He sinned-but he paid the price of his guilt
When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt;
When he strove with the heathen host in vain,
And fell with the flower of his people slain,
And the sceptre his children's hands should sway
From his injured lineage passed away.

But I hoped that the cottage roof would be
A safe retreat for my sons and me;

And that while they ripened to manhood fast,

They should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past.
And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride,

As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side,
Tall like their sire, with the princely grace

Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face.

Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart,
When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart!
When I clasped their knees and wept and prayed,
And struggled and shrieked to heaven for aid,
And clung to my sons with desperate strength,
Till the murderers loosed my hold at length,
And bore me breathless and faint aside,
In their iron arms, while my children died.
They died-and the mother that gave them birth
Is forbid to cover their bones with earth.

The barley harvest was nodding white,
When my children died on the rocky height,
And the reapers were singing on hill and plain,
When I came to my task of sorrow and pain.
But now the season of rain is nigh,

The sun is dim in the thickening sky,
And the clouds in sullen darkness rest,

When he hides his light at the doors of the west.
I hear the howl of the wind that brings
The long drear storm on its heavy wings;
But the howling wind and the driving rain
Will beat on my houseless head in vain :
I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare
The beasts of the desert, and fowls of air."

Of these, with "Romero" for an epigraphe.

"When freedom from the land of Spain

By Spain's degenerate sous was driven,
Who gave their willing limbs again

To wear the chain so lately riven;
Romero broke the sword he wore-
Go, faithful brand, the warrior said,

Go, undishonored, never more

The blood of man shall make thee red;
I grieve for that already shed;

And I am sick at heart to know,
That faithful friend and noble foe
Have only bled to make more strong
The yoke, that Spain has worn so long.
Wear it who will, in abject fear-

I wear it not who have been free;
The perjured Ferdinand shall hear
No oath of loyalty from me.
Then, hunted by the hounds of power,
Romero chose a safe retreat,
Where bleak Nevada's summits tower
Above the beauty at their feet.
There once, when on his cabin lay
The crimson light of setting day,
When even on the mountain's breast
The chainless winds were all at rest,
And he could hear the river's flow
From the calm paradise below;
Warmed with his former fires again,

He framed this rude but solemn strain.

I.

Here will I make my home-for here at least I see,

Upon this wild Sierra's side, the steps of Liberty;

Where the locust chirps unscared beneath the unpruned lime,

And the merry bee doth hide from man the spoil of the mountain thyme; Where the pure winds come and go, and the wild vine gads at will, An outcast from the haunts of men she dwells with Nature still.

II.

I see the valleys, Spain! where thy mighty rivers run,
And the bills that lift thy harvests and vineyards to the sun,
And the flocks that drink thy brooks and sprinkle all the green,
Where lie thy plains, with sheep-walks seained, and olive shades

between :

I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pomegranate near,

And the fragrance of thy lemon groves can almost reach me here.

III.

Fair-fair-but fallen Spain! 'tis with a swelling heart,

That I think on all thou might'st have been, and look at what thou art; But the strife is over now and all the good and brave,

That would have raised thee up, are gone, to exile or the grave.

Thy fleeces are for monks, thy grapes for the convent feast,

And the wealth of all thy harvest-fields for the pampered lord and

priest.

IV.

But I shall see the day-it will come before I die

I shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an age-dimmed eye;-
When the spirit of the land to liberty shall bound,

As yonder fountain leaps away from the darkness of the ground;
And, to my mountain cell, the voices of the free

Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea."

There are also several sonnets-or rather, as the author himself avows-short poems in fourteen lines, not fashioned upon the strict Italian model. That model, consecrated as it has been by all the grandeur and energy, as well as the beauty of genius-is after all, perhaps, essentially barbarous. Yet we candidly confess our decided partiality for it. The form, besides the interest which it derives from accidental association, has an intrinsic one of its own-that of great difficulty overcome. But more than any other kind of poetry, it abhors mediocrity. The general reason assigned by Horace in the well known dict, applies to it more strongly than to any other kind of poetry. It is artificial, and therefore, frigid, unless it be redeemed by surpassing excellence. It is in another sense artificial, and, therefore, admits of being done after a fashion, according to rule, and by mere mechanical industry. The difficulty consists not in executing a sonnet, but a fine sonnet, and a failure in it affects one with something like the same sensation of dismal disgust inspired by the grimace and tumblings of the clown in his awkward imitations of Harlequin. We love Petrach and his sonnets-bad as the taste of many of them is and all the world has been awakened by those of Milton and Filicaja. Mr. Bryant's, besides their wanting the legitimate form, are not master-pieces in other respects. Still they are very good. We submit as specimens the two following-the first is in an animated strain; but it wants power.

"SONNET-WILLIAM TELL

Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee,
Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame;
For thou wert of the mountains: they proclaim

The everlasting creed of Liberty.

That creed is written on the untrampled snow,

Thundered by torrents which no power can hold,
Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold,
And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.
Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,

Didst meditate the lesson Nature taught,

And to thy brief captivity was brought

A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.

The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.

The other is very sweet and balmy, like the breathing of our own south-wind in a serene October day.

"SONNET-OCTOBER.

Aye, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief,

And the year smiles as it draws near its death.

Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay

In the gay woods aud in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,

Journeying, in long serenity, away.

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

Might wear out life like the, 'mid bowers and brooks,
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,

And music of kind voices ever nigh;

And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

There are three or four pieces of a livelier mood than the rest, that pleasingly diversify the character of this little volume. They are not remarkable for a very high degree of vis comica, but their gay and ironical good humour makes them agreeable. The meditation "On Rhode-Island Coal" is a piece of philosophy embodying such reflections as one is apt to fall into when poring over the cheerful light of a grate, amid the pitiless howlings of a northern winter. There are, also, some excellent lines of the same character on certain " gay creatures of the element" that we would gladly extract, if we had not been already quite unconscionable in our use of Mr. Bryant's labours. As it is, we can only remark that he deserves to be a favourite with the belles-the flowersarrayed in more than the glory of Solomon-that blossom forth in the sunshine of Broadway-and that he ought to be sent into coventry, for life, by the race of musquitoes for treating their terrific trump and sanguinary warfare, as matters of poetry, and even of burlesque. To one living in the vapours of a marshy country within ten degrees of the tropic, this joke appears as strange as a comedy on the cholera.

Of the more serious pieces, we ought to mention that the "Hymn of the Waldenses" is very good, but " The Hurri

cane" strikes us as a failure. We do not think poems of that sort the fort of Mr. Bryant.

Upon the whole, we have great pleasure in strongly recommending this excellent little volume to the attention and patronage of the public. Decided poetical merit, is a great desideratum, in the social character of our country. A most exalted merit it is-precious in itself, still more precious as an index of what is felt and thought by a people, and as tending to foster and to warm into enthusiasm, all the sentiments that do most honour to human nature. In this point of view, Mr. Bryant deserves well of his country-and if "one great and kindling thought," as Dr. Channing sublimely expresses it, may awaken the minds of men to virtue and to glory, and live when thrones are crumbled, and those who sat upon them forgotten, let no one rate that service low.

ART. VII.-The History of England. By the Right Hon. Sir JAMES MCINTOSH, M. P. Vols. 1, 2. Philadelphia. 1830.

THE subject, of which the present article is to treat, is an august nation. In the statistics of the world, no people count larger items of power than England; none rivals her wealth, and in the perfection to which she has brought the arts of life she is the wonder and the benefactress of all. There are other titles, more venerable far, to exalt her in all eyes: these were nobly indicated by Wordsworth in 1802, when he mourned for the tardy arising within her of a spirit commensurate with the great part of liberatress of the world, which he predicted she was to play. He fondly complained that

altar, sword and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness.

If each single word of this complaint be well meditated, it opens all the characteristic glories of his country. To America, however, this power, thus august and venerable in herself,