North America, opposed to the united force of Great Britain and her allies, may prove an unequal contest, and should not be trusted too far.

The difficulty of finding funds whilst our trade is shut up by a superior marine strength is very distressing, and would find present relief if the united fleets of . Spain and France were to fall on that of Great Britain in its present state of inferiority. It amazes me that the Politicians of these two kingdoms do not see with what certainty they may, in conjunction with America, humble the pride and power of Britain as well as that, if the latter accomplish their plan of subjugating America, the force of both must and will be applied to attack the American possessions of the House of Bourbon. It is now in the power of Spain, with ease, to get the harbor of Pensacola for her homeward bound ships, and surely the power of Great Britain and North America divided, can never be so dangerous to her as when united, abstracted from the consideration of gratitude that must bind to her the affections of virtuous young Republics for timely and effectual aid afforded them in the day of their distress. It will be very long before such kindness will be forgotten. Since the 24th of December, we have been in a constant train of success against the enemy, and from that time during the whole winter campaign-for it has never slept we have reduced the enemy's force at least 4000 men. They have been confined to the hills of Brunswick, in New Jersey, the whole winter, and there they remain now. Their foraging parties have been so beaten and driven back-that their distress has been great, and their horses have died in numbers. And this has been done chiefly by militia, our regular army having been dispersed last fall in consequence of short enlistments which had taken place in spring of 1776, in the uncertain state that our affairs were then under. The levies for forming a new regular army for duration are now moving up to head quarters in Jersey from all the States, and an army is forming at Ticonderoga, ready to meet General Carlton as soon as the ice permits him to

cross Lake Champlain. But we are greatly retarded by the necessity we are under, of passing all our troops through inoculation before they join the army. And this I fear will prevent us from taking advantage of the enemy's weakness and presumption in remaining where they are before they get reinforced. Brunswick, (on the hills near which the enemy are fortified) is in New Jersey on the River Raritan, which communicates with the sea at Amboy, so that you find they keep pretty nigh their ships. What a fine stroke it would be for a Spanish Fleet to remove their small ships of war, which would effectually deliver their army into our hands! And it would not quickly be in the power of England to recover this blow. Except two, the other States have fixed and are exerci

sing their new governments, which you may well suppose must add greatly to our force, safety and success. We have 13 frigates nearly finished, and some of them at sea. Our privateers you know, have been very successful, and still continue to be so. You cannot imagine what universal joy and spirit it would give to North America if Spain and France were now to attack Great Britain. The success would be infallible, and the Independence of America immovably fixed.

Before this reaches you the former dispatches will be arrived, by which you will see that Congress had proposed Dr. Franklin to attend the Court of Spain whilst you remained at Paris. But I suppose you have jointly considered that it may do as well for you to be at Madrid, and perhaps the Doctor's age might render it inconvenient for him to travel so far. However, proper powers have long since been sent to Dr. Franklin, appointing him to the Court of Spain, although he is not deprived of right still to represent these States at the Court of France.

*

*

*

May 31st. Since the above the events of war have not been considerable. The Enemy, with about 2000 men from New York, pushed up the Sound by water, and made a forced march through a small part of Connecticut to surprise

A HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JAMES MADISON. BY WILLIAM C. RIVES. Volume I. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1859. [From J. W. Randolph, 121 Main Street.

Here, in the beautiful typography and on the clear paper of a publishing house which rivals Murray or the Longmans in the appearance of its editions, we have the first volume of a work which is destined to receive as close an attention and provoke as much controversy, perhaps, as any other of the day in America. The task of writing the Life of James Madison could not surely have fallen into better hands than those of a man who, having filled with distinguished credit several of the highest offices known to his government, has retired to prosecute anew those studies of literature and philosophy, for years but little interrupted, which commend themselves at once to his taste and

his temper. We augured well of the work upon the earliest announcement of its intended publication, and our expectations have not been disappointed. There is in it less. perhaps, than we had hoped for, of the familiar life of Mr. Madison, of the boy, the College student, the young man of society, and so far, Mr. Rives has presented us with few of those personal incidents and anecdotes which lend such a charm to Randall's Life of Jefferson. As he advances with his biography and comes to speak of Mr. Madison in the decline of life, the materials for personal characterization will be more abundant, since it was the rare privilege of the author to be intimately acquainted with that serene and attractive old age which invested the shades of Montpellier with so much interest, and the book, as the record of an individual life, will then be rounded into completeness. The great and crowning merit of this first volume is that, while the illustrious subject is never for a moment lost sight of by the author, it gives us by far the most luminous, succinct and satisfactory history that has ever yet been written of the Continental Congress and the infancy of our present State and Federal governments. There are positions assumed by Mr. Rives that will be contested by others who have written on our ante-Revolutionary affairs, but the value and fulness of his labors will be admitted by all. Mr. Rives' style is a model of simple elegance. If we must find a fault with it, we will say that it is too uniformly severe. In a footnote, introducing the whimsical programme

of Sports and Festivities on St. Andrew's Day, in 1737, in allusion to the fiddling, Mr. Rives tells us, with a quiet humour, that, Themistocles to the contrary notwithstanding, it was shown that men might both play upon the fiddle and understand the arts by which small States were made great ones; and so we may be pardoned for suggesting that a writer may frequently unbend in the stateliest narrative without diminution of his dignity, and that it is possible for a biographer to be both genial and forcible. No one has command of greater resources of language and illustration than Mr. Rives, or can better afford to come down, now and then, from the heights of philosophical discourse.

For the present, we must dismiss this excellent volume with thus much of cursory notice, but we shall probably recur to it more at length at a future day, when a larger space will enable us to render fuller justice to its merits.

We have long been familiar with Mangan's exquisite translations from the German Anthology, but we are indebted to Mr. Mitchel for all that we know of the man himself. In the short but most interesting biographical introduction to this edition of Mangan's Poems, the bard is presented to us so vividly, as he walked Dublin streets, or sat in a corner of the Fagel Library, that we seem to see the spare form, shabbily attired, and look into. the blue eyes so dreamily indicative of genius. His story is old enough and sad enough. It is a story of narrow means, of lofty aspirations, of drudgery, of drink, of tuneful song, now breathing of angelic choral harmony, and now burdened with a despair which voices itself in maudlin improvisations, and of an early grave, above which there were few to mourn or hang an immortelle. Mr. Mitchel has twined a pretty memorial wreath in his sketch of the poet, which is at once graceful, discriminative and loving. He says there were two Mangans, one well known to the Muses, the other to the police, and it has been his tender care to show us the shy, sensitive, gifted favorite of Clio and her sisters to the best advantage, while his dual inebriate is kept as much as possible

in the shade. Mr. Mitchel thinks Mangan Miserrimus was far more wretched than Poe, which we can hardly credit, and rates Mangan vates much higher than the author of the Raven, wherein we doubt if Clio herself would agree with him; but surely the man was sufficiently unhappy and the poet sufficiently inspired to excite both our commiseration and our homage. That Americans have had so little acquaintance hitherto with writings which in Ireland are even more popular than those of Moore, Mr. Mitchel thinks is due to the fact that we yield so implicitly to British authority in literature, which ignores Irish minstrelsy, very much as in this country Mr. Dana and his brethren ignore the poetical writers on this side of the Potomac, and hereupon our brilliant rebel biographer stands in contumaciam of the English literary court, and makes his appeal to the tribunal of Cisatlantic opinion. Throughout the whole introductory paper, as well in the outline of Mangan's personal character as in the commentary on his verses, there gleams the flash of Mitchel's peculiar style, at times abrupt, terse, nervous, odd as Carlyle, and again full, rich, finished and musical as Macaulay. In the translations contained in this

volume, we are introduced anew to the many glorious creations that people the cloud-land of German poetry. Again Mignon sings of the clime of the citron and myrtle, again Leonora rides at midnight with the phantom horseman, again Thekla warbles her pretty love-song, again the joyous procession moves on to the ringing of the merry marriage bells; and we need only the illustrations of Moritz Retzsch and Ary Scheffer to enable us to enjoy the noble ballads of the German masters with the zest of the Germans themselves. At least if there a strength in Schiller and a grace in Goethe, and a beauty in Buerger beyond the reach of the translator and the artist, we may confidently say that the English reader can derive from no other collection, with which we are acquainted, so just an idea of the grandeur and the melody of the Teutonic ballads.

We can give but one of these translations to our readers, and it shall be that same song of Thekla

Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn,

faithfully rendered by Coleridge, freely by Bulwer, and most gracefully, as all will agree, by Mangan.

Thy tears, O Forsaken!

Are gushing in vain;

Thy wail shall not waken

The Buried again :