tion of name which attaches to Bulwer's novel of "Night and Morning." Passing over the "Sacrifice of Abraham," we come next to an expression in the "Shunammite,” which strikes us with its absosolute childishness: which mark each poem vivify the illustra- | case. But we take the liberty to submit that "the cleft of a pomegranate blossom” is as unlike the parting of a woman's lips as it is possible to conceive; and as the cleft of this blossom is by no manner of means a very graceful or luscious severance, but on the contrary rough and rugged for so gorgeous a flower, we incline to think that so exquisite a gentleman as Mr. Willis would have hesitated about the comparison if he had ever seen the petals of a pomegranate bloom. "She drew refreshing water, and with thoughts Of God's sweet goodness stirring at her heart," &c. Nor have we the least patience with such flippant taste as we find evidenced in the closing lines of the poem, where our poet does not allow his readers even a breathing spell-but favors them only with a starry interval betwixt the period of the child's lingering, "long drawn out" death, and his hocus-pocus (à la Willis, we mean) restoration to life by the prophet. The poem of Jephthah's Daughter, we think, begins with entirely too much abrupt ness: "She stood before her father's gorgeous tent." There is a sort of sneaking resemblance to the opening line of Mrs. Hemans's heroic poem, Casabianca: “The boy stood on the burning deck.” Or if Mr. Willis and his admiring coterie will pardon the allusion, we may rather liken it to a smack of the fine old nursery song: "Lord Lovell he stood at his castle gate." We should suppose from the following, from the same poem, that Mr. Willis had no very keen relish for a woman's lips, or no very nice perceptions of their daintiness, or else, having been born and bred in northern regions, was unused to the tropical growths of the sunny South: "Her lip was slightly parted, like the cleft Of a pomegranate blossom." Now we are not at all of opinion that the term cleft when thus applied is an admissible expression, for we read much oftener of clefts in rocks than in blossoms. We have heard of Moses being ensconced in the cleft of a rock while God's glory passed along we cannot imagine how Moses could seat himself in the cleft of a blossom; and yet, the objects being totally dissimilar, the phrase must be incorrect in one or the other While describing with much enthusiasm the beauty of Jephthah's daughter, the poet winds up with the following: "Her countenance was radiant with love; After having exhausted description of the same anatomical tendencies as previously gone through with in the case of Jairus's daughter, and lavished on his young heroine every beauty of thought of imagery, we are quite too suddenly let down with the expression above italicized. To "die for it" is a loose, vulgar arrangement of words, amounting almost to downright indecency. We do not look for such within the pages of so neat a book, or from the pen of so courtly a litterateur, especially when that pen is engaged with such lofty and sacred subjects. We recollect to have come across such an expression in the first pages of the Heart of Mid Lothian, where, after the mob had broken down the door of the tolbooth, one of the number releases an imprisoned fellowbandit, with the advice, "Rin for it, Ratcliffe!" Now, at such a time, in such a place, and uttered by such a person, no expression could have been more appropriate or in better taste. But as applied to so lovely and interesting a creation as Jephthah's hapless daughter, no set of words can be more harsh or unseasonable. "Onward came The leaden tramp of thousands.” This, again, found a few lines afterward, is an incorrect and unfortunate simile. There is nothing martial or stirring in connection with leaden materials. Lead gives back a dull, dead sound. Nor is it possible to understand or perceive the pith and point of an expression which presupposes leaden shoes, as it is a metal never used for that purpose, whether for men or horses. The last being evidently alluded to, we rather think a son of Vulcan would smile at stumbling on such an idea. We are glad we can reconcile it to the task we have undertaken, to say that we consider the poem on Absalom quite a creditable and successful effort,-much the best of the sacred series as so far noticed. The prettiest lines and strongest description which occur in the whole series may be found, we think, in the poem of "Christ's Entrance into Jerusalem.” The imagery here shadowed forth is inconceivably grand and magnificent, wholly beyond the bounds of the rather contracted and too tame description of Mr. Willis. Indeed, we have long thought that this most interesting Scriptural event is eminently prolific of wide and glorious themes of contemplation, and we wonder that so spiritless a writer, poetically speaking, as our author, should so boldly have ventured to versificate the simple and unadorned narrative of the sacred penmen. We have loved, oftentimes, to imagine the incidents of that eventful morning when, seated on the picturesque summit of the Mount of Olives, the august son of Mary gazed sadly, though with the eager admiration of expanded tastes, on the glorious beauties and resplendent panoramic scenery which all around opened to view. And what would not his adorers of the present day have bartered to have been numbered among the little group whose wondering eyes were fixed, entranced and bewildered, on the benign and mysterious young Being whose lips were giving utterance to that gloomy prophecy which announced, in mournful strains, the approaching calamities and woes of Zion! "There stood Jerusalem!" The early rays of the sun dispensed, perhaps, a cheerful hue over the scene, and the soft breath of the morning breeze swept gently through the groves of palm trees which waved in the valley. Just beneath, at the mountain's base, was the smiling little hamlet of Bethany, the quiet abode of the lovely sisters and their brother, with its groups of neat cottages, and modest pastoral mansions, half obscured in the vast shadows which yet enveloped them. Beyond, arose in sullen majesty the bleak and frowning mountains which overlooked the ancient city of the Canaanites, and immediately between was Jerusalem itself-with its hills, and winding walls, and wild ravines-looming in the mellow light, with those stupendous architectural monuments which had endured since the age of Solomon, and which, long centuries anterior, had fallen under the eye of the Macedonian conqueror. Rising proudly above the rest was the famous mount of Zion, the ancient Acropolis of King David, crowned with the splendid palace which had once sheltered the royal lover and his frail Bathsheba; whose spacious harems swarmed afterwards with the thousand voluptuous houris of their amorous son, and which, even in ruin, seemed to assert its former grandeur. Opposite, was the crescent-shaped mount of Acra, romantically studded with lesser eminences; and from whence towered the grand and gorgeous structure first consecrated to the worship of Israel's God, the gigantic dimensions of which yet startle and bewilder mankind. We may easily imagine that, as the sun's brilliant rays irradiated the glittering front, it appeared to the group on Mount Olivet as a vast mountain of dazzlingly white marble, presenting a magnificent array of domes, and pillars, and turrets, all fretted with golden pinnacles, which, touched with the resplendence of the early morn, shone with surpassing grandeur. Intervening was the broad valley of the Cheesemongers, so famed in Bible story, and from the dark bosom of which bubbled the sparkling pool of Siloam; while on the north, from amidst cliffs and crags covered scantily with dwarfed shrubbery, was Calvary-destined, a few months afterward, to tremble beneath the wonders Beneath and the horrors of the crucifixion. were seen the rock-clad streets which had been so often threaded by the hostile bands of Gentile conquerors, and so often drenched with the blood of prostrate Israel. Before that temple had Alexander paused to reverence the High Priest. There the Syrian chieftain, surrounded by his fierce soldiery, had designed to honor the Jehovah of his fallen foe; and there, too, had Pompey the Great, fresh from the gory field, bent his haughty spirit before the hallowed associations belonging to the spot. Such are the imperfectly-told and mere skeleton outlines of a theme which might have challenged the minstrelsy of a Homer, but which Mr. Willis, with singular apathy and negligence, has been content to cramp up within the space of some half dozen lines, in despite of its crowds of suggestive associations so legitimately appropriate to his subject. The limits of a critique will not allow us thus to loiter; we must pass on, therefore, to the "Baptism of Christ." Our attention is first arrested by these lines: "Softly in Through a long aisle of willows, dim and cool, Stole the clear waters with their muffled feet." We do not know, in the first place, what business the preposition in has where we find it, unless Mr. Willis designed, at the risk of grammar, to lengthen his line to the proper measure; but we are utterly confounded when our author comes to speak of the "muffled feet" of "clear waters." We are familiar with the expression "foot of the mountain," or "foot of the hill," but we have jumped up for the first time that of the feet of waters-muffled at that. We are to suppose, however, that as we become acquainted with Willisiana perfumes, we are in like manner to learn Willisiana figures of speech, having already shaken hands with the "fingers of the dawn," and stumbled against the "muffled feet" of water. A few lines after these we find that Mr. Willis, with the unrestrained privileges of a poet, ventures unhesitatingly and quite complacently to settle a Scriptural quarrel which has consumed hundreds of disputatious folios, and has puzzled learned theologians ever since the apostolic era; for, alluding to John the Baptist, we meet with the lines describing him, as "He stood breast-high amid the running stream, Baptizing as the Spirit gave him power." It is by no means conceded by Christians that John actually went into the "running stream;" and although Mr. Willis's version may be sanctioned by the sectaries of the old Baptist denomination and the neophytes of the Campbellian school of divinity, we yet think that the same would be denounced as heretical and unorthodox by the doctors of Geneva, of Oxford, and of the Sorbonne; while even Rome might fulminate her Papal bulls against the rash assumption. We take the following from the poem of Hagar in the Wilderness: "It was an hour of rest; but Hagar found No shelter in the wilderness, and on Taken as a whole, we must pronounce this extract to be very awkward, very inexpressive, unideal, and commonplace. Besides the sluggish composition, there is exhibited a most woful deficiency in creativeness of imagination and artistic ingenuity. If we analyze minutely, it is to be feared that numerous minor blemishes may be shown. In the short space of eighteen lines the words he and she are made to occur eleven times; as if the author's ideas could not be cut loose from his characters. During the same time Hagar rose up and sat down again twice. She lifts Ishmael up and lays him down twice. The last time she leaves him to repose in a rather intangible and undefinable place, for Mr. Willis tells us she "laid his head beneath the shadow of a desert shrub." We should suppose that a desert or leafless shrub would afford but scanty shade, where even "thick pines" had been found too "close and hot." vide a "bow of Love" we are wholly unable | heretofore, to make it altogether a condescento divine; nor can we tell what earthly sion to scrutinize and test its merits. 66 connection a scarlet thread" can have with the figure. The same poem furnishes another specimen of labyrinthal composition: "He who wept with Mary-angels keeping Their unthank'd watch, are a foreshadowing Of what love is in heaven." The admirers of Mr. Willis cannot expect to so venalize others of less susceptible and, perhaps, less indulgent temperaments, as to extort universal concessions in favor of their poet's claims to the laurel wreath. It has been, all along, their good pleasure and his interest to cry up and extol these feeble offerings to the shrine of the Muses. Nobody has felt any pleasure, or taken any interest, in crying them down. But we think that this indifference has been carried quite far It would require, we think, a ball of our author's "scarlet thread" to wind through this foggy complicity of words at all under-enough; while leniency may become culpastandingly. We next get something of an ethereal adventure: For ble in view of Mr. Willis's vaulting ambition and excessive vanity, as well as of the extravagances of his admirers; and especially in view of the very serious fact that American literature, and not its counterfeit votaries, has to pay the penalty of all this hapless amiability and indifference. nothing is more certain than that by thus clogging the avenues to eminence with swarms of rampant, vain-glorious, elbowing pretenders, the doors are effectually closed against such as may really deserve to enter. Men of real talent disdain to resort to unworthy devices, or to join in unbecoming scuffles. Their mushroom competitors, on the contrary, are none too proud to stoop to any or all species of what may now be termed Barnumania, to attain a sickly and an ephemeral notoriety, and to pick up those scanty "present gains" to which Mr. Willis so candidly alludes in the preface to his book. We decline, for the present, to notice "Lazarus and Mary," and must here close with our excerpts from the "Sacred Poems." We trust that the admirers of Mr. Willis may pardon to candor much that has seemed bitter and harsh in the foregoing review. We have been led to undertake the task But we would not be understood as meanless from any exalted opinion of our author's ing to class Mr. Willis with that herd of merits as a poet, than with a view to set despicable and disgusting scribblers who, before the reader, fairly and undisguisedly, despite their blathering and nauseous excresthe nature and quality of that poetry which, cences, have so subsidized penny presses as in certain circles, has lifted Mr. Willis to that to crowd out, temporarily, all genuine literpedestal of favor which he so modestly ac-ary votaries, and to infect the country with knowledges in his preface. It has been perceived, doubtless, that we do not concede that unhesitating and redoubtable supremacy to which our author has so flippantly laid claim. On the contrary, we must frankly declare that we consider Mr. Willis a very ordinary and indifferent writer of poetry, and can only wonder how he became so grossly possessed as to suppose that he could conjure with a true wizard's rod, or sweep the harp with a minstrel's grace and skill. But his poetry, such even as it is, has been too much the theme of undisputed laudation, daily emissions of noisome nonsense, alike baneful to the encouragement of merit, and to the development of national literary resources. On the contrary, we desire to say that whatever contempt we may entertain for Mr. Willis's verses, we have yet seen much from his pen in a more appropriate and dignified department, that indicated, to our humble and imperfect judgment, talent of a very high and enviable order. But while entertaining a very high opinion of much of his prose writings, we are yet constrained to say, that our author would, to our judgment, have better con- | task of examining his entire book of "sacred, sulted his self-respect by abstaining from all adventurings in the way of poetry. We shall now dismiss Mr. Willis and his poems, for the present; promising, by-theby, that we design to resume and complete in some future number, our contemplated passionate, and humorous" poems; and that although we have chosen to select him, first, as the expiatory offering to the offended literary genius of America, he shall not be the last. Longwood, 1850. *** HENRY C. CAREY: THE APOSTLE OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. BY RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. HENRY C. CAREY has been recognized | fact that he was a consistent and ardent through continental Europe as one of the friend of protection. master thinkers of our generation. It is time for him to be known in his own country. In Political Economy he has applied the methods of the Positive Philosophy, and his works exhibit the chief advances the science has made since Adam Smith published his "Wealth of Nations." They are text-books in the colleges even of Sweden and Norway, while at the University in the street next to that in which the author has his residence, books are adopted composed of ideas from empirical and nearly obsolete systems: Say and Ricardo are regarded as expositors of the last and ultimate discoveries. Let us see if this law respecting prophets cannot be changed; or if not changed, confirmed, by an exception in the case of our philosopher. Ricardo left his doctrine of Rents; Malthus his principle of Population; their books are little read now, and they themselves would have been long since forgotten, but that they taught what had been taught by no others. Of the hundreds of their countrymen, who have since written, scarcely one has furnished a new idea; or if such an idea can be found in the books of any one, it will not bear investigation. Many have collected facts, that are useful, and all of them have talked and written about their facts and theories; but only as empirics. One man contended on one side and another on another, and there was no standard by which to judge them. Ricardo and Malthus gave laws that would not fit the facts, and the facts were altered and suppressed to suit the laws.* McCulloch taught that transportation and exchange were more advantageous than production, and Cobden that it was better to go to colonies in which rich lands were to be had cheap, than to stay at home where landlords charged high rents for the poor ones that were necessarily cultivated: and therefore Mr. Carey was born in Philadelphia, in December, 1793. His father was the late eminent Matthew Carey, memories of whose virtues preserve about his name a thousand delightful associations. Matthew Carey was a political economist also. He wrote much, and he wrote effectively, because he taught that which was in accordance with the feelings and interests of his readers; but he was of the old school, dead now, with its professors. He disliked abstract ideas or principles, and did not trouble himself much with their investigation. The consequence was, that he made no addition to politico-ing Chronicle, the conductors of that journal wishing him to suppress, in his reports on the condition economical knowledge, and left nothing by of the working classes, facts opposed to free trade. which he should be remembered except the + See Carey's Past, Present and Future, p. 128. * Thus we see by a correspondence published in the London papers that Mr. Horace Mayhew, author of the metropolitan "Labor and the Poor" articles, has ceased to write for the London Morn |