LITTELL'S LIVING AGE-No. 538.9 SEPT., 1854.

FRIBURG possesses a magnificent cathedral, [prayer, hearing the sound of horses' feet, looked the carving and ornaments of which are by some below, and beheld her father's troopers climbing supposed to surpass those even of Strasburg, the zig-zag path. She hastily rose to her feet, which at least speaks very highly in their favor. but, naked, tender, and bleeding, they refused to Certainly, if not so stately, it is extremely beau- bear her onward, and she fell exhausted to the tiful. From the terrace of a hermitage without ground.

the town, a certainly splendid view is command- In her agony and alarm, horrified at the posed, while the river which runs beneath, (and over sibility that she, who had intended to become the the valley of which, elegant suspension bridges bride of heaven, should be compelled to accept are thrown here and there,) give an air of pictu- the hand of an earthly lover, she prayed ferventresque lightness to the whole, heightened by the ly for deliverance. The rock opened, and when sight of cattle grazing in the meadows, and again it closed, she had disappeared. Presently peasant maidens chatting together in the open she heard her father's voice, in his bereavement, calling upon her.

air.

The following tradition is told of the Grotto of St. Odille, which is in the immediate neighborhood of Friburg

"My child! my child!" he cried, "where art thou gone to ?"

แ

My father," her voice replied, while he tremOdille, daughter of the Duke of Alsace, hav- bled at hearing these familiar tones coming ing been brought up in a convent to the habits of from the mysterious shelter she had found a religious life, resolved to devote herself to hea--"My father, you persecute him who loves ven by taking the veil, and one day departed from her father's court for this purpose, leaving all the noble young knights, her suitors, in the greatest grief.

Among the number was a German prince, on whom her father, Duke Attich, had looked with favor, but to avoid whose suit she had set forth habited as a beggar, and thus passed the Rhine in a small boat. The Duke discovering this, in his anger and disappointment set out in pursuit; and, from the boatman's description, had no doubt but that he was on her track, and continued to follow with fresh energy.

Odille, climbing one of the forest mountains, had sat down to rest, and, while engaged in

MINE!

FOR A GERMAN AIR.

O How my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,

And I drink up joy like wine;

O how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,

For the lovely girl is mine!

She's rich, she's fair, beyond compare

Of noble mind, serene and kind;

me."

Recognizing in all this the will and influence of a superior power, Duke Attich swore to respect his daughter's vow, and promised to build for her a convent. The rock opened, and, arrayed in garments of a heavenly brightness, Odille came forth, and fell upon his bosom.

From that day the rock remained open, a spring bubbled forth, a medicinal brunnen (profitable spec.) was established, and (English) pilgrims went to visit it, and to play cards there. If there is a moral in this good old story, let the reader discover it; for my part I didn't try.

TO MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.

The hay is carried; and the Hours
Snatch, as they pass, the linden-flow'rs;

O how my heart is beating as her name I keep And children leap to pluck a spray

repeating,

For the lovely girl is mine!

Bent earthward, and then run away.
Park-keeper! catch me those grave thieves
About whose frocks the fragrant leaves,

O how my heart is beating as her name I keep Sticking and fluttering here and there, repeating,

In a music soft and fine;

No false nor faltering witness bear.

I never view such scenes as these,

O how my heart is beating as her name I keep In grassy meadow girt with trees,

repeating,

For the dearest girl is mine!

But comes a thought of her who now
Sits with serenely patient brow

Orangeries, pineries, heronries, rookeries, fishe-ever she could go, with her cub by her side. Before I had the rifle capped and ready, they Time and barbaric men have swept them away were far enough out of our reach.- Markham's

Essays. Selected from Contributions to the "Edinburgh Review." By Henry Rogers. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Longman & Co.

From the Eclectic Review. Ipher. Macaulay thinks generally like an eloquent special pleader. Henry Rogers is a candid, powerful, and all-sided. thinker, and one who has fed his thought by a culture as diversified as it is deep. He is a scholar, a MR. ROGERS has only risen of late into mathematician, a philosopher, a philologist, a universal reputation, although he had long man of taste and virtu, a divine, and a wit, ago deserved it. It has fared with him as and if not absolutely a poet, yet he verges with Thomas Hood, and with some others who often on poetical conception, and his free and had for many years enjoyed a dubious and fervid eloquence often kindles into the fire of struggling, although real and rising fame, till poetry. some signal hit, some "Song of the Shirt," Every one who has read the "Eclipse of or "Eclipse of Faith," introduced their names Faith," and who has not?-must remember to millions who never heard of them before, how that remarkable work has collected all and turned suddenly on their half-shadowed these varied powers and acquisitions into one faces and broadest glare of fame. Thousands burning focus, and must be ready to grant that upon thousands who had never heard of since Pascal no knight has entered into the Hood's "Progress of Cant" or his "Comic arena of religious controversy better equipped Annuals," so soon as they read the "Song for fight, in strength of argument, in quickof the Shirt" inquired eagerly for him, and ness of perception, in readiness and richness began to read his earlier works. And so, of resource, in command of temper, in punalthough literary men were aware of Mr. Ro-gency of wit, in a sarcasm which "burns gers's existence, and that he was an able con- frore" with the intense coolness of its severitributor to the "Edinburgh Review," the ty, and in a species of Socratic dialogue which general public knew not even his name till the son of Sophroniscus himself would have the "Eclipse of Faith" appeared, and till envied. But as the public and press generally its great popularity excited a desire to become have made up their minds upon all these acquainted with his previous lucubrations. points, as also on the merits of his admirable We met with the "Eclipse of Faith" at its " Defence," and have hailed the author with first appearance, but have only newly risen acclamation, we prefer to take up his less from reading his collected articles, and pro- known preceding efforts in the "Edinburgh pose to record our impressions while they are Review," and to bring their merits before our yet fresh and warm. readers, while, at the same time, we hope to find metal even more attractive in the great names and subjects on which we shall neces sarily be led to touch, as, under Mr. Rogers's guidance, we pursue our way. We long, too, shall we say, to break a lance here and there with so distinguished a champion, although assuredly it shall be all in honor and not in hate.

Henry Rogers, as a reviewer and writer, seems to think that he belongs to the school of Jeffrey and Macaulay, although possessed of more learning and imagination than either, of a higher moral sense and manlier power than the first, and of a freer diction and an easier vein of wit than the second; and the style of deference and idolatry he uses to them and to Mackintosh might almost to his From his political papers we abstain, and detractors appear either shameful from its propose to confine ourselves to those on lethypocrisy, ludicrous from its affectation, or ters and philosophy. His first, and one of his silly from the ignorance it discovers of his own most delightful papers, is on quaint old Thoclaims and comparative merits. We defy any mas Fuller. It reminds us much of a brilunprejudiced man to read the two volumes he liant paper on Sir Thomas Browne, contribuhas reprinted from the "Edinburgh Review," ted to the same journal, we understand, by and not to feel that he has encountered, on Bulwer. Browne and Fuller were kindred the whole, the most accomplished, manliest, spirits, being both poets among wits, and wits healthiest, and most Christian writer who ever among poets. In Browne, however, imaginaadorned that celebrated periodical. If he has tion and serious thought rather preponderate, contributed to its pages no one article equal while wit unquestionably is, if not Fuller's in brilliance to Jeffrey's papers on Alison and principal faculty, the faculty he exercises most Swift, or to Macaulay's papers on Milton and frequently and with greatest delight. Some Warren Hastings, his papers, taken en masse, authors have wit and imagination in equal are more natural, less labored, full of a richer quantities, and it is their temperament which and more recondite learning, and written in a determines the question which of the two they more conversational, more vigorous, and more shall specially use or cultivate. Thus Butler, thoroughly English style. His thought, too, of "Hudibras," had genuine imagination as is of a profounder, and, at the same time, well as prodigious wit, and had he been a clearer cast. Jeffrey had the subtlety of the Puritan instead of a Cavalier, he might have lawyer rather than the depth of the philoso-indited noble serious poetry. Browne, again,

was of a pensive, although not sombre dispo- and Fuller, says finely, "Most marvellous sition, and hence his "Urn-burial" and "Re- and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which ligio Medici" are grave and imaginative, al- can adorn whatever it touches, which can inthough not devoid of quaint, queer fancies vest naked fact and dry reasoning with unand arabesque devices, which force you to looked-for beauty, make flowerets bloom even smile. Fuller, on the other hand, was of a on the brow of the precipice, and, when nosanguine, happy, easy temperament, a jolly thing better can be had, can turn the very Protestant father confessor, and this attracted substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. him to the side of the laughing muse. Yet This faculty is incomparably the most impor he abounds in quiet, beautiful touches both tant for the vivid and attractive exhibition of of poetry and pathos. Burke had, according truth to the minds of men." We quote these to Mr. Rogers, little or no wit, although pos- sentences not merely as being true, so far as sessing a boundless profusion of imagery. To they go (we think the imagination not only this we demur. His description of Lord exhibits, but tests and finds truth), but beChatham's motley cabinet, his picture, in the cause we want afterwards to mark a special "Regicide Peace," of the French Ambassa- inconsistency in regard to them, which he dor in London, his description of those "who commits in a subsequent paper. are emptied of their natural bowels and stuffed We have long desired to see what we call with the blurred sheets of the "Rights of ideal geography, i. e. the map of the earth Man," his famous comparison of the "gesta- run over in a poetical and imaginative way, tion of the rabbit and the elephant," his reply the breath of genius passing over the dry to the defence put in for Hastings that the bones of the names of places, and through the Hindoos had erected a temple to him ("He link of association between places and events, knew something of the Hindoo mythology characters and scenery, causing them to live. They were in the habit of building temples Old Fuller gives us, if not a specimen of this, not only to the gods of light and fertility, but something far more amusing; he gives us a to the demons of small-pox and murder, and geography of joke, and even from the hallowhe, for his part, had no objection that Mr. ed scenery of the Holy Land he extracts, in Hastings should be admitted into such a Pan- all reverence, matter for inextinguishable theon", these are a few out of a hundred merriment. What can be better in their way proofs that he possessed that most brilliant than the following? "Gilboa.-The mounspecies of wit which is impregnated with tain that David cursed, that neither rain nor imagination. But the truth is, that Burke, dew should fall on it; but of late some Engan earnest if not a sad-hearted man, was led lish travellers climbing this mountain were by his excess of zeal to plead the causes in well wetted, David not cursing it by a prowhich he was interested in general by serious phetical spirit but in a poetic rapture. Edrei. weapons, by the burning and barbed arrows-The city of Og, on whose giant-like proof invective and imagination rather than by portions the rabbis have more giant-like the light glancing missiles of wit and humor. lies. Pis-gah.-Where Moses viewed the Jeremy Taylor, with all his wealth of fancy, land; hereabouts the angel buried him, and was restrained from wit partly by the subjects also buried the grave, lest it should occasion he was led through his clerical profession to idolatry." And so on he goes over each awful treat, and partly from his temperament, which spot, chuckling in harmless and half-conscious was quietly glad rather than sanguine and glee like a school-boy through a morning mirthful. Some writers, again, we admit, and church-yard, which, were it midnight, he as Mr. Rogers repeatedly shows, vibrate be- would travel in haste, in terror, and with tween wit and the most melancholy serious- oft-reverted looks. It is no wish to detract ness of thought; the scale of their spirits, as from the dignity and consecration of these it rises or sinks, either lifts them up to pierc-scenes that actuates him; it is nothing more ing laughter or depresses them to thoughts nor less than his irresistible temperament, the too deep and sad for tears. It was so with boy-heart beating in his veins, and which is Plato, with Pascal, with Hood, and is so, we to beat on till death. suspect, with our author himself. Shakspeare, perhaps alone of writers, while possessing wit and imaginative wisdom to the same prodigious degree, has managed to adjust them to each other, never allowing either the one or the other unduly to preponderate, but uniting them into that consummate whole which has become the admiration, the wonder, and the despair of the world.

Mr. Rogers, alluding to the astonishing illustrative powers of Jeremy Taylor, Burke,

English prose often resembles not Gothic, but Egyptian architecture in its chaotic confusion and misproportioned magnificence.

its: "Such is the charity of the Jesuits, that lightful nonsense. Rogers justly remarks, they never owe any man any ill will-making too, that notwithstanding all the rubbish and present payment thereof." Or this on Machi- gossip which are found in Fuller's writings, he avel, who had said "that he who undertakes means to be truthful always; and that, with to write a history must be of no religion;" all his quaintness and pedantry, his style is "if so, Machiavel himself was the best qualifi- purer and more legible than that of almost ed of any in his age to write an history." Of any writer of his age. It is less swelling and modest women, who nevertheless dress them-gorgeous than Browne's, but far easier and selves in questionable attire, he says, "I con- more idiomatic, less rich but less diffuse than fess some honest women may go thus, but no Taylor's, less cumbered with learning than whit the honester for going thus. That ship Burton's, and less involved, and less darkened may have Castor and Pollux for the sign, with intermingling and crossing beams of light which notwithstanding has St. Paul for the than that of Milton, whose poetry is written lading." His irony, like good imagery, often in the purest Grecian manner; whilst his becomes the short-hand of thought, and is worth a thousand arguments. The bare, bald style of the schoolmen he attributes to design, "lest any of the vermin of equivocation Mr. Rogers's second paper is on Andrew should hide themselves under the nap of their Marvel, and contains a very interesting acwords." Some of our readers are probably count of the life, estimate of the character, smiling as they read this, and remember the and criticism of the writings of this "AristiDRESS of certain religious priests, not unlike des-Butler," if we may, in the fashion of Mithe schoolmen, in our day. After comment-rabeau, coin a combination of words, which ing on the old story of St. Dunstan and the seems not inapt to represent the virtues of Devil, he cries out in a touch of irony seldom that great patriot's life, and the wit and biting surpassed: "But away with all suspicions and sarcasm of his manner of writing. He tells queries. None need to doubt of the truth the old story of his father crossing the Humthereof, finding it on a sign painted in Fleet-ber with a female friend, and perishing in the street, near Temple Bar." waters; but omits the most striking part of In these sparkles of wit and humor, there the story, how the old man in leaving the is, we notice, not a little consciousness. He shore, as the sky wus scowling into storm, say's good things, and a quiet chuckle, a gentle threw his staff back on the beach and cried crow, proclaims his knowledge that they are out-"Ho for Heaven!" The tradition of good. But his best things, the fine serious this is at least still strong in Hull. Nothing fancies, which at times cross his mind, cross after Marvel's integrity, and his quiet, keen, it unconsciously, and drop out like pearls from caustic wit, so astonishes us as the fact, that the lips of a blind fairy, who sees not their he never opened his lips in parliament! He lustre, and knows not their value. Fuller's was "No-speech Marvel." He never got the deepest wisdom is the wisdom of children, and length of Addison's "I conceive, I conceive, his finest eloquence is that which seems to I conceive." There are no authentic accounts cross over their spotless lips, like west winds of oven a Hear, hear," issuing from his lips. over half-opened rosebuds, breathings of the What an act of self-denial in that of bad Eternal Spirit, rather than utterances of their measures and bad men! How his heart must own souls. In this respect, and in some others, sometimes have burned, and his lips quivered, he much resembled John Bunyan, to whom and yet the severe spirit of self-control kept we wonder Rogers has not compared him. him silent! What a contrast to the infinite Honest John, we verily believe, thought much babblement of senators in modern days. And more of his rhymes, prefixed to the second yet was not his silence very formidable? Did part of the "Pilgrim's Progress," and of the it not strike the Tories as the figure of the little puzzles and jokes he has scattered moveless Mordecai at the king's gate struck through the work, than of his divinely artless the guilty Haman? There, night after night, portraiture of scenery, passions, characters, in front of the despots, sate the silent statueand incidents, in the course of the wondrous like figure, bending not to their authority, allegory. Mr. Rogers quotes a good many of unmovable by their threats, not to be melted Fuller's precious prattlings; but Lamb, we by their caresses, not to be gained over by think, has selected some still finer, particularly their bribes, perhaps with a quiet stern sneer his picture of the fate of John Wickliff's resting as though sculptured upon his lips, and ashes. Similar touches of tender, quaint, profound, and unwitting sublimity, are found nearly as profusely sprinkled as his jests, and clenches through his varied works, which are a perfect quarry of sense, wit, truth, pedantry, learning, quiet poetry, ingenuity, and de

doubtless they trembled more at his dumb defiance, than at the loud-mouthed attacks and execrations of others; the more; as while others were sometimes absent, he was always there, a moveless pillar of patriotisin, a still libel of truth, forever glaring on their fascin