and criticism which must ever be the basis of a pure and elegant style. Not the most careful instruction from the most accomplished Professor, nor the closest attention on the student's part, can effect this by means of pieces heard once in the recitation room or society hall, and then forgotten. If general ease and fluency of style be attained by such ephemeral productions, it is the best we can hope for.

Thus it often happens that those who have borne through college the reputation of fine writers, find themselves afterwards searcely above mediocrity, when their productions pass the novel ordeal of the Press. In the former case, a fine voice, an easy manner, or a bold startling style often serves to gloss over many serious defects. In the latter, the article must stand or fall by its own intrinsic merit. Fixed there "in black and white," it lies open to careful and repeated criticism. Even the author himself can judge better of his own writings, when he sees them thus transmuted into some pages of fair type:-and he must be indeed "bound with oak and triple brass" about the head, who does not improve by it.

Many too will avail themselves of the wide scope afforded by the contents of such a magazine, to test their powers in flights of fancy for which the narrow routine of college exercises affords little or no encouragement-secure beneath a fictitious name from the mortification of ridicule or failure. Here especially may the whole tribe of college poets display their powers-a race who "love the shade" now, as much as their progenitors did in Horace's day. We would not be understood in this as meaning any disrespect: without looking for a new Shakespeare or Byron among us, we yet feel confidant that there exist in college germs of true poetic feeling, which need only to be fostered, by the very means now offered, to produce abundant and delicious fruits.

It is not expected, however, that any more than a local interest will be felt in our productions, whatever be their merit. To us students they will have a charm that none else can feel; now as the work of our friends and associates, and in after years as memorials of our own youth, and the pleasant days of college life. To a small class of the community—our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins and particular friends, we trust they will be scarcely less interesting as indicators of the thoughts and feelings of the absent. To the Alumni of this college-elder children of our Alma Mater-and in fine to all in any way interested in her welfare, we hope the work will be, for her sake, no unacceptable offering.

Influenced by these views, the present undergraduates of Amherst College have joined almost unanimously to place the undertaking upon such a basis as leaves but little fear for its permanent prosperity; and in their name, we, to whom its charge has for the present been committed, commend it to all under whose notice it may happen to come.

For ourselves we have little to say. Of the honor which our classmates have indulgently conferred upon us we are deeply sensible; but we shall strive to render our grateful acknowledgments rather by a faithful discharge of our duties than by verbal professions.

In performing the responsible task of selection from among the materials offered, we shall make every effort, (as we have already taken every precaution) to preserve the strictest impartiality. If the hopes we have formed of success be blighted, it shall not be through remissness on our part. But while we thus promise our own best endeavors, it must be remembered that these alone can never fulfil the design of the work. We are but too well aware that no labor of ours could ever make the INDICATOR what it will profess to be-a just representative of the literary merit of the Institution. To fulfil this promise we shall require the hearty and generous support of all connected with it. In the subject matter of our numbers, we shall feel ourselves limited to no particular class of themes. Grave or gay-literary, moral, scientific, æsthetic, or humorous-all will find a place that we deem best fitted to promote the object of the work, and render its pages at once interesting and profitable to our little public.

After all we cannot hope to satisfy ourselves, and still less our readers. We have too much confidence in the generosity of our fellow students, to believe that invidious motives will prompt any part of the deserved, or undeserved censure we may at times incur. But "to err is human," and we claim no exception from the common lot. Nothing less than infallibility indeed could enable us constantly to please so many varying tastes. We shall do our best; and for indulgence we can only ask, as Horace has before us,

Amicus dulcis, ut æquum est

Quum mea compenset vitiis bona, pluribus hisce,
Si modo plura mihi bona sunt, inclinet."

With these prefatory words we commit our little bark to the waves that its voyage may be prosperous, not only now but long after we have resigned the helm to others, is the sincere and hearty desire of THE EDITORS.

Few classes of men have had a separate existence long enough to elaim the title of nation, who have not acquired a Literature more or less distinct in its characteristics, and have had more or fewer poets to perpetuate their praises and give them a memory in after days. And among all these, the greatest and the best have matched their strength with the noble Epic or the equally noble Drama. Nations are remembered by their poets. Who thinks of Greece without remembering the Song of Troy? Who can read of Rome's conquering legions and forget that Eneas was their great progenitor and that the Mantuan Bard gave his fame to the world? Modern Italy is renowned, not for her Popes, but for being the fatherland of Ariosto, the two Tassos, and "the world worn Dante!" Germany is wider known for its Goethe and its Schiller than for the prowess of its arms, or the more dangerous prowess of its Philosophy. Chaucer, Spenser, Milton and Shakespeare will be read and loved long after the Protector and his royal victim have passed from the thoughts of men, and the conqueror of the Corsican lost in oblivious age! So long as antiquity has an interest, and Poetry a charm, it shall be remembered that "Fingal lived and Ossian sung." And the hero of the present sketch, Portugal's illustrious Camoens, shall long survive the ungrateful country which so cruelly neglected him.

If our principles be correct, and indeed if it be not, it is well that the history of the great poets, especially of the epic poets, should be made familiar to us. Camoens has been selected, because, of all we have mentioned, he perhaps is least known and least appreciated. The reasons why he is so little read and admired are various. His translator has alleged the most obvious one :-"The poem is written in a language unknown to polite literature."

Luis de Camoens is supposed to have been born at Lisbon in 1524, or, as some affirm, in 1517. We know but little of his early lifeindeed, the year and place of his birth were for a long time uncertain, and even now his biographers are not agreed respecting them. When he was fourteen years old, we find him at Coimbra, in the University, where he became nursed in all the polite literature of that day. The Latin classics particularly engrossed his attention, with which he is said to have become as intimate as Scaliger, and to have afterwards employed with the taste and skill of a Milton or a Pope. Having completed his education at the University, he repaired to the

court of his Prince at Lisbon, where his accomplished mind and polished manners, together with the recommendations of personal youthful beauty, a warm poetic temperament, and noble birth made him quite a favorite, especially with the ladies. Here he became deeply enamoured of Dona Catharina de Atayde, a ladyof rare accomplishments and who warmly returned his love. But for some reason this affair du cœur was displeasing to the lady's parents, and through their agency the young poet lover was banished from the court. The place of his exile was Santarem, a small town on the Tagus above Lisbon, and in true poetic spirit he has invoked the waves of the river to convey his tears of sorrow to the object of his attachment. While here he devoted himself to poetic study, composing at this time most of his comedies, many of his sonnets, and probably laid the plan for his immortal poem-the Lusiad. But disconsolate and brokenhearted, he determined to drown his grief in the din of arms, and embarked for Africa. Here too he proved himself a man of the heart. True to his love, he was also true to his country, and he wrought as fiercely in war as he had sweetly and plaintively in Song. Encountering a Moorish fleet off the Straits of Gibraltar, he was wounded in the right eye and disfigured for life. Adding now military glory to literary fame, he returned to Portugal asking, as a right, the honor which he so richly deserved. But his greeting was cold and distant. A narrow-minded Sovereign and capricious people could see no merit in his generous patriotism-at least, would acknowledge none, and Camoens had the mortification to find no one at his monarch's court to defend him and obtain an acknowledgment of his services and a remuneration for his sufferings.

"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot."

The noble mind can endure opposition, invective, and disgrace, for they acknowledge worth in the abused: but cold neglect, an insensibility to those generous acts which demand the highest gratitude and reward-this is insupportable. It crushes the noble spirit; it maddens the heart; it transforms fond hope into despair! Add to this the loss, which he then sustained, of the lady of his heart, the object of his youthful affections, whose unchanging love had cheered and supported him in his exile and been with him in the field of gory death, and who-who, that has not his heart, can judge of the youthful

poet's feelings! His country was insensible to his merits and had refused his claims of remuneration: Poverty shook her snaky arm in her face; his loved one, the only tie which bound him to Portugal, was no more, and he determined to leave forever his ungrateful country. Proudly resentful of the neglect he suffered, he exclaimed in the words of the Epitaph of Scipio Africanus: "Ingrata patria, non possidebis mea ossa!”

In the spring of 1553 he departed for India. Here we find him alternately wielding the sword and the pen. With the one he chastised the piratical Moors; with the other, he sternly rebuked the vices and sordid avarice of his countrymen. This latter weapon sometimes has a keener edge, and cuts a wound deeper and less easily healed than the former. Thus with Camoens. In a satirical poem entitled "The Follies of India," he aimed a shaft at a few prevalent vices of the country, and though without personalities, yet so deeply offended certain individuals who with unerring sagacity applied the coat to their own backs, that on an appeal to the Governor, they succeeded in their revenge on the virtuous poet and procured his banishment to China. In 1556, this great, though much abused, man departed for the place of his exile "loaded," as he tells us, "with his sorrows, his feelings, and his fortunes."

He spent the earlier part of his exile at the Molucca Islands; the remainder at Macao. Here, by some instrumentality, he was suffered to hold a subordinate office in the civil government, the perquisites of which afforded him a livelihood and enabled him to devote himself assiduously to the great business of his life-the perfection and publication of the Lusiad.

Returning from China in 1561, his evil fortune still attended him. He was shipwrecked. And here we cannot but stop to admire his devotion to his poem. With but a single plank to which he could cling for succor, he suffered all else to perish-the savings of his exile-all his earthly possessions save the treasure of his heart, and to rescue this he struggled with the mighty ocean and was victor! He rescued his poem and himself, not without difficulty, from a watery grave. It was on the shores of the "friendly Mecon," where he was rescued from the devouring sea, that he paraphrased that beautiful 137 Psalm:

"When we, our weary limbs to rest,

Sat down by proud Euphrates stream, &c."

Returning to India, after a short season of tranquility, his enemies