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which he became famous. This attained a great and deserved popularity. It is obviously an imitation of Hudibras in its structure, epigrammatic turns of thought, and grotesque rhymes. But its spirit is the author's own, and many of its couplets are fully as pungent as those of its prototype. It has been often observed that the wit of one generation is rarely appreciated by the next, and this is especially the case when the point of a sentence depends upon a knowledge of contemporaneous persons and events. The jokes that require an ap pendix for their elucidation are apt to miss fire with the reader. For this reason McFingal, which is an embodiment of the spirit of the revolution, and is, in its way, nearly as good as Hudibras, is fast going to oblivion. A few passages only will be remembered. For that matter, how much of Hudibras is read? Trumbull wrote another poem of some length, entitled The Progress of Dulness, a satire upon prevailing errors in training and manners. An edition of his works was published in Hartford in 1820. The McFingal, with notes by B. J. Lossing, was published by G. P. Putnam, New York, 1857. In this reprint the original spelling is preserved.

Mr. Trumbull was never robust in body, but he lived to an advanced age. He died at Detroit, Michigan, May 12, 1831.

[Passages from McFingal.]

WHEN Yankies, skill'd in martial rule,
First put the British troops to school;
Instructed them in warlike trade,
And new manoeuvres of parade;
The true war-dance of Yanky reels,
And manual exercise of heels ;
Made them give up, like saints complete,
The arm of flesh and trust the feet,
And work, like Christians, undissembling,
Salvation out, by fear and trembling,
Taught Percy fashionable races,
And modern modes of Chevy-chaces,
From Boston, in his best array,
Great 'Squire McFingal took his way,
And, graced with ensigns of renown,
Steer'd homeward to his native town.

Nor only saw he all that was,

But much that never came to pass;
Whereby all prophets far outwent he;
Tho' former days produced a plenty ;
For any man, with half an eye,
What stands before him may espy;
But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen.
As in the days of antient fame
Prophets and poets were the same,

And all the praise that poets gain
Is but for what th' invent and feign,
So gain'd our 'Squire his fame by seeing
Such things as never would have being.

But as some musquets so contrive it,
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And tho' well aim'd at duck or plover,
Bear wide and kick their owners over,

So far'd our 'Squire, whose reas'ning toil
Would often on himself recoil,

And so much injur'd more his side,
The stronger arg'ments he applied ;
As old war elephants, dismay'd,

Trode down the troops they came to aid,
And hurt their own side more in battle,
Than less and ordinary cattle.

All punishments the world can render,
Serve only to provoke th' offender ;
The will's confirm'd by treatment horrid,
As hides grow harder when they're curried.
No man e'er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law;

Or held in method orthodox
His love of justice in the stocks;
Or fail'd to lose, by sheriff's shears,
At once his loyalty and ears.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT.

Timothy Dwight was born in Northampton, Mass., May 14, 1752. He was a descendant of the famous Jonathan Edwards, and related in blood to other eminent men. He entered Yale College at the age of thirteen, and, upon his graduation, taught school in New Haven. He served as chaplain in the revolutionary army, under General Putnam, and devoted himself, with great zeal, to the cause of liberty. After some years spent in preaching, he was chosen president of Vale College in 1795, in which office he continued until his death, in 1817. His personal influence was unbounded over students and parishioners, and his unremitting industry enabled him to accomplish a vast amount of literary labor in addition to his daily duties. He wrote a number of poems, all possessing a certain kind of merit, but not sufficiently inspired to give them a permanent place in literature. His best remembered performance is the patriotic song, beginning,

"Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise,

The queen of the world, and child of the skies."

His principal poems are The Conquest of Canaan, Greenfield Hill (which has a number of felicitous rural scenes), and The Triumph of Infidelity. Besides a number of theological treatises, he wrote four volumes of Travels in New England and New York, the results of his tours in college vacations. This last work is valuable for its pictures of scenery and manners in what now seems a remote age. The author had an instinctive feeling for the picturesque, but the narrative lacks simplicity, and the descriptions are overladen with epithets.

THE NOTCH OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.

THE Notch of the White Mountains is a phrase appropriated to a very narrow defile, extending two miles in length, between two huge cliffs, apparently rent asunder by some vast convulsion of nature. The entrance of the chasm is formed by two rocks standing perpendicularly at the distance of twenty-two feet from each other one about twenty feet in height, the other about twelve. Half of the space is occupied by the brook mentioned as the head stream of the Saco, the other half by the road. The stream is lost and invisible beneath a mass of fragments partly blown out of the road and partly thrown down by some great convulsion.

When we entered the Notch we were struck with the wild and solemn appearance of everything before us. The scale on which all the objects in view were formed was the scale of grandeur only. The rocks, rude and ragged in a manner rarely paralleled, were fashioned and filed by a hand operating only in the boldest and most irregular manner. As we advanced, these appearances increased apidly. Huge masses of granite of every abrupt form, and hoary with moss, which seemed the product of ages, recalling to the mind the saxum vetustum of Virgil, speedily rose to a mountainous height. Before us the view widened fast to the south-east. Behind us it closed almost instantaneously, and presented nothing to the eye but an impassable barrier of mountains.

About half a mile from the entrance of the chasm we saw, in full view, the most beautiful cascade, perhaps, in the world. It issued from a mountain on the right, about eight hundred feet above the subjacent valley, and at the distance from us of about two miles. The stream ran over a series of rocks almost perpendicular, with a course so little broken as to preserve the appearance of a uniform current, and yet so far disturbed as to be perfectly white. The sun shone, with the clearest spiendor, from a station in the heavens the most advantageous to our prospect, and the cascade glittered down the vast steep like a stream of burnished silver.

At the distance of three quarters of a mile from the entrance we passed a brook, known in this region by the name of The Flume,

from the strong resemblance to that object exhibited by the channel, which it has worn for a considerable length in a bed of rocks, the sides being perpendicular to the bottom. This elegant piece of water we determined to examine further, and, alighting from our horses, walked up the acclivity perhaps a furlong. The stream fell from a height of two hundred and forty or two hundred and fifty feet over three precipices; the second receding a small distance from the front of the first, and the third from that of the second. Down the first and second it fell in a single current, and down the third in three, which united their streams at the bottom in a fine basin, formed, by the hand of nature, in the rocks immediately beneath us. It is impossible for a brook of this size to be modelled into more diversified or more delightful forms, or for a cascade to descend over precipices more happily fitted to finish its beauty. The cliffs, together with a level at their foot, furnished a considerable opening, surrounded by the forest. The sunbeams, penetrating through the trees, painted here a great variety of fine images of light, and edged an equally numerous and diversified collection of shadows, both dancing on the waters, and alternately silvering and obscuring their course. Purer water was never seen. Exclusively of its murmurs, the world around us was solemn and silent. Everything assumed the character of enchantment, and, had I been educated in the Grecian mythology, I should scarcely have been surprised to find an assemblage of Dryads, Naiads, and Oreads sporting on the little plain below our feet. The purity of this water was discernible not only by its limpid appearance, and its taste, but from several other circumstances. Its course is wholly over hard granite; and the rocks and the stones in its bed and at its side, instead of being covered with adventitious substances, were washed perfectly clean, and, by their neat appearance, added not a little to the beauty of the scenery.

From this spot the mountains speedily began to open with increased majesty, and, in several instances, rose to a perpendicular height little less than a mile. The bosom of both ranges was overspread, in all the inferior regions, by a mixture of evergreens with trees, whose leaves are deciduous. The annual foliage had been already changed by the frost. Of the effects of this change it is, perhaps, impossible for an inhabitant of Great Britain, as I have been assured by several foreigners, to form an adequate conception, without visiting an American forest. When I was a youth, I remarked that Thomson had entirely omitted, in his Seasons, this fine

part of autumnal imagery. Upon inquiring of an English gentleman the probable cause of the omission, he informed me that no such scenery existed in Great Britain. In this country it is often among the most splendid beauties of nature. All the leaves of trees, which

are not evergreens, are, by the first severe frost, changed from their verdure towards the perfection of that color which they are capable of ultimately assuming, through yellow, orange, and red, to a pretty deep brown. As the frost affects different trees, and different leaves of the same tree, in very different degrees, a vast multitude of tinctures are commonly found on those of a single tree, and always on those of a grove or forest. These colors also, in all their varieties, are generally full, and, in many instances, are among the most exquisite which are found in the regions of nature. Different sorts of trees are susceptible of different degrees of this beauty. Among them the maple is pre-eminently distinguished by the prodigious varieties, the finished beauty, and the intense lustre of its hues, varying through all the dyes between a rich green and the most perfect crimson, or, more definitely, the red of the prismatic image.

I have remarked that the annual foliage on these mountains had been already changed by the frost. Of course the darkness of the evergreens was finely illumined by the brilliant yellow of the birch, the beech, and the cherry, and the more brilliant orange and crimson of the maple. The effect of this universal diffusion of gay and splendid light was to render the preponderating deep green more solemn.

The mind, encircled by this scenery, irresistibly remembered that the light was the light of decay, autumnal and melancholy. The dark was the gloom of evening, approximating to night. Over the whole the azure of the sky cast a deep, misty blue, blending, towards the summit, every other hue, and predominating over all.

As the eye ascended these steeps, the light decayed, and gradually ceased. In the inferior summits rose crowns of conical firs and spruces. On the superior eminences the trees, growing less and less, yielded to the chilling atmosphere, and marked the limit of forest vegetation. Above, the surface was covered with a mass of shrubs, terminating, at a still higher elevation, in a shroud of dark-colored moss.

As we passed onward through this singular valley, occasional torrents, formed by the rains and dissolving snows at the close of winter, had left behind them, in many places, perpetual monuments of their progress in perpendicular, narrow, and irregular paths of im

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