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MIDNIGHT IN STOCKHOLM.

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In a moment, Randolph determined he would stay at home that night. But then he thought of an engagement-might not that engagement have been innocently set aside ?-and he said, tenderly, "I think I must go, dear, but I will not stay long." Charles Randolph! take care! Thou hast already placed thy feet on one of the steps to ruin! Take care! Listen to the voice of thy better genius. Hark! it whispers to thee now. Nay, heed not that other voice. Let not the tempter lure thee to thy ruin. Stop! Thou hast even now cause to tremble. Hast thou not already entered the wicket-gate that leads from the path of virtue and peace to the path of vice and sorrow? Take care! think of thy wife, Charles, and of thy dear little babes. Alas! he has gone, and the partner of his bosom is kneeling at the cradle of her boy, and pouring out her heart to God for the tempted man. Tears, bitter tears, roil down her cheeks. Can it be ?-but no, nothat were impossible!-and she is calm again. Thus it is with the sorrow-stricken woman, the victim of a grief she cannot reveal, and of a fear she cannot acknowledge even to herself. Love, pure as an angel's, and stronger than the grave; hope, lighting up the darkest night; trust, that spurns every suspicion, as the voice of the tempter; constancy, like the everlasting hills;—these nerve her arm, and impart to her a heroism a thousand fold more worthy of the world's applause than that which is exhibited on the battle-field.

Charles Randolph-the devoted husband and fond father-loved more and more the excitement

of the bar-room. Many, many times, when his wife tearfully remonstrated with him, he resolved to leave that dangerous path. But his resolutions were broken. In less than seven years from the day of his marriage, he was a confirmed inebriate. Poverty stared that family in the face. His grim visage entered the door of their cottage, and became an inmate there.

Another year passed-two, perhaps. One night-a bleak, cold, stormy night in Februarythat poor victim of intemperance sought his accustomed haunt, the tavern. Like an insect, that plays around the flame which is consuming him, fascinated by the blaze, Randolph, though sensible that he was descending the steps to ruin, was yet urged on by an appetite which he had now not the power to control. That was a bitter cold night: fiercely howled the winds around the once happy home of Charles and Emma. How the blast sighed through the leafless boughs of the oak that stood there, like a guardian angel. The snow fell profusely, and was hurled into drifts as it reached the earth. Long and anxiously the wife and mother looked for the absent one-but he came not. He left the inu late, with the bottle in his hand. Poor man! His tale is soon told:

64 Nor wife, nor children, more shall be behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home."

He was found, when the morning dawned, lying in the road near his cottage, stiff and cold, with his dog caressing him, and striving to rouse him from the sleep of death!

LINES

Suggested by hearing Dr. Baird's description of his emotions while passing through the streets of Stockholm at the hour which corresponds with midnight in more Southern latitudes; the sun being there still some degrees above the horizon, while the entire population of the city have retired, and are wrapt in profound sleep.

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AMERICAN VERSE:-RALPH HOYT.*

BY W. A. JONES.

WHAT is true, generally, of the best poets, holds with regard to our own writers of verse: they are almost invariably the briefest. Brevity is the essence of wit in its widest acceptation; of passion and imagination no less than of epigrammatic smartness. The very highest flights of Fancy cannot be long sustained; the most brilliant flashes of genius are the most evanescent.

This has ever been the case, from the days of the Hebrew Bards, to the present epoch. And where great Poets have written long poems, how few of these are fairly endenizened in the national heart; and have taken a firm hold on the popular feeling. Few, very few, great, long poems survive a very limited period; and even the classic national epics, which can be counted on the fingers, are by no means perfect throughout. In the grandest of epics, Paradise Lost, how much there is one could willingly let die. Many fine poets of the second rank, assume that position from their perfect short pieces; not from mediocre long ones.

produces, instead, the ever-sweet rose, the graceful lily, the variegated tulip and the exquisite mignio

nette.

We have no cedars of Lebanon, but beautiful japonicas. The cactus is a true type of our poetical flowers. It is a foreigner; it is raised and developed with care and pains; and its flower is delicately fair.

Critically, the American Poets fall within the class of Minor Poets. They do not as a class--none of those whose verse will last-write at length, or in the highest walks of the Epic and Tragic Muse. Yet, their efforts may be and often are excellent. And we have thus far at least a score, but surely not over two hundred, as one collector affirmed, of true Poets, whose works will maintain a desirable place in all select collections of Poetry.

Of this nature, and belonging to this class, are the charming effusions of Mr. Hoyt's genius; who is not a great Poet, because he does not attempt the highest walks of Poetry; but who is a pure and sweet one, with judgment to boot, in not venturing upon flights without his reach, or wasting his powers on unattainable objects.

He has happily opened an original vein in these sketches, which display true pathos, and a delicate talent for satiric irony; descriptive skill and a fine ear, attuned to the nice management of his peculiar measures. A pleasing pastoral tenderness; a

But a short effort must be complete and finished, in itself, to be valuable. It is, as in statuary: the critic demands perfection; whereas, in architecture, one is necessarily more lenient. Or, as in painting, an historical picture may be deficient in parts, while a portrait ought to reflect the living features. Yet, one shall often find the Poet priding himself on his elaborate and longer produc-pure tone of domestic feeling runs through the tions, and contemning, as slight and worthless, verses of Mr. Hoyt, whose landscape is enveloped those fugitive, occasional effusions, which alone in an atmosphere of sentiment. stamp him with immortality.

The length of the performances of our Poets is in an inverse ratio to their intrinsic merits. Thus far, the longest are superlatively meagre and valueless, and fill single volumes, any one of which would probably contain the Gems of American Verse.

We need an American anthology, which should bring together many delicate blossoms, mostly reared in hot-houses, and which can ill bear the rude air of common criticism or the chilling breezes of neglect. Our Parnassus is a garden of exotics chiefly: we have no forest trees yet growing upon it. The soil is not hardy and vigorous enough for the towering oak or majestic elm: it

Sketches of Life and Landscape. By Rev. R. Hoyt. Shephard, 1891 Broadway.

ver

The present collection includes Julia, Edward Bell, Snow, White Dragon, World Sale, Old, New, Rain, Shower, Outalissa.

We by no means class these together. To our taste, there is a good deal of difference; and we greatly prefer some of these to the rest. We shall declare which, and for what reasons.

Snow, a rural sketch of winter; and Rain, in a lesser degree, a rural summer reminiscence; Old and New, we take to be four jewels of the first water, and superior to the other pieces, which are still fine copies of verses.

Julia and Edward Bell are pleasing persona! histories, of somewhat the same character, as to personages and to incidents, with Goldsmith's Hermit; but written, the first of them, more in Beattie's style; an imitation by no means marked-possibly unconscious to the author-and

THIRZA.

caught rather from a liking for and study of these delightful writers, than from any deliberate design at copying. The story is simple but natural; the happy union of long-separated lovers in Julia Jay; and the reflections of age, in Edward Bell, over the past delights of childhood and youth. Mere invention or high imagination our author does not profess to possess or display; but fine and faithful description, with just feeling, couched in elegant and melodious verse, he unquestionably may claim. SNow, is a masterpiece of description and sentiment. It deserves to be placed very near the Cotter's Saturday Night. It is a fine painting, and a religious poem. Domestic joys inspire the strain, and deepen the coloring. The minute detail, the accessories of the picture, are painted with Flemish fidelity, distinctness and brilliancy. The White Dragon, an appendage to Snow, is an allegorical attempt we do not like so much as we would if written by any one else. It is so unlike most of Mr. Hoyt's poems, that it does by no means harmonize (in our judgment) with the rest.

World Sale, is a moral sketch; the latter half of which is full of pith and point. It will not compare, however, with the succeeding, OLD and NEW. These are rarely choice, as an old writer might say. The pathos of the first is true; the satire of the second is as just and keen. What is more natural, than for an old man to grow sad on the spot where his youthful joys were partaken by a generation now past, not less fleeting than they? Can anything, again, be more according to nature, than the fickle anxiety of youth and love of change in man and woman, unchastised by suffering and trial? While man remains what he is, the truth of these fine poems must remain; and they alone should embalm the memory of their author. RAIN is a beautiful counterpart to SNow. It is a summer scene, taken off with the vivid fidelity of the winter picture. A sly humor peeps out occasionally, that gives a zest to the tender and romantic character of our author's productions; while it confirms the soundness of his poetical talent, and the healthiness of his moral constitution. The Shower is a cabinet piece, worthy of Rain; to

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which it serves as a pendant. Outalissa is something after Campbell's manner: a copy of Gertrude's Indian hero, in miniature.

Description, sentiment, humor: descriptive sentiment, or sentimental description, and humorous irony: these are the leading traits of Mr. Hoyt's poetical character: invention, passion, imagination, we do not find. Not force or depth, but gracefulness and purity. Original observation and original illustration, is here, without a particle of cant. There is always just, manly sense, and fine feeling: often verbal felicities occur; nor is the verse rough or halting. On the contrary, the variety and music of the rhythm, is one of the most attractive features of our Poet's muse.

Mr. Hoyt has in print some delightful poetical jeux d'esprit : we wish he would collect them with these pieces in a larger volume. In the Evening Mirror, he has had several; and we have lighted upon verses in the Sun, so much superior to the common run of newspaper verse, that we charged upon our author, pieces he confessed to be his.

We have not quoted a line, as we wish our readers to find out the separate beauties for themselves. The critic is a literary taster; but the reader must mark and inwardly digest for himself. Mr. Hoyt is a clergyman of the Episcopal Church; and may be fitly regarded as the best poct, by far, of that church. A modest, though manly preacher, he is not by any means a fashionable preacher; most fortunately for us and for his own true interest, though not for his pecuniary interest.

Able controvertists arise, flourish, die, are forgotten. Brilliant declaimers flash and vanish more suddenly still; but genuine poetry outlasts controversies and fashions in oratory, though it gives no personal popularity or worldly honors, or worldly gear. The Muse yields nothing perishable to her followers. Gold is not lasting, but glory is; so the Poet, too often, is poor and famous.

In the case of a professional man, this should not be; and we hope will not be with our author. Such as he, the Church should especially cherish.

THIRZA.

FORGET thee, Thirza? would to heaven I might—
I strive to do it every day. I know
My love is vain and hopeless, and a blight,—
A waste of all my energies; but oh,

I cannot rid me of it, 't is entwined
Around my very heart-strings. Death alone

Can separate it from them: years have flown

And changed in many things my fickle mind.
Sinful, apostate to my early creeds,
The freshness of my heart has passed away
And left it but a waste and ruin wild;
Thy love alone survives and mocks decay,
Holy and pure, where all things are defiled,
A spotless lily in a bed of poisonous weeds.
R. S. STODDARD.

'PARDONED.'

A Fragment from Beal Life.

(See the Engraving.)

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

SINCE the earliest dawn of morning had the unhappy wife been waiting at the gate of that doleful prison, until the hour appointed for admission. By the beatings of her own heavy heart she had counted the dreary minutes, as they slowly lagged along; and yet she listened with a shudder to the clock whose iron tongue was numbering her husband's last hours on earth. At length the door unclosed, and, taking her child by the hand, she followed the turnkey into the condemned cell. Alas! she had trod that darksome way many times before, but she was never again to follow its windings after this fearful morning. In the emaciated form of that lonely prisoner, in that pallid face, ploughed with the furrows of mortal agony,-she beheld the husband of her youth, the father of her child, ay, and the condemned felon. In vain had she sought for mercy from those who sat in the high places of judgment. She had found kindness, compassion, sympathy, but no promise of comfort. He must die-innocent of this last great crime, but with a life-time of sin yet unrepented of, he must die the death of a murderer. Yet not alone had he been left to encounter the horrors of that last night upon earth. One, whose duty taught him to administer the balm of spiritual healing, had knelt beside him during those frightful hours of darkness, and his prayers had scared the evil demons from their prey.

"Listen to me, Mary," said the miserable man; "listen to me as to a dying man: I am no murderer! A gambler and a drunkard I have been: deserving of the heaviest punishment for sins committed against you, Mary,-against our innocent child, against the oracles of God within my own soul; but never have my hands been stained with blood. It is true I was among the rioters; I saw the tavern brawl in which young Rivers lost his life; but, as I hope to gain from Heaven the mercy denied on earth, my hand was not raised in the affray. The witness who lied my

life away, struck the blow for which I am unjustly condemned: and had I not been rendered powerless by strong drink, I would have stepped between those who were drunk with wrath. Do you not believe me, Mary?"

"I do, I do, and I thank God for this one drop of consolation in my cup of bitterness."

The convict took his child upon his knee, and "Take him looked sadly and fixedly in his face. far from hence," he gasped, "give him another name: let him never be known to others as a felon's son. But tell him of his father's fate, that you may guard him from a father's vices. Let him never forget, that had I taken heed to the beginnings of evil, I should not now be the wretch I am."

At this moment a sound of footsteps was heard; the keys rattled in the heavy lock, and the form of the jailer appeared in the door-way. Pale, cold, and half fainting, the unhappy woman sank on her knees, with her hand clasping, as if in a death-grasp, the cold fingers of the convict.

"Has the hour come?" asked the prisoner. "Well, I am ready:" and, taking one last fond look at his unconscious child, he endeavored to extricate himself from the boy's embrace. What means that sudden pause? The light of a lantern gleams far along the vaulted passage, but shines full upon a paper in the hands of the jailer. The kindly official knows every word of its contents, but he holds it closer to the light, as if conning it more carefully, in order that the group within the cell may be prepared for his tidings.

Vain caution. "Pardoned! PARDONED!" The shock is too great: the spirit that was nerved to wrestle with agony, cannot endure the quick revulsion of feeling. With a choked and gurgling cry, Mary falls heavily forward: and the heart which has been overtasked by sorrow, is broken by the sudden stroke of joy.

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