&c., but these are not unpoetical; while the same liveliness of fancy on the Old Bridge over the Pegnitz, in Nuremberg, stirs us, we confess, quite as much as one of Macaulay's lyrics. This mannerism, in the little thing before us, is manifest in The Bells of Lynn, heard at Nahant, and perhaps more strikingly still in the THE WIND OVER THE CHIMNEY. See, the fire is sinking low, While above them still I cower, While a moment more I linger, Though the clock, with lifted finger, Points beyond the midnight hour. Sings the blackened log a tune From a schoolboy at his play, When they both were young together, Heart of youth and summer weather Making all their holiday. Every quivering tongue of flame Into darkness sinks your fire!" Then the flicker of the blaze Written by masters of the art, Throb the harp-strings of the heart, And again the tongues of flame "These are prophets, bards, and seers; In the horoscope of nations, Like ascendant constellations, They control the coming years." But the night-wind cries: "Despair! Leave no long-enduring marks; These are but the flying sparks. "Dust are all the hands that wrought; The dead laurels of the dead 66 Well, Mr. Longfellow has written far better things; but in any way, common place does not seem to us to serve his attributes and position as a poet. But, certainly, there is no knowing what these, his critics, might do if they tried, and infinitely lofty powers eagles of song, for instance, cannot be expected to have much complacency for grasshopper songsters. We hoped there was truth in the long-spread report, that he was engaged in translating Dante; we fear that it may mean little more than that he has been engaged in some such little sketches and studies as those in this little volume studies of the Divinia Comedia-here are one or two: STUDIES IN ANCIENT CATHEDRALS. Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, I enter, and I see thee in the gloom Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. The air is filled with some unknown perfume; The congregation of the dead make room For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. From the confessionals I hear arise Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, ANOTHER, and to us, a fresh volume of American verse, comes to us with a very timely title. Snow Bound; a Winter Idyll, with five Photographic Illustrations taken from American Scenery. By John Greenleaf Whittier. (Alfred Bennett). We always procure, with pleasant expectations, Mr. Whittier's true, tender, fresh and flowing verses. Here we have a portrait of the amiable and admirable author; but the photographs are not so clear and distinct as the verses; they tell the story, always an attractive one, of household life among the snows. "A Flemish picture of old days," a picture of old American farm-house life -limned by the tender pencil of a poet's memory, abounding in sweet pathetic touches; bright flashes of firelight and leaden-coloured cloud shades; life indoors and out; the snow becomes to the bright vision of the author "A weird palimpsest," and he sees the life beneath the monotonous and obscuring snow wreath :— Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own! There is rich felicity of description in these easy happy verses; they flow as freely as a river; and, like the waters of some So all night long the storm roared on;! All day the gusty north-wind bore To have an almost human tone. Who they were who sat round the fire, that snow-bound winter time, and thoughts of where they are now, and of the changed world they have left behind them: what stories were told in those days, what books were read From painful Sewell's ancient tome, Clasp, Angel of the backward look omage to Green hills of life that slope to death, With the white amaranths underneath. The restless sands' incessant fall, The dreamer leave his dream midwayrowad Life greatens in these later years, The century's aloe flowers to-day! Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, These Flemish pictures of old days; etors and editors of this paper, to a great deal of annoyance and much loss of time. We refer to the idea which is so strangely prevalent, that almost anybody who is capable of writing with tolerable correctness, has some education, and either has, or imagines that he has, a large stock of ideas and considerable store of information, is qualified to perform editorial duties, and may, without presumption, solicit employment on some daily newspaper, and have the right to feel surprised, and even hurt, if his offers are not accepted. To such an extent has this delusion obtained, that many persons are willing to abandon occupations and professions for which they have qualified themselves by practice and study, in order to embark in one of which they have no experience, and, for which they have had no training. This arises from the idea that editors and newspaper writers do not require practice and training that regular course of study and apprenticeship which are demanded in other trades and callings - that an editor springs into existence somewhat in the manner of Minerva's birth -fully prepared by nature and education to do battle with the veteran and skilled masters of the profession, without the slightest previous discipline and drill, that in fact the old Latin maxim is a misprint, and instead of " poeta " should read "editor nascitur, orator fit." Unhappy infatuation! Unhappy for the victim; unhappier for the public, and unhappiest for the conductor of a daily newspaper, who has to devote a large portion of his valuable time to the unpleasant task of declining, and giving the gentlest reason he can imagine for declining, the offers of scores of misguided aspirants for editorial fame who daily and hourly favor him with visits. Were it not for the obviously innocent motives and good intentions of some of these parties, we might be provoked, our amour propre offended, by the apparent superciliousness or depreciatory estimate of the labors, the duties and demands of our profession indicated by this very erroneous band contemptuous view of its necessities Adoro qualifications. A greater folly and delusion never prevailed among intelligent people than this idea. The editorial conduct of a daily paper, a successful and popular one, requires a longer experience and a rarer combination of qualities, intellectual and moral, more general knowledge, fact, and industry, than are demanded in any of the professions and callings in which our people are engaged. Such editors, too, are From The New York Weekly Times. V EDITORIAL ASPIRANTS. ONE of the most common delusions of the large number of unemployed, or inadequately employed persons in our city, is that which subjects us, meaning the propri their vera causa lies, not in the mind, which works through the features of Mr. Schulz, but in the minds worked upon, which in the freedom of their own constructive power own imaginings, and therefore "sit loose to the mechanism of expression." The case is an illustration of that production of" being out of seeming," ably discussed by the late Professor Grote in a remarkable paper published in Macmillan's Magazine for this month. more difficult to find-are, in fact, not withstanding the demand, fewer than the number of competent persons in other employment. Good lawyers, skilful and learned physicians, eloquent and able di-shape the materials offered to them to their vines, artisans of great skill, machinists of wonderful powers of invention, merchants profoundy versed in all the laws of trade and all the intricacies of finance, abound in large communities, but editors, capable, able, fully qualified to conduct an independent daily newspaper, have to be sought for with great diligence and perseverance, and are very rarely found in the largest, most enlightened, and highly educated communities. The editorial talent is the rarest of all other talents among even this highly gifted and versatile people of ours. Writers, able, learned, elegant, and witty, are as numerous as butterflies in summer, but when, with their qualifications, we seek to find combined the judgment, tact, skill, and readiness needed in the editor of a daily journal, our quest is rarely indeed rewarded with success, and the exacting nature of the standard of competency in the profession is painfully brought home to us We hope that this view of the subject will now be duly and properly considered, and reflected upon by the scores of young men who are seeking places in the editorial department of newspapers, and that they will perceive the folly and misapplication of their talents and energies when they embark in a profession in which they will be subjected to such severe tests, without the strongest assurances and conviction of their ability to meet all its demands in a creditable and efficient manner. From the Spectator. CHARACTER AND EXPRESSION. Mr. Schulz's own character I conceive to be truly indicated by the "sensible, observant, slightly humorous, otherwise not very remarkable face," which you describe. Endow such a mind with flexible facial mus cles, and it has all that it requires for putting on the marked lines commonly associated with particular characters. These lines Mr. Schulz makes conspicuous by intensifying the light and shadows, and 'on this hint the imagination of the spectators immediately acts, building all the lines of his face into the types supposed to belong to the particular characters indicated. Let a Lavater criticize the performance, and probably he would tell us that nine-tenths of Mr. Schulz's face was out of keeping with the rest; that Mr. Schulz's own natural expression, which you observe that you could "trace clearly enough beneath the new one, until the intense light of the lamps was cast upon it," was the only one which his face ever really indicates, because the only one consistent with itself. But ordinary specta tors are not Lavaters, and give free reins to their imaginations in interpreting human expression, from the want of sufficient knowledge of its subtle varieties to hold them in check. The secret of the whole effect is, I suspect, spoken in your own observations upon the apparant change of expression produced by slight changes of accessories in forms of countenance otherwise absolutely unaltered, namely," how much our natural interpretation of the meaning of certain lines and atticontext in which we find them, which is tudes of the face depends. on the made [i.e., taken occasion of by our imagination] to suggest to us an interpretation of its own." Mr. Schulz is no doubt very To the Editor of the Spectator. SIR, I have not seen the curious enter tainment by Mr. Ernst Schulz which has led to the interesting remarks on "The Clothes of the Mind" in your current num-clever in conjuring with the signs of charber, but taking your account of the effects acter, but the true magician is in ourselves. produced to be faithful, it seems to me that March 4, 1867. E. V. N. J 1550 SIM fordon, so slegu sit From the Eclectic. R SIR JOHN HERSCHEL'S ESSAYS.* own. The study of science usually awakens in ordinary minds little interest, until it definitely answers some cui bono question until it is shown to be related to some im AT is really very pleasing to find such a mediate increase of worldly fortune; while, man as Sir John Herschel publishing such a meantime, it is pushing its experiments and volume as this; a little collection of most observations upon regions of thought and readable, and to ordinarily cultured minds, discovery, which perhaps few learn to resimple papers; opening up some of the great gard as interesting; but which produce in vistas and results, and further speculations the mind, hovering even momentarily in of modern science, from the pen of one of their neighbourhood, impressions of pro15 the chief scientific sages of our day him-foundest wonder and awe- perhaps it is self occupied in those deeper and wider the case that most persons have some fear of fields of mathematical and scientific thought, science, and scientific results-religious, but in which only savants and sages can accom- partially educated people cherish a trempany him. Sir John Herschel has long de- bling and hesitating dread, under the imserved and received this double meed of pression that science will, in the end, desgratitude; he is not only known and revered poil the soul of some of its most cherished as a distinguished veteran in the ranks of conclusions, and essential hopes; and we bethe higher observers and discoverers, but as lieve the best cure for such fears is to accusthe author of that priceless little book, which tom the mind to come often and reverently is still unique as a piece of healthful reading face to face with those results of number, and discipline, for minds first exercising calculation, enquiry, and observation which themselves in clear and right thinking may certainly infinitely enlarge the horizon The Discourse on Natural Philosophy,t and of human knowledge, but which, inasmuch that other equally valuable and invaluable, as they only increase the fullness and intenas an introduction to the subject to which it sity of human consciousness, and serve to refers, his discourse on Astronomy. The vol- enlarge the perception man has of the bounume before us is of a much more miscella- daries of his own powers and spiritual being, neous character, but it is written in a like can never, by a really thoughtful mind, be popular and entertaining manner, and is regarded his foes. All the papers in this composed of lectures given to village au- volume seen to have such an influence on diences and Mechanics Institutions, or pa- the mind; none of them can be read for the pers contributed to Good Words, or other purposes of mere amusement; sensational such magazines. There is something, we say, excitement and scientific discovery can very right and healthful in such a man never be regarded as exactly twins, but teaching the more rudimentary principles of there is a marvel felt in the mind, which science to the people; for it is to be regret- even tingles along the nerves and through ted that readers in general seldom feel inte- the blood, and produces upon the spirit rested in scientific in subjects, except in the even what may be called a sensation of rapmatter of merely professional routine; the ture and wonder; and if less human than almost infinite conclusions upon which men than some of the miserable plots and counof science are occupying themselves, the terplots which to make go boundless fields which open on every hand, tion of romance, yet wing the spirit with a are, in general almost unknown; while even sense of the wonderfulness of nature's ways, scientific men themselves, it is to be thought, more wildly and marvelously romantic than permit themselves to follow one particular anything which even Dante could dream, line of rail, and take partial views of the or Doré describe. "That only is little," universe failing, in the routine and per- says our author," which cannot rise to great sistency of their own particular department conceptions." One of the highest marks of of enquiry, to perceive the great correlations an extended civilisation is the creation of of other departments lying outside of their want and desires higher than material gratification, and the desire of " extending * Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects. By Sir knowledge for the sake of knowing; the craJohn F. W. Herschel, Bart., K.H., &c., &c. Alex-vings after a larger grasp, a clearer insight, If we had the honour of speaking to Sir John a more complete conception in all its relaHerschel, we would take the liberty to beg him to tions, of the wondrous universe of which we publish in these, his later, ripe, and still we are glad form a part." And Sir John, in the paper to know most healthful days, a new, somewhat enlarged, and revised edition of this beautiful and no- on Celestial Measurings and Weighings, fur ble compendium, which, published about forty years nishes us at once with one of the most sinsince, has never been retouched. We are not aware if it be new in print. gular and beautiful illustrations both of this ander Strahan, up man's concep |