27 Take up and fix its everlasting rest: Yea, Heaven with these, its children, fain would dwell, And, far-withdrawn within their stainless breast, Deliver thence, at times, a blessed oracle." The Citizen-It is a new name in American verse, a word unwritten in the poetry of the past. Let us hail it here as the prelude to trumpet tones to come. There is an air of grandeur above all Roman fame." and majesty in it, "above.all Greek, Let it be a hint to our future versifiers. Enough of dumb inanimate nature is there written in verse, of the false glory of battle. The warriors of sword and gunpowder have had the field too long. Let arms now yield to the toga. "With plainness in thy daily pathway walk And disencumbered of excess: no other Jostling, servile to none, none overstalk, For, right and left, who passes is thy brother. and wrong 'Tis thine to bless, or blast the waiting land, To shorten up its life or make it long. "Who looks on thee, not hopeless should behold, A self-delivered, self-supported Man; True to his being's mighty purpose-true To a wisdom-blessed-a God-given plan. «No where within the great globe's skyey round Cans't thou escape thy duty, grand and high, A man unbadged, unbonneted, unboundWalk to the Tropic-to the Desert fly. "A full-fraught Hope upon thy shoulder leans, And beats with thine, the heart of half the world; Ever behind thee walks the shining Past, Before thee burns the star-stripe, high unfurled." tics. It is to the Farmer that Democracy, among us has always looked as its main hope and reliance. With a few exceptions, the cities are against us in the long run of our poligenerally Jefferson's habitual sentiment on this subject is familiar to all; and it was a favorite saying of Jackson's, that Biddle had nearly all the cities, and he was welcome to them, but that his land began at the first cross-road out of town. The Mechanic is in the spirit of Channing. Our author boldly challenges for him a portion of that creative power which is commonly restricted to themselves by the poets-as if these were not all imitative arts: "In the First Builder's gracious spirit work, Through hall, through enginery, and temples meek, In grandeur towered, or lapsing, beautysleek, Let order and creative fitness shine: Though mountains are no more to rear, Though woods may rise again no more: The noble task to re-produce is thine! The spreading branch-the firm-set peak may live With thee, and in thy well-sped labors thrive. "The untried forces of the air, the earth, the sea Wait at thy bidding: oh, compel their powers To uses holy! Let them ever be Servants to tend and bless these new found bowers; And make them household workers, free and swift, On daily use-on daily service bent: Her face again old Eden may uplift, And God look down the open firmament." In the Merchant occur some of the best lines in the volume. His lesson is Truth: "Slight duties may not lessen but adorn, The cedar's berries round the cedar's shaft, The pettiest act will lift the doer up, The other wears it as a living crown." Mr. Mathews has but one apology for the Soldier: "Thy battles are not wars but selfdefences. Girding this universal home about." He has no ambition for the glories of conquest. It is truly a happy position that our land occupies-far removed from hostile interference, with courage nobly proved and undoubted from the acts of the past. Let us once be as assured, said a distinguished American author to us, of our manners and our thinking, as we are of our courage, and we shall look no longer timidly to Europe. Must not that time soon come? We confess for ourselves even a less degree of sympathy with "the Soldier," than our author accords. He bids him indeed"With grounded arms, and silent as the mountains, Pause for thy quarrel at the marbled sea : And, when comes the ship o'er the curled wave bounding, Remember that a brother in a foe may be." We have little faith in the very existence of the professional soldier among us, (excepting perhaps what may be rendered necessary by past mis-government for the police of our Indian frontier,) even though he remain in this attitude of patient defensiveness, and, as Mr. Matthews well expresses it And the dumb cannon stretches at his leisure." We plead guilty to the crime of Quaker sentiments on this subject; and could wish that the vast expenditure of money, time, and effort worse than wasted on military things, were applied to purposes of real utility and benevolence. Of the Statesman is not our author's satire just? Let us once feel this justice, and the evil will be remedied. We feel tempted, for the wider diffusion of the lesson, to quote it entire : "Up to the Capitol who goes, a heart Should bear, state tyranny may not subdue: Wakening at dawn to fill its ample part, It, ever, day by day, grows fresh and new, Nor sleeps through the mid-watches of the night, Though there the thankless world has left its smartWithout some visions, beckoning and bright, That make him gladly to his bedside start. "No castled shadow falls upon the heart, Darkening two faces each turned unto the other, 420 No lowly roof shuts in or out the heart's true brother: Life deals to each, with equal chance an equal part. This Many chapters might be written on this text, full of matter for wise and sad reflection. There would be many sighs for past tenderness, for the petrifaction of society, for youthful simplicity gone never to return, for the nicer shades of sentiment lost in the sunlight of the world. But these are individual feelings seldom free from prejudice. Friendship is of a private character, and on this account might have been spared by Mr. Mathews. He has not given us the lover, or attempted to catch the "Cynthia of the minute." Why give us the Friend, for whom there are no universal rules? friendship is the most abused, arbitrary, exacting thing in the world. It substitutes prejudice for justice-it dispenses tyranny for respect. Its essence moralists say is equality; if so, it has no need of one virtue,-and one of the best,-gratitude. Among men it prevails but little. The sentiment is merged in the better relationship, the As the second-self of married life. world advances and we meet in every man a brother, this restrictive sentiment will disappear, or rather will be expanded into a broader, a more universal development and action. In times of danger, in religious or political persecutions, friendship is the most eminent. Its essence is in sympathy and charity-why should they end so near home? We expect a friend to be a partizan by a kind of Masonic bond. We exact from him, and repay with indifference, a boon for which the heart would warm in lasting gratitude to a stranger. A perfectly just man can have no partialities-he will forgive an enemy's weakness as soon as his friend's. His charity will cover all save himself. He will condemn his own errors and spare all others. To return to our book. The Painter and Sculptor may be classed together. Mr. Mathews inculcates for both-originality. The following is finely expressed: "Would the soul clothe itself in elder gloom Let stand upon the cliff and in the shadowy grove The tawny ancient of the warrior race, And he thus, after lingering briefly amid the beauties of that nature which in this country affords to the Painter such noble inspirations, cheers him on to his duty and mission, of at once adorning it, and elevating and purifying by the benign influences of art, those whose lines are fallen in these pleasant places: "Are there no spirits, kin to light and beauty, Springing to cheer these sweet and suited haunts? ter pants? Faces of love and forms of eldest duty, With glancing shapes that every fair- And pour a larger life from thy creative hand!" The Journalist for its subject and execution, is among the best of these poems. Mr. Mathews's few verses are worth all the bad-spirited homilies of the Foreign Reviews, or rather they are worth a great deal more: "A dark-dyed spirit he who coins the time, To virtue's wrong, in base disloyal lies Who makes the morning's breath, the evening's tide, The utterer of his blighting forgeries. "How beautiful who scatters, wide and free, The gold-bright seeds of loved and loving truth! By whose perpetual hand, each day, supplied Leaps to new life the empire's heart of youth. "The angel that in sand-dropped minutes lives, Demands a message cautious as the ages; Who stuns, with dusk-red words of hate, his ear, That mighty power to boundless wrath enrages." The fourteenth poem is entitled, "The Masses," a force in the State which Mr. Mathews evokes to clear the air of foul pestilential vapors when the light of Heaven is hid from men. His language is bold and destructive, and savors little of the speech of those timid gentlemen who take so much satisfaction in circulating Alison's History of the French Revolution, not as the truest, but the most conservative a very good book for the people! "Remember, Men! on massy strength relying, There is a heart of right Not always open to the light, Secret and still and force-defying. In vast assemblies calm, let order rule, And, every shout a cadence owning, Make musical the vex'd wind's moaning, And be as little children at a singingschool. "But, when thick as night, the sky is crusted o'er, Stifling life's pulse and making Heaven an idle dream, Arise! and cry, up through the dark, to God's own throne: Your faces in a furnace glow, Your arms uplifted for the death-ward blow Fiery and prompt as angry angels show: Then draw the brand and fire the thunder-gun ! Be nothing said and all things done! Till every cobwebbed corner of the common-weal Is shaken free, and, creeping to its scabbard back the steel, Lets shine again God's rightful sun!" But Mr. Mathews is no destructive. He has the true conservative principle, a constant looking to his country and a firm determination to abide by all the good she has thus far attained. Your แ true Reformer knows too well the hard means by which blessings are obtained to throw away the least advantage of goodness. The next poem, on The Reformer," is very happy, comparing the wrong and error of the past to some polluted, unclean beast, foul as Schiller's dragon: "Man of the Future! on the eager head |