divert attention from their felt deficiencies in this respect. Our 'Young America' had not wit enough to coin for itself a name, but must parody one used in England; and in its pronunciamento in favor of a fresh and vigorous literature, it adopts a quaint phraseology, that so far from having been born here, or even naturalized, was never known among us, except to the readers of very old books and the Address of the Copyright Club. In all its reviews of literature and art, the standards are English, which would be well enough, perhaps, if they were English standards, but they are the fifth-rate men with whose writings only their own can be compared.' Their very clamor about 'Americanism' is borrowed from the most worthless foreign scribblers, and has reference chiefly to the comparatively unimportant matter of style. Of genuine nationality they seem to have no just apprehension. It has little to do with any peculiar collocation of words, but is the pervading feeling and opinion of a country, leavening all its written thought.'

This not only hits the nail on the head;' it drives it home, and buries it. We quite agree with Mr. GRISWOLD in the remark, that of all absurd schemes, the absurdest is that of creating a national literature by inventing tricks of speech, or by any sort of forced originality; of which fact, proof enough may be found in the writings of Mr. MATHEWS.' We commend The Prose Writers of America' cordially to a wide national acceptance; with the especial advice to the reader, not to overlook the excellent introductory Essay on the Intellectual History, Condition and Prospects of the Country,' which contains many noteworthy suggestions and much valuable literary information.

FROISSART BALLADS, AND OTHER POEMS. By PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE. In one volume: pp. 185. Philadelphia: CAREY AND HART.

THESE ballads came to us in an unlucky hour, for we had just been reading for the twentieth time those glorious lays of MACAULAY, that stir one like a clarion. But they have stood this severe test of comparison well, and certainly stand very far above the level of what is now-a-days miscalled 'poetry. Several of them are mere versifications of FROISSART's stories. Perhaps,' says the author, 'if I had carried out this purpose of fidelity to the noble old chronicler, my poetry would have been all the better for it.' 'Perhaps nothing of the sort; and we half suspect Mr. COOKE in his heart thinks so too; else why should he assign the first place to his original ballads, The master of Bolton,' and 'Geoffrey Tetenoire? Very properly are they thus placed, being decidedly the best things in the collection. A few stanzas from the latter will serve to give an idea of its spirit. The old out-law, litter-borne by his troop, is charged by a band of cavaliers :

'GIVE me a cross-bow in my hand,
And place a bolt therein!'

Grim GEOFFREY said; and bend the bow,
And let the bolt be keen.'

And then he scanned the County's band,
And bade his own hold place,
A perilous smile was fierce the while
Upon his ancient face.

'As leant he on his litter's side, An old and feeble man,

With raven locks so wonderful

Above his visage wan,

And peered with keen and ferret eyes
So subtil in their guile,

You would have said a common wrath
Was kindlier than his smile.

'He raised the cross-bow to his aim,
And then with sudden twang
The bolt flew forth, and angrily
Upon its journey sang.
The sharp bolt flew so swift and true,
That ere a man might speak,
It smote the County GASTON
Betwixt the eye and cheek.

Ah! ill betide the bowyer's craft
That shaped that bolt so true!
And ill betide that heart of pride
From whose fierce will it flew!
The County tottered on his horse,
His brain spun round and round,
And then he lost his rein, and fell
A dead man to the ground.'

Some of the miscellaneous poems have been published before. Florence Vane' has been much admired: it runs sweetly, but there are two very puzzling lines in it:

'THY heart was as a river

Without a main.'

Does this mean that the lady's heart never lost itself? We are DAVUS and not EDIPUS. Mr. COOKE has evidently studied TENNYSON and MACAULAY: he ought to have caught a little more harmony from them. We continually meet such lines as these:

'HER voice is ignorant of command.'

'Which take the golden light they are veiling.'

A man

May call a white-browed girl Dian.'

Rude natural tales: she had no love

Of trouvere or of troubadour.

All these in one poem; a poem too containing passages of such beauty as this:

"THE gods were very good to bless

My life with so much happiness.
The maiden on that lowly seat,

I sitting at her little feet!
Two happier lovers never met

In dear and talk-charmed privacy.

It was a golden day to me,

And its great bliss is with me yet,

Warming, like wine, my inmost heart:

For memories of happy hours

Are like the cordials pressed from flowers,
And madden sweetly.'

Frequently too, we stumble upon very uncouth words:

The lady JANE of Ventadore

Is irritant of mood.'

And oaken stools and cabinets,

The room's appurtenances.'

The cross that night had sunk before
The crescent orgillous.'

The term appurtenances' smacks of a lawyer's declaration in a case of trover; and although SHAKSPEARE speaks of princes orgulous' in his episode to Troilus and Cressida,' the introduction here of a kindred word is any thing but felicitous. In the enlarged edition, which Mr. CooKE promises, we trust these faults will be corrected.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE. BY DAVID N. LORD. In one volume. pp. 542. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THIS is properly denominated an exposition of the Apocalypse: a title to which few if any of the works that preceded it have any claim. It explains in the first place the nature and states the law of symbols, and thereby places their interpretation on clear and demonstrative grounds; a preliminary as indispensable to the exposition of the revelation as the axioms and definitions of geometry are to the solution of the propositions of EUCLID; and a requisite which no former commentators have furnished. They have neither given any just conception of the principle of symbolization, nor founded their explications on any uniform rule. They have often treated symbols as mere metaphors, or personifications, and almost uniformly mistaken their nature, and assigned to them significations at the utmost distance from their true meaning. This work will introduce a new era in the interpretation of the symbolic scriptures. No writer will hereafter follow the old method, any more than an astronomer would now proceed on the theories of the universe which were held anterior to the discovery of the law of gravitation; or a shipmaster attempt to cross the ocean by the rules of navigation which prevailed before the invention of the compass.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

NAVAL SKETCHES FROM THE GULF.- Our correspondent, Mr. E. C. HINE, 'posts up' to the last advices, in the annexed account of the sailing of the sloop-of-war 'Albany' from Pensacola, her arrival off Vera Cruz, and her adventures thereabout. Pass we the accustomed track, 'the breeze, the gale, the storm,' and the elaborate technical detail of the sailor, to come at once to the following: On a sunny afternoon we made the lofty and snow-crowned Arazabo, which stood glittering in the rays of the sun like a monarch arrayed in his jewelled robes, and the same evening came to an anchor under the lee of La Isla Verde,' where we found the United States' sloopof-war JOHN ADAMS, maintaining the blockade off Vera Cruz, and rolling heavily to and fro on the long glassy swell that came sweeping in from the Gulf of Mexico. After remaining for two days at our anchorage, during which time we were visited by Commodore CONNOR, on a lovely Sabbath morning we weighed anchor, and with a free fresh wind from the south-west, proceeded on a cruise down the enemy's coast. We had just got well clear of the harbor, when a large full-rigged brig was espied, under top-sails, jib and courses, standing leisurely and boldly in for the port of Vera Cruz. It being no part of the policy of our captain to permit strange vessels to enter an enemy's harbor, which was under a vigorous blockade, a shot was fired just ahead of the suspicious-looking craft, to bring her commander to a sense of his duty; but he impudently pursued his course, in defiance of the gentle admonition which had been furnished him. This was too much for our gallant captain calmly to submit to. The guns of the first, second and third divisions were cleared away, cast loose and manned, and every thing was in readiness to give our quondam friend a dose which it was thought he might not relish. Fire fine, Sir !' said our captain to the second lieutenant, and pitch it right into him! Bang! bang! thundered the cannon, in rapid succession, and away flew the iron hail, skimming and richoting along the tops of the waves, dashing their spray high in air, and passing close under the stern of the brig, which had at last hoisted the gorgeous ensign of Spain at her fore-topmast head. We were just preparing to give our proud neighbor a whole broadside, when he suddenly hauled upon a wind and backed his main-top-sail. As his broadside was turned toward us, we at once discovered her to be a Spanish manof-war. The Albany' was hove-to, and a boat was manned and sent on board the stranger, which proved to be La Patriot,' a Spanish brig of war, bound to the island of Sacrificio. When the officer commanding our boat arrived alongside the brig, he found her crew all at quarters, and full of fight as the Bishop of Bevis; her commander walking his quarter-deck, with wrath and indignation pictured on his coun

6

tenance. Does you vant to fight, Señor?' said he, looking round with considerable complacency upon the few old iron pots which garnished the side of his brig; 'I say, Sare! does you vant to fight?' However, on an explanation taking place, he cooled down, and the two officers parted company on exceedingly friendly terms; the brig being left to pursue her course without farther molestation.

The head of the Albany' was turned to the northward, and away she flew along the coast of Mexico, in search of other adventures. The third day after our departure, a tremendous Norther' came howling along, ploughing up the tortured ocean, and reducing the ship to her storm-sails. The gale, however, was not of long duration; and when it had subsided, we ran close in under the high rocky shores, and commenced cruising up and down the coast.

Can you

Sail, O!' cried the look-out from the fore-top-sail-yard, one bright morning, as we were leisurely standing off and on, under easy canvass. 'Where away?' sung out the officer of the deck. Two points on the weather-bow, Sir.' make her out?' 'A large barque, Sir, standing upon a wind, under top-gallant-sails and courses.' Very well. All hands make sail!' In a few moments we were staggering along under a pyramid of canvass, in pursuit of the strange barque, which proved to be a very fast sailer; so fast, indeed, that it was not until after night-fall that we were able to bring her to, by firing a shot over her. A prize-crew was sent on board of her, when she was found to be a French vessel from Bordeaux, laden with wines and silks, with a large number of passengers, many of them ladies. During the night we lay by our newly-acquired prize, and in the morning gave her over to a prize-master from the 'JOHN ADAMS,' who proceeded with her to the squadron, off Anton de Lizardo. We then made sail, and again proceeded upon a cruise. During the time that I have been on board this ship, I have often been very much amused at the long confabulations which frequently take place among the 'darkies.' The place where they usually convene being directly in front of my window, I have had many opportunities of overhearing their altercations, which have served to dissipate much of the ennui which always hangs around my lonely hours. One day a bevy of them gathered in front of my door, where they were very earnestly engaged in discussing the merits of a west' which one of their number had recently purchased (at a great sacrifice, it seemed,) from a sailor. It was a tawdry affair, covered with variegated and showy figures, large as your hand; yet it seemed to give great delight to its possessor, who turned it first in one position and then in another, to discover in which light it appeared the most beautiful; all the while grinning and chattering like a Brazilian ape, as he half-soliloquized upon its qualities in the follow. ing words:

Wal now! I reckin dat west's a shiner ! One dat's fit to wear in de king's pallus! Chaugh! I'm gwine to keep it till I gets home to Baltimore, and den, stan' clea' nigger! E'yah! e'yah!'

'So busily engaged was CUFFEE in detailing his anticipated triumphs among the dingy beauties of Baltimore, that he failed to observe the acquisition to his listeners of a little chubby ward-room darkie, who with lips apart, stood eagerly awaiting the completion of his comrade's eulogy upon the west,' when, with a look of intelligence and superior sagacity beaming in his face, he exclaimed, as he drew a long sigh:

Wal, gemmen, you may all say what you likes! Dat west is no doubt a wery fine one; dat's a fac'! It's a grand one, and no mistake! But, gemmen,

do n't be too elewated! Dat west would look mighty well on a white man; but you put dat west on a nigger—put it on a nigger, and 't will look like de wery debil! I tell you you can't make a nigger look well:

For dress a darkie how you will,

He'll be a dam black nigger still!''

'Had a thunder-bolt or a bomb-shell fallen among the astonished and indignant darkies, they could not have absquatulated with greater velocity! The next epistle from our lively correspondent may be dated from the castle of San Juan de Ulloa.

MORE TALK WITH MR. MOTH.' We welcome Mr. MoтH again to our pages, as will our readers. In justice to that unique gentleman, it behooves us to state, that a line in one of the stanzas from EMERSON, quoted by him in our last number, was made nonsense of by the careless substitution of the word 'sun' for 'sum.' The stanza should have read:

"THE babe by its mother

Lies bathed in joy;

Glide its hours uncounted,
The sun is its toy:

Shines the peace of all being

Without cloud in its eyes,
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.'

Mr. MOTH will now address the audience: How vigorously,' said Mr. MоTH, 'does EMERSON recall the writers of ELIZABETH's time! He has fed full upon them, until the matériel of his verse, however sprinkled with modern names and allusions, is rather of that age than this.'

'Yes,' said I, he is holy GEORGE HERBERT redivivus.'

"T is often said,' replied he; but I find more resemblance in him to another poet

of that period, whose name perhaps you will not guess.'

'I remember some verses of HERRICK's that might have been written at Concord:

'SWEET country life! to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own,

But serving courts and cities be,
Less happy, less enjoying thee.

Thou never ploughed the ocean's foam,

To seek and bring rough pepper home,

Nor to the eastern Ind dost rove

To bring from thence the scorchéd clove;
Nor with loss of thy lov'd rest
Fetchest ingots from the west,

No; thy ambition's master-piece

Flies no thought higher than a fleece,

Or how to pay thy hinds, and clear

All scores, and so to end the year.

When now the cock, the farmer's horn,

Calls for the lily-wristed morn;

Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go,

Which though well-soiled, yet thou dost know,

That the best compost for the lands

Is the wise master's feet and hands.'

And so on; don't you see, Sir, a sort of RALPH WALDO air about it? There's something in that epithet, 'Lily-wristed morn,' that strikes one as quite in his way; 't is pretty but far-sought; it implies a foregone personification of morning, that is quite charming.'