"An assured belief That the procession of our fate, however Let us then be wise, and adore that Being who has power to make us happy even amid the many vicissitudes of life! Let us live according to His wise and righteous laws, and the spirit of Sadness will have no power over our hearts, and life will be to us a path of pleasantness and peace. New-York City. C. L. Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.* BY H. W. LONGFELLOW. Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. His hair is crisp, and black, and long; His brow is wet with honest sweat, And looks the whole world in the face, Week out, week in, from morn till night, You can hear his bellows blow; You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, With measured beat and slow, Like a sexton ringing the old kirk chimes When the evening sun is low. And children coming home from school And hear the bellows roar, And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard rough hand he wipes Toiling-rejoicing-sorrowing- Has earned a night's repose. *The above lines are from the November number of the Knickerbocker. Mr. Longfellow is one of our favorites, and we gladly avail ourselves of any opportunity to present his productions to our readers. He "looks into the heart and writes," and draws the elements of his poetry from "life's deep stream."-Ed. Mess. READINGS. The Bodily Condition of Man. (From Jeremy Taylor.) "In our bodies we find weakness and imperfection, sometimes crookedness, sometimes monstrosity; filthiness and weariness, infinite numbers of diseases, and an uncertain cure, great pain and restless nights, hunger and thirst, daily necessities, ridiculous gestures, madness from passion, distempers and disorders, great labor to provide meat and drink, and oftentimes a loathing when we have them; if we use them, they breed sicknesses; if we use them not, we die; and there is such a certain healthiness in many things, to all and in all things, to some men and at sometimes, that to supply a need is to bring a danger: and if we eat like beasts, only of one thing, our souls are quickly weary; and if we eat variety, we are sick and intemperate, and our bodies are inlets to sin, and a stage of temptation. If we cherish them, they undo us; if we do not cherish them, they die: we suffer illusion in our dreams, and absurd fancies when we are waking; our life is soon done and yet very tedious; it is too long and too short; darkness and light are both troublesome. Sweet smells make the head ache; and those smells which are medicinal in some diseases, are intolerable to the sense. The pleasures of our body are bigger in expectation than in possession; and yet while they are expected, they torment us with the delay: and when they are enjoyed, they are as if they were not; they abuse us with their variety, and vex us with their volatile and fugitive nature. Our pains are very frequent alone, and very often mingled with pleasures to spoil them; and he that feels one sharp pain, feels not all the pleasures of the world if they were in his power to have them. We lead a precarious life, begging help of every thing, and needing the repairs of every day; and being beholden to plants and trees, to dirt and stones, to the very excrements of beasts, and that which dogs and horses throw forth. Our motion is slow and dull, heavy and uneasy; we cannot move but we are quickly tired-and for every day's labor, we need a whole night to recruit our lost strengths; we live like a lamp, unless new materials be perpetually poured in we live no longer than a fly; and our motion is not otherwise than a clock. We must be pulled up once or twice in twenty-four hours; and unless we be in the shadow of death for six or eight hours every night, we shall be scarce in the shadows of life the other sixteen. Heat and cold are both our enemies; and yet the one always dwells within, and the other dwells round about us. The chances and contingencies that trouble us are no more to be numbered than the minutes of eternity. The devil often hurts us: and men hurt each other oftener; and wo are perpetually doing mischief to ourselves. The stars do in their courses fight against some men, and all the elements against every man; the heavens send evil influences; the very beasts are dangerous; and the air we suck in does corrupt our lungs. Many are deformed and blind and ill-colored, and yet upon the most beauteous face is placed one of the worst sinks of the body; and we are forced to pass that through our mouths oftentimes, which our eye and our stomach hate. Pliny did wittily and elegantly represent this state of evil things: 'A man is born happily, but. at first he lies bound hand and foot by impotency and cannot stir. The creature weeps that is born to rule over all other creatures, and begins his life with punishments for no fault but that he was born.' In short, the body is a region of sorrow and nastiness and weakness and temptation. Here is cause enough of being humbled." Doing Good that Evil may come. (Jeremy Taylor.) "He that positively ventures upon a sin for a good end, worships God with a sin, and therefore shall be thanked with a damnation if he dies before repentance." LINES WRITTEN BENEATH A SEAL. BY MRS. MARY E. HEWITT. ""Twas the doubt that thou wert false that thrilled my heart with pain, The Present Social Condition of Europe. (7 (Thomas Carlyle.) "Wealth has accumulated itself into masses; and poverty, also in accumulation enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like forces in The device, an Altar and Flame. Motto 'Si negligéé j'expire." positive and negative poles. The gods of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than Epicurus' gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of ignorance and hunger welters terrific, in its dark fury, under their feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited sepulchre; outwardly, all pomp and strength; but inwardly, full of horror and despair, and dead men's bones! Iron highways, with their wains fire-winged, are uniting all ends of the firm land; quays and moles, with their innumerable stately fleets, tame the ocean into our pliant bearer of burdens; labor's thousand arms of sinew and of metal, all-conquering, every where, from the tops of the mountain down to the depths of the mine and the caverns of the sea, ply unwearily for the service of man: yet man remains unserved. He has subdued this planet-his habitation and inheritance-yet reaps no profit from the victory. Sad to look upon, in the highest stage of civilization, nine-tenths of mankind must struggle in the lowest battle of savage or even animal man-the battle against famine. Countries are rich, prosperous in all manner of increase, beyond example: but the men of those countries are poor, needlier than ever of all sustenance, outward and inward; of belief, of knowledge, of money, of food. The rule sic vos, non vobis, never altogether to be got rid of in men's industry, now presses with such incubus weight, that industry must shake it off, or utterly be strangled under it; and alas! can as yet but gasp and rave and aimlessly struggle, like one in the final deliration." But now I know thy perfidy I shall be well again."-Bryant. Writ on my heart in fire !-Thy holy fane Lip and knee worshippers. Ne'er again AN AUTUMN REVERIE. BY MRS. ELIZABETH J. EAMES. Mutual Conversion. (Jeremy Taylor.) "There is a strange spring and secret principle in every man's understanding, that is oftentimes turned about by such impulses of which no man can give an account. But we all remember a most wonderful instance of it in the disputation be- And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died. Solemn yet beautiful to view, Bryant. tween the two Reynolds's, John and William-the former of which being a papist, and the latter a protestant, met and Autumn! sad, sighing, yet most lovely Autumn, disputed with a purpose to confute and convert each other: and so they did; for those arguments, which were used, again art thou here; and again with feelings prevailed fully against their adversary, and yet did not pre-"pleasant but mournful to my soul," do I greet vail with themselves. The papist turned protestant, and thy return. And the strangest feelings of mingled the protestant became a papist, and so remained to their pleasure and pain are awakened at thy approach, dying days, of which some ingenious person gave a most handsome account in an excellent epigram, which, for the verification of the story, I have set in the margent. "Bella, inter geminos, plusquam civilia, fratres Ille reformatæ fidei pro partibus instat : Et victor vieti transfuga castra petit. though thou excitest emotions less rapturous and fancies less playful, yet hath thy presence for me a solace and a spell unfelt amid the greener verdure, brighter sunbeams and more fragrant flowers of Summer. Dearer to me than the clustering roses of June, are thy withered stalk and falling leaf-pleasanter the moaning whisper of thy waters, and sweeter the plaintive hymning of thy solitary birds. It is true, thou hast not the rosy transparent skies of the departed season, but that deep royal hue of purple flushing the whole heavens, and those rich clouds of gold bordered with brightest crimson-this is magnificent indeed! And thy forests!-Grandly, sublimely beautiful are to love the child as I have loved few on earth. they, in the light, and shade of their glorious ap- And it was Grace that brought her teacher the parelling; and solemn is the music of the rustling first violet of Spring, and the earliest rose of Sumbranches sounding through many a long, leaf-strewn mer, with the freshest cluster of ripe red strawaisle. Every string of nature's breezy harp is berries. It was Grace who gathered the shining touched to answer thy sighs. The green oak and chesnuts, and the dearly prized lap-full of wintercedar-the dark pine, the yellow and silvery-bark-green berries; and it was Grace Grafton's light ed willow-each majestic old tree; hath its own step that I followed through the still valley at sunpeculiar tone and whisper for thine ear. And for set-for she could tell me where the zephyr dalthe heart, the busy, changeful human heart, thou lied oftenest with the evening flower-in what hast a thousand stirring chords, whose vibrations mossy nook the robin built her low nest, and in awaken with an electric influence its slumbering which old tree the whippoorwill sung at night. 0, sensibilties, and whose sympathetic music responds how fresh and fair, and distinctly visible does that with all the truth of an echo. And in my heart, vision of young angelic loveliness, as in the heysweet Autumn, thou art the awakener of many, day of hope and happiness come before me, while many things. At thy touch the deep fountain of I write of her as she was then. And would that memory is stirred, and its shadowy bank is throng- I could leave her here, the brightest and gayest of ed with many cherished images and hallowed re-human beings-but I must finish the portrait, feeble, collections of the Past! But more intensely beau- and ill-sketched as it may be. tiful on this quiet eve, and mid this surrounding It is strange and wonderful what changes may scenery, do the thoughts of my heart acknowledge be wrought by a few fleeting months, on the human thee to be. On fair-fruited orchard-golden-grain-frame, and the human heart. The changing desed harvest field-on hill and valley and stream, is tinies of life separated me from Grace Grafton for lain the spell of silence; and the deep stillness of a year, and when I again met her she was fast the air is unbroken, save by the low tinkling of yon sinking to the grave. Neither sorrow nor disease little water-fall, and the faint trilling of that whip- had visited her in any of their fiercer forms, but poorwill nested amid the crimson-turned leaves of consumption had fanned her cheek with his blightthis maple, whose spreading bough brushes my ing wing, and was wooing her form to his fatal window-pane. Through the branches of this tall embrace. And of Grace-there was scarcely a elm the moon above is sprinkling with touches of trace remaining of her former self. The gleeful silver light the fading grass beneath; and the golden star-light is steeping roof, railing, and pillar, in soft, subdued, shadowy beauty. O, could I give utterance to the feelings, that the contemplation of this fine scene in nature awakens! But the voice of my spirit dies away unanswered in the silent temple of my own thoughts. tone of joyousness which had so often delighted me in young girlhood, had given place to a melancholy music which thrilled one like the harping of the Wind-god's-Lyre, her buoyant spirits had sunk down from their starry height, and her light heart divested of its former gaiety had been succeeded by a calm feeling of holy rapture. But it And now (as my eye rests on yon place of se- was her radiant beauty that had undergone the most pulture), my thoughts wander to the early grave striking change; not that she was less beautiful of one whose dying day I put far in the distance. now, but it was a high spiritual beauty, bright, still Gentle Grace Grafton! She was but a child of and transcendantly lovely that now glowed in every twelve summers when I first knew her, yet even lineament; withal so seraph-like, that its expresat that early age, when she exhibited to the casual sion charmed my spirit as a spell from heaven, and observer only the varying charms, and graceful I could have knelt down in worship to her, as the playfulness of a very young girl, I was struck habitant of a perfect sphere. Her life too seemed with the rare, exceeding beauty of her face, and to have caught a portion of the purity and brightthe all-perfect symmetry of her slight figure. The ness of the upper world. The breathing forth of spell of the poet's language—the highest finish of the love of religion, seemed to have entered her the artist, and the finest chisel of the sculptor-earthly temple from the skies above, and the glowere alike vain to describe the physical perfections rious things of nature around her; her thoughts of Grace Grafton; and I can only speak of her came forth in the light of inspired divinity, and as an artless, blithsome young creature, whose went upward like incense gushing from a broken clear ringing laugh assured you that happiness urn! But she might not stay in this changeful was the very essence of her existence. And it sin-touched world. The light of her earthly exiswas Grace Grafton who became my pupil for the tence is now extinguished forever. Like a fair space of four years. A studious persevering girl green tree chilled in its blossoming, or a flower was she and beautiful to her imagination were stricken down by the Autumn winds, so she passed the wreaths of knowledge that she daily culled away, sadly calm and submissive; and all that now in learning's bower. And she had withal such a remains of youth, beauty, innocence and genius, tender-loving, truthful nature, that I was soon won is fast mouldering to dust "in the silent land of the sleepers." Beautiful, sainted child! to thee the sere leaf" was an omen of thy own falling and lot, yet thy dying lips bade me rejoice in Hope, that as the frail forest flower should again bud in Spring-time, so thou, robed in garments of holiness, shouldst awaken on the morning of the resurrection, to a glorious and immortal existence. Requiescat in pace, young seraph. Thy life was a starlapse of innocence, and the recording Angel hath no dark memorial of thy bright, brief sojourn, in this vale of tears! Eames' Place, Oct. 1840. DEATH-DREAM OF THE YOUNG NAPOLEON. BY J. C. M'CABE. He dreams! The flutt'ring Spirit's wings Are plumed for flight, yet linger still For wild and deep imaginings His young, proud bosom strangely thrill. He sees the lofty Alps arise, With robes of everlasting snow; St. Bernard rings with martial cries, As thousands from the chasms below Are breaking through each stern recess, To win Napoleon deathless fame, And real or fancied wrongs redress, And reap the glory of--a name! They slowly fade, and victory's shout It is his father's legions' cry! And far and wide the echo swellsRed flames are glaring on his eye, And peal a thousand midnight bells! And Moscow's towers and temples proud, And " and minaret," are there; mosque, All circled in a fiery shroud, Like that expiring Time shall wear! The scene is chang'd-the Kremlin's light The cannon's shock, the rolling drum, Waving o'er bloody Mount St. Jean- The storm is up, the thunder wakes, The hissing lightning skims the wave, And in sepulchral flashes breaks Around an ocean-guarded grave? A grave upon a lonely rock! Cold as the hearts that plann'd his doom, Who gave to Europe's thrones a shock, And gain'd-a low unhonored tomb. A change comes o'er his pallid cheek His beaded lip is parted now, And words of proud and lofty tone A phantom-sword before him gleams! And voices from a thousand graves The spell is broke! the vision's o'er CAVE OF CAMOENS,* IN MACAO: Notices of his Life and Works, especially of his Lasiad. BY MRS. HENRIETTA SHUCK. A writer who visited the tree under whose spreading branches Pollok composed the larger portion of his Course of Time, in closing his description of the spot, exclaimed, "I felt that I was in verity on classic ground." Macao, situated on an extreme isthmus of the beautiful island of Heangshan, or the Fragrant Hills,' may also be regarded as 'classic ground,' inasmuch as in this city was composed a portion of the renowned Lusiad; which, though not enriched, like the Course of Time, by the hallowed spirit of Religion, will never cease to be admired while genius is respected. It is the production of a master-mind, and an invaluable contribution to poetic literature. As in contradistinction to the Iliad and Eneid, the Paradise Lost has been called the epic poem of religion, so the Lusiad may be styled the epic poem of commerce. It celebrates the discovery of India. We have never seen any very complete or satisfactory history of Camoens. Many particulars of his career have been published; but few of them, however, are well authenticated. The following notices we have gathered from various sources. They are brief and incomplete, yet not without interest. Luis de Camoens is generally known as being the most renowned of the Portuguese poets. He possessed talents of no ordinary character, and on the page of history his name will long live in all *The above article appeared originally in the Chinese Repository,' for March, 1840. But as that work is s seen in this country, it is here inserted as an original con tribution. the brightness of its deserved glory. He was | voyage of nine months, he landed at Goa, and imborn at Lisbon, about the year 1524. His life is mediately joined an expedition to revenge the king noted for the many misfortunes and difficulties to of Cochin on the king of Pimenta. In obtaining which he was exposed, some of which commenced the victory, the poet bore a share of the merit. in his infantile state. His father, to whom he was One year afterwards he accompanied Manoel de tenderly devoted, was shipwrecked at Goa; and Vasconcellos, in an expedition to the Red Sea. with his life the greater part of his property was His sword being useless to him there, he gave all lost also. Luis, however, was provided for by his his power and attention to poetry. He visited widowed mother, who placing a proper estimate on Mount Felix, and the adjacent regions of Africa, education, felt that it was of the greatest impor- which are so strongly pictured forth in his Lusiad. tance to her son; she therefore placed him at the After he returned to Goa, the tranquillity which university of Coimbra, where the natural talents for a time he enjoyed, was well adapted to his inwith which he was endowed were cultivated with clination for the muses, and there his epic poem care and assiduity, as his literary productions of was commenced.* But by his own imprudence after-life abundantly testify. He is described as this season of tranquillity was soon interrupted. being handsome, of fine form, with eyes glowing In consequence of some satires which he wrote, full of life. To the natural ardor and vivacity of his disposition, he added the accomplishments of a scholar and the refinements of a gentleman. After the completion of his studies at the university, he returned to Lisbon. 66 he gave offence, and was again banished;† and the place of his banishment was Macao. Here his engaging manners and accomplishments soon won for him many true and warm-hearted friends, notwithstanding he was under the disgrace of banAs he was remarkable for his genius, so was he ishment; and he received an appointment as also for the strong passions of his heart. Unfor- Provedor dos defunctos," and continued his Lutunately for him, he aspired above his rank, and siad with unabated ardor. bestowed his affections on Catharina de Atayde, to whom (from causes which to us are unknown) he could not be united, and in consequence of his attachment to her he was banished from court. Despair indeed now filled his bosom ; but his mind being strong, he rose above its baneful influences. At that time the Portuguese were sending a fleet against Morocco, and he engaged as a soldier. During some hardfought battles, he received many wounds, among which was the loss of an eye. Yet in the midst of all the cares and toils of life, his love for poetry clung most tenaciously to him, and in such situations he composed some very beautiful and striking stanzas. In speaking of himself, on one occasion, he exclaims "One hand the pen, and one the sword, employed." But the talents of this noble hero were by no means appreciated while he lived; he was envied, and treated with contumely, even by his country men whom he had so indefatigably assisted through so many dangers on the land and on the sea. Jealousy is a monster, and has resentments which know no bounds; and Camoens, finding himself the object of this dire intruder in the human breast, deemed it no less than prudent to abandon his country, which he did in 1553, fully determined in his own mind never again to revisit its shores. Leaving the Tagus, he repeated, with indignant emphasis, these words The spot where it is said that Camoens used to sit, while composing this poem, is in a beautiful garden, which at present is the property of L. Marques, Esq, situated on the elevated ground in the northern part of Macao, just beyond the church of St. Antonio. The retreat of the poet is not a cave, in the common acceptation of the term. On the surface of a gently sloping hill, and between two huge rocks, which seem to have been originally one, but now sundered a few feet apart by some one of nature's freaks, is the spot where Portugal's noblest poet used to sit. Above the cleft rocks, and on them, rests a mass of granite, which served the poet as a covert from the noonday's sun and stormy winds. There have been several additions made about the place. A balustrade has been built on one side of it, and on the top of the upper rock a small quadrangular of the surrounding country. Towards the east, building has been erected, commanding a fine view you behold the sea and the blue outlines of Lantao and other islands. Southward and westward you view the Typa and Inner Harbor, with the Portuguese shipping and various native craft. To the north is the Barrier, which forms a line of demarcation between the foreigners and celestials, and walled town and Military post, where Mr. Flint beyond it Tseënshan or Caza Branca, a small was imprisoned in 1760-62, and behind which, stretching away in the distance, is a meandering river and innumerable inlets. The little Ilha Verde Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea!" commenced before Camoens left Portugal. It has been denied that he was the writer of those sa tires, although they were the cause of his banishment— |