-

admirable qualities which belong to the man SMITH, and exhibit his claims to 'kindred' with the brotherhood of genius, sympathy with whose sorrows and fall was the inspiration of these lays. If we may regard them as what are sometimes called 'occasional poems,' in the nature of monodies or elegies — of which the English miscellanies for the last hundred years are full we know of nothing that surpasses these exquisite poems in natural feeling, in delicacy and beauty of expression, and in their adaptation to the events that called them forth. If we could decide which of these four poems is the best, we would copy it, but we must refer the reader to the volume, to decide the question for himself. Our impression is, that the magnificent tribute to CAMPBELL must bear away the palm.

There is a fact in HORACE SMITH's history worthy of note, in connection with a few stanzas inspired by a philosophy which not only prompted his verses, but regulated his life:

Unpossessed Possessions.

'WHOSE are Windsor and Hampton, the pride of the land,
With their treasures and trophies so varied and grand?
The QUEEN'S, you reply:
Deuce a bit! you and I

Through their gates, twice a week, making privileged way,
Tread their gilded saloons,

View their portraits, cartoons,
And, like CRUSOE, are monarchs of all we survey.

'And whose are our nobles' magnificent homes,
With their galleries, gardens, their statues and domes?
His Grace's, my Lord's?
Ay, in law and in words,

But in fact they are ours, for the master, poor wight!
Gladly leaving their view
To the visiting crew,

Keeps a dear exhibition for others' delight.

'And whose are the stag-haunted parks, the domains,
The woods and the waters, the hills and the plains?
Yours and mine, for our eyes

Daily make them our prize:

What more have their owners? The care and the cost!
Alas! for the great,

Whose treasures and state,

Unprized when possessed, are regretted when lost.

'When I float on the Thames, or am whisked o'er the roads,
To the numerous royal and noble abodes

Whose delights I may share,
Without ownership's care,

With what pity the titled and rich I regard,
And exultingly cry:

Oh! how happy am I

To be only a poor unpatrician bard!'

HORACE SMITH was a broker, but unlike the broker described by his Roman namesake, who, smit with a passion for retirement and a countryseat, called in his money in the ides, but loaned it out again in the kalends. He was an attentive man-of-business in early life, but was so wise as to know when he had enough. This is a knowledge few live to acquire. The sentiment which pervades his 'Unpossessed Possessions,' the feeling that it is not necessary to own all you see in order to enjoy it, was practical with him, and not poetical. He retired from the pursuit of wealth when he had gained a reasonable independence: and thenceforward devoted himself en

tirely to literary avocations. To this course he was indebted for many years of tranquil enjoyment, undisturbed by vicissitudes of fortune.

There is a motive and a moral in every poem of HORACE SMITH, and they are finished with a neatness and point of expression that never leave one at a loss to comprehend his meaning. This may be regarded as a blemish with the admirers of some of the new schools of verse; but we confess that it gives us pleasure to derive a distinct impression from what we read, and that we never fail to understand as we go, when we pore over CAMPBELL, BYRON, or WORDSWORTH, who surely may be considered three of the masters of English song. SHELLEY and KEATS, we must confess, bid us pause sometimes, and are now and then quite past our understanding: but when we come down to the later gods of the poetical world, they seem to be so blurred and bedimmed in their ideas that they are little better than 'heathen Greek' to us for all the pleasure that we derive from them. Because we can always comprehend him, we enjoy HORACE SMITH, and think with FORSTER of the 'London Examiner,' that he is a 'delightful' writer in verse. We know of few small poems in the English language more perfect than 'The First of March,' or the 'Invocation to the Cuckoo' and yet, with all their fancy and imagination, they are as intelligible as a demonstration of EUCLID. Among the other pieces in this volume most infused with the 'faculty divine,' we would mention, Death,'' The Dying Poet,' 'Farewell,' 'The Birth-Day of Spring,' and 'The Poet's Winter-Song to his Wife.' The last we copy:

THE birds that sang so sweet in the summer skies are fled,
And we trample 'neath our feet leaves that fluttered o'er our head;
The verdant fields of June wear a winding-sheet of white,
The stream has lost its tune, and the glancing waves their light.

'We too, my faithful wife, feel our winter coming on,

And our dreams of early life like the summer birds are gone;
My head is silvered o'er, while thine eyes their fire have lost,
And thy voice, so sweet of yore, is enchained by age's frost.

'But the founts that live and shoot through the bosom of the earth,
Still prepare each seed and root to give future flowers their birth:
And we, my dearest JANE, spite of age's wintry blight,
In our bosoms will retain Spring's florescence and delight.

The seeds of love and lore that we planted in our youth,
Shall develop more and more their attractiveness and truth;
The springs beneath shall run, though the snows be on our head,
For Love's declining sun shall with Friendship's rays be fed.

"Thus as happy as when young shall we both grow old, my wife,
On one bough united hung of the fruitful Tree of Life;

May we never disengage through each change of wind and weather,
Till in ripeness of old age we both drop to earth together!'

Of the comic pieces by HORACE SMITH, the style is his own, though the anecdotes on which they are founded are sometimes borrowed. And though many of them are old favorites with us, we have read them in the new guise in which they appear with as much zest as if they were just out of manuscript. 'The Auctioneer and the Lawyer,' 'Rabelais and the Lampreys, The Fat Actor and the Rustic,'The Collegian and the Porter,' 'The Poet and the Alchemist,' though old acquaintances, will be welcome, if for nothing else, for the company in which they are found.

We have gossipped so much about HORACE SMITH, that we have hardly left ourselves room to speak of his more worldly, but equally clever brother. JAMES SMITH did not possess the poetic faculty to any great degree, but he was a polished yersifier, and a man of decided esprit. He ought to have been the laureate of London. His verses are the suggestions of London life, and yet of general application. His style is condensed and pointed, and marked by epigram and antithesis. In its way, there is nothing better. Neither KIT ANSTEY nor PRAED, the most successful writers of the vers de société, surpassed JAMES SMITH. But his sphere was limited. He was a lyrist of fashion, as Hook was a novelist. If his verses were understood and well received at Lady BLESSINGTON'S, he was content. It has been said that his part of 'The Rejected Addresses' is the better part; but the imitations are all of the first excellence, and it is difficult to say which possesses the most merit. It must be conceded that the work stands without a rival. Neither before nor since has any thing appeared to compete with it. Time and again it has been tried, here and in England, and yet nothing has ever been accomplished that has survived. But 'The Rejected Addresses' is as popular a book as the day it was written.

But we must take our leave of the 'Brothers SMITH,' with a word of thanks to the Brothers MASON, for the beautiful manner in which they have issued the volume before us, and to the editor for the very entertaining memoir which it contains.

THE RIFLE, AXE, AND SADDLE-BAGS, and other Lectures. By WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN. With an Introduction by Rev. J. MCCLINTOCK, D.D., and a Portrait of the Author on Steel. In one volume: pp. 309. New-York: DERBY AND JACKSON.

FROM the moment we saw Mr. MILBURN led forward by our friend Mr. WESLEY HARPER at the Book-seller's Festival at the Crystal Palace, and turn his almost sightless orbs upon the vast crowd whom he was to address, we have felt an interest in him 'which we can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.' It was the first time we had seen him. We had heard of 'the Blind Preacher,' and of his simple, natural eloquence; and when he began in a voice clear, deep, and full, without being loud, and plunged at once, without ambiguity or circumlocution, into what he had to say, we saw that he had not been over-rated. But Mr. MILBURN's history, and his professional and literary characteristics, are too well known to the country to require reference or elucidation at our hands. Turn we rather to the volume under notice; wherein, as is truly stated by Dr. MCCLINTOCK in his 'Introduction,' the reader will find no ambiguities of phrase; no wandering or meaningless sentences; no paragraphs 'put in to fill up ;' but lucid narrative, glowing descriptions, earnest thought, and genial feeling everywhere The contents of the volumes consist of seven spoken lectures, under the annexed titles: 'The Symbols of Early Western Character and Civilization;' 'The Rifle;' 'The Axe;' 'The Saddle-Bags;' 'Songs in the Night, or the Triumph of Genius over Blindness;' 'An Hour's Talk about Woman;' and 6

VOL. XLIX.

'French Chivalry in the South-West.' All these themes, and they are all of interest, are very fully and eloquently treated, and abundantly illustrated by incident and anecdotes. We were struck very forcibly with one feature of this volume. A hundred years from now, reader, when we are in our graves and out of them in impalpable dust, it may be quoted in proof of the toils and sufferings of the early Methodists, in spreading the 'glad tidings of salvation' throughout the wilderness of the until then untrodden West. Our limits will permit of but a single extract: a passage from the lecture, 'Songs in the Night, or the Triumphs of Genius over Blindness.' Mr. MILBURN is speaking of the inferiority of the Blind in the matter of 'spoken eloquence':

"THERE is a popular fallacy that this is a profession wherein the blind may readily excel; to which Mr. WIRT's celebrated description of the Blind Preacher, in his letters of the British Spy, has given still greater currency. I will not charge that distinguished person with intentional extravagance; but his picture is an exaggeration. His own mind was in a morbid and excited state, profoundly impressed by the Sabbath-like stillness of the forest; the grassy turf illumined by flashes of sunshine, and speckled by the twinkling shadows of the leaves; while through the trees appears the modest country church. Brooding over a youth mis-spent, haunted by the phantoms of remorse and despair, he crosses the threshold of the house of GOD, to hear if any word can be spoken that will dispel his gloom. An aged man stands in the desk. Silvery locks fall down his shoulders. His voice is tremulous from age. His manner of simple fervor betokens the deepest earnestness. As the hearer looks more narrowly, he perceives that the speaker is blind. His own condition, the scene, the sightless apostle of the truth, all combine to arouse him to a pitch of enthusiasm; and he pronounces WADDELL the most eloquent of men.

That Mr. WIRT on this occasion may have found him so, I do not question. But that the audience, under ordinary conditions, would have been affected to the same, or to an approaching degree, I cannot believe. Excel as the blind may in literature, the magic wand of the great orator cannot be given to them. Shall I demonstrate my position? When you are engaged in conversation, is it not requisite, in order to the fullest interest and animation, that you have the tribute of your companion's eye? Is it possible for you to sustain a prolonged and exciting conversation in a dark room? Can you make a friend or intimate of any person, who, when you speak to him, averts his glance? No, is the unmistakable answer to this question. Why? You come to your deepest acquaintance with others' sensibilities, whereby your own are kindled, through their eyes and your own. The sweetest and mightiest tie which binds us to each other-sympathy- whose glow kindles our enthusiasm, whose magic power enables us to transfer our life into another's life, to pervade our own imagination with another's being, reveals itself, not through the poor ministry of words, but in the divine expression of the human face, which concentrates and glorifies itself in the electric flashing of the eyes. These orbs are the mirrors of the soul; the lights which kindle the fires of friendship and affection.

'Again; you are a public speaker. Suppose you are called upon to address an audience from behind a screen; or with your face turned to the wall; or with a bandage across your eyes. Would your words have power, or your nature inspiration? Picture DEMOSTHENES OF CLAY addressing an audience, they hanging breathless on his lips, when suddenly the lights go out. No poise of character, no self-possession, no absorption of the speaker in his theme is equal to such a crisis. No spell of eloquence is mighty enough to hold an audience together under such circumstances. There can be neither speaking nor hearing in the dark.

'What is the secret of the richest, greatest eloquence? Neither in finish of style, nor in force of logic, nor affluence of diction, nor grace of manner, nor pomp of imagination, nor in all of these combined, is it to be found. It may be accompanied by these, it may be destitute of them. It is in the man- feeling his theme, feeling his audience, and making them feel the theme and himself. He pursues the line of his thought; a sentence is dropped which falls like a kindling spark into the breast of some one present. The light of that spark shoots up to his eyes, and sends an answer to the speaker. The telegraphic signal is felt, and the speaker is instantly ten-fold the stronger; he believes what he is saying more deeply than before, when a second sentence creates a response in another part of the house. As he proceeds, the listless are arrested, the lethargic are startled into attention, tokens of sympathy and emotion flash out upon him from every portion of the audience. That audience has lent to him its strength. It is the saine double action which characterizes every movement of the

universe: action and reaction; the speaker giving the best that is in him to his hearears, they lending the divinest portion of themselves to him. This tidal movement of sympathy, this magnetic action, awakening and answering in the eyes of speaker and hearer, by which he is filled with their life, and they pervaded by his thought, is to me the secret and the condition of real eloquence; and clearly this condition is one unattainable by a man destitute of sight.'

'Ah! but,' dear Mr. MILBURN, please look at the other side of the picture. Tears came into the eyes of hundreds who heard your eloquent and most touching address at the Crystal Palace, who would have been unmoved had they not known that you were painting from an upper and an inward light. You thought not of this, but your auditors did; and no man, with ‘all his eyes about him,' as the phrase is, could have wrought half the sensation which your simple narrative created. We have done scant justice to this exceedingly attractive volume; but by glancing at the head of this hurried and imperfect notice, our readers will know how and where to obviate this defect, by obtaining a copy of the work in question, and enjoying its perusal, 'without note or comment' neither of which, in fact, does it in the least require.

PAUL FANE OR PARTS OF A LIFE ELSE UNTOLD. A Novel: by N. P. WILLIS. NewYork: CHARLES SCRIBNER. Boston: A. WILLIAMS AND COMPANY.

THIS work was originally published in chapters in the 'Home Journal,' and its announcement excited much interest. We among others, gladly hailed its advent, and eagerly perused its first numbers; but a growing sense of disappointment took the place of interest, and caused us to discontinue the weekly reading, and patiently await the completion of the story, trusting that when published all together, it might impress us more favorably. The book is now before us: we have read it carefully and kindly; but the result is the same. There is an artificiality about it, and the characters move through it like so many automatons; and though each one does and says just the right thing in just the right time and just the right place, yet it is done as stiffly as though they were made of paste-board and pulled by wires. There is great affectation of expression, and many of the incidents strike us as unnatural. In 'BOSH BLIVINS' we recognize a strong likeness to our old friend FORBEARANCE SMITH, the subject of one of the sketches in the 'Inklings of Adventure;' but in vain we look in the present work for the touching simplicity, the graphic description and mirth-provok ing incidents which so forcibly distinguished Mr. WILLIS's earlier works. Who does not feel as though JULIA BEVERLY and BLANCH CARROL were old friends? - but we think none of us will care to cultivate such acquaintances as Miss FIRKINS, or to become intimate with the Princess C. The letters which are exchanged between the hero and his mother are certainly beautiful specimens of composition, and serve to exhibit most charmingly the holiness of a mother's love, and its influence on an absent son. Let not our readers be biased by our opinion, but read 'PAUL FANE,' and judge of its merits for themselves.