not yet been banished by the sterner experience and more severely common-sense views of advancing years. But there is another field of poetry, which we should on a priori grounds assign to a riper age, which has nevertheless been most successfully cultivated by the young. We mean that which

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usually passes under the name of religious poetry. who examines with reference to this point any of our most popular selections of sacred poems, will, we think, be surprised to see how large a part of it belongs to the young. The most touchingly beautiful pieces on death and the glories of immortality will be found to have been written by those whose visions of heavenly bliss have not been clouded by too long a stay in the damp atmosphere of this mortal world. George Herbert, with his "Lyrics of the Temple," and Henry Vaughan, whose lines beginning, "They are all gone to the world of light," make one of the sweetest and divinest songs of immortality that have ever been written to comfort and uplift the mourner's heart, gave themselves up to more commonplace duties before they had reached the meridian of life. We are not quite sure of the fact, but we believe that both Watts and Doddridge wrote their hymns before they had prepared the heavier prose compositions which they regarded as their serious occupation. Milton was but seventeen when he wrote his exquisite stanzas, marred perhaps by the pedantry of his age, "On the Death of a Fair Infant," and but a few years older, we suppose, when he wrote his Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, and his Ode "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," the grandest religious lyric that we know of in any language.

In this country the same general remark holds true. Bryant's Thanatopsis, a solemn religious poem, was the product of his early youth, as were Willis's Scripture pieces, Miss Townsend's lines on "The Incomprehensibility of God," and Jones Very's Sonnets and other poems, which in depth and purity of thought and sentiment, as well as in beauty of imagery and exquisite simplicity of language, deserve a place beside the best religious poems of any age. A Christmas Hymn in eight stanzas, by the Rev. E. H. Sears, composed, we believe, before he entered on the duties of his profession,

stands at the head of its class, and can hardly be read without a thrill of emotion and an uplifting of the soul in harmony with the theme.

With these and possibly a few other exceptions, the finest productions of genius belong to the later periods of life. Generally speaking, there is a richness of style which can be perfected only by time. We see it in comparing the earlier and later writings of the most distinguished men. Let any one compare Burke's "Observations on a Late State of the Nation," written in 1769, or his " Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents," written the next year, though the author had then attained to the mature age of forty, with his "Reflections on the Revolution in France," or his "Letter to a Noble Lord," written a quarter of a century later, and we think he will find in the later works, that, while there is no abatement of enthusiasm, there is a mellowness and harmony of style, an ease and grandeur in the flow of his sentences, in short, an indefinable charm of expression, far beyond what is to be perceived in his earlier writings. Let one compare in the same way the earlier and the later writings of Washington, and he will hardly fail, we think, to feel the deeper tone of sentiment which pervades the language and affects the style of his later productions. The forty intervening years, with all their varying emotions, and trying experiences, and wisdom ripening through great and generous deeds, have infused something of their richness even into the severe simplicity and sound common-sense of his unimaginative language. We think that we recognize much of this improvement in Mr. Webster's speeches and writings. No one can read the Life or the writings of Dr. Channing without seeing the marks of this progress in the richer coloring and greater ease and simplicity of his style.

If the view that we have taken of this subject be sound, it should make us lenient in the judgments that we pass on the writings of the young, and should lead the young who are inspired with the noble ambition to produce something" which the world will not willingly let die," to prepare themselves as the great men of other days have done; not to be discouraged by any temporary failures, or elated by the successes of the

day, but to keep their faculties alive by constant effort; and to lay in stores of knowledge and of thought, that by and by, in the fulness of all their powers, they may bring forth the ripened fruit of a generous culture, mellowed by the large experience, the slowly maturing wisdom, and the ever-deepening emotions of the revolving years. It is thus that the greatest works of genius have been prepared in times past, and so it must be in times to come.

1.- Junius Discovered. By FREDERIC GRIFFIN. Brown, and Company. 1854. 16mo. pp. 310.

Boston: Little,

AMERICA supplies everything. It is always impossible to tell what will be the next curiosity she will exhibit to an amazed world. All that she knew herself of the Great Industrial Exhibition was, that she had not sent forward the labor-saving machines she was most proud of. And the prizes she won there were in many instances for things as little known at home as abroad. In this book she has outdone herself in singularity. She has actually furnished a candidate for the authorship of Junius.

It is our excellent old Governor Pownall, who is now advanced as the claimant to what are left of Junius's honors. It seems that he was in London while the letters were written, and in pretty constant opposition to government. He spelt chearful with an a, as Junius did, and dated his letters with the name of the month first, instead of the numeral, as Junius also did. He was a Cambridge man, as Junius is supposed to have been, and more than fifty at the time, as Junius affected to be. He was neither a soldier nor a lawyer, nor was Junius. He was a member of Parliament, and so was Junius. Scattered through the book are other suggestions of similarity; but the above-named are some of the insignificant, and all the leading, points on which the argument is founded. Governor Pownall's handwriting is not like Junius's; but it is thought that, if he had disguised his hand, it would have been, or the reader is invited, if he prefer the alternative, to believe that Sir Philip Francis copied his letters for him. And thus the most formidable competitor is removed; unless, indeed, John Pownall copied them, as is also

suggested. It seems that Sir Philip Francis was a connection, by marriage, of Governor Pownall's.

The conjecture is not sustained at all by the testimony, faithfully and ingeniously though this be put together. Mr. Griffin has persuaded himself, — has made a very agreeable book to persons interested in history; but in rescuing Governor Pownall from the semi-obscure, into which time was consigning him, not unjustly, he has not made a Junius of him, nor anything but what he was, a faithful public servant, too honest to serve any party then in the ascendant, and too dignified in manner, and too completely "respectable," to make from his independent position any very deep impression on his times. To imagine Junius becoming a member of that most worthy institution, the English Society of Antiquaries, publishing now a Memoir on Antiquities in the Provincia Romana, and now one on Drainage,— is a hard play of the fancy. On the other hand, to imagine Governor Pownall, chary as he was of his well-earned reputation, and disposed to place before the public all honors that were his due, keeping Junius's secret for thirty years, and dying without revealing it, is no less unnatural. The only sign he gave in dying was a direction that "he might be laid in an oaken coffin without ornament or inscription." "What could he mean," says Mr. Griffin, "by this direction for an inscriptionless coffin, but a repetition of the motto, Stat nominis umbra'?" Really, as he suggests, this is "a little fanciful." The book does not show who Junius was. It does show pretty distinctly that Governor Pownall was not he. In face of all the coincidences which Mr. Griffin brings together, he also brings in, of necessity, the palpable contrast between the sharp, vivid sentences of Junius's style, and the elaborate dignity of the Governor's, pompous, as became his time, and apt to be long-winded. As one reads the book, it is amusing to see how eagerly he lights on the scraps of Junius as a rest, after a passage through the Governor's stately sentences. The sharp epigrams scattered through Junius are almost all that now preserve the memory of what he wrote. We have read all that there is of Governor Pownall in this volume without hitting upon one. Mr. Griffin is conscious of this evident difference of style, and attempts to account for it by saying that we have only public speeches and set letters of Governor Pownall's, and do not know but that he would have written more sharply under a mask. We do not know it. But we do know that, if he could write as well as Junius, he would have done so in his published writings, unless he were a man of much less sense than Junius.

the motto of Junius.

The book thus defeats its avowed object. It brings to light by the way, however, a good deal of curious Revolutionary history, and places

Pownall's career, and his gallant advocacy of the Colonial interests, in a light which has not been distinctly enough disclosed before, and which our historians ought not to omit to mention hereafter. Especially curious are twenty-five letters from Governor Pownall to Dr. Samuel Cooper, of Boston, and one to Samuel Adams, written in the trying times before the outbreak of the war. They show how much confidence was reposed in Pownall by the patriots of that day, and how heartily he had their interests in view, though he could not step so fast as they did, and they hardly expected him to do so. These letters fell into the hands of Dr. John Jeffries, who took them with him to Halifax when Boston was evacuated, and afterwards presented them to a Mr. Thompson, supposed to have been the king's librarian, who states these facts in a note, in which he "presumes, most humbly, to lay them at his Majesty's feet, as a literary as well as a political curiosity." The king condescended to pick them up, and to have them preserved in his library, which now forms a part of the British Museum. These facts have, we believe, been made public before, but the correspondence of Governor Pownall is now printed for the first time. Everything is of value which illustrates the progress of the feeling of alienation,—the steps in revolution; and these confidential letters, addressed by a man of his ability to one in Dr. Cooper's position, are specially interesting.

2.-1. National Education in Europe. By HENRY BARNARD, LL.D., Superintendent of Common Schools in Connecticut. Second Edition. Hartford. 1854.

2. Reformatory Schools. By MARY CARPENTER. London. 1854.

MR. BARNARD's valuable report has been greatly enlarged, and is now published in a cheap edition, which will give it, we trust, a very wide circulation. We allude to it at present to call attention to its val uable chapter on Schools for Juvenile Delinquents, in connection with Miss Carpenter's new book named above.

Now that the attention of our own State has been turned to the necessity of providing some penal institution better fitted than a jail can be for the discipline of boys and girls, it would be a great pity if we made all the mistakes, and went through all the doubtful experiments, which were necessary in Europe, before the Schools of Discipline on the Continent attained so effective a condition as those of the Rauhe Haus of Mettrai in France, and others in Switzerland, France, and Belgium have attained. These schools must be organized with the ele