, and bright and glowing noons,
To make the spirit light, and drive from it
The moody madness and the listless sorrow?
I feel there is not. Something tells me, here,
There may be such a grief, that nothing earthly
Hath power to stay it.-I too have a feeling,
How beautiful this clime; and though the native
Looks on it with a blank indifference,

To us who had our birth in clouded skies,
And reckoned it a bright and fortunate day,
If the sun gave us but an hour at noon,

It is indeed a luxury to see

Whole days without a cloud, but these light shapes,
That float around us more like heavenly spirits,
They are so bright, and wear such glorious hues,
Or hang so quietly, and look so pure,
When all is still at noon. O! I have felt
This luxury of sense, but yet it comes not
So far as here. The heart knows nothing of it;
And now that I have seen so many days,
All of an equal brightness, like the calm
That reigns, they say, perpetually in Heaven,
Why I grow weary of them, and my thoughts
Are on the past. Thou need'st no other answer.

B.

A. 'Tis not the barren luxury of sense,

That makes me love these skies-but there is in them
A living spirit. I can feel it stealing

Even to my heart of hearts, and waking there

Feelings, that never yet have stirred within me,
So blessed, that I almost weep to think

How poor my life without them. I now walk
In a glad company of happy visions,

And all the air seems like a dwelling-place
For glorious creatures. Like the shifting waves,
That toss on the white shore, when evening breezes
Steal to the land in summer, they are floating
In airy trains around me. Now they come
Laughing on yonder mountain side, a troop
Of merry nymphs, and now they flit away
Round the far islands of the golden sea,
Islands of light that seem to hang in air,
Midway in heaven. No wonder they so love
The song and dance, and walk with such a look
Of thoughtless gaiety-the merry beggars,
Who breed like insects on these sunny shores,
And live as idly. There are glorious faces
Among them-there are Roman spirits here,
And Grecian eyes that tell a thousand fancies,
Like those that shaped their deities, and wrought
Perfection. True, they have no stirring hopes
To lift them; yet at times they will give vent
To the o'erburdened soul, and then they speak
In oracles, or like the harp of Memnon
They utter poetry, as the bright skies

And stirring winds awake it. Who can wonder,
That every voice is bursting out in music,
And every peasant tunes his mandoline
To the delicious airs, that creep so softly
Into the slumbering ear. O! 't is a land,
Where life is doubled, and a brighter world
Rolls over this, and there the spirit lives
In a gay paradise, and here we breathe
An atmosphere of roses.

Yes-But this

Is nothing to the heart. They never felt,
These summer flies, who buzz so gaily round us,
They never felt, one moment, what we feel
With such a silent tenderness, and keep

So closely round our hearts. We do not wake

The echoes with our loud and thoughtless carols,
Nor sit whole days beneath a bowering vine,
Singing its amber juice, and telling too

Of starry eyes, and soft and languishing looks,
And talking of our agonies with smiles,
Making a sport of sorrow. No, our year,
With its long time of gloom, and hurried days
Of warmth, that call for more of toil than pleasure,
Our pensive year forbids the wandering spirit
To make itself a song-bird. We must keep
Our sorrows and our hopes close cherished by us,
Till the heart softens, and by often musing
Takes a deep, serious tone, and has a feeling
For all that suffer. So we often bear

A grief, that is the burden of a life,

And will not leave us. Something that would seem
Too trifling to be laughed at here, will weigh
And weigh upon us, till we cannot lift it,

And then we pine and die. Her heart is broken,
And the worm feeds upon her early roses,

And now her lily fades, and all its brightness
Turns to a green and sallow melancholy,

And then we strew her grave;-but here the passion
Breaks out in wildness, then is sung away
With a complaining air, and so is ended.
I have no sympathy with such light spirits,
But I can see my sober countrymen
Gather around their winter's hearth, and read
Of no unreal suffering, and then weep

Big tears that ease the heart, and need no words
To make their meaning known. One silent hour
Of deep and thoughtful feeling stands me more,
Than a whole age of such a heartless mirth,
As a bright summer wakens.

P.

ODE TO GREECE.

HAIL to thee, Greece !-thy fame is eternal

As the foam-crested sea that embraces thine isles! Though years have rolled o'er thee, thy bloom is yet vernal, And beauty still beams through thy tears and thy smiles.

Hail to thee, Greece !-thou art still the bright portal
To those regions that bloom in thy fanciful lore!

Hail to thee, Greece, thy renown is immortal!

Though the songs of thy minstrels proclaim it no more.

Thessalia, thy mountains and vales are still fertile,
The zephyr, fair Tempe, still woos thy embrace;
Thine is the laurel, and thine is the myrtle,

But where is the victor whose brow they should grace?
Where now are those beings, so bright and fantastic,
That peopled thy mountains in fables of yore ?-
And Sparta the valiant, and Athens the plastic,-

Those names, once so mighty, are heard of no more.
But weep not for Greece! though her glory has ended,
Though the day of her pride and her freedom has fled,
Though with paynim devotions her worship is blended,

And the mosque is now throng'd in the Parthenon's stead: For the day may yet come, when her sons and her daughters Shall leap from their bonds and exult o'er the slain; When the banners of Freedom shall gleam o'er her waters, And Minstrelsy wake from her slumbers again.

H.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

An Address in Commemoration of the Sixth of September, 1781, spoken on Groton Heights, Sept. 6, 1825. By William F. Brainard, New London. 1825. 8vo. pp. 32.

WHILE the public celebrations of the past year have produced several of the finest pieces of composition, whereof our literature can boast, it is not to be disguised that there are some very signal exceptions to the general merit of these occasional performances. Among the failures, we feel compelled, by a sense of literary justice, to class the Address before us. The style is throughout quaint, familiar, and colloquial; and the orator skips about from topic to topic in most "admired disorder." His ideas are distinguished by an unaccountable strangeness of conception, and a fantastic oddity of expression, which sometimes even move us to laughter; a sensation, which the scene of the performance, and the event it was intended to commemorate, do not seem very naturally to inspire.

In short, we are sorry to say that we think the oration is beneath the dignity of the occasion and of the press. Our chief reasons for noticing it are, to express our thanks to the kind friend who forwarded to us a copy, and to signify our good wishes for the praiseworthy and patriotic object, which it was written to promote, viz. the erection of a monument on Groton Heights, in commemoration of the massacre at Fort Griswold, and the

burning of New London, during the war of the revolution. Every thing, which has for its end to fix and perpetuate our historic recollections, is entitled to warm encouragement. On this account, the disposition, which is gaining ground, to place durable monuments where the great battles of our freedom were fought, is more especially laudable; for thus will our fathers be duly honoured, and posterity learn to venerate their memories and emulate their example.

A Discourse delivered in the Chapel of Nassau-Hall before the Literary and Philosophical Society of New Jersey, at its first annual meeting, Sept. 27, 1825. By Samuel Miller, D. D. Princeton, N. J. D. Ă. Borrenstein. 8vo. pp. 39.

A society "for the promotion of useful knowledge, and the friendly and profitable intercourse of the literary and scientific gentlemen of New Jersey," has within a few months been organized; and this discourse, as we learn from its title, was delivered before the members at their first public meeting. We regard every association of this kind as auspicious to the cause of good learning; and particularly so, when it happens, as in this present instance, to be connected with one of our most respectable literary institutions. It must be confessed, that there has usually been in the proceedings of similar associations a large proportion of parade, compared with the real, valuable new inventions and discoveries; still, although the boundaries of science may not be much enlarged by their "official transactions," it is doing much, and doing it in a very agreeable manner, to make distinguished literary and scientific gentlemen acquainted with each other, to promote identity of purpose and good fellowship among them, and on their public anniversaries, to enrich our literature with a discourse like this of Dr Miller, abounding in interesting facts, and full of sound and liberal reflections upon them.

After noticing one or two of the celebrated scientific associations in Europe, and sketching some of the general advantages resulting from them, Dr Miller mentions a few of the most active and important of those formed in our own country. He considers New Jersey as having been singularly negligent in regard to this facility for improvement, as well as in her attention to liberal education generally.

We are, at present, far behind many of our sister States in the proportion of our educated inhabitants. Our population is a little greater than that of Connecticut. That state is nearly on a par with ours, too, in having no large cities, and few cases of great wealth. Yet the number of the sons of Connecticut who receive a liberal education, is four if not six times greater than those of New-Jersey.