trymen, what may we not look for from the universal dissemination of those writings, on whose authors was poured the full splendor of eternal truth? If unassisted human nature, spell-bound by a childish mythology, have done so much, what may we not hope for from the supernatural efforts of pre-eminent genius, which spake as it was moved by the Holy Ghost?

HUGH SWINTON LEGARE.

Hugh Swinton Legaré (pronounced Legree) was born in Charleston, S. C., January 2, 1797, and was graduated at South Carolina College, Columbia. He commenced his legal studies in Charleston, and in 1818 went to Europe to complete his education in the history and philosophy of law. He returned to his native city with a high reputation for scholarship, both in ancient and modern literature, and soon entered into public life. He was a member of the state legislature for several years, until in 1830 he was made attorney general of the state. In 1833 he was appointed chargé d'affaires at Brussels, where he remained three years. On his return he was elected a member of Congress, and upon the accession of President Tyler, in 1841, was appointed attorney general of the United States. He accompanied the president to Boston on the occasion of the completion of Bunker Hill monument, and, being seized with a sudden illness, died June 20, 1844, at the house of his friend and classmate, the late George Ticknor.

The writings of Mr. Legaré consist of notes from his journal, a few speeches, and articles written for the Southern Quarterly Review, and were published in 1846, in two volumes, 8vo., with a memoir. The biographer was more enthusiastic than judicious. The learning of Mr. Legaré was unusual for a lawyer and politician, but it had not borne much fruit. His essays are thoughtful and interesting, but have no special brilliancy of style, and lack fire as well as imaginative power.

[From an Article on Sir Philip Sydney.]

INFLUENCE OF PURITANISM ON LITERATURE.

WITH the exception of Surrey, Wyatt, and Sackville, — meritorious, but still inferior poets, two centuries had passed away without producing a single name worthy to be had in remembrance by posterity. Chaucer and Gower, as we observed on a former occasion, had hitherto found as few successors as Dante and Petrarch; while, in both countries, the national literature, after this period of darkness, "burst forth with sudden blaze" about the same time, or at no great interval. It is not improbable that this coincidence in so striking a state of facts was produced by some general cause at least, by some cause common both to Italy and England. But however that may be, the revival of poetry had to encounter in the latter an obstacle altogether unknown in the former country. This was the rigorous, self-mortifying fanaticism of the Puritans. We do not mean to derogate from the merit of the sect, whose stern discipline,

like that of their archetypes in heathen antiquity, the Stoics, was so admirably fitted for a period of trial and fiery persecution, and taught so many patriots and heroes to think, to act, and to die, as becomes men devoted to duty and to liberty. We are too well aware what the world - what we in particular, owe to the Long Parliament, and who they were that most zealously promoted the reforms which it made in the constitutional law of England..

But highly as we appreciate the political services of these great men, we must be allowed to dissent from some of their views of human nature. Their imaginations were so strongly possessed with what they considered as the abominations of idolatry in those "gay religions full of pomp and gold," from which they were desirous of purging England, that they could tolerate in the church nothing but the most absolute simplicity of forms, and the severest spirituality in worship. The same modes of thought were naturally extended to other subjects. In this vale of tears, how absurd, how criminal was it to be gay! How could a being, accountable for every idle thought, indulge his fancy, with impunity, in vain and chimerical figments, in foolish dreams of what he never could expect, or should never wish to see realized!

Our answer to the dogmas of this school is the same that was made to the Stoics two thousand years ago. They aim at a degree of perfection if apathy is perfection- quite inconsistent with the nature of man and his relation to the world about him. They treat him as if he were no-body, but all understanding—a mere mathematical machine, whose only object is to know, whose only business is to reason, and whose whole conduct in life is to be a sort of practical demonstration. All instructive impulse, however generous; all uncalculating affection, however sweet and consoling; all feeling, in short, — unguarded, natural feeling, is unworthy of a rational being, much more of a supremely wise man. According to this theory, taste, and the sense of beauty and of melody, were given us in vain. Imagination is no part of our original nature, but a consequence, rather, and proof of its corruption. Nature is lovely in vain. Nay, it is worse than in vain that she has poured her bounties forth with such a lavish hand, and covered the earth with odors, fruits, and flowers, with so many sources of enjoyment with so many scenes of magnificence and attraction, — ail but to delude, to insnare, and to destroy us! Everything about us, and within us, and above us, is full of poetry, for everything is full of sublimity and beauty, everything is calculated to inspire admiration or awaken love in

rational creatures, and in them alone. Yet, to enjoy the very pleasures, to cultivate the very perceptions and faculties that most distinguish them from the brutes that perish, is folly, or worse, in the opinions of those who talk, in the loftiest strain, of the privileges and pre-eminence of human reason.

True poetry, like true eloquence, is the voice of nature appealing to the heart with its utmost sublimity and power. Its precepts differ from those of philosophy only in their effect. Instead of teaching merely, it persuades, elevates, inspires. It excites a feeling where the other leaves only an opinion or a maxim. It proposes examples of ideal excellence, and raises virtue into heroism.

WILLIAM WARE.

William Ware was born in Hingham, Mass., August 3, 1797, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1816. He entered the ministry, and preached in New York for sixteen years. He is the author of three historical romances that have gained for him a permanent reputation. The first (published in 1836) is Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra, a series of letters purporting to be written by a Roman, in which the splendors of the desert city, and its final overthrow by the Emperor Aurelian, are described. The work shows an intimate acquaintance not only with the history, but with the private life and manners of the age, and its style is vivid and picturesque. The second (1838) is entitled Probus, and is a sequel of the narrative of Zenobia. The third (1841) is Julian, a picture of the scenes and events in Judea during the latter years of Jesus Christ. Zenobia is the most brilliant of the series, but all possess a high order of merit.

Mr. Ware was afterwards settled over a church in West Cambridge, but resigned on account of ill health in 1845. He died at Cambridge, February 19, 1852.

[From Zenobia. ]

THE APPROACH TO PALMYRA.

UPON this boundless desert, which stretches from the AntiLibanus almost to the very walls of Palmyra, we now soon entered. The scene which it presented was more dismal than I can describe. A red moving sand, or. hard and baked by the heat of a sun such as Rome never knows, low gray rocks just rising here and there above the level of the plain, with now and then the dead and glittering trunk of a vast cedar, whose roots seemed as if they had outlasted centuries; the bones of camels and elephants, scattered on either hand, dazzling the sight by reason of their excessive whiteness; at a distance, occasionally an Arab of the desert, for a moment surveying our long line, and then darting off to his fastnesses these were the objects which, with scarce any variation, met our

eyes during the four wearisome days that we dragged ourselves over this wild and inhospitable region. A little after the noon of the fourth day, as we started on our way, having refreshed ourselves and our exhausted animals at a spring which here poured out its warm but still grateful waters to the traveller, my ears received the agreeable news that towards the east there could now be discerned the dark line, which indicated our approach to the verdant tract that encompasses the great city. Our own excited spirits were quickly imparted to our beasts, and a more rapid movement soon revealed into distinctness the high land and waving groves of palm trees which mark the site of Palmyra.

It was several miles before we reached the city, that we suddenly found ourselves, — landing, as it were, from a sea upon an island or continent in a rich and thickly peopled country. The roads indicated an approach to a great capital, in the increasing numbers of those who thronged them, meeting and passing us, overtaking us, or crossing our way. Elephants, camels, and the dromedary, which I had before seen only in the amphitheatres, I here beheld as the native inhabitants of the soil.

Frequent villas of the rich and luxurious Palmyrenes, to which they retreat from the greater heats of the city, now threw a lovely charm over the scene. Nothing can exceed the splendor of these sumptuous palaces. Italy itself has nothing which surpasses them.

The new and brilliant costumes of the persons whom we met, together with the rich housings or the animals they rode, served greatly to add to all this beauty. I was still entranced, as it were, by the objects around me, and buried in reflection, when I was roused by the shout of those who led the caravan, and who had attained the summit of a little rising ground, saying, "Palmyra ! Palmyra !”

I urged forward my steed, and in a moment the most wonderful prospect I ever beheld no, I cannot except even Rome - burst upon my sight. Flanked by hills of considerable elevation on the east, the city filled the whole plain below as far as the eye could reach, both towards the north and towards the south. This immense plain was all one vast and boundless city. It seemed to me to be larger than Rome. Yet I knew very well that it could not be that it was not. And it was some time before I understood the true character of the scene before me, so as to separate the city. from the country, and the country from the city, which here wonderfully interpenetrate each other; and so confound and deceive the

observer. For the city proper is so studded with groups of lofty palm trees, shooting up among its temples and palaces, and on the other hand, the plain in its immediate vicinity is so thickly adorned with magnificent structures of the purest marble, that it is not easy, nay, it is impossible at the distance at which I contemplated the whole, to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other. It was all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I imagined that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men and of gods. Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earthborn. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where the vast Temple of the Sun stretched upwards its thousand columns of polished marble to the heavens, in its matchless beauty casting into the shade every other work of art of which the world can boast. I have stood before the Parthenon, and have almost worshipped that divine achievement of the immortal Phidias. But it is a toy by the side of this bright crown of the eastern capital. I have been at Milan, at Ephesus, at Alexandria, at Antioch ; but in neither of those renowned cities have I beheld anything that I can allow to approach in united extent, grandeur, and most consummate beauty, this almost more than work of man. On each side of this, the central point, there rose upward slender pyramids, — pointed obelisks, domes of the most graceful proportions, columns, arches, and lofty towers, for number and for form beyond my power to describe. These buildings, as well as the walls of the city, being all either of white marble, or of some stone as white, and being everywhere in their whole extent interspersed, as I have already said, with multitudes of overshadowing palm trees, perfectly filled and satisfied my sense of beauty, and made me feel for the moment as if in such a scene I should love to dwell, and there end my days. Nor was I alone in these transports of delight. All my fellow-travellers seemed equally affected; and from the native Palmyrenes, of whom there were many among us, the most impassioned and boastful exclamations broke forth. "What is Rome to this?" they cried. "Fortune is not constant. Why may not Palmyra be what Rome has been mistress of the world? Who more fit to rule than the great Zenobia? A few years may see great changes. Who can tell what shall come to pass?" These, and many such sayings, were uttered by those around me, accompanied by many significant gestures and glances of the eye. I thought of them afterwards. We now descended the hill, and the long line of our caravan moved on towards the city.