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Budded, and shook their green leaves in thy breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy and tall and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold
Communion with his Maker. Here are seen
No traces of man's pomp or pride;-no silks
Rustle, no jewels shine, nor envious eyes
Encounter; no fantastic carvings show

The boast of our vain race to change the form
Of thy fair works. But thou art here-thou fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summits of these trees

In music;-thou art in the cooler breath,

That, from the inmost darkness of the place,

Comes, scarcely felt ;-the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.
Here is continual worship;-nature, here,

In the tranquillity that thou dost love,
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,
From perch to perch, the solitary bird

Passes; and yon clear spring, that, 'midst its herbs,
Wells softly forth and visits the strong roots

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left
Thyself without a witness, in these shades,

Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak-
By whose immoveable stem I stand and seem
Almost annihilated-not a prince,

In all the proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me-the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo all grow old and die-but see, again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth

In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death-yea-seats himself
Upon the sepulchre, and blooms and smiles,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them;-and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. Oh God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, sett'st on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill'st
With all the waters of the firmament
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent and overwhelms

Its cities-who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate
In these calm shades thy milder majesty,
And, to the beautiful order of thy works,
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

B.

SPRING.

Again the infant flowers of Spring

Call thee to sport on thy rainbow wing-
Spirit of Beauty! the air is bright

With the boundless flow of thy mellow light;

The woods are ready to bud and bloom,

And are weaving for Summer their quiet gloom :

The tufted brook reflects, as it flows,
The tips of the half-unopened rose,
And the early bird, as he carols free,
Sings to his little love and thee.

See how the clouds, as they fleetly pass,

Throw their shadowy veil on the darkening grass;
And the pattering showers and stealing dews,
With their starry gems and skyey hues,
From the oozy meadow, that drinks the tide,
To the sheltered vale on the mountain side,
Wake to a new and fresher birth
The tenderest tribes of teeming earth,
And scatter with light and dallying play
Their earliest flowers on the Zephyr's way.

He comes from the mountain's piny steep,
For the long boughs bend with a silent sweep,
And his rapid steps have hurried o'er

The grassy hills to the pebbly shore;

And now, on the breast of the lonely lake,
The waves in silvery glances break,
Like a short and quickly rolling sea,
When the gale first feels its liberty,

And the flakes of foam, like coursers, run,
Rejoicing beneath the vertical sun.

He has crossed the lake, and the forest heaves,
To the sway of his wings, its billowy leaves,
And the downy tufts of the meadow fly

In snowy clouds, as he passes by,
And softly beneath his noiseless tread
The odorous spring-grass bends its head;
And now he reaches the woven bower,
Where he meets his own beloved flower,
And gladly his wearied limbs repose
In the shade of the newly-opening rose.

P.

ORITICAL NOTICES.

The Edinburgh Review for October, and the Quarterly Review for December, 1824. AN anonymous "Tour in Germany" is reviewed in both these journals, and it is no small evidence of its merit, that both unite in commending it. It affords an opportunity to the Edinburgh Review for a tirade against the Holy Alliance. The Quarterly, with its usual servile whine, takes the same occasion to land the prudence, gentleness, benignity, &c. of their allied Majesties, who, as the reviewer intimates, are gradually preparing the minds of their subjects for the enjoyment of their natural

rights. We believe this to be true enough, but not in the sense intended by the Quarterly. An article on 66 High Tory Principles," in the Edinburgh Review, is a spirited and very amusing attack upon the nauseous loyalty of the French press and pamphleteers, with the ineffable M. Chateaubriand at their head, as displayed on the occasion of the death of the old, and the accession of the new monarch.

"If," say they, "a contrast were wanted to the servile spirit displayed by the French royalists in the present day, we should look to the interesting spectacle, now exhibited by the American people, of honest and enlightened affection for their ancient benefactor and fellow-soldier in the cause of freedom. We will own, that, to us, there is something peculiarly touching in the enthusiasm which that great nation has shown upon the arrival of the truly venerable person who seeks, in their affec tions, a temporary refuge from the persecutions of his own government. No man can be named, who has, through a long life, acted with more undeviating integrity, and who, with more strict consistency, has pursued his course of devotion to the sacred cause of liberty, and opposed all despotism, whether exercised by the genius of Napoleon, or by those successors to his throne whose powers form so mighty a contrast with their stations. La Fayette may have fallen into errors; in flying from one danger, he did not perceive that liberty might have a double hazard to encounter, both from oppression and from conquest; but faults he has never been charged with by any whose good opinion deserves his regard; and the honours which he has received in America are as entirely due to the inflexible virtue of his riper years, and his willing sacrifice of himself on all occasions to the cause of liberty in his own country, as they are peculiarly fit to hail his reappearance in a country which the generous devotion of his younger days had helped to make a powerful state of a few dependent colonies. He must be far gone in the servile feelings of French royalism who can read, without a blush, the productions we have cited in this article; but no friend of liberal principles can feel any thing but sympathy and pride in following the progress of this great patriot through the United States, even where its details are recorded with the least reserve, and by the most ordinary chroniclers of the times."

In the last article of the Quarterly, we have the other side of the question. The subject is the Progress of Dissent in England. The article contains, among other matters of Tory sophistry, a most impudent and shameless attempt to prove the advantage and necessity of the present constitution of the hierarchy. It is asserted, for instance, that the notion of the opulence of the clergy is a vulgar prejudice, and that, as a body, they are poorly paid. It is argued, that the enormous incomes of the dignitaries, do not constitute wealth, because wealth is comparative; that ministers of religion must mingle with every class of individuals in the nation; that "saints in lawn" are necessary to purify the nobility; and that these are comparatively no more opulent than the "saints in crape," who perform the same wholesome service to the middling classes, or the saints in rags, who christianize the canaille.

A considerable portion of this number is devoted to reviews of voyages and travels, which indeed are usually better executed in this, than in the Northern journal. The reviewers of Travels in Brazil are great

ly uplifted by the establishment of a government in that country, which savours of legitimacy, and mourn over the probable failure of the republican forms in South America, in a very edifying manner. They further take occasion to touch, with an air of dignified contempt, upon the quarrel of the United States with Great Britain in 1812; and close with an expression of benevolent anxiety for the future destinies of the federal union, when the population of the West shall have somewhat increased. We are happy to relieve them by the assurance, that there is no danger whatever to the Union, which is every day growing stronger. But "a confederate republic, of such vast extent, would be a phenomenon in politics!" It certainly will be so, good croaking brethWe have told you so these many years, and are glad to perceive, that you begin to be aware of it.

ren.

A subsequent article contains a panegyric on the noble nature and pure morality and religion of the aborigines of North America, especially when compared with many of the white settlers. They had their legitimate sachems, and their panicses, or nobles, and their powows, or dignitaries, which proves, we suppose, that men are by nature subject to monarchy and hierarchy, instead of being free and equal, as our consti tution ventures to assume. And these sachems, and panieses, and powows met in council, and made "long talks," and wore party-coloured dresses, and believed in scarlet and ermine. The reviewers really grow sentimental, when they enlarge upon the moral beauty and grandeur of the Indian character. And then they lament the cruel and systematic design of the American government to extirpate every Indian tribe from the Valley of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and tell how the grateful and affectionate savages, in the last war, called the king of England their Great Father, who protected them against the wicked plans of the Longknives. To all this we have but one word to say,-Brethren of the Quarterly, "beware of cant."

The Edinburgh Review, in an article on the "Abolition of Corn-Laws," endeavours to show, that by the repeal of these, no ruinous depression of prices would ensue; and that the average price of wheat, &c. in England is nearly as low as that, at which it could be supplied from any other country. Another, on Impressment, offers strong reasons for supposing that this practice, defended hitherto on the plea of necessity, is contrary to every sound principle of economy and policy, and that seamen could be obtained in greater abundance, and at no greater expense, if impressment was forever abolished. We are informed, in an article on Slavery, that a new and great effort is about to be made at the present session of parliament, for the emancipation of the slaves in the West India colo. nies. The abolitionists seem to have become tired of the slow method of parliamentary recommendation, and desire something more effectual. From an article on the Scientific Education of the People, many useful hints might be derived, for establishments in our own country.

Each of these Reviews is doubtless in a great measure, the organ of a party; but whatever may be the ultimate end of the Whigs in Britain, their journal, on most great national and political questions, speaks the language of nature and reason; while their Tory opponent is too often employed in defending the most monstrous paradoxes, by the most impudent sophistry. We have been informed, that the circulation of the latter is far before that of the former;-what does this

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