cerned in the production of wool, he brought to this subject all the knowledge, and confidence, and zeal which personal interest gives. The argument was worthy of note for its clearness and cogency, and the aptness of his abundant illustrations. It had the fault, if fault it be, of being too purely an argument, or rather too abstract, for the place even in which it was delivered. As a specimen of reasoning, admirable as it was, it was perhaps better fitted for careful consideration in the closet than to sway the deliberations of a popular assembly, where flashes of eloquence and bursts of passion are more likely to be appreciated than a course of continuous thought. The latter, indeed, is in some respects of a higher order, and implies, which the other does not, something of what he used to say was the true sense of Demosthenes' triple rule of "action"-mental action, perpetual onwardness. The disposal of the Indian tribes, a subject which agitated the public mind very deeply for several years, and engaged the anxious attention of Congress, was one which appealed too strongly to his sense of justice, and to all his sympathies with humanity, to be lightly regarded by Mr. Bates. He entered zealously into the plans that were devised to prevent their removal beyond the Mississippi. He carefully investigated their title to the lands they occupied, and found it valid. He regarded with deep indignation the attempts which were made to bribe and coerce them from their birthright. He held the faith of treaties sacred, and mourned over the threatened violation of our national honor. He sought by every means to avert what he deemed so melancholy a consummation. Among those who eloquently remonstrated against this measure, his voice was none of the feeblest. In May, 1830, he presented his views to the House, in a speech in which the legal merits of the question were most ably set forth, and the iniquitous wrongfulness of their enforced exile from the burial-grounds of their fathers most feelingly portrayed-a speech not inferior, in the full grasp of the subject and in completeness of argument, to any which grew out of that great national interest, and which closed with a brief strain of lofty sentiment, and burning rebuke, and subduing pathos, hardly surpassed in any oration of modern times. The excitement of the occasion called out all his powers, and he perhaps needed such an excitement to display what he could do. When themes of ordinary interest were before the House, he was little disposed to hinder action by speaking. Yet once more, in January, 1833, he again made a speech on the tariff, in which he took a more general view of that subject, and which, as marked with his usual ability, was thought worthy of being given to the public. On his retirement from the House of Representatives, as he imagined, to the quiet of his farm and the more congenial business of his profession, his services were found too valuable to the State to be dispensed with; and he was appointed, in October, 1835, by the executive of that commonwealth, the agent to prosecute the Massachusetts claim. To this most difficult business he devoted much time and labor. After all the attention which others, his predecessors, had bestowed on it, there remained an arduous task for him. A huge variety of documents were to be consulted, cases almost forgotten in the lapse of time to be vindicated, principles to be discussed and settled, and the whole to be arranged for a jealous scrutiny. This was done by him, and the entire subject presented repeatedly, with great clearness and force, to the War Department. The honor, no less than the interest, of his native State was involved in his success, and he spared no pains to bring it to a prosperous issue. He at length, in December, 1837, obtained from Mr. Poinsett, then Secretary of War, a report to the House of Representatives favorable to the allowance of the claim, and finally from the House a partial appropriation. While engaged in this business, and away from home, he was nominated by the Whig convention of Hampshire county their candidate for the Senate of that State. On his return he promptly declined the nomination, as the duties of that station would interfere with the execution of his commission. In 1839 he was chosen a delegate from Massachusetts to the convention which met at Harrisburg, in December of that year, to select a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. He was elected to preside over that body, during its preliminary organization; and though entirely without experience of such a post, (and the choice of one so unused was a token of their ample confidence,) he performed its delicate duties with great courtesy, promptness of decision and firmness. He was afterwards one of the vice presidents of the convention. The result of their deliberations was the nomination of General Harrison. The desire and hope of Mr. Bates had been that the nomination might be given to another, to whose hands he would gladly have confided the destinies of the country; yet such was the great interest at stake, and such the need of unanimity in the Whig counsels, that, with many others, he felt bound to sacrifice his own preferences, and acquiesce in the decision of the majority; and on his return he did much to reconcile the people of New England to a result so unlike their anticipations. In the summer of 1840 he was chosen one of the electors at large, and, with the college, gave his vote for what all saw was now inevitable, and which he now believed was for the best. In the autumn of the same year, as he had been the year before, he was chosen one of the Executive Council; and a vacancy occurring in the Senate of the United States by the resignation of Gov. Davis, he was elected by the Legislature, January 15th, 1841, for the remainder of his term, and also for the six years from the ensuing March. This election, entirely unsought, and spontaneous on the part of those who made it, and simply a tribute to his abilities and worth, was highly gratifying and honorable. immediately took his seat in that body; He and with a mind trained by long experience, he entered at once on the duties of that high office as if he had been familiar with them all. None there were more honest and steadfast to their sense of duty, more high-minded and self-sacrificing for the public good, than he; and though many were more widely known, there were few more intelligent to understand the right, or more resolute in its defence. Here he continued to act on the same habit of abstinence from efforts to display himself, which had marked his whole career-a habit not common in this forth-putting age, and which his friends used to complain of as the only hindrance to his earlier and more complete success. The speeches which he made in the Senate were mostly very brief, pertinent to the occasion, and yet distinguished by their terseness of expression and condensed fullness of meaning; and some of them betrayed glimpses of the old Roman temper-a spirit of patriotism which scorned, in comparison with the claims of country, all sectional and party preferences, and all the prompt ings of personal interest. We need only allude to a few touching remarks which he offered to the Senate in June, 1842, General Harrison; to a speech pregnant on the bill for the relief of the widow of with noble feelings on a motion "to refer the plan of a fiscal agent;" and to one delivered June 6th, 1842, "on the districting clause of the apportionment bill," which was a fine specimen of constitutional interpretation. In February, 1844, he embraced the opportunity given by Mr. McDuffie and Mr. Woodbury, to address the Senate "in defence of the Protective System." It was a most able defence, urged by arguments derived from the history and origin of that system, its present vital necessity to the prosperity of the Eastern States, its general influence people, and its intrinsic fitness to our on the morals and happiness of their national condition. It was marked by tic though courteous retort, and by much his usual perspicuity and force, by causepigrammatic point and brevity of expression, while it gave utterance to large and statesmanlike views of public policy. It impressive elocution, and excited much was delivered in a style of animated and admiration. It was not answered. So highly was this speech esteemed as a vindication of that great feature of our printed for general circulation. Not less policy, that large editions of it were than thirty thousand were distributed in Connecticut alone, and great numbers in Pennsylvania. country was stirred with the activities of During the summer of 1844, the whole took more than he was wont of the gena Presidential election. Mr. Bates pareral excitement. Such was his conception of the great interests depending on the issue of that struggle, and such his looked for a safe and honorable adminconfidence in the great man to whom he istration of national affairs, that, as indeed the leading spirits of the time were doing, he suffered himself to be drawn from his seclusion, and was persuaded to lend the influence of his eloquence to sedate. He was often summoned from a cure the election of his favorite candidistance to address large audiences on this exciting theme. A-sociation" was the only one of them he gave to the "Young Dens Whig The speech winch that was published, except by newspaper reporters; and it is believed that few, of the many which that canvass called out, presented a fairer statement of the princi ples involved in it, or a more manly as sertion of the claims of the Whig party to success. The election resulted in the defeat of Mr. Clay. Deeply disappointed, though not disheartened, by this untoward event, Mr. Bates repaired to Washington at the opening of the session. He had taken leave of his family in more than his usual health, and entered on his duties with his accustomed alacrity. But he had already passed that period of life when labor is pleasure, and the anxieties and fatigues of that session gradually undermined his strength. The Annexation of Texas had again been vehemently pressed on the attention of Congress, and as the time for acting on it in the Senate drew near, his solicitude to avert it became in tense. Nothing but a feeling of the foul iniquity and danger of that measure could have induced him, exhausted and enfeebled as he was, to employ his remaining strength in a final effort at resistance. He was called to close the debate; and he did so in a speech, whose eloquent appeals for his country's honor and safety will be long remembered by those who heard them. The effort, protracted long beyond his wish by the refusal of the Senate to adjourn, and yet sustained by the deep enthusiasm of the hour, was more than he could bear. He was in his place again the following day, and that night was seized with a violent pulmonary fever, which defied medical skill, and in a few days all was over. He died March 16, 1845. To his associates in the Senate his loss was a severe shock-not only as the sudden taking one from their number, but as the sundering of a private affection. He had not an enemy among thein, and none were more warmly loved. He had won their confidence, and they mourned for him as for a friend. Among his neighbors and friends at home Mr. Bates had always commanded an almost unbounded love and veneration; he had been the friend of the poor, the defender of the oppressed, the frank, honorable, noble-minded man, whom they had delighted to honor. Not one was there in that large community who did not feel, when the news of the sad event reached him, that he had lost one whom he himself could ill afford to spare. When the messengers of the Senate bearing his remains had arrived at the borders of the State, they were met by a company of gentlemen, who escorted the body in solemn procession to his late home. When they entered the village at night, the tolling of the bells admonished all that he whom they had loved was returned to leave them no more. On the day of the funeral, all shops were closed, and every hill and valley in that wide region poured forth its multitudes to join in the last sad offices to the dead. Had his colleague seen the universal sorrow, he could not have more truly portrayed it than he did. "When information of his death," said Mr. Webster, "shall reach the beautiful village in which he lived, it will be a day of general grief. I see many an aged and venerable form, known to me, and better known to him, leaning tremulously on his staff, and shedding copious tears at the sad intelligence. see the middle-aged pause in their pursuits, to regret the death of a neighbor, an adviser and a friend. I see the youth, of both sexes, lamenting that the mansion always open to their innocent associations, always made instructive by the kindness and conversation of its head, is now closed against its accustomed visitors by the stroke of death; and I hear the solemn tones which shall call afflicted families and an afflicted neighborhood into the house of God, to pay respect to his memory, and to supplicate the consolations of religion." THE TRUE PRINCIPLE OF POETRY. CAMPBELL'S AND "AMELIA'S" POEMS ON THE RAINBOW COMPARED. [THE following observations from an able contributor are given, as affording some views, which many may agree with, on one side of the much-disputed question-What is Poetry? That we do not, ourselves, mainly agree with the sentiments expressed, is of little consequence, since opinions on the subject have always been so various. We have contented ourselves at present, with marking two or three important points of dissent in a note.-ED.] THE Comparison of two or more poemsas indeed of any other subjects-to be intelligible or even possible, implies two prerequisites. It should first appear that the things to be compared are rightly referred to a common category or class, and, in order to this-secondly, What may be the nature of the general subject, and what its criterion of excellence. But these preliminaries, though indispensable in a regular dissertation on Poetry, would be out of proportion, if not out of place, with reference to the present limited and lighter purpose. Some prefatory explanation, however, seems to be necessary, in a matter so confused: the more especially, since the views to be offered here upon it may be found to differ from the prevailing. We are obliged to render these views intelligible; it cannot be equally imperative upon us to ensure their approval. What is Poetry? seems to be a question akin to those posers of all times, What is the Supreme Good? What is Happiness? What is Virtue? Does Poetry consist in the rhyme or the metre, in imagery, in eloquence, or in some or all of these together? Or does it rather lie in the subject-matter, not in the form? All this has been, is, and probably will long continue to be, disputed. Then, there is a second set of questions, as to poetical rank: May the writer of odes be as great a poet as the writer of epics? Yet, with full knowledge, presumably, of this multitude of doubts and distinctions, we every day hear the critics, as well as the crowd, pronounce apace upon the merits of poems and poets, absolutely and comparatively, without the least advertence to any standard of judgment, and as if Poetry was a unity as definite and indivisible as a "primordial particle." Nor has a definition been furnished that we remember at this moment-by even those who have written systematic treatises on the art; by Horace in an cient, or by Vida, Boileau, Pope, in more modern times. Poetry is a supplement to the reality of life, and relates to the imagination, according to Lord Bacon-himself no mean poet, were this his description receivable. Poetry says, or sings Campbell (Gertrude of Wyoming)" is the eloquence of truth." Well, so is oratory, properly, the eloquence of truth. So is music, too; at least in a qualified acceptation. And then, what is eloquence? what is truth? Poetry, says Lord Byron," is but passion;" which to us proves that his lordship (or rather his bardship) could define, as well as he could write it. He adds a negative compliment of the definition, intimating what is not Poetry, and equally pointed for its logic, its satire and its truth: "Or at least was so, e'er it grew a fashion." Here, Byron, with his usual sagacity and precision, has hit the nail on the head. Passion in the writer, Pleasure in the reader; Impulse the motive, Emotion the effect-such do we conceive to be the two essential elements of Poetry. The term passion we, of course, understand not in any of its obnoxious acceptations, either the moral or the theological, or as designative of any excess whatever; but simply in a metaphysical sense, as an attribute of the soul and contradistinguished from reflection and reasoning. It is not that Poetry is not compatible with reason, according to a popular notion. On the contrary, there can, in our opinion, be no Poetry where there is not reason. Poetry has its logic as well as any of the sciences. But it is a logic of its own, a logic secundum quid (to borrow a term of the trade); a logic, not of rule, but of circumstance and instinct; it is the winged reason of the passions, not the lagging ratiocination of the syllogism. This distinction between the reasoning of the head and that of the heart, together with the kindred one between an erudite and an emotional imagination, furnishes the best criterion of the true poetic genius. The distinction is not always obvious; and as the recognition of it is of prime importance to our purpose, we will pause awhile to illustrate. This, from the nature of the subject, is better done by example than by argumentation. When Pope wrote to take a strong case seem suffused with indignant feeling. But considered more carefully, they will be found to be the deliberate result of rigorous thought, of collected reason. For it is only the manner in which all persons, capable intellectually, might treat the subject. They are certainly the "eloquence of truth." They are fine rhetoric. But they are not poetry; that is, they are not passion. Here is another passage from the same "Dash the proud gamester in his gilded writer, which is not to be excelled in car, Bare the base heart that lurks beneath a star," fertility and fitness of fancy; but which is amenable to the same observation and test, it being, manifestly, the production of a reasoned, not of a spontaneous im the lines might, to ordinary attention, agination: "Avert it, Heaven! that thou, my Cibber, e'er Now if (according to Bacon) imagination constituted the essence of poetry, this would be a poetical masterpiece. Nothing can be better imagined and expressed; especially the lumbering waddle of the rolling-stone, as descriptive of "Colly”—the manner and the man. But we put it to the general mind, if what strikes the reader be not, as in the former couplet the rhetoric, so in the latter extract the wit, or the satire, or the fancy; never, perhaps, (rhyme aside,) the poetry. The reason of this effect seems to be, that the imagination of these lines supposes no feeling; that it is obviously the texture of refined reflection and a cultivated intellect, not the natural imagery of the passions. The distinction will be clearer if we set in contrast with the preceding illustrations of the rhetoric and imagery of Thought, an example or two of the eloquence and the imagination of Passion. For this imagination, we shall quote from Racine part of the terrible monologue of Phedre, in the celebrated tragedy of that name. For the present purpose an exact translation would, perhaps, serve sufficiently. But there is none of any sort ; and we have not ourselves the heart, even if we had the hand, to attempt one. Phedre discovers that Hyppolytus, her stepson, has given to another the love which he had disdainfully refused to her own delirious and incestuous passion for him. She breaks forth into an execration of herself, her nurse, the gods and all nature. The thought occurs of getting her husband, Theseus, to put her rival in his son's affections to death. But startled by this new complication of her enormities, she checks herself: "Que fais-je ? où ma raison se va-t-elle égarer? |