When murdered Cæsar's mighty shade
The sanguine homicide dismayed,
And fantasy rehearsed

The ides of March, and, not in vain,
Showed forth Philippi's penal plain.

"In loneliness I heard my hopes
Pronounce, Let us depart !'
And saw my mind--a Marius-
Desponding o'er my heart:
The evil genius, long concealed,
To thought's keen eye itself revealed,
Unfolding like a chart,--

But rolled away, and left me free
As Stoicks once aspired to be.

"It brought, thou spirit of my breast,
And Naiad of the tears,
Which have been welling coldly there,
Although unshed for years!

It brought, in kindness or in hate,
The final menaces of fate,

But prompted no base fears—
Ah, could I with ill feelings see
Aught, love, so near allied to thee?

"The drowsy harbinger of death,
That slumber dull and deep,
Is welcome, and I would not wake
Till thou dost join my sleep.
Life's conscious calm,--the flapping sail,-
The stagnant sea, nor tide nor gale
In pleasing motion keep,—

Oppress me; and I wish release

From this to more substantial peace."

"Star of that sea!--its currents bear
My vessel to the bourne,
Whence neither busy voyager
Nor pilgrim may return.

Such consummation I can brook,

Yet, with a fixed and lingering look,

Must anxiously discern

The far horizon, where thy rays

Surceased to light my night-like days.

"Unwise, or most unfortunate,

My way was; let the sign,
The proof of it, be simply this-
Thou art not, wert not, inine!
For 'tis the wont of chance to bless
Pursuit, if patient, with success;
And envy may repine,

That, commonly, some triumph must
Be won by every lasting lust.

"How I have lived imports not now
I am about to die,

Else I might chide thee that my life
Has been a stifled sigh:

Yes, life; for times beyond the line
Our parting traced, appear not mine,
Or of a world gone by;

And often almost would evince,
My soul had transmigrated since.

"Pass wasted powers; alike the grave,
To which I fast go down,
Will give the joy of nothingness
To me, and to renown:
Unto its careless tenants, fame
Is idle as that gilded name,
Of vanity the crown,
Helvetian hands inscribe upon
The forehead of a skeleton.

"List the last cadence of a lay,
That, closing as begun,
Is governed by a note of pain,
Oh, lost and worshipped one!-
None shall attend a sadder strain,
Till Memnon's statue stand again
To mourn the setting sun,-
Nor sweeter, if my numbers seem

To share the nature of their theme."-pp. 28-31.

"I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,

A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven.

"Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds, And something more than melody dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows As one may see the burthened bee forth issue from the rose.

"Affections are as thoughts to her, the measures of her hours;
Her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness, of young flowers;
And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns,—the idol of past years!

"Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts a sound must long remain,
But memory such as mine of her so very much endears,
When death is nigh my latest sigh will not be life's but hers.

"I filled this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,

A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon;

Her health and would on earth there stood some more of such a frame,

That life might be all poetry, and weariness a name."—pp. 39, 40. "Odds and Ends" is a collection of songs, epigrams, &c. and contains some very pretty things. We are struck immediately with the superior beauty of the printing. The authors of these effusions, and of "Leisure Hours at Sea," are under great obligation to their printers, for the fascinating garb with which their embodied thoughts are invested. Fugitive poetry always seems ten times as amusing, when snowy paper, clean type, and a generous margin, enable it to expatiate gracefully and regularly over the pages, as when it is crammed and wedged into an uncouth, disproportioned oblong, and tortured into agony, like the delicate essence of Ariel in the flinty bowels of the knotted pine. The writer of "Odds and Ends" is from the green island of Erin, and an obvious admirer of the sweet minstrel of his native land. To write a good song requires a talent as peculiar as to write a good epic. We think he has been very often successful. The pieces are said, in the title page, to be original and translated; and, indeed, we have met with a great many things, in looking over these pages, which were translated a great while ago, and the new versions are inserted here without giving credit to the author from whom they were made; and others which seem to have undergone no other process than that of being translated out of one sort of English verse into another. His epitaph on an honest lawyer, for example, is as old as Hercules Strozza, remembered as recording the immortality of one John Merandula, about whom other chronicles are silent. The epitaph is, however, inserted without any acknowledgment to honest Hercules. Several of the others may be found in any English anthology. We extract one song as a fair sample:

66

Toujours fidele, the warrior cried,

As he seized his courser's rein;

And bending over his weeping bride,

He whisper'd the hope which his heart denied,
That they soon might meet again.

And fear not, he said, though the wide, wide sea
Betwixt us its billows swell;

Believe me, dearest, thy knight will be

To France and to honour-to love and to thee,

Toujours fidele.

"Then proudly her forehead that lady rears,
And proudly she thus replied-

Nay, think not my sorrow proceeds from fears-

And the glance which she threw, though it shone through tears,
Was the glance of a soldier's bride.

Not mine is the wish to bid thee stay,

Though I cannot pronounce "farewell."

Since glory calls thee--away, away

And still be thy watchword, on battle day,

Toujours fidele.

"One moment he gaz'd--the lingering knight--
The next, to the field he sped.

Why need I tell of the deadly fight,

But to mark his fate? for his country's right

He battled-and he bled.

Yet he died as the brave alone can die,

The conqueror's shout his knell;

His sleep was the slumber of victory,

And for her whom he loved his latest sigh,

Toujours fidele.

Italiam! Italiam! Mr. S. L. Fairfield is the last name on our muster-roll, and truly he evinces a marvellous degree of improvement since his last appearance. His book is freer from blunders of several kinds, and some parts are written with considerable spirit. Our limits do not permit us to make any extracts from it, but if our readers wish to see a favourable specimen, without the trouble of reading the whole volume, we advise them to turn at once to the poem entitled the Prophet's Malison, among the smaller pieces, which we think quite respectable in its way, without attempting to read the Dramatic Sketch, which constitutes the first of the collection, and which, we fear, they will be compelled to give up after reading the two first pages.

ART. XV.-The United States of America compared with some European countries, particularly England, in a Discourse delivered in Trinity Church, and in St. Paul's and St. John's Chapels, in the city of New-York, October, 1825. By JOHN HENRY HOBART, D. D. Rector of the said Church and Chapels, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New-York, and Professor of Pastoral Theology and Pulpit Eloquence in the General Theological Seminary. NewYork: Printed by T. & J. Swords.

1825.

It has passed into a kind of proverb, that to visit foreign countries is the surest means of strengthening the love we bear to our own. It is never difficult to discover some points in which the land of our nativity and of our friends has the advan

tage over that in which we are strangers, and however slight and trifling these may be, our partiality is always prone to magnify them into importance. In every nation, the traveller will miss some of those comforts which habit has rendered almost necessary, or meet with some restraint to which he is unused, and which is therefore felt as doubly irksome, or some peculiarity of manners, inoffensive enough in itself, but unpleasant to him on account of associations connected with the manners of his own country. If his heart has nothing else to desire, it will sink within him as he looks round in vain for those features which were familiar to his childhood, and listens for the accents of that dialect which his infant tongue was taught to imitate. The homeliest custom of his native land, and the rudest provincialism of his native speech, will have its place in his affections, for it will remind him of the sports of early years, of the kind faces of old neighbours, and of his father's fireside. These are the spells by which the native soil of every man keeps its hold upon his love; but it is doubly fortunate for a nation, when its citizens, in comparing it with others, can fix their attention on those things which make the true glory and happiness of a people. Instead of dwelling upon inconsiderable or doubtful advantages, it is well if they can give an honest preference to their own country, in respect of the moral and political blessings which have fallen to its lot, the general diffusion of intelligence, and the equal enjoyment of liberty, and of all those goods which Providence intended equally for all the human race, but which in many parts of the world one class of men intercepts from another. It is well, in short, if, in the eulogium which the feelings of our hearts prompt us to pass upon the land of our birth, we can advert to such topics as are treated of in the discourse before us- topics sufficiently important to be discussed in the most sacred place, and on the most sacred occasion.

It is, therefore, with great pleasure that we have read the sermon before us, the production of an eminent divine of this city, who has just returned from a considerable absence in Europe, and now makes it his earliest duty to inculcate a religious gratitude for the blessings with which it has pleased Heaven to distinguish his native country. It is evidently from the pen of one whose original partialities in favour of that country have been confirmed and heightened by his own experience, even beyond what he was prepared to expect; and whose patriotism has been sublimed from a sense of duty into a passion. He writes with these impressions upon him in their first depth and strength; and even where his speculations have no novelty