which contains A Discourse on Ministerial Responsibility, delivered before the Hudson River Baptist Association in 1835; An Address, The Conservative Principle in our Literature, delivered in 1843, before the literary societies of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, Madison County, N. Y.; several eloquent occasional Sermons; and among other papers, one on The Life and Times of Baxter, which indicates the happy manner in which Dr. Williams employs the resources of his library. Another illustration of his copious stores of reading was afforded to the public in the hitherto unpublished Address pronounced in 1854 before the Alumni of Columbia College, New York, on occasion of the completion of a century in the career of that institution. It was a retrospective review of the literature and other liberal influences of the year of the college foundation, 1754. Dr. Williams is also the author of two volumes of a practical devotional character, entitled Religious Progress, and Lectures on the Lord's Prayer. Though the utterance of Dr. Williams is feeble, and his health apparently infirm, few clergymen of the day have a firmer hold upon their hearers. His delivery is in low measured tone; the main topic of the discourse flowing easily on, while occasional illustrations from history or biography fall like leaves from the trees, refreshing its banks, into the unconscious current of his style. AN AGE OF PASSION. Our age is eminently, in some of its leading minds, an age of passion. It is seen in the character of much of the most popular literature, and especially the poetry of our day. Much of this has been the poetry of intense passion, it mattered little how unprincipled that passion might be. An English scholar lately gone from this world (it is to Southey that we refer), branded this school of modern literature, in the person of its great and titled leader, as the Satanic school. It has talent and genius, high powers of imagination and language, and boiling energy; but it is, much of it, the energy of a fallen and revolted angel, with no regard for the right, no vision into eternity, and no hold on Heaven. We would not declaim against passion when employed in the service of literature. Informed by strong feelings, truth becomes more awful and more lovely; and some of the ages which unfettered the passions of a nation, have given birth to master-pieces of genius. But Passion divorced from Virtue is ultimately among the fellest enemies to literary excellence. When yoked to the car of duty, and reined in by principle, passion is in its appropriate place, and may accomplish a mighty service. But when, in domestic life, or political, or in the walks of literature, passion throws off these restraints and exults in its own uncontrolled power, it is as useless for purposes of good, and as formidable from its powers of evil, as a car whose fiery coursers have shaken off bit and rein, and trampled under foot their charioteer. The Maker of man made conscience to rule his other faculties, and when it is dethroned, the result is ruin. Far as the literature to which we have alluded spreads, it cherishes an insane admiration for mere talent or mental power. It substitutes as a guide in morals, sentiment for conscience; and makes blind feeling the irresistible fate, whose will none may dispute, and whose doings are beyond the jurisdiction of casuists or lawgivers. It has much of occa sional tenderness, and can melt at times into floods of sympathy; but this softness is found strangely blended with a savage violence. Such things often co-exist. As in the case of the French hangman, who in the time of their great revolution was found, fresh from his gory work of the guillotine, sobbing over the sorrows of Werther, it contrives to ally the sanguinary to the sentimental. It seems, at first sight, much such an ill-assorted match as if the family of Mr. Wet-eyes in one of Bunyan's matchless allegories, were wedded to that of Giant Bloody-man in the other. But it is easily explained. It has been found so in all times when passion has been made to take the place of reason as the guide of a people, and conscience has been thrust from the throne to be succeeded by sentiment. The luxurious and the cruel, the fierce and the voluptuous, the licentious and the relentless readily coalesce; and we soon are made to perceive the fitness of the classic fable by which, in the old Greek mythology, Venus was seen knitting her hands with Mars, the goddess of sensuality allying herself with the god of slaughter. We say, much of the literature of the present and the last generation is thus the caterer of passion— lawless, fierce, and vindictive passion. And if a retired student may "through the loop-holes of retreat" read aright the world of fashion, passion seems at times acquiring an unwonted ascendency in the popular amusements of the age. The lewd pantomime and dance, from which the less refined fashion of other times would have turned her blushing and indignant face, the gorgeous spectacle and the shows of wild beasts, and even the sanguinary pugilistic combat, that sometimes recals the gladiatorial shows of old Rome, have become, in our day, the favorite recreations of some classes among the lovers of pleasure. These are, it should be remembered, nearly the same with the favorite entertainments of the later Greek empire, when, plethoric by its wealth, and enervated by its luxury, that power was about to be trodden down by the barbarian invasions of the north. Wil It is possible that the same dangerous ascendency of passion may be fostered, where we should have been slow to suspect it, by the ultraism of some good men among the social reformers of our time. berforce was, in the judgment of Mackintosh, the very model of a reformer, because he united an earnestness that never flagged with a sweetness that never failed. There are good men that have nothing of this last trait. Amid the best intentions there is occasionally, in the benevolent projects even of this day, a species of Jack Cadeism, if we may be allowed the expression, enlisted in the service of reform. It seems the very opposite of the character of Wilberforce, nourishes an acridity and violence of temper that appears to delight in repelling, and seeks to enkindle feeling by wild exaggeration and personal denunciation; raves in behalf of good with the very spirit of evil, and where it cannot convince assent, would extort submission. Even truth itself, when administered at a scalding heat, cannot benefit the recipient; and the process is not safe for the hands of the administrator himself. Far be it from us to decry earnestness when shown in the cause of truth and justice, or to forget how the passion awakened in some revolutionary crisis of a people's history, has often infused into the productions of genius an unwonted energy, and clothed them as with an immortal vigor. But it is passion yoked to the chariot of reason, and curbed by the strong hand of principle; laboring in the traces, but not grasping the reins. But set aside argument and truth, and give to passion its unchecked course, and the effect is fatal. It may at first seem to clothe a literature with new energy, but it is the mere energy of intoxication, soon spent, and for which there speedily comes a sure and bitter reckoning. The bonds of principle are loosened, the tastes and habits of society corrupted; and the effects are soon seen extending themselves to the very form and style of a literature as well as to the morality of its productions. The intense is substituted for the natural and true. What is effective is sought for rather than what is exact. Our literature therefore has little, in such portions of it, of the high finish and serene repose of the master-pieces of classic antiquity, where passion in its highest flights is seen wearing gracefully all the restraining rules of art: and power toils ever as under the severe eye of order. WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS, ONE of the most consistent and accomplished authors by profession the country has produced, is a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He was born April 17, 1806. His father, who bore the same name, was of Scoto-Irish descent, and his mother, Harriet Ann Augusta Singleton, was of a Virginia family, which came early to the state, and was found in the Revolutionary times on the Whig side. William Gilmore Simms, the elder, having failed in Charleston as a merchant, removed to Tennessee, where he held a commission in Coffee's brigade of mounted men, under the command of Jackson, employed in the Indian war against the Creeks and Seminoles. His wife died while our author, the second son, was in his infancy, and he was left in the absence of his father to the care of his grandmother. Though his early education derived little aid from the pecuniary means of his family, which were limited, and though he had not the benefit of early classical training, yet the associations of this part of his life were neither unhappy nor unproductive, while his energy of character and richly endowed intellect were marking out an immediate path of mental activity and honor. Choosing the law for a profession, he was admitted to the bar at Charleston at the age of twenty-one. He did not long practise the profession, but turned its peculiar training to the uses of a literary life. His first active engagement was in the editorship of a daily newspaper, the Charleston City Gazette, in which he opposed the prevailing doctrines of nullification; he wrote with industry and spirit, but being interested in the paper as its proprietor, and the enterprise proving unsuccessful, he was stripped by its failure of the limited patrimony he had embarked in it. The commencement of his career as an author had preceded this. He wrote verses at eight years of age, and first appeared before the public as a poet, in the publication, about 1825, of a Monody on Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. A volume, Lyrical and other Poems, appeared from his pen, in 1827, at Charleston, followed by Early Lays the same year. Another volume, The Vision of Cortes, Cain, and other Poems, appeared in 1829, and the next year a celebration, in verse, of the French Revolution of 1830, The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris. Shortly after this date, in 1832, Mr. Simms visited New York, where his imaginative poem, Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, published by the Harpers in that year, introduced him to the literary circles of the city, in which he was warmly Welcomed. Atalantis was a successful poem with the publishers, a rarity at any time, and more noticeable in this case as the work of an unheralded, unknown author. It is written with easy elegance, in smooth blank verse, interspersed with frequent lyrics. Atalantis, a beautiful and virtuous princess of the Nereids, is alternately flattered and threatened by a monster into whose power she has fallen, by straying on the ocean beyond her domain, and becoming subject to his magical spells. She recovers her freedom by the aid of a shipwrecked Spanish knight, whose earthly nature enables him to penetrate the gross atmosphere of the island which the demon had extemporized for her habitation. The prison disappears, and the happy pair descend to the caves of ocean. The next year the Harpers published Mr. Simms's first tale, Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, written in the intense passionate style. It secured at once public attention. The author had now fairly entered upon the active literary life which he has since pursued without interruption; and so uniform has been his career, that a few words will sum up the incidents of his history. A second marriage to the daughter of Mr. Roach, a wealthy planter of the Barnwell district, his first wife having died soon after their union before his visit to New York; a seat in the state legislature, and the reception of the Doctorate of Laws from the University of Alabama: his summer residence at Charleston and his home winter life on the plantation Woodlands at Midway, with frequent visits to the northern cities; these are the few external incidents of a career, the events of which must be sought for in the achievements of the author. The latter are sufficiently numerous and important. To proceed with their production in some classified order, the author's poems may be first enumerated. The publication, next to those already mentioned, was a volume in New York in 1839, Southern Passages and Pictures, lyrical, sentimental, and descriptive; Donna Florida, a Tale, in the Don Juan style with a Spanish heroine, published at Charleston in 1843; Grouped Thoughts and Scattered Fancies, a collection of sonnets; Areytos, or Songs of the South, 1846; Lays of the Palmetto, a number of ballads illustrative of the progress of the South Carolina regiments in the Mexican war in 1848; a new edition of Atalantis the same year at Philadelphia, with a collection, The Eye and the Wing; Poems Chiefly Imaginatire; The Cassique of Accabee, a Tale of Ashley River, with other pieces, New York, 1849; The City of the Silent, a poem delivered at the Consecration of Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, in 1850. In 1853, two volumes of poems were published by Redfield, comprising a selection, with revisions and additions, from the preceding. In dramatic literature, Mr. Simms has written Norman Maurice, or the Man of the People, in which the action is laid in the present day, and the author grapples resolutely in blank verse with the original every-day materials of familiar life. The scene opens in Philadelphia. Maurice is the suitor for the hand of Clarice, whom he marries, to the discomfiture of an intriguing aunt, Mrs. Jervas (whose name and character recall her prototype in Pamela), and a worthless Robert Warren, kinsman and enemy-who retains a forged paper which Maurice had playfully executed as a boyish freak of penmanship, which had been made negotiable, and which Maurice had "taken up," receiving from his cunning relative a copy of the paper in place of the original, the latter being kept to ruin him as time might serve. In the second act, we have Maurice pursuing his career in the west, in Missouri, as the Man of the People. In a lawsuit which he conducts for a widow, he confronts in her oppressor the fire-cating bully of the region, with whom he fights a duel, and is talked of for senator. The scoundrel Warren follows him, and seeks to gain control over his wife by threatening to produce the forged paper at a critical moment for his political reputation. She meets the villain to receive the paper, and stabs him. The widow's cause is gained; all plots, personal and political, discomfited; and Missouri, at the close, enjoys the very best prospect of securing an honest senator. Though this play is a bold attempt, with much new ground to be broken, it is managed with such skill, in poetical blank verse, and with so consistent, manly a sentiment, that we pay little attention to its difficulties. Michael Bonham, or the Fall of the Alamo, is a romantic drama founded upon an event in Texan history. Both of these have been acted with success. Mr. Simms has also adapted for stage purposes Shakespeare's play of Timon, with numerous additions of his own. This drama has been purchased by Mr. Forrest, and is in preparation for the stage. Of Mr. Simms's Revolutionary Romances, The Partisan, published in 1835, was the earliest, the first of a trilogy completed by the publication of Mellichampe and Katharine Walton, or the Rebel of Dorchester, which contains a delineation of social life at Charleston in the Revolutionary period. The action of these pieces covers the whole period of active warfare of the Revolution in South Carolina, and presents every variety of military and patriotic movement of the regular and partisan encounter of the swamp and forest country. They include the career of Marion, Sumpter, Pickens, Moultrie, Hayne, and others, on the constant battle-field of | the state, South Carolina being the scene of the most severe conflicts of the Revolution. These works have been succeeded at long intervals by The Scout, originally called The Kinsmen, or the Black Riders of the Congaree, and Woodcraft, or Hawks about the Dovecot, originally published as The Sword and the Distaff. Eutaw, which includes the great action known by this name, is the latest of the author's compositions in this field. Guy Rivers, a Tale of Georgia, the first regularly constructed novel of Mr. Simms, belongs to a class of border tales, with which may be classed Richard Hurdis, or the Avenger of Blood, a Tale of Alabama; Border Beagles, a Tale of Mississippi; Beauchampe, a Tale of Kentucky, founded upon a story of crime in the state, which has employed the pens of several American writers; Helen Halsey, or the Swamp State of Conelachita; The Golden Christmas, a Chronicle of St. John's, Berkeley. The Historical Romances include The Yemassee, a Romance of Carolina, an Indian story, founded upon the general conspiracy of that Colony to massacre the whites in 1715-the portraiture of the Indian in this work, based by Mr. Simms upon personal knowledge of many of the tribes, correcting numerous popular misconceptions of the character; Pelayo, a Story of the Goth, and its sequel, Count Julian, both founded on the invasion of Spain by the Saracens, the fate of Roderick, and the apostasy of the traitor from whom the second work is named; The Damsel of Darien, the hero of which is the celebrated Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific; The Lily and the Totem, or the Huguenots in Florida, an historical romance, of one of the most finely marked and characteristic episodes in the colonial annals of the country, bringing into view the three rival nations of Spain, France, and the Red Men of the Continent, at the very opening of the great American drama before the appearance of the English; Vasconcelos, the scene of which includes the career of De Soto in Florida and the Havannah. In the last work Mr. Simms introduces the degradation of a knight by striking off his spurs, under the most imposing scenes of chivalry-one of the most delicate and elaborate of his many sketches. This was first published under the nom de plume of "Frank Cooper." Another class of Mr. Simms's novels may be generally ranked as the moral and the imaginative, and are both of a domestic and romantic interest. This was the author's earliest vein, the series opening with Martin Faber, published in 1833, fol. lowed at intervals by Carl Werner, Confession of the Blind Heart, The Wigwam and The Cabin, a collection of tales, including several in which an . interest of the imagination is sustained with striking effect; and Castle Dismal, or the Bachelor's Christmas, a domestic legend, in 1844, a South Carolina Ghost Story; Marie de Berniere, a Tale of the Crescent City, with other short ro mances. In History, Mr. Simms has produced a History of South Carolina, and South Carolina in the Revolution, a critical and argumentative work, suggestive of certain clues overlooked by historians. A Geography of South Carolina may be ranked under this head, and reference should be made to the numerous elaborate review and magazine articles, of which a protracted discussion of the Civil Warfare of the South in the Southern Literary Messenger, the American Loyalists of the Revolutionary Period in the Southern Quarterly Review, and frequent papers illustrating the social and political history of the South, are the most noticeable. Mr. Simms's contributions to Biography embrace a Life of Francis Marion, embodying a minute and comprehensive view of the partisan warfare in which he was engaged; The Life of John Smith, which affords opportunity for the author's best narrative talent and display of the picturesque; a kindred subject, The Life of the Chevalier Bayard, handled con amore, and The Life of General Greene, of the Revolution. These are all works of considerable extent, and are elaborated with care. In Criticism, Mr. Simms's pen has traversed the wide field of the literature of his day, both foreign and at home. He has edited the imputed plays of Shakespeare, with notes and preliminary essays.* To Periodical literature he has always been a liberal contributor, and has himself founded and conducted several reviews and magazines. Among these may be mentioned The Southern Literary Gazette, a monthly magazine, which reached two volumes in 1825; The Cosmopolitan, An Occasional; The Magnolia, or Southern Apalachian, a literary magazine and monthly review, published at Charleston in 1842-3; The Southern and Western Monthly Magazine and Review, published in two volumes in 1845, which he edited; while he has frequently contributed to the Knickerbocker, Orion, Southern Literary Messenger, Graham's, Godey's, and other magazines. A review of Mrs. Trollope, in the American Quarterly for 1832, attracted considerable attention at the time. In 1849, Mr. Simms became editor of the Southern Quarterly Review, to which he had previously contributed, and which was revived by his writings and personal influence. Several Miscellaneous productions may be introduced in this connexion. The Book of my Lady, a melange, in 1833; Views and Reviews of American History, Literature, and Art, including several lectures, critical papers, and biographical sketches; Father Abbot, or the Home Tourist, a Medley, embracing sketches of scenery, life, manners, and customs of the South; Egeria, or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside, a collection of aphorisms, and brief essays in prose and verse; Southward Ho! a species of Decameron, in which a group of travellers interchanging opinion and criticism, discuss the scenery and circumstances of the South, with frequent introduction of song and story; The Morals of Slavery, first published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and since included in the volume entitled The ProSlavery Argument. In addition to these numerous literary productions, Mr. Simms is the author of several orations on public occasions,-The Social Principle, the True Secret of National Permanence, delivered in A Supplement to the Plays of William Shakespeare, comprising the Seven Dramas which have been ascribed to his pen, but which are not included with his writings in modern editions, edited with notes, and an introduction to each play. 8vo. Cooledge & Brother: New York. 1848. The numerous writings of Mr. Simms are characterized by their earnestness, sincerity, and thoroughness. Hard worker as he is in literature, he pursues each subject with new zeal and enthusiasm. They are a remarkable series of works, when it is considered how large a portion of them involve no inconsiderable thought and original research. But Mr. Simms is no ordinary worker. Much as he has accomplished, much lies before him, and in the prime of life, with a physical constitution which answers every demand of the active intellect, he still pursues new game in the literary world. His As an author, he has pursued an honorable, manly career. His constant engagements in the press, as a critic and reviewer, have given him opportunities of extending favors to his brother writers, which he has freely employed. generosity in this respect is noticeable. Nor has this kindness been limited by any local feeling; while his own state has found in him one of the chief, in a literary view the chief, supporter of her interests. As a novelist, Mr. Simms is vigorous in delineation, dramatic in action, poetic in his description of scenery, a master of plot, and skilled in the arts of the practised story teller. His own tastes lead him to the composition of poetry and the provinces of imaginative literature, and he is apt to introduce much of. their spirit into his prose creations. His powers as an essayist, fond of discussing the philosophy of his subject, are of a high order. He is ingenious in speculation and fertile in argument. Many as are his writings, there is not one of them which does not exhibit some ingenious, worthy, truthful quality. THE BARD. Where dwells the spirit of the Bard-what sky Persuades his daring wing, Folded in soft carnation, or in snow Still sleeping, far o'er summits of the cloud, Impelled by holiest ire, Assail the sullen summits of the storm, Bent with broad breast and still impatient form, What passion wings his flight, What dream of conquest woos his eager eye!- With what unmeasured rage would he defy He goes through parting air, He breaks the barrier cloud, he sees the eye that's there, The centre of the realm of storm that mocked him but to dare! And now he grasps the prize, That on the summit lies, And binds the burning jewel to his brow; He wears a mightier face, Nor grovels more in likeness of the earth;- His step a wilder grace, He glows, the creature of a holier birth;— Suns sing, and stars glow glad around his light; 'Mid gathering sun and star, The sov'reign, he, of worlds, where these but subjects are; And men that marked his wing with mocking sight, Do watch and wonder now;— Will watch and worship with delight, anon, When far from hiss and hate, his upward form hath gone! Oh! ere that van was won, Whose flight hath braved the sun Whose daring strength and aim Have scaled the heights of cloud and bared their breasts of flame; What lowly toil was done, How slow the moments sped,— How bitter were the pangs that vexed the heart and head! The burden which he bore, The thorns his feet that tore, The cruel wounds he suffered with no moan,-- Denial, which could smile, Beholding, all the while, How salter than the sea were the salt tears he The feet of hissing things, And cramp the glorious creature born to wings! Not lonely, with the sad nymph Solitude, His robes for flight-his robes, the woven of songs, To conquer, he has only to explore,— A single feather from his pinion shed, A single beam of beauty from his eye, wreathe His altars; and, as those, to life from death, And lacking sympathy for the light!—The eye No more be furled The wing,-that, from the first decreed to fly, By these that wing the soul on its first flight, |