be done that night but to watch, and if attacked, to defend ourselves as well as we could. We posted our sentinels, and lay on our arms all night without sleep-the roar of the winds often being transposed by fancy into the warwhoop of the savage. The night passed without disturbance, and in the morning we resolved in council that we would make the best of our way to the army, and not stay to be scalped. As we were beginning to make preparations to set out, our commander arrived, and despatched a scout to learn something of the force of the enemy, as they could easily be tracked on the snow. We soon fell on the trail of the Indian I saw the day before, and followed it without meeting with any others for a number of miles; we then returned satisfied that there was but one Indian in the neighborhood at present, and as we were about forty in number, we judged it would be safe to maintain our position, which we did with complete success.

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

NOTE RESPECTING THE

ODE TO THE SUN," ON PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT, OF THE

PRESENT NUMBER.

THE Ode to the Sun, in the present number of the Democratic Review, though now printed for the first time, was written many years ago. The author was a young clergyman of the Wesleyan persuasion, himself some years dead. Though evidently very imperfect-the first inchoate effluence of the mind that conceived it— this production will be admitted to be, in many respects, remarkable, and contains evidences of an exquisite poetical power; at times replete with beauty, and frequently evincing a grandeur of conception that approaches the sublime.

It was intended by the author as the commencement of a lengthened poem in the Spenserian stanza, to be called "THE SUN," and to have embraced the illustration, in verse, of the noble range of subjects for poetry which can be readily imagined as connected with the historical and astronomical phenomena of that luminary. The universality and unmixed good of its agency in sustaining life, and producing the beauty, harmony, and fertility of the material universe, naturally inspiring a religious awe and veneration in the darkness and infancy of the human mind, and the effects of this feeling in the sun-worship of the ancient world;—the Chaldaic poetry;— the eternal and mysterious architecture of Egypt;-the Cromlechs and "unchiselled piles" of the aboriginal Celts, with the "satanic rites" of the "hoary Druid with his knife upraised; "—the Ghebers of Persia, and the golden temples of Peru, a realm ruled by the children of the Sun, with the illustrations which history supplies of these grand and solemn rites of the primitive races of mankind-would have formed a portion of the subject, susceptible in a high degree of poetical interest and grandeur. The great historic actions recorded by sacred and profane writers, which contemporaneous phenomena of the Sun would have connected with the subject, from the miracle of Joshua-where the command of the General of the Lord,

"Winged with the power that poised thee in the sky,”*

Made the sun "stand still upon Gibeon,”— -to the thick darkness that fell on the face of the earth at the crucifixion, would have afforded episodes worthy the noblest pencillings of the heroic muse. Finally, the effects of the sun, upon the climate of the various countries of the earth, were intended to furnish the poet in their description with opportunities of selecting, from the infinite varieties of the human race and manners, the themes best adapted for the exercise of imagination and description, and would have produced a panorama of striking subjects of greater variety, sublimity, and interest, than the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold.

A line from the original draft. Among other disjecta membra of a similar kind, we select the following, probably intended as a part of the Ode or Proem which we have given→

Undying, dazzling, unapproached, alone,

Art thou the palace of that glorious God

Who willed the thought, and saw around his throne

Unnumbered worlds born instant at his nod,

Shedding their starry light o'er space abroad.

*

Here it may be proper to observe that the verses between the lines of asterisks (pages 31 and 32) were evidently intended to occupy another place in the poem.

Whether a subject so sublime, so unique, so extensive, which would have been a theme to have kindled the noblest inspiration of Milton or Dante, would have been adequately treated, can never be now conjectured; and whether, if the design had been fully executed, it would have formed an epic that would have lived forever, or have been classed among the ambitious failures of intellect overstrained, which crowd every language—it were now vain indeed to speculate. Those who knew its author well recollect in him an expansiveness of mind, and a range of faculties of the highest order, that sometimes flowed out in eloquence that filled the heart with fervid thought, and was characterized by a command of language and a grasp of intellect that must have ensured success in any pursuit to which the full energy of his mind had been applied.

Certainly in the fragment now published, utterly unfit as it is-except in connection with the circumstances we have mentioned-to be put forth as a regular poem, there will be found many lofty and striking thoughts, worthy of the ambitious subject which had been assumed, and sufficient to give poetic vitality to far more serious errors of style and composition than it possesses. Dulness and imbecility of imagination form no part of its faults; there is, on the contrary, throughout, an exuberance of vigour tending to exaggeration-while such lustrous gems of thought as the following, that are scattered with no sparing hand over this interesting relic, are sufcient to give it much interest to every lover of poetry. We proceed to select almost at random:

that orb of fire

Intensely glowing on creation's spire,

Is an original and striking idea vigorously and happily expressed; while the

music

of the spheres," so often sung by poets, was never described in verse with a beauty more exquisite than that displayed in the following lines:

* * the tremblings of that song sublime

Pealed forth melodious through unconnted years,
While echo, lightning-winged, conveys the chime,
To ring its sweetness forth in many a starry clime.

There is high sublimity in the poetic epithet,

A HIEROGLYPHIC OF THE ALMIGHTY GOD,

as applied to the Sun, and the succeeding lines are scarcely less fine:

Thy surface, like a burning mirror wrought,
Sends the bright image of his face abroad.

Again, the exceeding beauty of the following stanza will strike every mind:
Now I have gained thy summit, and mine eye
O'erlooks a vast empyreal wilderness,-

Isles filled with immortality float by,

And glittering millions in the distance press.

"Great brilliant sparkling in Creation's breast," is another of those happy poetic expressions which conveys an image in the most pleasing and appropriate language to the mind. Many other ideas will be discovered, by a careful, perusal of the verses, which will satisfy the reader that the praise we have bestowed on them is correct, and that the obvious imperfections of an unfinished production, such as this should not have been permitted forever to consign beauties of so high an order to obscurity and neglect.

THE LATE DR. COOPER.

The name of Dr. COOPER, who died recently at Columbia, S. C., has been before the public, attracting a good deal of attention, for sixty years, during which time there is scarcely any department of intellectual exertion with which it has not been connected.

man.

For the extent and multifariousness of his knowledge, he was indeed a very extraordinary He published works on law, medicine, medical jurisprudence, political economy, and was an habitual writer upon current politics. He translated Justinian and Broussais. He received an honorary diploma of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania, and was a judge of the court of common law of that State. He was at one time professor of chemistry in the College of Carlisle-was offered the same chair in the University of Virginia, by his friend Mr. Jefferson, and subsequently filled it in the College of South Carolina. Of the last he became President upon the death of Dr. Maxco, and, by order of the trustees, lectured on chemistry, geology and political economy. To these encyclopedic, acquirements and occupations he added a large acquaintance with elegant literature.

At the age of eighteen he came from the University of Oxford, with its scholarship and its censures. He at once associated himself (with the natural ardor of his temper and of his time of life) with that party in England which hailed with rapturous enthusiasm the commencement of the French revolution. How few of his associates have, like him, lived to see, after the gloomy eclipse of their hopes for so many years by the turbulent and bloody events of that struggle, their final realization in the regeneration of Europe! His hopefulness had never failed. From eighteen to eighty the love of liberty never forsook him, nor a cheerful confidence in its triumph, nor a willing labor in its service. Associating himself with the most excited of the Anglo-Gallican party, he signalized at once his zeal and courage in the earliest effort of his pen. He entered the lists with Mr. Burke, whose prophetic spirit had penetrated into all the horrors of the storm, but could not see through its darkness the results for which a benign Providence permitted a season of desolation. The same courage which impelled Dr. Cooper into the controversy with Mr. Burke, prompted him to the more hazardous adventure of denouncing Robespierre from the tribunal of the Jacobins, whither he had been sent as a delegate from a Manchester association. The versatility of his talents was conspicuous at this early period. Within a very short space of time he was a political missionary-a member of a committee of chemists to report upon the intensity of certain dyestuffs and stood with Mr. Erskine at the assizes as junior counsel for Mr. Walker and other gentlemen of Manchester charged with treason. When the eloquence of Burke, the power of Pitt, and the unspeakable atrocities of the French revolution, had crushed the Gallican party in England, young Cooper in 1793 followed Dr. Priestly to this country, whither the advocates of liberty had turned their aching sight from the blasted prospects of Europe. Here, too, he combined the pursuits of science and literature with an active participation in political affairs. He was associated with Dr. Priestly in his philosophical investigations, and upon his death published an elaborate biography of him in two volumes.

In the contest between the Federal and Republican parties, he of course took sides with the latter, and signalized his adherence to it by the free exercise of his ready pen. For a spirited animadversion upon the principles and tendency of the Administration of the elder Adams, he incurred the penalties of the sedition law by fine and imprisonment. The pecuniary mulct has not been restored to him by the tardy justice of Congress.

In the controversy of South Carolina with the General Government, he vindicated the policy of the State with signal zeal and ability, and contributed, with "Brutus and the rest," to arouse and inform public opinion. Amidst the high names which illustrated that bold and memorable moveinent, his was conspicuous. His facility of composition, his readiness to work, his abundant knowledge, and the point and terseness of his style, gave him great influence on public opinion, and properly entitle him to be classed among the leaders in that enterprise.

Nor did his active participation in those stirring events abstract him from the pursuits of science or philosophy, or interrupt the most exemplary attention to his peculiar duties as President and Professor. No one ever performed those duties with more exact punctuality. His presence in the lecture-room was as regular as the arrival of the hour; and, when there, those who heard him could scarcely have believed that he had ever occupied his mind but with the business appropriate to that scene. He showed great mastery of his subject, a per

fect acquaintance with every addition made to it from any quarter of the globe, and brought illustrations from the whole circle of science and the whole field of literature. His lectures were not only instructive, but beautiful, and delivered with a perspicuity and simplicity that at once adapted them to the comprehension of learners, and recommended them to the taste of the learned.

That his abundance of knowledge and uncommon aptitude to communicate it, joined to great industry and activity, failed to confer upon the College that degree of prosperity which might have been expected from such a combination of qualities in the President, perhaps arose from his avowal of peculiar opinions on theological subjects-opinions which, it appears to us, he would have been more prudent not to have avowed.

Upon his resignation of the Presidency of the College, the Legislature confided to him, with a liberal salary, the collection and digestion of the Statutes of the State, in the performance of which duty he died, having completed four volumes.

The predominant qualities of Dr. COOPER's intellectual character were intrepidity and activity. His mind coursed the whole field of learning with untiring rapidity. It incessantly sought for knowledge, not with any apparent drudgery or toil, but, up to the last moments of his life, with that youthful and fresh alacrity which belongs to the pursuit of pleasure. He did not hesitate to follow his reasoning wherever it led, and what he thought he said. Authority had but little weight with him. He always endeavored to apply the touchstone of reason to every proposition, and to judge of it by that test alone.

His multifarious studies, and his uncommonly wide observation of society, had enriched his memory with vast stores of useful and agreeable topics; and these, combined with a cheerful temper, a social spirit, and a most pleasant style of conversation, rendered him a most delightful companion. He was an admirable talker-terse, epigrammatic, gay, and instructive. He was rarely in a company in which he did not say the best thing that was uttered. His conversation was illustrated by well-turned anecdotes, ornamented by sparkling classical allusions, and enriched by sensible and judicious remarks. His temper was most agreeable, and his whole manière d'être distinguished by a pervading bonhommie and kindness of nature. He was benevolent, friendly, and impulsive; prompt to do a good turn, to spread friendships and to cover heats." He was fond of children, addicted to pets, and kind to servants. Throughout his whole behaviour there was a winning simplicity and directness, always agreeable, but, in one of his age, learning, and abilities, peculiarly captivating. He resided in Columbia for the last twenty years, and the Telescope, a newspaper published in that city, from which we extract the above sketch of his character and career, adds, that it doubts whether during that time he had ever been known to manifest a feeling of personal unkindness towards any individual.

THE VICTORIA FEVER.

There is so much, and to us painful, truth in the following letter, which—to its credit be it said-we take from a Whig paper, that we cannot resist the temptation of transferring it to our pages, that the absurdity it describes may be laughed at as a folly, or referred to as a warning or example, as the mood of the reader may be inclined. The remark of the British traveller that the United States now were as much subject to the English System as the Colonies once were to the English King, would appear, as far as the wretched apeing, anti-republican fashion of the times is concerned, to be rather a momentous truth than a vain, inflated boast. Our papermoney, banking, credit, and stock operations, are dependent, even to their minutest ramifications, on the temper of the Bank of England and the change-jobbers of London. That is the dark side as affecting our national morals, manners, and institutions, of the same feeling which has run to such a ridiculous excess in Philadelphia; and, unless it is checked by a more wholesale infusion of the honest demo