after making his divine Minerva, carved his own image with such deep incision into the shield, that it could not be effaced without destroying the statue. But this artist of ours, with deeper cunning, has contrived to levy on all American nature, has subsidized every solitary grove and monument-mountain in Berkshire or the Katskills, every gleaming water, the "gardens of the Desert," every waterfowl and woodbird, the evening wind, the stormy March, the song of the stars; - has suborned every one of these to speak for him, so that there is no feature of day or night in the country which does not, to the contemplative mind, recall the name of Bryant. This highhanded usurpation of whatever is sweet or sublime, I charge him with, and, on the top of this, with the sorcery of making us hug our fetters and rejoice in our subjugation.

was

Then, sir, for his patriotism - we all know the deep debt which the country owes to the accomplished journalist, who, the better to carry the ends which his heart desired, left the studies and retirements dear to his muse, adapted his voice to the masses to be reached, and the great cause to be sustained content to drop "the garland and singing-robes of the poet," and, masking his Tyrtaean elegies in the plain speech of the street, sounded the key-note of policy and duty to the American people, in a manner and with an effect of the highest service to the Republic.

Before I sit down, let me apply to him a verse addressed by Thomas Moore to the poet Crabbe, and Moore has written few better:

LETTER OF PROTEST

CONCORD, September 23d, 1846.

as

DR. S. G. HOWE, AND ASSOCIATES OF THE COMMITTEE OF CITIZENS: If I could do or say anything useful or equal to the occasion, I would not fail to attend the meeting on Thursday. I feel the irreparable shame of Boston of this abduction. I hope it is not possible that the city will make the act its own, by any color or justification. Our State has suffered many disgraces, of late years, to spoil our pride in it, but never any so flagrant as this, if the people of the Commonwealth can be brought to be accomplices in one crime, which, I assure myself, will never be. I hope it is not only not to be sustained by the mercantile body, but not even by the smallest portion of that class. If the merchants tolerate this crime, nothing will be too bad for their desert, so it is very certain they will have the ignominy very faithfully put to their lips. The question you now propose, is a good test of the honesty and manliness of our commerce. If it shall turn out, as desponding men say, that our people do not really care whether Boston is a slave-port or not, provided our trade thrives, then we may, at least cease to dread hard time and ruin. It is high time our bad wealth came to an end. I am sure I shall very cheerfully take my share of suffering in the ruin of such a prosperity, and shall very willingly turn to the mountain to chop wood, and seek to find for myself and my children labors compatible with freedom and honor.

With this feeling, I am proportionably grateful

to Mr. Adams and yourselves, for undertaking the office of putting the question to our people, whether they will make this cruelty theirs? and of giving them an opportunity of clearing the population from the stain of this crime, and of securing mankind from the repetition of it, in this quarter forever.

Respectfully and thankfully

Your obedient servant,

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

LETTER TO WALT WHITMAN

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, 21 July, 1855.

DEAR SIR: I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large preception only can inspire.

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty.

It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects. RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

REVIEW OF THE BOTHIE OF TOPER NA FUOSICH, LONG - VACATION PASTORAL, BY ARTHUR CLOUGH

A

HERE is a new English poem which we heartily recommend to all classes of readers. It is an account of one of those Oxford reading-parties which, at the beginning of a long vacation, are made up by a tutor with five or six undergraduates, who wish to bring up arrears of study, or to cram for examination and honors, and who betake themselves with their guide to some romantic spot in Wales or Scotland, where are good bathing and shooting, read six hours a day, and kill the other eighteen in sport, smoking, and sleep. The poem is as jocund and buoyant as the party, and so joyful a picture of college life and manners, with such good strokes of revenge on the old tormentors, Pindar, Thucydides, Aristotle, and the logical Aldrich, that one wonders that this ground has not been broken up before. Six young men have read three weeks with their tutor, and after joining in a country dinner and a dance in a barn, four of them decide to give up books for three weeks, and make a tour of the Highlands, leaving the other two partners with the tutor in the cottage, to their matutive, or morning bath, six hours' reading, and mutton at seven. The portraits of the young party are briefly but masterly sketched. Adam the tutor, Lindsay the dialectician, Hope, Hobbes, Airlie, Arthur, who, from his thirty feet diving, is the "glory of headers,' and Hewson. Philip Hewson, the hero of the poem,