Who the happy profession of martyrdom | And now, as this offers an excellent text, I'll give 'em some brief hints on criti take Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak : Sixty-two second Washingtons: two or three Jacksons: And so many everythings-else that it racks one's Poor memory too much to continue the list, Especially now they no longer exist; I would merely observe that you've taken to giving The puffs that belong to the dead to the living, And that somehow your trump-of-contemporary-doom's tones Is tuned after old dedications and tombstones." Here the critic came in and a thistle presented - * From a frown to a smile the god's features relented, As he stared at his envoy, who, swelling with pride, To the god's asking look, nothing daunted, replied, "You're surprised, I suppose, I was absent so long, But your godship respecting the lilies cism next. So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd, And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud: "My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews ; Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they Felt that they, too, were poets in hear. ing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Precreated the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small, For one natural deity sanctified all; Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods; He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods; 'T was for them that he measured the thought and the line, And shaped for their vision the perfect design, With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue; Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, In the free individual moulded, was Art; Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, And her whole upward soul in her coun- | Never mind what he touches, one shrieks tenance glistening, -- Eurydice stood like a beacon unfired, Which, once touched with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture did more than relieve 'Nature fits all her children with something to do, The need that men feel to create and He who would write and can't write, can LETTER FROM BOSTON. DEAR M. December, 1846. By way of saving time, I'll do this letter up in rhyme, Whose slim stream through four pages flows Ere one is packed with tight-screwed prose, Threading the tube of an epistle, Smooth as a child's breath through whistle. With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue, The expansive force without a sound a Who might, with those fair tresses shorn, The great attraction now of all Is the "Bazaar" at Faneuil Hall, Where swarm the anti-slavery folks As thick, dear Miller, as your jokes. There's GARRISON, his features very Benign for an incendiary, Beaming forth sunshine through his glasses On the surrounding lads and lasses, For G., you know, has cut his uncle,) There was MARIA CHAPMAN, too, Mr. James Miller McKim. ↑ When Mr. Garrison visited Edinburgh in 1846, a handsome silver tea-set was presented to him by his friends in that city. On the arrival of this gift at the Boston custom-house, it was charged with an enormous entrance duty which would have been remitted if the articles had i For every shaft a shining mark. And there, too, was ELIZA FOLLen, As if all motion gave it light There jokes our EDMUND,‡ plainly son ever been used. It was supposed that if the owner had not been the leader of the unpopular abolitionists, this heavy impost would not have been laid on a friendly British tribute to an emi nent American. + Edmund Quincy. And then his satire 's keen and thin Like a new hopfield which is all poles, There, with one hand behind his back, A terrible denouncer he, His words are red-hot iron searers, ers, Spurring them like avenging Fate, or Hard by, as calm as summer even, Not with soft book upon the knee, So simply clear, serenely deep, With smooth Niagara's mane of spray, A man with caoutchouc endurance, To whom the harshest word comes apt est, Who, struck by stone or brick ill-starred, Which, deadlier than stone or brick, His oratory is like the scream Whom, though condemned by ethics Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam On the occasion of the murder of Rev. Eli- pro-slavery speech, which called forth a crush jah P. Lovejoy, editor of an anti-slavery news-ing reply from Wendell Phillips, who thenceforth paper at Alton, Illinois, an indignation meeting became a main pillar of abolitionism. was held in Boston, at which Mr. Austin, Attor- ↑ Stephen S. Foster. ney-General of Massachusetts, made a violent Abby Kelley. Along the wires in silence fares These last three (leaving in the lurch Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing, Which, of the Gospel's straitest size, Passed round in turn from mouth to Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes, mouth; If any ism should arise, They look on it with constable's eyes, The followers of Fi and Fum. Well, if the world, with prudent fear, For this world works six days in seven What wonder World and Church should |