Nearly a hundred slaves of different ages, sexes, and colors, most of them house-servants in the best families, had made a stampedo, as the Western men say. They had procured a sloop through the aid of some white men, and sailed off up the Potomac-not a very brilliant proceeding on their part. The poor devils were all taken, and sentence of transportation passed upon them-for it amounts to that: They were condemned (by their masters) to be sold into the South-Western States. Some of the cases were peculiarly distressing-among others, a quadroon man, who had been coachman to one of our government secretaries. He had a wife and five children, all free in Washington; but two of his sisters were in bondage with him—very pretty and intelligent girls report said. The three were sold to a slave-trader, who kept them some time on speculation. The circumstance attracted a good deal of attention in New York; some of the papers were full of it. I saw the account one morning, and happening to have those 900 dollars on hand, I wrote straight off to one of our abolition members at Washington, (I never saw him in my life, but one does n't stand on ceremony in such matters, and the whole thing was done on the spur of the moment,) saying that if either of the girls could be bought for that sum I would give it. The gentleman who had the honor of my correspondence put upon him, wrote to another gentleman-standing counsel, I believe, for the Washington abolitionists-and he wrote to the slave-trader, one Bruin, (devilish good name that for his business!) who sent back a glorious answer, which I keep among my epistolary curiosities. The girls are very fine ones,' said this precious specimen; 'I have been offered 1000 dollars for one of them by a Louisiana gentleman. They cannot be sold at a lower price than 1200 dollars and 1300 dollars respectively. If I could be sure that your friend's motives were those of unmixed philanthropy, I would make a considerable reduction. The man, who is a very deserving person, and whom I should be glad to see at liberty, can be had for 900 dollars; but I suppose your correspondent takes less interest in him.' The infernal scamp thought I wanted a mistress, and his virtuous mind revolted at the thought of parting with one of the girls for such a purpose-except for an extra consideration.'*

"It must have been a wet blanket upon your philanthropic intentions.'

"Really I hardly knew whether to be most angry or amused at the turn things had taken. As to Clara, she thought it a glorious joke, and did nothing for the next month but quiz me about the quadroon girls, and ask me when she might expect them. However, I thought, with the Ethiopian in the ballad, that it would never do to give it up so,' and accordingly wrote back to Washington that I should be very glad indeed to buy the man. Unfortunately, the man was half-way to Mississippi by that time-Now we are well up that hill and can take a good brush down to the next. G'l-lang, ponies! He-ch! Wake up, Firefly!'

"And then?'

"Oh, how he got off, after all! It was a special interference of Providence. (G'lang, Star!) The Hon. Secretary felt some compunctions about the fate of his coachman, and hearing that the money was all ready to pay for him, actually paid himself the additional 50 dollars required to bring him back to Washington; so he lives there now a free man with his family-at least, for all I know to the contrary, for I never heard any more about him since.'

* All the above incidents are literally true, and the extracts from Bruin's letter almost verbatim copies.

"And what became of the girls?'

"There was a subscription raised for them here. My brother Carl gave something toward it—not that he cared particularly for the young ladies, but because he had a strong desire to sell the gentleman from Louisiana. They were ransomed, and brought here, and put to school somewhere, and a vast fuss made about them-quite enough to spoil them, I'm afraid. And so ends that story. What a joke, to think of a man being worth just as much as a grand piano, and a little more than a pair of ponies!'

"Ashburner thought that Masters treated the whole affair too much as a joke.

"Tell me,' said he, if these people came to New York, or you met them traveling, would you associate with them on familiar terms?'

"Not with Mr. Bruin, certainly,' replied Harry. 'To give the devil his due, such a man is considered to follow an infamous vocation, even in his part of the country.' "But the Honorable Secretary and the other gentlemen, who sell their men to work on the cotton plantations, and their women for something worse?'

H-m! A-h! Did you ever meet a Russian ?—in your own country, I mean.' "Yes, I met one at dinner once. I wont pretend to pronounce his name.' `

"Did you go out of the way to be uncivil to him, because he owned serfs?'

"No, but I did n't go out of my way to be particularly genial with him.'

"Exactly: the cases are precisely parallel. The Southerners are our Russians. They come up to the North to be civilized; they send their boys here to be educated; they spend a good deal of money here. We are civil to them, but not over genial-some of us, at least, are not.'

Mr. Charles Astor Bristed's opinions of British Officers in general, which will probably set him forward a good deal when he again visits England! Lieutenant Law again!

"Ashburner felt no disposition to deny the beauty and grandeur of the Hudson. At first the shore was lined with beetling ramparts of trap-rock. After many miles of this, the clear water spread out into a great lake with apparently no egress. But on turning a promontory, the river stretched away nearly as wide as before, under wooded cliffs not dissimilar to those of the Rhine. Then came the picturesque Catskill mountains; and near these Harry was to stop, but Ashburner did not stop with him. At West Point the boat had taken up, among other passengers, two young officers of his acquaintance, then quartered in Canada. They were going to take the tour Ashburner, if he would accompany them on this excursion of the lakes, including, of course, Niagara, and offered

first, to show him the lions of Canada afterward. On consulting with Masters, he found that the trip would not occupy more than a month or five weeks, and that after that time the watering-place season would be at its height.

"And it will be an excuse for my staying with Carl till August,' Harry continued, The women are half crazy to be at Oldport already. I would rather stay at Ravenswood. We shall expect you there at the end of July. But,' and here, for the first time since their acquaintance, Ashburner perceived a slight embarrassment in his manner, 'do n't bring your friends.'

"Oh, dear, no!' said Ashburner, not comprehending what could have put such a thing into the other's head, or what was coming next.

Verily Mr. Pynnshurst was not so far out of the way, when in his wanderings and ways of thinking he embodied this epigram.

"The plume, you know," says the lady, "is greater than the sword. I read that now in all the journals; what do you think it means?"

"Every thing they could do to go counter to the habits and prejudices of the people among whom they were, and to show their contempt of American society; to act, in short, as if they were among uncivilized people. For instance, it is a custom at these watering-place hotels to dress for the table-d'hôte. Now I do not think it altogether reasonable that a man should be expected to make his evening toilette by three in the afternoon, and, indeed, I do not strictly conform to the rule myself. But these men came in flannel shirts and dirty shoes, and altogether in a state unfit for ladies' company. Perhaps, however, we were too fastidious in this. But what do you say to a youngster's seating himself upon a piano in the public parlor, while a lady is playing on it?'

"Ashburner allowed that it was rather unceremonious. "By various similar acts, trivial, perhaps, individually, but forming a very disagreeable aggregate, these young men made themselves so unpopular, that one season the ladies, by common consent, refused to dance with any of them. But there is worse behind. These gentlemen, so stupid in a drawing-room, are sharp enough in borrowing money, and altogether oblivious of repaying it.'

"Ashburner remembered the affair of Ensign Lawless, and made up his mind to undergo another repetition of it. "I don't speak of my individual case; the thing has happened fifty times. I could tell of a dozen friends who have been victimized in this way during the last three years. In fact, I believe that your jeunes militaires have formed a league to avenge the Mississippi bondholders, and recover their lost money under the form of these nominal loans. You may think it poetic justice, but we New-Yorkers have no fancy to pay the Mississippians' debts in this way.'"

It must be a strangely constituted mind that will, for spite at a single loss of an amount trifling to one so wealthy as Mr. Bristed is reputed to be, stoop to slander a whole class of men who have always, till he thought fit to liebel them, borne a reputation the world over, for strict honor; and whose bills are readily cashed the world over, on no recommendation save that of their being proved to be British officers-Lieutenant Law was not one when he swindled Mr. Charles Astor Bristed-the price of their commissions being responsible for their bills if unpaid.

It must be a strangely constituted mind that will stoop, for the sake of gaining pseudo popularity in a foreign country averse to slavery, to slander and abuse a whole section of his countrymen, every one of whom, we mean the gentlemen of the south, after all we have heard, is better born, better bred, better informed, better educated, if not so pedantically drilled to a little Latin and less Greek, than their egotistical slanderer.

But what cannot be expected of a man, who, after a

"That the pen is more brutal than the sword, with less danger to its wielder."

which, it is proverbial, that two can play as well as one. The fact seems to be, that an insane desire for notoriety has fallen upon this unfortunate young man, who has, since first he entered upon the stage of life, been constantly running mucks at all and sundry, in which he has as constantly achieved the renown of being thoroughly belabored. He has now attained his desired notoriety; but it is a notoriety, than which any one, save himself, would prefer the most profound obscurity.

It may be thought that we have dwelt too long upon such a galimatia of frippery, flippancy, and falsehood as this book; but as it is going the round, and selling with almost unequaled rapidity, and will probably continue to do so, owing to its piquancy and sneering levity, we think it right that people with the bane should have the antidote. The book is a bad one, holding up a bad set, false views of society, false notions of morality, a false tone of honor, not to be palliated, much less to be praised and admired, but to be condemned. Nothing about it seems to be true but the self-portraiture of the author. The Heirs of

Townsend.

Randolph Abbey. A Novel. Stringer &
New York.

This is a wonderfully powerful and striking romance, reprinted from the pages of the Dublin University Magazine, a paternity which is almost tantamount to saying that it is excellent; for the Dublin University contains probably less trash than any other magazine in existence, with the exception of Blackwood, and-of courseGraham.

"The Heirs of Randolph Abbey" was at first selected for republication in Stringer & Townsend's "International," and was, of course, discontinued when that excellent magazine was merged in Harper's; so great, however, has been the demand for the conclusion of the tale that the publishers have now produced it in cheap book form. It is a story of the darkest and most terrible interest, affecting the reader with a sort of grave and mystic awe, like that arising from the perusal of a supernatural story; yet there is nothing supernatural or mystical in the narrative, nothing in short beyond the conflicts of human passions, carried to excess, and unregulated either by human principle or Christian religion, against humility, benevolence, and the charity that thinks no harm.

The tale, as regards the fortunes of the two principal actors, the hapless Aletheia and the noble-minded Richard Sydney, is almost too painfully interesting to be pleasurable reading. The circumstances out of which this powerful romance is formed, probably never did exist, and therefore some readers might consider them unnatural. I am not, however, prepared so to regard them, since such circumstances might readily arise from the natural causes to which they are assigned, and, if arising, might and in

The terribly fierce passions of Sir Michael and the Lady Randolph are less easily reconciled, not to Nature-for Nature has exhibited far stronger and more terrible displays of fierce and morbid love distorted into fiercer and more monstrous hatred-but to the routine of daily probabilities, and to the tenor of social life in these days, when the formalities and decencies of society render the display of such feelings, in their extremity, wholly impossible. Still, so skilfully are the sterner and darker portions of the tale contrasted and relieved by the soft graces and pure gentleness of other characters, such as the sweet Lilias and the high-minded Walter, that there is nothing morbid or repulsive in the pervading gloom which is the general characteristic of the novel, and that the impression left upon the mind at the conclusion is agreeable, rather than the reverse; while the reader feels, on reaching the last page, that he has not been merely entertained, but in some degree edified, by the perusal of a work, affecting nothing less than to preach, and pretending neither to the inculcation of a set moral, nor to the propagation of a creed.

The following passage, one of the finest descriptive passages in the book, will give you an admirable specimen of the forcible style, and thrilling interest, which is conspicuous in every line, and engrafted in every chapter of this singular work.

Lilias Randolph has been suddenly summoned from the humble home in which she has passed her childhood and the first spring time of her youth, under the care of an aged grandsire, among the green hills of Connaught, to visit the proud halls of Randolph Abbey, in order there to become acquainted with her uncle, Sir Michael. For in his old age, prescient of his approaching death, the wealthy baronet has collected his connections around him, that he may study, during the familiar intercourse afforded by a six months' visit, the character of each; and so decide to which of the four-for so many they prove to be in number, all the orphan children of his brethren, and therefore cousins german-as the worthiest, he shall bequeath his broad domains and more than princely inheritance.

The four are Lilias, Walter, Gabriel, and last in place, but first in interest, Aletheia—a creation of real geniuswho is thus introduced to the reader.

"This is not all,' said Sir Michael, who had watched the scene; he turned to Lady Randolph-Will she come?'

"His wife made no answer, but walked toward a small door which seemed to open into some inner apartment: she opened it, pronounced the name of Aletheia,' and returned to her place. There was a pause. Lilias had heard no sound of steps, but suddenly Walter and Gabriel moved aside, she looked up, and Sir Michael himself placing a hand within hers, said-This is your cousin, Aletheia; her father, my third brother, died only last year.' The hand she held sent a chill through Lilia's whole frame, for it was cold as marble, and when she fixed her eyes on the face that bent over her, a feeling of awe and distress, for which she could not account, seemed to take possession of her.

"It was not a beautiful countenance, far from it, yet most remarkable; the features were fixed and still as a statue, rigid, with a calm so passionless, that one might have thought the very soul had fled from that form, the more so as the whole of the marble face was overspread with the most extraordinary paleness. There was not a tinge of color in the cheek, scarce even on the lips, and the dead white of the forehead contrasted quite unnaturally with the line of hair, which was of a soft brown, and gathered simply round the head; it was as though some

"Do you not welcome your cousin, Alethein?' said Sir Michael, with a frown. She started fearfully, as if she had been roused by a blow, from the state in which she was absorbed. She looked down at Lilias, who felt as if the deeply mournful eyes sent a chill to her very soul. Then the mouth relaxed to an expression of indescribable sweetness, which gave, for one second, a touching beauty to the rigid face; a few words, gentle, but without the slightest warmth, passed from her pale lips. Then they closed, as if in deep weariness. She let fall the hand of Lilias, and glided back to a seat within the shadow of the wall, where she remained, leaning her head on the cushions, as though in a death-like swoon. Lilias looked inquiringly at her aunt, almost fearing her new-found cousin might be ill. But Lady Randolph merely answered, 'It is always so,' and no further notice was taken of her.

"They went to dinner shortly after, and Lilies thought there could not be a more complete picture of comfort and happiness than the luxurious room, with its blazing fire, and warm crimson hangings, and the large family party met round the table, where every imaginable luxury was collected. Little did her guilelessness conceive of the deep drama working beneath that fair outward show. Her very ignorance of the world and its ways, prevented her feeling any embarrassment amongst those who, she concluded must be her friends, because they were her rela tions, and she talked gayly and happily with Walter, who was seated next to her, and who seemed to think he had found in her a more congenial spirit than any other within the walls of Randolph Abbey. All the rest of the party. excepting one, joined in the conversation. Lady Randolph, with a few coldly sarcastic remarks, stripped every subject she touched upon of all poetry or softness of color. ing; she seemed to be one whom life had handled so roughly that it could no longer wear any disguise for her, and at once, in all things, she ever grasped the bitterness of truth, and wished to hold its unpalatable draught to the shrinking lips of others. Sir Michael listened with interest to every word that Lilias uttered, and encouraged her to talk of her Irish life; whilst Gabriel, with the sweetest of voices, displayed so much talent and brillianey in every word he said, that he might well have excited the envy of his competitors, but for the extraordinary humility which he manifested in every look and gesture. There was one only who did not speak, and to that one Lilia's attention was irresistibly drawn. She could not refrain from gazing, almost in awe, on Aletheia, with her deadly pale face, and her fixed, mournful eyes, who had not uttered a word, nor appeared conscious of any thing that was passing around her; and her appearance, as she sat amongst them, was as though she was forever hearing

a voice they could not hear, and seeing a face they could not see. Lilias had yet to learn that "things are not what they seem" in this strange world, and that mostly we may expect to find the hidden matter below the surface directly opposite to that which appears above. She therefore concluded that this deep insensibility resulted from coldness of heart and deadness of feeling, and gradually the conviction deepened in her mind, that Aletheia Randolph was the name which had trembled on the lips of her unknown friend, when he warned her to beware of some of her new relatives. It seemed to her most likely that one so dead and cold should be wholly indifferent to the feelings of others, and disposed only to work out her own ends as best she might; and thus, by a few unfortunate words, the seeds of mistrust were sown in that innocent heart against one most unoffending, and a deep gulf was fixed between those two, who might have found in each other's friendship a staff and support whereon to lean, when for either of them the winds blew too roughly from the storms of life.

"Once only that evening did Lilias hear the sound of Aletheia's voice, and then the words she uttered seemed so unnatural, so incomprehensible, to that light heart in its passionless ignorance, that they did but tend to increase the germ of dislike, and even fear, that was, as we have said, already planted there against this singular person. It was after they had returned to the drawing-room that some mention was made of the storm of the preceding evening, to which Lilias had been exposed. Walter was questioning her as to its details, with all the ardor of a bold nature, to whom danger is intoxicating. But, I suppose,' he continued, smiling, 'you were like all women, too much terrified to think of any thing but your own safety?'

“No,' said Lilias, lifting up her large eyes to his with a peculiar look of brightness, which reminded him of the dawning of morning, 'the appearance of the tempest was so glorious that its beauty filled the mind, and left no room for fear. I wish you could have seen it. It was as though some fierce spirit were imprisoned behind the deep black veil that hung over the western heavens, to whom freedom and power were granted for a little season; for suddenly one vivid, tremendous flash of lightning seemed to cleave asunder that dark wall, and then the wild, liberated storm came thundering forth, shrieking and raging through the sky, and tearing up the breast of the sea with its cruel footsteps. It was the grandest sight I ever saw.' "I think there must have been another yet more interesting displayed on board the vessel itself,' said the sweet, low voice of Gabriel. I should have loved rather to watch the storms and struggles of the human soul in such an hour of peril as you describe.'

came when the ship was reeling over, till the great mountains of waves threatened to sweep every living soul from the deck, and the only safety was in being bound with ropes to the mast-I saw this man, who had fixed himself to one with a cord which was not very strong, and who held his wife clasped in his arms, that the waters might not carry her away. At last there came one gigantic billow, whose power it seemed impossible to withstand: then I saw this man withdraw the support of his arm from the poor creature, who seemed anxious only to die with him, and use both his hands to clasp the pole which sustained him. She gave a piteous cry, more for his cruelty, I feel sure, than her own great peril; but with the impulse of self-preservation, she suddenly grasped the frail cord which bound him. Then he, uttering an impious curse, lifted up his hand-I can scarcely bear to tell it." And Lilias shivered and grew pale.

"Go on,' said Walter, breathlessly.

"He lifted up his hand and struck her with a hard, fierce blow, which sent her reeling away to death in the boiling sea; for death it would have been, had not a sailor caught her dress and upheld her till the wave was passed.'

"How horrible !' exclaimed Walter.

"Oh, miserable to be thus rescued! Happy-thrice happy had she died!' said a deep-foned, mournful voice behind her.

"Lilias started uncontrollably, and looked round. The words had been spoken very low, and as if unconsciously, like a soul holding converse with some other soul, rather than a human being communicating with those of her own kind; yet she felt that they came from Aletheia, who had been sitting for the last hour like an immovable statue, in a high-backed oaken chair, where the shadow of the heavy curtain fell upon her. She had remained there pale and still as marble, her head laid back in the attitude that seemed habitual to her; the white cheek seeming yet whiter contrasted with the crimson velvet against which it lay; and the hand folded as in dumb, passive resignation on her breast. But now, as she uttered these strange words, a sudden glow passed over her face, like the setting sun beaming out upon snow; the eyes, so seldom raised, filled with a liquid light, the chest heaved, the lips grew tremulous.

"What! Aletheia,' exclaimed Walter, 'happy, did you say; happy to die by that cruel blow?'

"Most happy-oh! most blessed to die by a blow so sweet from the hand she loved.'

"Her voice died into a broken whisper; a few large tears trembled in her mournful eyes, but they did not fall; the unwonted color faded from her face, and in another moment she was as statue-like as ever, and with the same

"Pray give us some details,' said Gabriel, earnestly. He seemed to long for an anatomy of human nature in agony, as an epicure would for a feast.

"Lilias was of too complying a disposition to refuse, though she evidently disliked the task. One instance may be a sufficient example of what I mean,' she said. There was a man and his wife, whom, previous to the storm, I had observed as seeming so entirely devoted to one another; he guarded her so carefully from the cold winds of evening, and appeared to live only in her answering affection. Now, when the moment of greatest peril

diately after."

This specimen of the author's style will prove a better recommendation than any thing we can say in favor of the book; yet we do recommend it earnestly. It is a work of real genius.

Up-Country Letters. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo.

This is a brilliant and thoughtful volume, giving fine views of country life in spring, summer, autumn and winter, with here and there a capital daguerreotype of character and manners.

Anglo-American Literature and Manners.

From the French of Philarète Chasles, Professor in the College of France. New York: Charles Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo. This brilliant and vigorous volume should be read for its happy flashes of original thought, and occasional keenness of observation, rather than for its consistent truth. It swarms with errors, but the errors are so sparklingly expressed that they are valuable as epigrams when worthless as opinions. Every thing is sacrificed to point, and even the truths the volume contains are lit up in such a glare of witty impertinence, that they are truths suggested rather than truths expressed. French dogmatism is pert ness, and our lively Frenchman's pertness almost amounts to genius. But he is still a scholar and a critic, and some of the principles he announces are really deep and valuable; it is in their application that he fails. He lacks all sobriety of mind in observing character, manners and men, being chiefly solicitous to find in them pegs to hang his epigrams on, so that the object seen will not be America, Franklin, Irving or Bryant, but Philarète Chasles. And then he is so perfectly content with himself-he chuckles and chirrups so blithely over his own brilliant little selfhe has such a sweet unconsciousness that the limits of his conceptions are not the limits of the human mind-that his quick, sharp, knowing, and gleeful spirit becomes, after the first shocks of opposition are over, quite delightful to the reader's reason and risibles. He seems continually to say of himself, with little Isaac, in Sheridan's Duenna"roguish, perhaps, but keen, devilish keen." We envy the students of the College of France such a Professor of Belles Lettres, who must hear himself talk as gladly as others hear him, and whose very seriousness seems got up for effect. He has a philosophy regarding the "fitness of things;" but to him this fitness consists in the predetertermined ease with which nature and man yield occasions for point and antithesis to such a charming fellow as Philarète Chasles.

In truth, our author is a French Hazlitt. We will give some of his sprightly decisions on our American writers, in illustration of his manner. He is a joking, but a hanging judge, vivacious as a coxcomb but ruthless as a Jeffries. In speaking of Washington Irving, he overlooks Irving's subtle sentiment, purely native to his character, and calls him a mere graceful imitator of old English literature. All that he writes "is a somewhat timid copy, on silk paper, of Addison, Steele and Swift," and "it glows with the gentle, agreeable lustre of watered silk." He praises Cooper, it is true, and praises him intelligently; but then he calls Joel Barlow's Columbiad "a poem which has both eloquence and vigor." Afterward, forgetting this praise, he lumps the "Columbiad," Dwight's "Conquest of Canaan," and Colton's "Tecumseh," together, as "epics, colossi of cotton and papier maché, forming a mass of about ten thousand verses, which, however, yield the palm in absurdity to the epic called "Washington," printed in Boston, in 1843." It is needless to say that the first three of these epics few Americans have ever read, and the last, which is made the butt of our author's satire, no American ever heard of. We have made particular inquiries of "the man who read Cooper's Monnikens,"—who, we are happy to inform the public, is gradually recovering from the effects of his gigantic feat-and even that remarkable individual had not yet got on the trail of "Washington, an Epic." It seems, if we may believe Philarète Chasles, that the poet in question had read in one Dr. Channing's writings that America had no national literature. Struck with this astounding fact, which had never occurred to him before, he naively says, that he resolved at once to present his country with an epic. Our French critic deposes that the

present has been made, but as the country, which ought to know, is ignorant of the matter, it will take more than a foreigner's assertion to make us believe it. The coming man, with his coming epic, should therefore be awaited in breathless wonder; "Expectation sits i' th' air;" let all our astronomers of letters be on the watch, with telescopes sweeping the whole field of observation, for this new and "mighty orb of song" which is to swim into our ken."

Our friend Griswold's collection of American poetry, the invariable target of all that "gentle dullness which ever loves a joke," is, of course, made the especial mark of our Frenchman's malicious raillery. "The distinctive sign of all the specimens," he says, "is commonplace; they are all made with a shoemaker's punch. Take off your hats, salute these images, they are from the Gradus ad Parnassum. The worn-out forms of Europe make fortunes in the States, as bonnets of past fashions do in the Colonies. The figures are stereotyped; the lake is ever blue, the forest ever trembling, the eagle invariably sublime. The bad Spanish poets did not write more rapidly stantes pede in uno, their wretched rhymes, than the modern American verse-makers, bankers, settlers, merchants, clerks, and tavern-keepers, their epics and their odes. In the way of counterfeiting they are quite at ease. One re-does the Giour, another the Dunciad. Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman repeats the songs of Thomas Moore; Mr. Sprague models after Pope and Collins. One takes the Byronic stanza, another appropriates the cadence and images of Wordsworth. Mrs. Hemans, Tennyson, Milnes, all find imitators. Once the consecration of the British public given, the American counterfeit soon appears." Is not this in the very spirit of little Isaac"roguish, perhaps, but keen, devilish keen!" Still, it is really too bad that a Frenchman should presume to attack our poetry on the ground of imitation and diffuseness. What has been the larger part of French poetry for five centuries? Has it not been cold imitation of classical models or red-republican spasm? The French poets have been five centuries at work, and yet where is French poetry? graceful, vigorous, vital, national poetry? Why, is it not notorious that it was fast dwindling from frigid imitation into hopeless imbecility when it was roused by the convulsive school-which is but feebleness gone stark mad and raving? The French never had any poetry, growing naturally out of the national mind, like the poetry of Greece, or Italy, or Spain, or England. Ah! Philarète Chasles, smirking so conceitedly in your national glass-house, beware how you throw stones! You Frenchmen, who imitate even in your revolutionsyou, whose republican heroes are but caricatures "done into" French from Plutarch, and about as much like the original as Ovid "Englished" by a Grub-Street hack of Charles's day—you talk of imitation!

The best poets of America, according to our pleasant Frenchman, are Bryant, Emerson and Longfellow. "Bryant has created nothing great; his voice is feeble, melodious, somewhat vague; but pure, solemn, and not imitative.

. By his contemplative gentleness and gravity he reminds one of Klopstock; fantasy and free caprice are found in neither." Mr. Emerson "is the most original man produced in the United States up to this day;" a true remark, if it be meant to be confined to literature, but perhaps unjust if extended to politics, as in that department our country has produced many marked originalities, ranging all the way from original sin to original virtue. Chasles emphasizes the exquisite beauty of Emerson's lines to the Humble-Bee-one of the finest poems in the language. Of Longfellow it is said, that he is more varied than either Emerson or Bryant; and "so