the old men "sitting calm and peacefully" under the sea-Endymion "leaning upon a bough," and gazing on the young Indian-and the Bacchus, "within his car aloft trifling bis ivy-dart,"-all beautiful, all master-pieces; but we must pass on to the few additional extracts we propose to present under the head of dialogues. In these Keats excels as much as he does in painting. His dialogues are eminently dramatic. Passion speaks out in its own burning language-Grief breathes forth from trembling lips the story of her trials. Passion and Grief, both poetic elements, as commanding that excited state, that high-wrought emotion, in which the most grovelling are, for the time being, lifted up above their usual selves, and rapt into a world which is usually the home only of those of lofty minds, and refined sensibility. In this high heaven which Grief and Passion inhabit, Keats was a constant dweller he had interlinked their existences with his own, until they became a part of his very being, and then throwing himself, Proteuslike, into the spirit of his actors, he saw what they should see, acted as they should act, felt as they should feel, and spoke as they should speak. It is only in possessing this power that any one can give each emotion its own true utterance, and it he possessed in its full and perfect strength. What more graphic-what more brief-what more full of feeling-what more poetic-than Glaucus' description of his Scylla, found dead and floating on the sea — Young lover, I must weep-such hellish spite With dry cheek who can tell? While thus my might Upon a dead thing's face my hand I laid; I look'd 'twas Scylla! cursed, cursed Circe! How true to nature is the speech of Endymion when he finds the young stranger again, after their flight through the heavens, when, worn out and aweary with chasing his love, so cherished, so burthening, he bids it a melancholy farewell, and elects his Indian damsel sole sovereign of his affections: "My sweetest Indian, here, Here will I kneel; for thou redeemed hast Of visionary seas! No, never more Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore On earth I may not love thee; and therefore, And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss! One sigh of REAL breath-one gentle squeeze, And although not exactly under our present head, there is so similar, so master-like a portrayal of a struggle between these loves given, where he sees the two objects of his passion at once, that we cannot forbear transcribing it here: "and, strange, o'erhead Where that same treacherous wax began to run, Young Phabe, golden-hair'd; and so 'gan crave At this the shadow wept, melting away. What a depth of meaning is there in the following eight lines. Through what a labyrinth of feeling do they not lead the willing mind? I was a fisher once, upon this main, And my boat danced in every creek and bay; No housing from the storm and tempests mad, There were some others we would like to have added, but must now pause, and present an isolated passage, which claims attention from its exquisite beauty-it is where Endymion is bringing back to life the dead lovers in the temple beneath the sea: "he left them to their joy, And onward went upon his high employ. Showering those powerful fragments on the dead, And as he pass'd each lifted up its head, As doth a flower at Apollo's touch. This is a splendid illustration of his great poetic power. A lovers suddenly brought to life! Now what shall they do? Weep? Rave? Call on each other's names? No; those "who Had died in mutual arms devout, and true, number of How act? But the others-they who had not died in mutual arms. Here is a greater difficulty still. How shall they act? They whose all-absorbing thought must be love, with its object far away. A lesser genius would have filled the air with their shrieks and plaints, and made them curse their cruel fates and long again for death; but our poet sinks into their hearts, and sees, that having been re-animated by some beneficent power, they must have known and felt it, and knowing this, have been conscious that all did not stop there; and with the faith of a dying Christian, "the rest Felt a high certainty of being blest." We shall give no more extracts, enough having been presented to show the author's high claim to an eminent position among the poets; and what we have given, have extended our limits so much beyond what we had set as bounds to ourselves, that we must close as briefly as possible, not ever being able to take a single glance at either of the other poems. Keats' mind was deeply imbued with the spirit of ancient mythologythat Pantheon, in which each god seems rather the offspring of the Muses-and in which imagination worships with ecstatic devotion, bending before shrines so rich in all that it may adore, and wandering through its many aisles, breathless with wonder, thrilling with delight. Its many divinities rushed, a færy throng, into his dizzy brain, and, whirling in the mazy dance, wrought, with their light foot-prints, an arabesque tracery, to be interpreted and sung forth by him. The usual poet is the student of nature, external and internal; a creature of passion, who, with the glowing fervor of enthusiasm, worships at the inmost shrine of his goddess, and chaunts forth the melodious gushings and outpourings of his too full spirit, in the harmonious notes of inspiration. But to Keats their one goddess was multiplied an hundred fold; and, presenting herself in the myriad forms attributed to her in the Grecian Mythology, their one creature of adoration became to him a multitude of deities, each possessing the same control of his heart the rest give to the one. To him each star looked down with an animate eye on the world; each brook murmured forth the plaints or loves of its deity; each breeze which whispered through the leaves of a tree, sported in soft dalliance with its Hamadryad. In the morning, he did not look with a philosophic eye upon the golden clouds, but to him it was rosy-fingered Aurora who drew near; and when they began to fade away, it was 66 And when the crescent moon "from ebon streak" put forth one little tipno bigger than an unobserved star," it was a bright signal that she only stooped to tie her silver sandals." Thus, to him all nature became a temple, each object a deity, and he stood enraptured in her midst -her worshipper and priest. But there are many who crowd round to hear the words which fall from the lips of the priest, who understand not their full import-many who catch the outward beauties of poesy, who do not discern its inward, its hidden beauties. The poetic idea which strikes the first glance, has something deeper, more delicate, enclosed in this outward covering. Indeed, we may liken it to a figure which we pursue into a labyrinth, through whose mazes, wander as we will, we at times see it laughing among flowers-then bathing among fountains-then sporting among cupidsand anon toying with wild beasts-while, in all these various situations, it is still the same, clearly known and to be recognized. To the blind man, who has his sight suddenly given him, the eastern sky at noon would be a great and exceeding beauty; but to one who can look beyond the horizon, it is also the precursor of the splendid and glorious god of day. To one of dimmed vision, the rocket, just ascending in its blazing course, is the meteor he can recollect to have seen shooting athwart the sky; but to him who follows it in its sparkling ascent it becomes, when it bursts into a myriad of stars, each brilliant and various hued, a part of that spangled sphere itself. We mean that, while all can see the beauty of the idea, few can discern the multitude of accompanying images, which, to the poetic mind, cluster round it in a beautiful and bright band. And while this power of associating images is possessed in a high degree by Keats, he carries it also into his mere story. Possessing a thorough knowledge of mythological stories himself, to appreciate his tale alone fully, we must ourselves be acquainted with the whole history of each fabled individual to whom he adverts; his parentage, his trials, and his loves, must all be distinct in our minds; and then we can see how perfect a group of statuary the mere personages introduced would form. Thus, while there will be nothing to admire in the classical chasteness of Keats' poetry, to those who dwell with forced admiration on the newfangled schools, in which feeble imitators of Shelley endeavor to combine metaphysics with poetry, and others take Wordsworth for a model, and run, in the one case, into unintelligibility, and in the other into maudlin simplicity, still one imbued with a refined poetic taste cannot fail to draw copious draughts of delight from this one of the few streams which has its source in the true Castalian fount. THE REVULSION. CHAPTER I. "And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace, Of finer form, or lovelier face."-SCOTT. THE year 1836 was one of unusual prosperity. The Asiatic cholera, after ravaging our country in different regions for the three preceding years-smiting the high and the low, the great and the small-withering the pride of manhood and the beauty of youth-in many sections marring, in others obliterating the festivities and gayeties of life - robing the social circle and the family group in the garments of grief-spreading the gloom and striking the panic of sudden death-had disappeared from the land; peace and health-peace eternal and internal, health public and individual, the duality that, rightly used, engenders an advancing happiness-reigned within our borders. The political heresies of the restrictive system-legislatively established in 1828, and productive, from its nature, of injustice and oppression-had been repealed by its creators; and thus freed from the exorbitant burthens of improper taxation, the great planting interests of the South and West were rapidly regaining a progressive position; while clouded brows and angry features on political subjects had, throughout our Union, changed to gladness and smiles. In fulfillment of the Indian policy of the government, vast numbers of the Indians residing, or rather roaming miserably at large, in many of the States, had been, or were then being removed to allotted districts in the then Far West. The Aborigines, in all cases, carried with them their property-slaves included-to their new homes, and that without an echo of disapprobation, much less of opposition, from the teeming thousands of our country, who, in 1850, would move heaven and earth lest an American citizen should migrate with his property to a country west and south of this same territory, and be protected in so doing by the Constitution of the Confederacy. The Indian and his slaves, if he had any, in 1836 were removed, at public expense, to a new home; while in 1850, the citizens of fifteen sovereign states are denied the right of seeking with their property new homes, won by their valor, and paid for with their blood! The migration of the red man brought into market vast quantities of public land, which, with the distribution of the surplus revenue among the States-the enormous discounts of State and local banks greatly stimulated by Biddle's monster-the exorbitant expansion of commercial credit-the high and largely remunerating price of the great staple-the successful returns of previous adventures-each and all produced a mania, a real frenzy for speculation of every kind, pervading every grade of the community. A general disinclination for the steady pursuits of life-a total relaxation of ordinary prudence in the management of commercial operations-a fatal proclivity to acquire wealth without antecedent labor -an unusual eagerness to consummate the most visionary schemes—a |