Such are those two poems, "The Tocsin " and "The Gag," of which the latter begins,

"Ho! children of the Granite Hills,

That bristle with the hackmatack,

And sparkle with the crystal rills

That hurry toward the Merrimack,
Dam up those rills; for, while they run,
They all rebuke your Atherton,"

and to which was appended the following foot-note: "I have no feelings of personal hostility towards the Hon. Charles G. Atherton. But if, by stifling the prayers of more than one million of his fellow-men in order that he may perpetuate the slavery of more than two millions, the best friend I have on earth shall seek to make his name immortal, I will do my best to help him."

A complete collection of Mr. Pierpont's verses would contain much that was not poetry, but only measured prose. But it would also contain a dozen pieces in which the thought is wholly divorced from any moral or political motive, and in which the imagination is so bright and pure, and the expression so graceful and happy, as to entitle their author to a very high place among the poets of the century. First among these is, of course, the little dream called "Passing away." We have no desire to exaggerate; but we are strongly of the opinion, that no poem has yet been written. by any American author which possesses, in so high a degree as this, the qualities of true imaginative poetry. The poetry, we grant, is not of the highest order. The thought is but commonplace. But the succession of pictures is painted in colors at once so vivid and so harmonious, that we must go back to Keats for a parallel; and with a tenderness and purity of feeling which Wordsworth could not surpass. We quote a single stanza as a specimen; but our readers are doubtless familiar with the whole.

"While I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought or care stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud, on a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.

The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush

Had something lost of its brilliant blush;

And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels

That marched so calmly round above her,

Was a little dimmed, -as when Evening steals

Upon Noon's hot face,-yet one couldn't but love her;
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay

Rocked on her breast as she swung all day;
And she seemed in the same silver tone to say,
“Passing away!—passing away!'"

In direct contrast to the lightness and elegance of this is the grave strength of "The Exile at Rest," which is very noticeable for the sobriety and fitness of its figures.

The little poem on the death of a child, "I cannot make him dead," "Not on the Battle-field," "The Pilgrim Ode," and several of the Hymns,-doubtless familiar to most of our readers, show the same characteristics of deep and tender feeling combined with uncommon felicity of movement and expression. The poetic faculty survived in full force even to his last days. Few even of his best poems are more remarkable than that which he wrote in the early months of the Rebellion, and called "E Pluribus Unum." The easy swing of the verse is in wonderful accord with the buoyant, gallant, martial spirit of the song.

"Should the demon of Discord our melody mar,

Or Treason's red hand rend our Union asunder,

Break one string from our harp, or extinguish one star,
The whole system's ablaze with its lightning and thunder.
Let the discord be hushed,

Let the traitors be crushed,

Though "Legion" their name, all with victory flushed!
For aye must our motto stand, fronting the sun,

E Pluribus Unum:-1 though many, we're one."

Had there been no slavery in the land, no drunkenness, no imprisonment for debt, it is hard to say what the poetic faculty of a mind at once so strong and so graceful might not have produced. Or had he possessed the placid indifference to public affairs and the welfare of the community which is commonly joined to that faculty, instead of his intense moral earnestness and sensitiveness, we might have had from him such a body of imaginative poetry as no American poet has yet created. But can we wish the change had been possible? Would we exchange the fame of the reformer for that of any poet of the century? Not until we are ready to put intellect above conscience, and confess that poetic imagination is a finer thing than moral devotion.

Mr. Pierpont came to Boston, as a minister, in 1819, fresh from failure in various forms. He had failed as a lawyer: he had failed as a merchant. He came to the pulpit at a time when the country, having recovered from the prostration of its second war with Great Britain, was entering on that

astonishing career of prosperity and growth which has been and is still the wonder of the world. Boston was then a town of 40,000 inhabitants, still under the virtuous and benignant sway of a board of selectmen. It was compact in territory, homogeneous in population, more easily reached and agitated by the voice of a single preacher than now, after the growth in size and the deterioration in quality of a quarter of a century. The Hollis-street pulpit had been made conspicuous by the splendid eloquence and the manly liberality of Dr. Holley. But no pulpit had yet ventured to step far aside from the narrow path of tradition, or to throw its light over the boundless fields of human effort and human suffering which lie on either hand. Mr. Pierpont soon proved himself no unworthy successor of the eminent man in whose place he stood. He had found his vocation at last, and, we may suppose, enjoyed the full measure of the position and influence to which he had succeeded. With his commanding presence, his silvery voice, his grace of manner and gesture, his skill in the use of language; his brilliant social qualities; his warm and lively interest in whatever was noble and of good report, we must believe the later testimony of friend and foe to the effect that he was much beloved, and that the people were proud of their minister. But pride and prejudice, often associated, do not always work in the same direction. The times were growing troubled. A few men began to see dimly, that this young nation might profitably give a little attention to something else than making money six days in the week, and going to church twice on Sundays. The pulpit of Hollis street had always been pretty keen of sight, and the sermons of the new minister began presently to grow alarmingly definite and pointed. The ghastly evil of drunkenness, the cruelty of the laws which regulated the affairs between debtor and creditor, were matters which came under the daily notice of every man. Having once thought of these things, such a man as Mr. Pierpont could in nowise refrain from speaking of them. And, if he spoke at all, he spoke the whole truth, without reserve or modification; calling white white, and black black. A little later,

the plots of the Southern traitors began to take form, dimly at first, but foreshadowing the tragedies of the last years. Slavery, heretofore quiet and torpid, began to stir uneasily at the suggestions of hunger. The Missouri Compromise, instead of settling every thing, as its friends predicted, had but shown the South its own power and the boundless servility of the North. South Carolina passed her law for the imprisonment of black seamen. The Florida War was fought, with an atrocity that might have taught the North a lesson, had they not been so over-ready to accept the "settlement" of the Southern leaders. The imprisonment of Torrey, the murder of Lovejoy, the gag-law of Atherton, the mobbing of anti-slavery meetings at Philadelphia and Boston, were not events to "overcome us like a summer cloud, without our special wonder." Very slowly, a few men at the North began to see what sort of a creature it was that lay there coiled in the nation's lap. Mr. Garrison began his work. Mr. Pierpont found a new department of inquiry, and one which he was not slow to explore. But a minister who was liable any Sunday to open on his congregation with either or both of two such topics as temperance and slavery, to say nothing of kindred subjects of lesser importance, was something new under the sun. And not more new than unpleasant. There was an admirable chance for a division; and it is in no way surprising, things standing as they did, that it came in the form we all remember. It has always been so, and perhaps will always be so. Men are generally cross when they are awaked suddenly out of a sound slumber. If any thing is surprising, it is that so few were awake already. But the ashes of that controversy are cold, and we shall not seek to rekindle from them the flame which once burned so fiercely. It was seen from a goodly distance, and did much towards the desirable end of getting people awake. This much only we must say,- for in any notice of John Pierpont it would be either cowardice or prejudice to omit all mention of that long struggle, that it was the direct result of his whole theory and practice of life. He had his own views of the duties of a minister in times like