descend to the invidious labor we can only remember that he was the idol, and the benefactor of our race,-and that he is gone from hence, and will be no more seen.

"Bright be the place of thy soul

No lovelier spirit than thine,

E'er burst from its mortal control,

In the realms of the blessed to shine."-BYRON.

From the king of novelists, we turn to two authors of our own country-authors known as widely, and as fully appreciated in Europe, as on this side of the Atlantic-and first in place, as in deserts, to Washington Irving. Him we have ever considered, setting apart those feelings of pride and gratification, which must kindle every American heart, at the triumph of a countryman, as one of the most chaste, pathetic, and classical writers in the modern school of our land's language. He is one of those who have drank deep from "the well of English undefiled," and may be regarded as a model of pure and easy composition. Indeed it is more to the graceful polish of his style, to the kindly and amiable vein of feeling, and to the slight tinge of thoughtful melancholy, which run through all his works, than to any high degree of interest in the narrative, or excitement created by the plot, that he owes his almost unequalled popularity. The "Tales of the Alhambra," are the result of the same Spanish tour, which gave birth to his "Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada;" and, though necessarily inferior to that admirable history in sustained interest, as they are also inferior to the Sketch Book-in our opinion his masterpiece-in beauty of style and pathos, will be read with avidity, as bearing throughout the impress of an amiable and cultivated mind, and containing amusing trifles clothed in elegant language. The most agreeable parts, in our estimation, are The Journey, and the descriptions of scenery and Moorish antiquities; take for example such a gem as the painting-for such in fact it is—of The Alhambra by Moonlight.

"I have given a picture of my apartment on my first taking possession of it; a few evenings have produced a thorough change in the scene and in my feelings. The moon, which then was invisible, has gradually gained upon the nights, and now rolls in full splendor above the towers, pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall. The garden beneath my window is gently lighted up; the orange and citron trees are tipped with silver; the fountain sparkles in the moonbeams, and even the blush of the rose is faintly visible.

"I have sat for hours at my window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the chequered features of those whose history is dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials around. Sometimes I have issued forth at midnight when every thing was quiet, and have wandered over the whole building. Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate, and in such a place! The temperature of an Andalusian midnight, in summer, is perfectly etherial. We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; there is a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame that render mere existence enjoyment. The effect of moonlight, too, on the Alhambra has something like enchantment. Every rent and chasm of time, every mouldering tint and weather stain disappears; the marble resumes its original whiteness; the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams; the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance, until the whole edifice reminds one of the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale. "At such time I have ascended to the little pavilion, called the Queen's Toilet, to enjoy its varied and extensive prospect. To the right, the snowy summits of the Sierra Nevada would gleam like silver clouds against the darker firmament, and all the outlines of the mountain would be softened, yet delicately defined. My delight, however, would be to lean over the parapet of the tocador, and gaze down upon Granada, spread out like a map below me: all buried in deep repose, and its white palaces and convents sleeping as it were in the moonshine.

"Sometimes I would hear the faint sounds of castanets from some party of dancers lingering in the Alameda; at other times I have heard the dubious tones of a guitar, and the notes of a single voice rising from some solitary street, and have pictured to

myself some youthful cavalier serenading his lady's window; a gallant custom of former days, but now sadly on the decline except in the remote towns and villages of Spain. "Such are the scenes that have detained me for many an hour loitering about the courts and balconies of the castle, enjoying that mixture of reverie and sensation which steal away existence in a southern climate-and it has been almost morning before I have retired to my bed, and been lulled to sleep by the falling waters of the fountain of Lindaraxa."

For the rest we cannot very much praise the tales themselves. Though perfect in their eastern costume, in their keeping, as an artist would say, they are somewhat too fantastical, too puerile for readers of the present day. We wish as sincerely that words of ours could induce Mr. Irving to exert his rich talents on a connected legend, to incline a little to Mr. Cooper's taste for wild adventure and thrilling incident; as that they might cause the other to pay a little more attention to the garb in which his thoughts are dressed, and to emulate, if not to imitate, the manner of the author of the Sketch Book.

Mr. Cooper's forte is in the forest or on the flood, roaming the trackless wilderness with the untired pace of his Indian hunters, or sweeping before the breeze over the stormy ocean, he is equally great, equally sublime. He has opened a new leaf in the book of nature-he has stood forth the champion, and the historian of the naked, painted, warrior of the desert. He has done more towards making the world acquainted with the aboriginal inhabitants of our vast empire, than hundreds of essayists or dry historians. We well remember the night we first took up his Last of the Mohicans-it was early twilight when we began to read, and it was broad daylight when we closed the book. We devoured it; we were so completely absorbed in the tale, as volume succeeded volume, that we could hardly give credit to our senses, when we heard the songs of the waking birds, and saw the rays of the morning sun mocking our faded lamp: and this has been the case with all Mr. Cooper's novels, till the two last; his readers were so absolutely engrossed in the matter, that they could not think of the manner; the story was everything, the style nothing. This however is not as it ought to be, and the proof is here: Mr. Cooper has been travelling latterly in the south of Europe; he has dismounted from the horse he has ridden so long and so well, nor can we compare the amble of the pony which he now bestrides, to the gallop of his discarded charger. His Bravo exhibited many gleams of his original brilliancy, but as a whole it is heavy. The Heidenmauer has none of these; there are none of the graphic descriptions, none of the thrilling actions, none of the "hair breadth 'scapes" which have kept our souls on the stretch in all his former works. The story is feeble, there is neither hero nor heroine, at least, not such as call forth a moment's anxiety; and herein we perceive what we had never noticed before, that Mr. Cooper's style is not only embarrassed, but not always strictly grammatical. He labors under some strange hallucination, or still stranger affectation, concerning the nature of the words thou and thine, which he constantly uses as plurals. One instance we will cite from the Bravo, in which he applies the pronoun thy as the possessive of ye or you. The Carmelite says to Gelsomina and Jacopo, "Thy affection for each other, children, is such as angels might indulge,-Has thy intercourse been of long date?" Mr. Cooper cannot seriously think that this is English; yet it is not a solitary error, on the contrary, there are so many of the same kind, that it has almost the appearance of being a crochet, like Mitford's

choosing, in defiance of all reason and orthography, to spell island and foreign, iland and foren. Whatever may be the meaning of this, we trust, for Mr. Cooper's own sake, that he will correct it in future; that he will shake off his apathy, and return to native subjects, on which, he may rest assured, he will more clearly display the originality of his talents, than by trenching on ground already occupied by European writers of undoubted celebrity.

When first we took the present artiele in hand, it was unquestionably our intention to have laid before the public our thoughts regarding each of the works, whose names are set before them. We have, however, been drawn on so far beyond our expectations, in treating the earlier part of our subject, and we now perceive that there is so large a quantity of matter yet before us, that, fearful of transgressing our limits, and encroaching too far on the patience of our readers; we have but the option of giving a cursory notice to the three last novels of our schedule, or of deferring the discussion of their merits to some future period. Now to bestow merely a glance on productions of such ability as Eugene Aram, and Henry Masterton, after having spoken at some length of less meritorious publications, were to do injustice both to their authors and to ourselves. We prefer then to delay our critique of these to some more seasonable opportunity; premising merely that Mr. Bulwer is, in our opinion, decidedly the first writer of fiction, at the present time, in the English world. Second only to Scott while in his prime, he now stands, after his decease, unrivalled and unapproached. Not that any comparison can be drawn between the writings of the two: the style -the train of thought-the choice of subjects-the mode of treating them when chosen-are all entirely distinct. Scott was the more vivid painter, Bulwer the deeper and freer thinker; Scott superior in delineating the external effects of passion, Bulwer in tracing out its internal workings. In a word, Scott was a more material, Bulwer a more metaphysical writer; and from all the works of the latter, we would select Eugene Aram, as most clearly displaying his peculiarities, his acquaintance with the human mind, and his comprehensive grasp of a subject involving such difficulties as must have deterred any but a master from the attempt. Mr. James, on the other hand, is an author formed in the very school of Sir Walter, following, though not with servility, the steps of his master, and doing credit to his nurture by successful adoption of many beauties, and his avoidance of some defects in his preceptor's system. He has the same antiquarian knowledge, the same art of sketching with the pen, and in no small degree, the same talent for the representation of character.

The anonymous writer of the adventures of a nameless Younger Son, differs again from both these, differs indeed from any novelist whose works we remember to have seen. His field is a new and wide one; his incidents as various as they are marvellous. He revels in wild adventures, in the strange vicissitudes of a wandering life, in the hitherto untouched beauties or terrors of tropical climes; and he describes, in words as fiery as the scorching sun of his beloved East, and with unflagging felicity, the horrors of the tornado, the perils of a tiger hunt, or the tumults and confusion of naval warfare. There is an earnestness about the whole, which, as .we have stated before, convinces us that the writer must have mingled

largely in the extraordinary scenes, and long resided in the almost unknown regions, which he delights to paint.

In conclusion, we can most conscientiously recommend the three lastmentioned novels to the attention of the world. All persons must derive much pleasure, many will gain much information from the perusal, and none will have the least reason to dread, at least with justice, the taunting appellation of novel readers; if by the term be meant, as we suppose, that class of persons who prefer the marvellous to the rational, and who care but little for style, or even sense, so long as they can pamper their diseased appetites with honeyed cates, to the exclusion of sound and nutritious aliment.

CHORUS,

FROM THE EDIPUS COLONEUS OF SOPHOCLES.

STRANGER, behold! Thy wandering foot hath pressed
Earth's sweetest vale, in spring's new verdure dressed;
Famed for the matchless steeds its pastures yields,
Its glowing gardens, and its fertile fields.
Here screen'd beneath the o'erbowering thickets shade,
Of densest bays, with clustering vines o'erlaid,
Or midst the dark-leav'd ivy's gadding sprays,
Where with his nymphs immortal Bacchus strays,
Securely sheltered from the tempest's wing
The clear-voiced nightingales for ever sing.
Here, nurs'd by vernal warmth and dewy showers,
The golden crocus spreads its daily flowers,
Here bright narcissus, favored as of yore
By the Great Goddess, studs the sacred shore;
With sleepless murmurs, trickling day by day
A thousand founts their liquid tributes pay;
While swift Elphisus, famed in ancient song,
Fed by their waters, smoothly glides along.
Nor do the muses with unwilling feet
Nor golden Venus, tread the fair retreat.
Here too, the verdant olives proudly rear
Their crests, unconquered by the hostile spear;
Which sprang not e'er from Asiatic earth,
Nor in the isle of Pelops had their birth;
But shot self-planted by divine command,
To guard and grace Athena's chosen land;
No impious hand e'er harm'd one sacred bough-
Such as earth saw them first, they flourish now.
Nor these alone our boast Our glories rest
On noblest steeds,-on ocean's subject, breast:
For first thou badest the warrior horse submit
In snorting frenzy to the Athenian bit,
Great son of Chronos;-whilst our flying oar
Securely triumphs o'er the billows hoar,
And springing life-like from the rower's sweep
Vies with the Nereids on the bounding deep.

W.

THE TRIALS OF A TEMPLAR,

A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what man doeth unto me. Ps. 118. ver. vi. A SUMMER day in Syria was rapidly drawing towards its close, as a handful of European cavalry, easily recognized by their flat-topped helmets, cumbrous hauberks, and chargers sheathed like their riders, in plate and mail, were toiling their weary way through the deep sand of the desert, scorched almost to the heat of molten lead by the intolerable glare of an eastern sun. Insignificant in numbers, but high of heart, confident from repeated success, elated with enthusiastic valor, and the inspiriting sense of a holy cause, they followed the guidance of their leader, one of the best and most tried lances of the Temple, careless whither, and secure of triumph; their steel armor glowing like burnished gold, their lance-heads flashing in the level rays of the setting orb, and the party-colored banner of the Beauseant hanging motionless in the still atmosphere.

Before them lay an interminable waste of bare and dusty plain, broken into long swells succeeding each other in monotonous regularity, though occasionally varied by stunted patches of thorny shrubs and dwarf palm trees. As they wheeled round one of these thickets, their commander halted suddenly at the sight of some fifty horsemen, whose fluttering garb and turbaned brows, as well as the springy pace of their Arab steeds, proclaimed them natives of the soil, winding along the bottom of the valley beneath him, with the stealthy silence of prowling tigers. Although the enemy nearly trebled his own force in numerical power, without a moment's hesitation, Albert of Vermandois arrayed his little band, and before the infidels had even discovered his presence, much less drawn a blade, or concentrated their scattered line, the dreaded war-cry rung upon their ears-"Ha, Beauseant! For the temple! For the temple !" and down thundered the irresistible charge of the western crusaders on their unguarded flank. Not an instant did the Saracens withstand the brunt of the Norman lance; they broke away on all sides, leaving a score of their companions stretched to rise no more, on the bloody plain. Scarcely however had the victors checked their blown horses, or re-organized their phalanx disordered by the hot struggle, when the distant clang of cymbal, horn, and kettle-drum, mingled with the shrill lelies of the heathen sounding in every direction, announced that their march had been anticipated, their route beset, themselves surrounded. Hastily taking possession of the vantage-ground afforded by an abrupt hillock, and dismissing the lightest of his party to ride for life to the Christian camp, and demand immediate aid, Albert awaited the onset with the stern composure which springs from self-possession. A few minutes sufficed to show the Christians the extent of their embarrassment, and the imminence of their peril. Three heavy masses of cavalry were approaching them from as many different quarters, their gaudy turbans, gilded arms, and waving pennons of an hundred hues, blazing in marked contrast to the stern and martial simplicity of the iron soldiers of the west. To the quick eye of Albert it was instantly evident that their hope consisted in protracting the conflict till the arrival of succor, and even this hope was diminished by the VOL. I.

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