across the Hudson or the bay, as the sun sinks to his evening pavilion or whether he gain an afternoon to visit suburban landscapes, and "walk in the fields, hearing the voice of God:" and when his mind is full, he pours it forth, a deluge of strong and brilliant imaginings. He suffers little or nothing to go forth to a cold-bosomed public which does not bear the impress of a master's hand. The first poem in the volume before us establishes the powerful originality of his style. In the present age of indiscriminate locomotion--when "the universal Yankee nation," using the phrase in the national sense, are every where present in Europe, by travelled delegations--we all know how stale and unprofitable are their pictures and descriptions of ivied ruins and broken turrets, the homes of rooks and owls-where the moon is as constant an attendant for every tourist, as if she were hired for the occasion, under a contract of "no postponement on account of the weather;" we know the thricetold tales of halls, and armours, and corridors, and so forthpart romance, part reality;--and it is an easy thing to set them down at their true value. But, let the reader peruse such a concentrated sketch as the following of Alnwick Castle-and will he ever forget it? Not soon.

"Gaze on the abbey's ruined pile:

Does not the succouring ivy, keeping
Her watch around it, seem to smile,
As o'er a loved one sleeping?
One solitary turret gray

Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,

The Percy's proudest border story.

That day its roof was triumph's arch;

Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,

The light step of the soldier's march,
The music of the trump and drum;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn, and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home."

If

We ask a close attention to the lines we have Italicised. there be any thing more delicious in the whole range of English literature, we have not yet encountered it. Something akin to them may be found in Bassanio's exclamation in the Merchant of Venice, when he draws from the leaden casket that which assures him how he is beloved :

-

In this little gem of a picture, the author of Alnwick has taken us back to the past. The pomp and circumstance of the victory and the return are there; the harpings in the hall of triumph; the shouts of retainers; the joy of the feast; the draining of huge draughts of Rhenish down; the speaking roll of the drum to the "cannonier without;" and the echoes which that noisy functionary sends thrilling magnificently toward the empyrean. This is abbreviated romance--it is the spirit of unadulterated chivalry. The true poet alone could thus embody the scenes of other days. Some who affected the burlesque, and shone therein, have delighted to imagine that knights templars have left their blacksmith's bills for mending coats of mail unpaid, all the way from England to Palestine; and bold historians have sometimes represented them as clumsy horsemen, with their limbs galled, and their unwashed persons irritated, by rusty armour. We do not, for our parts, affect this dissolving of ancient spells: and we can scarcely forgive those venerable chroniclers, Froissart, de Thou, or Stowe, for representing the characters of so many heroes, "dear to fancy" and treasured in the recollection of every true lover of the brave and noble, apparently in puris naturalibus--without that ornament which, with the aid of their recorded deeds, imagination could easily supply. For the same reasons, we take but little pleasure in perusing those short narratives in the Decameron of Boccacio, from which Shakspeare has built a fairy and unconquered world. Who would go to the dull outline which some old monk or annalist has furnished of Romeo and Juliet, when he could revel in that glowing description written by the bard of Avon? The moonlight sleeps upon the garden of the Capulets, when we survey it from the window of our imagination, as palpably as if the rustling of its leaves were in our ear-we hear the stifled sigh-the broken vow-the voice of Philomel singing in the branches. What has "unaccommodated" history to do with the enchanting transactions of that balmy night, and the loving interlocutors who made its presence holy? By the mass, nothing. The poet's duty is to give us things, robed couleur de rose; to shed around nature a perfume richer than the breath of the violet-and to suffuse it "with tints more magical than the blush of morning." A power or skill like this bespeaks more readily the poet, nascitur, non fit, than the wildest bursts of animal passion: it exhibits a quality, ethereal-heavenly-which owns no touch of this working-day world. And as often as we think of the devoted pair of Verona, so often are we reminded of their familiar identity; as if we saw the noble girl sinking into the tomb of her fathers. In our mental vision,

"The summer rose hath not yet faded-
The summer stream not yet decayed;
The purple sky is still unshaded,

And, from the sweet pomegranate-glade,
Floateth the night-bird's serenade;
Flower, and stream, and song remain-
Not one of Nature's charms hath fled;
While she, who breathed a softer strain,
Herself a fairer flower, is dead."

We had not intended to stroll into so long a digression-and return to our author. Having quoted a parallel to those charming lines at the close of the extract from Alnwick, in the same language, we ought perhaps to seek a better in some older tongue. The task is difficult; for with all the luxurious tastes of lyrists in the bygone time, they had not a better perception of the beautiful than has been accorded, early and late, to a favoured few in many ages, who have swept the lyre with measures of English modulation. Mr. Halleck has built his rhymes with care: he has turned his stylus often, until every note he has recorded has discoursed pleasantly to his spiritual ear. Hence, his sentiments, above expressed, are not less pure than smooth-reminding one of those sweet and juicy lines in the Carmen ad Lydiam of Horace :

-" dulcia oscula, quæ Venus

Quintâ parte sui nectaris imbuit."

Next in order, among the productions in the volume under notice, appears that splendid lyric, entitled Marco Bozzaris. We will not so far question the good taste of the reader as to presume that he has not perused this stirring effusion, " time and again;" but we cannot refrain from offering the first portions of it for renewed admiration. To ourselves, the best test of its merit is the effect which it has upon our feelings. It is like contemplating a distant conflict, in which we have the deepest interest, but are forbidden to take a part. The spirit of liberty thrills through every line. We are convinced, while we read with tingling veins, that the writer possesses the true chivalresque quality; and that, occasion serving or demanding, he would be quite ready to distinguish himself, like Körner, not with the lyre merely, but the sword. In truth the very quantity and movement of this noble poem seem instinct with martial ardour. Like the war-horse in Scripture, the author, in his spirit at least, "goeth forth to meet the armed men. The quiver rattleth against him; the glittering spear and the shield. He saith ha, ha! among the trumpets; he heareth the battle afar off; the noise of the captains, and the shouting." Let the reader observe the life-like energy with which the Turk is

awakened from his last gorgeous dream, and hears the deathshots falling around him, like the angry bolts of heaven as they leap from the bosom of an Alpine tempest;—the stern and patriotic command that rings through the sacred air; the tumult that ensues;—the leaden rain-and the harvest of death. We mark some lines in Italic, not that we suppose their grandeur and beauty will not be perceived, but to express how especially we appreciate them.

"At midnight, in his guarded tent,

The Turk was dreaming of the hour
When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent,
Should tremble at his power:

In dreams, through camp and court, he bore
The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of triumph heard ;
Then wore his monarch's signet ring:
Then pressed that monarch's throne-a king;
As wild his thoughts,
and gay of wing,

As Eden's garden bird.

"At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band,

True as the steel of their tried blades,
Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood,
On old Platæa's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,
As quick, as far as they.

"An hour passed on-the Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last;
He woke to hear his sentries shriek,
'To arms! they come! the Greek! the Greek!'
He woke to die midst flame, and smoke,
And shout, and groan, and sabre stroke,

And death shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain cloud;
And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,
Bozzaris cheer his band:

'Strike—till the last armed foe expires;
Strike-for your altars and your fires;
Strike-for the green graves of your sires;
God-and your native land!

"They fought-like brave men, long and well;
They piled that ground with Moslem slain;
They conquered-but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw

His smile, when rang their proud hurrah,

And the red field was won;

Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night's repose,

Like flowers at set of sun."

The verses in memory of Robert Burns, addressed to a rose brought from near Alloway Kirk, in Ayreshire, in the autumn of 1822, which follow the lyric from which we have just made an extract, are worthy of any modern pen, whose products are but the synonyms for true inspiration. The author has written in a strain worthy of his subject: his method is simple, fervent, and dear to the heart. He has a Scott-like faculty, we think, of contemplating his theme with a nice severity;-there is a simplex munditiis about the objects of his song, sometimes, that really gives them more attraction than the most laboured measures could otherwise impart. The mere sight of a rose, brought across the Atlantic, awakens in his mind a host of happy and pathetic imaginations. He is reminded of the autumn noon when he first detached it from its parent stem, on "the banks of bonnie Doon." He bore it with him across the winter sea; and lo! when it meets his eye in his native country, a multitude of recollections pass, with kaleidoscopic colours, through his mind. We consider this faculty of making one thought provoke a legion of others, as among the highest attributes of human intellect. That our author possesses it to more than the ordinary extent, is undeniable. With him the running brook might indeed furnish forth its volumes; or the mossy stone, half hidden from the eye, fructify into a sermon. This power of his reminds us frequently of the peculiar gifts of the imaginary German, Teufelsdröch, with whom the author of Sartor Resartus has caused the English and American reader to be well acquainted. This faculty of making the most evanescent thing in nature a nucleus for profound reflection, is admirably exhibited in the following passage:-"As I rode through the Schwarzwald," he writes, "I said to myself: that little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing moor, where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe-is it a detached, separated speck, cut off from the, whole universe; or indissolubly joined to the whole? Thou fool; that smithy fire was primarily kindled at the sun; is fed by air, that circulated from before Noah's deluge-from beyond the dog-star; it is a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of immensity." We cannot help comparing the spirit which dictated these sentences, to that which can evoke from a scentless rose, a thousand leagues from the source where it bloomed, a tribute like the one from which the following quotation is offered.