THE STAR-GAZER. BY C. P. CRANCH. STAR after star looked glimmering down, Thought after thought upon him shone. An inner sky did sometimes seem And well he knew the world was dark, And fewer still would sit with him And watch that sky he loved so well. One solitary soul he seemed And yet he knew that all might see The orbs that showed to him alone The fullness of their majesty. He knew that all the silent scorn Which now in meekness he must bear, Would change to worship when his ear No longer was a listener there. And when the cold and rugged sod Had pressed the brain that toiled for them, That on his statue men would hang The unavailing diadem. All this he felt, and yet his faith In uncomplaining silence kept, With starry Truth its vigils brave, They slept and would not wake—until And then they started from their dreams, Then turned and sought for him whose name They in their sleep had mocked and cursed,— But he had left them long before The vision on their souls had burst. And underneath the sod he lay, Now all bedewed with fruitless tears, And they could only deck the tomb That told of his neglected years. NEW-OLD ESSAYS OF ADDISON AND STEELE, BY W. A. JONES. It is not an unfrequent occurrence in the case of voluminous writers, that a proportional moiety of their productions become after a short period succeeding to their decease, little known and in the progress of a century or even a still briefer space of time, almost obsolete. After the enthusiasm of party feeling, or the excitement of novelty, has gradually cooled down into a sober appreciation of real merit, from a previous extravagant estimate of it-we begin to learn the true secret of excellence, to discriminate the peculiar and characteristic traits of the author and award him the palm, which shall continue fresh and green in the eyes of posterity. Of many copious authors, how little is now generally read—a few versified translations, an ode, some satires, and a prose essay or two, with one play, of Dryden: only two or three, out of the score of volumes that complete the edition of Swift. Of Voltaire's three score, a few satirical tales and historical compends: some two or three dialogues of Plato: the Essays and Advancement, of Bacon: the Essay of Locke: a play, here and there, of the old Dramatists: an occasional sonnet of a writer of a volume of sonnets. These are illustrations at hand a very long list might be made of the very fertile authors who have been popularly known as the writers of but one work of pre-eminent ability. Bunyan, Defoe and Butler, are striking instances. For the gratification of personal amusement, or the curious eye of the diligent antiquary, we might add a copious appendix of this sort, but such might not be so generally acceptable, as these occasional reflections illustrated by fewer examples. The writers of the present century, this age of authors and books, will in all probability experience a very great diminution in the extent and character of their fame with the coming age. Countless volumes of fiction will soon be laid on the shelf for ever; whilst a class of writers read by few and whose names have not yet gone abroad into general esteem will, we venture VOL. XIV.—NO. LXIX. 19 to predict, become classical, not only or so much from the capacity of their genius, as from its direction to the permanently classical forms of writing. Except Scott (a vast deal of whose writings, it has been confessed by more than one even cautious critic, cannot last) what novelist will gain in fame, as the Critic and Essayist Hazlitt? We have had, for more than a century, no humorist like Lamb; and Hunt treads closely upon the heels of Steele.-Many authors too will become famous in spite of their elaborate attempts at avoiding fame: the squib, the pamphlet, the newspaper editorial, will throw in the shade heavy Epics and dull histories; a picturesque sketch of manners, a fresh and spirited portrait of character, true and genial criticism, speculations on life and the principles and motives of human actions; these form the favorite reading of the best class of readers in all ages-and although the readers of Addison and Steele may, at the present day, comprise a small body, still they have admirers, and there are also readers and lovers of them who have succeeded them in the same form of composition. What style or range of speculation does it not embrace? It is too didactic for the mass of readers, who, like children or ignorant people, must be entertained the same time that they are taught: but for the scholar and philosopher it is invaluable. From the prose lyric, a poetic confession, to the loftiest hymn of adoration, it is full of varied music; and personal, as it appears in its very essence, it may even be made dramatic. Myself a reader and writer of Essays, I must confess to a special fondness for the very name; and I have contracted a feeling of affectionate interest in and for the essayist and critic. As I run my eye over the shelves of my small collection, I find few books it rests upon with such pleasure as upon the essayists, moral painters and historians of manners and fashions. There are Bacon and Temple, and Clarendon and Cowley, with the admirable writers whose names are placed at the head of this paper. There too are Goldsmith and Shenstone and Mackenzie.-Nor may I omit that trio of masterly essayists to whom I have previously referred, Lamb and Hazlitt and Leigh Hant. Of the French, I especially cherish Rochefoucauld and Labruyere-writers with more thinking in their maxims and sentences, than you find in whole pages of weaker writers.-Among quite recent instances, Carlyle and Macauley in England; Guizot and Cousin (though more scholastic than strictly belongs to general essayists) in France; and at home, Channing, Emerson and Dewey. Indeed, the best writing of the present day is to be found in periodical literature; though we have lost much in pure classicality and in certain traits of the essay, that have become merged in other forms of writing. Thus, owing to the necessity of rapid and copious production, inaccuracies are not so rare as they should be; and evident marks of haste are to be found.-The humorous painting of the Addisonian school has become the property of two or three capital novelists. We have nowadays no pictures of manners, merely, in essays; and since Hazlitt, no prose satirist of decided ability has arisen. The Lecturers and Reviewers occupy a large portion of the province formerly allotted to the Essay. Moral speculation and criticism; analysis of character, historical painting, satirical description, the peculiar characteristics of the Essay, have, for the most part, passed into other hands. Yet a taste for this sort of writing is retained by a circle, which is rapidly widening, and in consequence the demand is as evidently increased for more of literature, of the pleasantest kind-for something brief, pointed and pithy-something of a practical bearing, and yet which is to be considered as valuable in a purely literary estimate of the matter. A kind of Literature is needed for the busy man and the gentleman, as well as for the recluse scholar, a tone of fresh vigor, real knowledge of life, wide and original experience is requisite. The authors of this, must be men, scholars, and gentlemen. It is not by any means the most ambitious department of authorship, but, perhaps, next to fine poetry, it is the most stable; the staple is life and books: feeling and passion; without inclining to system or method, it is grave and philosophical: without descending to farce or burlesque, it admits of pleasantry and good-natured ridicule. It is not exact or mechanical science, but the science of human nature and the art of criticism (not of books and authors only) of principles, and theories, and fashions, and contemporary manners. It is strictly historical, though it contains little narrative, for it points out the sources of historical truth. It is experimental philosophy, though without any settled rules of art. In brief, it is the kind of writing most particularly addressed to all, who while they read, think and feel; and not to those, who read to accumulate and display knowledge. Addison and Steele have been more fortunate than most writers of magazines, not only as they are among the best as they are among the earliest. Priority is, in fact, as important a thing in Literature, as precedence is thought to be in life. The first writers are generally the best at all events they are freshest and most original. In point of delicate humor, Addison is unsurpassed, though his serious writing, which is sometimes almost tame, has been equalled. Steele is more unique : such naturalness, so easy and uniform a style, a vein of sentiment so fresh and manly, such charming pleasantry, such elegance of compliment and heartiness at the same time, we find in no one other essayist. Not a few periodical writers might be mentioned, more brilliant, more ingenious, with greater learning and capacity, more profound, more exact, yet none who are so delightful, as Steele is invariably. Happy on any topic, he is perfectly delicious where he is most at home, and writes from his heart. The greater fame of Addison has arisen in part from higher pretensions and as much from the serious nature of his moral essays. Addison, too, aimed more at being the censor; Steele was content with the reputation of sociality, and to be loved rather than admired. Addison was perhaps a more cultivated man, yet Steele had wit and spirit, that needed slight aids from scholarship-yet he would, at the present day, be called a scholar. Steele had less art and policy than his associate, was more open and credulous, a generous dupe, though deceived by no lack of sense, but of stratagem. Addison was author all over; Steele was more of the man than of the writer. Both were admirable in their respective manners-Addison's elegance and humor gave an additional beauty to the subjects fullest of it, naturally; while Steele's fine sense and airy style played with easy grace upon the most barren theme. Besides the Spectator, Tatler and Guardian, Addison was concerned in other periodical publications. He was not only the creator of Sir Roger de Coverly, the satirist of the beau-monde, the elegant sermonizer, the tasteful critic; but also, the warm partizan and leading political writer. "The Freeholder" was a strong whig paper, edited and conducted by Addison, who furnished all the papers, under that title, which are collected into a single volume. It consists of fifty-five essays, and was commenced in the year '15, celebrated for the first rising in favor of the Pretender—and is filled with arguments in favor of the House of Hanover, the Protestant succession, and a number of elegant artifices (compliments garnished with eloquent flattery) to bring in the fair portion of the inhabitants of Great Britain, to the side of the existing government. These papers are the best of the series-as a specimen of the work we make the following extracts from it, and which are in the Freeholder's happiest vein. They are transcribed from the fourth number, entitled, "Reasons why the British Ladies should side with the Freeholder." "It is with great satisfaction I observe that the women of our island, who are the most. eminent for virtue and good sense, are in the interest of the present government. As the fair sex very much recommend the cause they are engaged in, it would be no small misfortune to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of a kingdom on his side, if he did not find himself King of the most beautiful half of his subjects. Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail to win over numbers to it. "Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's computation, make at best the third part of the sensible men of the British nation; and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a lover is al ways at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half a dozen able-bodied men to his majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best cause, to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable. There are many reasons why the women of Great Britain should be on the side of the Freeholder, and enemies to the person who would bring in arbitrary government and Popery. As there are several of our ladies who amuse themselves in the reading of travels, they cannot but take notice what uncomfortable lives those of their own sex lead where passive obedience is professed and practised in its utmost perfection. In those countries the men have no property but in their wives, who are the slaves to slaves: every married woman being subject to a domestic tyrant who requires from her the same vassalage that he pays to his sultan. If the ladies would seriously consider the evil consequences of arbitrary power, they would find that it spoils the shape of the foot in China, where the barbarous politics of the men so diminish the basis of the human figure, as to unqualify a woman for an evening walk or a country dance. In the East Indies, a widow who has any regard to her character throws herself into the flames of her husband's funeral pile, to show, forsooth, that she is faithful and loyal to the memory of her deceased lord. In Persia, the daughters of Eve, as they call them, are reckoned in the inventory of their goods and chattels and it is a usual thing when a man sells a bale of silk, or a drove of camels, to toss half a dozen women into the bargain. Through all the dominions of the great Turk, a woman thinks herself happy if she can but get the twelfth share of a husband, and is thought to be of no use in the creation, but to keep up a proper number of slaves for the Commander of the Faithful. I need not set forth the illusage which the fair ones meet with in those despotic__ governments that lie nearer to us. Every one hath heard of the several ways of locking up women in Spain and Italy; where, if there is any power lodged in any of the sex, it is not among the young and the beauti ful, whom nature seems to have formed for it, but among the old and withered matrons, known by the frightful names of Gouvernantes and Duennas. If any should allege the freedoms indulged to the French ladies, he must own that these are owing to the natural gallantry of the people, not to their form of government, which excludes by its very constitution every female from power, as naturally unfit to hold the sceptre of that kingdom. Women ought in reason to be no less averse to Popery than to arbitrary power. Some merry authors have pretended to demonstrate, that the Roman Catholic religion could never spread in a nation, where women would have more modesty than to expose their innocent liberties to a confessor. Others of the same turn have assured us, that the fine British complexion, which is so peculiar to our ladies, would suffer very much from a fish diet; and that a whole Lent would give such a sallowness to the celebrated beauties of this island as would scarce make them distinguishable from those of France. I shall only leave to the serious consideration of my fair country women, the danger any of them might have been in (had Popery been our national religion) of being forced by their relations to a state of perpetual virginity. The most blooming toast in the island might have been a nun; and many a lady who is now a mother of fine children, condemned to a condition of life disagreeable to herself, and unprofitable to the world. To this I might add the melancholy objects they would be daily entertained with, of several sightly men delivered over to an unavoidable celibacy. Let a young lady imagine to herself the brisk embroidered officer, who now makes love to her with so agreeable an air, converted into a monk; or the beau, who now addresses himself to her in a full-bottomed wig, distinguished by a little bald pate covered with a little black leather scull-cap. I forbear to mention many other objections, which the ladies who are no strangers to the doctrines of Popery will easily recollect; though I do not in the least doubt but those I have already suggested will be sufficient to persuade my fair readers to be zealous in the Protestant cause. We read no such political writing at the present day: elegance of style is considered as quite a subordinate matter, and pleasantry rarely passes from a paragraph into an article. The Lover, of Steele, is concerned with the policy of Passion, and the strategy of Love. It is a work of sentiment, and peculiarly a lady's journal. The passion of Love in all its multiplied forms; the affections of the heart with all their subtle windings; the various aspects of friendship, are painted with masterly skill. Tales of real life and characters so natural, as to seem almost living, occupy a large space, with a rich fund of sense and unpretending sincerity of feeling. The purest sentiment, a facile wit, and polished gallantry are its marked features. The Lover is an avowed imitation of the Tatler, which is a surety for the style of its author. Like that delightful collection, it contains its club and had letters written to its author, Marmaduke Myrtle, gent. Thoroughly acquainted with city life, and the ways of the town, the book is full of good advice of the kind most needed in a great city. It is, besides this, a chart of the shoals and quicksands of the tender passion, that should be studied by all youthful navigators. Beyond this, it has the additional attraction of delightful illustrative matter, incidental to the main design. It contains many admirable suggestions of the highest practical value, and delicate satire, with fine irony unequalled but in the pages of his friend and associate. Of these various fine qualities, we shall endeavor to present examples, though necessarily brief and few. Here is the portrait of a Lover Vagabond, as he calls the representation of a certain class of speculative rakes. "He has the language, the air, the tender glance; he can hang upon a look, has most exactly the veneration of face when he is catched ogling one whose pardon he would beg for gazing; he has the exultation at leading off a lady to her coach; can let drop an indifferent thing, or call her servants with a loudness, and a certain gay insolence rare enough; nay, he will hold her hand too fast for a man that leads her, and is indifferent to her, and yet come to that gripe with such slow degrees, that she cannot say he squeezed her hand, but for anything further he had no inclination.” We wish we could find room for certain delicious papers, that would be mutilated by mere extracts. Such are, the Battle of Eyes; the Lover, containing the tragical history of Penruddock, with the affecting correspondence that passed between |