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the custom-house here are extremely rigorous in the discharge of their inquisitorial trust. If man has not an epaulette on his shoulder, or a cockade on his hat, even his pockets will hardly escape the dishonor of a search. Nor is the inspection always confined to the living; it sometimes extends to the dead! We had occasion to bury one of our crew here; and as we came on shore to pay him this last sad office of respect, his coffin was unceremoniously opened, to ascertain that it contained no contraband goods! I always knew the French to be an extremely shrewd and inquisitive people, but I did not suppose they would ever carry their researches into the secrets of the grave. O Death! I have heard thee accused by some of being an inexorable tyrant; by others of being an indiscriminate leveller; but never before, by saint, by savage or by sage,' have I heard thee accused of being a smuggler! And even if thou wert such, what couldst thou want of aught that our poor ship contained? Wast thou in quest of pea-jackets and tarpaulins? But thy sailors never go on watch; each in his hammock still slumbers as he laid himself down. Or wast thou in need of charts or quadrants? But thy ships never leave their moorings; each rots down piecemeal in its own berth. Or was it thy desire to obtain Bibles and hymn-books? But there is no worshipping assembly in thy dominions, and the preacher's voice is never heard there. O Death! thou art falsely suspected, and basely dishonored, by the Frenchman! - by him, too, who should ever regard thee with the most indulgent sentiments; for he has crowded millions of putrid corses upon thy domains. From the chilling snows of Russia, to the burning sands of Egypt, he has sunk his victims into thy pale realm, thick as the devoted quails that fell for food around the famishing tents of wandering Israel !

I had intended to sketch a few of the most easily-detected features in the domestic habits of the people of Toulon; but this affair of the coffin, which will be discredited by many, but which can be established by the oath of fifty witnesses, has so disaffected me with the place, I leave it without farther comment. I only hope it may not be my mournful lot to die here, to be insulted in my shroud. The most deeply-wounding and irreparable wrong, is that which falsely suspects the dying; and the most mean and dishonorable distrust, is that which looks for selfish, sinister concealments, beneath the simple obsequies of the dead.

BENEVOLENCE.

As on the parching bosom of the plain
Descend the genial showers of kindly rain;
As the blue tint of heaven, with fragrant breeze,
Dispels the pallid spectre of disease;

So through the wounded mind and thrilling sense,
Flows the sweet balm of blest Benevolence:
To the lost wretch, by daily tortures torn,
Who wakes to weep, and only lives to mourn,
Can, with electric touch, new powers impart,
And warm to infant life the palsied heart;
Bid the raised eye unwonted language speak,
And drops of transport bathe the faded cheek :
With looks that bless, the saving hand regard,
And give to feeling worth a rich reward.

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So spake the youth

Whose fondest hopes through many a sleepless night
Had vision'd forth that hour, while fear and doubt,
The company of love, with their cold breath
Did ofttimes whisper that it ne'er would come.

- And so the priest, with solemn voice inquir'd
Who to this man the blooming maiden gave,
In nuptial rite. And when the father rose
To place within another's grasp the hand
Which ever in its childish pastime lov'd
To hide itself among his clustering locks,
Making him glad, methought to his proud eye,
Though her lip trembled like a breeze-swept rose,
His darling ne'er had look'd so beautiful.

What was the din without? They heard it not.
Their world was in the heart, and all beside
Was a forgotten echo.

Lo, the tide

Of fire rolls on! Even from the parting lip

The plighted faith is snatch'd. Hoarse through the door
Rush a wild crowd, and scarce the bridegroom's brow

Hath space to kindle with a moment's ire,

Ere the dense smoke pours in, and the fierce flames,
Already climbing toward the pillar'd roof,

Warn them to 'scape for life.

Ah! who can tell

The unmeasur'd miseries of that fearful night?
A sick babe lay within its mother's arms -
The half-loos'd soul hung quivering on its lips,
Longing for freedom. The small veins stood forth
In purple tenseness round the tiny neck,
And where the temples met the golden hair,
While each fair feature sharp and rigid grew,
So strong did Nature struggle for her hold
In that frail tenement.

Still hope was there;

Such desperate hope, as roots in deathless love

Hope that a mother nurtures, though her son

Plunge headlong through the darkest depths of guilt.

Even so this lone one trusted that her God

Would not bereave her utterly, and sate
Nursing a fond belief that sleep's soft balm
Would heal the anguish of her restless child.
She was a widow, and her only wealth
Was garner'd up in that pale piece of clay.
The chamber of her watching, long so dim
With one faint taper's waning ray, grew bright
With the red flashes of approaching flame.
She mark'd it not. Her brooding sorrow dwelt
With its drear watch-light in her inmost soul,

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I HAD a dream -a dream, but that is o'er,
Thy charms can move, thy beauty blind no more;
Thy spell is broke, thy fascination past,
And I can see thee as thou art, at last;

Unshackled once again, and proud, my soul
Now spurns, as once it courted, thy control.
No longer Beauty wears alone thy form,
No longer 't is alone thy smile can warm;
Almost I dare to think that there may be
Another, lovely as I pictured thee,

When, fondly bending at thy feet in prayer,

I deemed that more than woman's soul was there;

Oh wert thou still as then my fancy thought,
The world beside to me, the world were nought!

I own the light, the glory of thy brow;
It dazzles, but it cannot warm me now!
No longer now it bids me bend the knee,
And think religion is to worship thee;
Condemned thyself a suppliant to bow,
My knee denies to do thee homage now;
And as thy spirit to its idol turns,

With shame of thee, my cheek indignant burns;

But yesterday so peerless! - and to-day

Oh what thou art, my lips refuse to say!

Farewell! and though the thought of thee may gleam
Perchance athwart my fancy's wayward dream,

When, present things forgot, my soul shall dwell

On one 'it loved, not wisely, but too well;'

Though sometimes in my secret breast shall rise
The memory of thy subduing eyes,
The magic music of thy voice, and all

L. H. S

That held the pulses of my heart in thrall,

Yet shall not these suffice again to move

The steadfast purpose of my soul to love.

L. L. D. P.

LITERARY NOTICES.

SCRIPTURAL ANTHOLOGY: OR, BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. Designed as a Present for all Seasons. By NATHAN C. BROOKS, A. M. In one volume. pp. 180. Philadelphia: WILLIAM MARSHALL AND COMPANY. Baltimore: BAYLY AND BURNS.

ON opening this volume, the first thing which meets the eye of the reader is the 'publishers' preface,' evidently written by the author, wherein the succeeding pages are spoken of, as 'blending exalted sentiment and devotional fervor with the enchantments of poetry.' This modest verdict is followed by this farther declaration : 'While we must claim for our author a high degree of poetic excellence, we would by no means insist that his productions will be found superior to criticism; as they are merely the relaxation of a scholar, while laboriously engaged as superintendent of one of our largest and most respectable literary institutions.' Here two or three birds are killed with one stone. Mr. BROOKS is not only a poet of the first order, but he is a scholar, and moreover, preceptor of a very superior academy; and his faults as a writer are to be excused, on the ground that he is engaged in literary occupations! As we perused this advance critique and academy advertisement, we could not help calling to mind the economical inscription upon a tomb-stone in Père La Chaise, Paris: 'Here lies the body of M R-, an affectionate parent and kind husband. His disconsolate widow still keeps the shop, No.-, Rue -, where may be found, at all times, a superior assortment of gloves, hosiery, linens,' etc. But waiving the diffident introduction to the volume under notice, and bearing in mind, that while the elephant is always drawn smaller than life, a flea must be represented larger, let us pass to a few remarks upon the egg which is heralded by so much cackling.

Having read the Scriptural Anthology' through, (for which feat we trust to become distinguished, in like manner with that long, low, 'dark-complected individual, who is pointed out on a sunny day in Broadway, as 'the man who has read 'The Monnikins,') we are prepared to speak our opinion of its merits; and since we neither know, nor have ever seen, the author, we cannot be accused of being influenced in our comments by personal considerations. 'Sooner shall the surges of the sandiferous sea ignify and evaporate,' ('style is style,' and we have caught the infection,) than we be justly chargeable with such disingenuous motives!

The first features of Mr. BROOKS' writings, which we have to notice, are their inflation and redundance. He is ever on stilts-aiming to petrify the reader in a single stanza -and 'winnowing the air with winged words.' He conceives nothing too high for him to mount; nor does he ever seem aware, in reducing his aspirations to practice, of the pressure about his heels. He tosses his splendid epithets around him, and hammers out hard sentences on the anvil of his brain, with untiring perseverance. This may be necessary, however, for the 'purposes of amplification,' mentioned in the publishers' preface.' He tells us how the 'opalled sun-beams' shone, and the moon-beams leaped from 'heaven's urn of blue;' how the sun played prompter, and 'rolled up the curtain of the world's theatre;' the winds are described as

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'strong-lunged heralds of the storm,' while the thunder 'booms from pole to pole.' His personal similes are numerous. Take, for example, one feature. We have the 'cheek of heaven' turning pale, 'ocean's cheek,' the 'cheek of earth,' night's starry cheek,' and the 'cheek of day;' the loud winds 'seize the giant billows' Samson locks;' the veil of darkness hangs in 'foldings' over the face of earth; and there are dark 'foldings' in the tempest's robe. If a line is not sufficiently full, nothing is easier than to remedy the defect by elongating a proper name- as 'Babylon-ia's waters,' or 'Egypt-ia's soil'- after the manner of that famed university poet, who, (embodying a sentiment worthy of Mr. BROOKS' attention,) wrote:

A man cannot make himself a poet,

No more 'n a sheep can make itself a go-at!

Subjoined are a few specimens of 'amplification.' The first is taken from 'Abraham's Sacrifice:'

Elsewhere, he says:

The waren neck

And ivory wrists were dented with the cords,
Until the purple blood seemed bursting through
The tissue of the pure, transparent skin.'

The moon

Pours from her beamy urn a silver tide

Of living rays upon the slumbering earth.'

The annexed is from the 'Beheading of John the Baptist.' It is a fair specimen of our author's general style and taste:

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How much better than poor prose is the following? - always excepting the electro-magnetic simile, so unaffected and so clear. Abraham is here spoken of:

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We must protest against reducing touching and beautiful passages of Scripture to such verse as is in this volume turned to small account, in paraphrasing the captivity of Zion, our Saviour's lamentation over Jerusalem, the melting pathos of the Man of Uz,' or re-painting, in lines of tedious vapidity, a scene like that of Belshazzar's feast, what time his guests gazed at the hand-writing on the wall,

'Until their thought-strained eyes dilated grew!'

He must needs be largely gifted, who kindles adequately at the flame of the sacred writers. It requires something more than one who contents his ideas with the 'films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superfices of things,' to beautify, or render more poetical, some of the finest scenes recorded in Holy Writ.

Our author, we are sorry to perceive, has not at all times a proper regard for the 10

VOL. XI.

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