Was a blessing on his head; That when death had seized my frame, And uplifted was his dart, That I ne'er forgot the name, That was dearest to my heart. And tell her whose favor gave From the foe's polluting hand; To the rescue, gallant men! * All his daring deeds again! WILLIAM A. CARRUTHERS, THE author of several novels written with spirit and ability, was a Virginian, and as we learn from a communication to the Knickerbocker Magazine, in which he gives an account of a hazardous ascent of the Natural Bridge, of which he was a witness, was, in 1818, a student of Washington College, in the vicinity of that celebrated curiosity. We have no details of his life, beyond the facts of his publication of several books in New York about the year 1834, his retirement from Virginia to Savannah, Georgia, where he practised medicine, and wrote for the Magnolia and other Southern magazines, and where he died some years since. His books which have come to our knowledge are, The Cavaliers of Virginia, or the Recluse of Jamestown, an Historical Romance of the Old Dominion, contrasting the manners of the conservative and revolutionary races, the followers of Charles and of Noll in the State; The Kentuckian in New York, or the Adventures of Three Southerns, a sketchy volume of romantic descriptive matter; and The Knights of the Horse Shoe, a Traditionary Tale of the Cocked Hat Gentry in the Old Dominion, published at Wetumpka, Alabama, in 1845. In the last book the author drew a pleasing and animated picture of the old colonial life in Virginia, in the days of Governor Spotswood. A passage from one of its early chapters will exhibit its genial spirit. A KITCHEN FIRE-SIDE IN THE OLD DOMINION. Imagine to yourself, reader, a fire-place large enough to roast an ox whole, and within which a common waggon load of wood might be absorbed in such a speedy manner as to horrify one of our city economical housewives-though now it was late in summer, and of course no such pile of combustibles July, 1828. enlivened the scene-besides, it was night, and the culinary operations of the day were over. A few blazing fagots of rich pine, however, still threw a lurid glare over the murky atmosphere, and here and there sat the several domestics of the establishment; some nodding until they almost tumbled into the fire, but speedily regaining the perpendicular without ever opening their eyes, or giving any evidence of discomposure, except a loud snort, perhaps, and then dozing away again as comfortably as ever. Others were conversing without exhibiting any symptoms of weariness or drowsiness. In one corner of the fire-place sat old Sylvia, a Moor, who had accompanied the father of the Governor (a British naval officer) all the way from Africa, the birth-place of his Excellency. She had straight hair, which was now white as the driven snow, and hung in long matted locks about her shoulders, not unlike a bunch of candles. She was by the negroes called outlandish, and talked a sort of jargon entirely different from the broken lingo of that_race. She was a general scape-goat for the whole plantation, and held in especial dread by the Ethiopian tribe. She was not asleep, nor dozing, but sat rocking her body back and forth, without moving the stool, and humming a most mournful and monotonous ditty, all the while throwing her large stealthy eyes around the room. In the opposite corner sat a regular hanger-on of the establishment, and one of those who kept a greedy eye always directed towards the fleshpots, whenever he kept them open at all. His name was June, and he wore an old cast-off coat of the Governor's, the waist buttons of which just touched his hips, while the skirts hung down to the ground in straight lines, or rather in the rear of the perpendicular, as if afraid of the constant kicking which his heels kept up against them when walking. His legs were bandied, and set so much in the middle of the foot as to render it rather a difficult matter to tell which end went foremost. His face was of the true African stamp: large mouth, flat nose, and a brow overhung with long, plaited queus, like so many whip-cords cut off short and even all round, and now quite grey. The expression of his countenance was full of mirthfulness and good humor, mixed with just enough of shrewdness to redeem it from utter vacuity. was a slight degree of cunning twinkled from his small terrapin-looking eye, but wholly swallowed up by his large mouth, kept constantly on the stretch. He had the run of the kitchen; and, for these perquisites was expected and required to perform no other labor than running and riding errands to and from the capital; and it is because he will sometimes be thus employed that we have been so particular in describing him, and because he was the banjo player to all the small fry at Temple Farm. He had his instrument across his lap on the evening in question, his hands in the very attitude of playing, his eyes closed, and every now and then, as he rose up from a profound inclination to old Somnus, twang, twang, went the strings, accompanied by lips in half utterance, such as the following:some negro doggrel just lazily let slip through his There Massa is a wealthy man, and all de nebors know it; it. The last words were lost in another declination of the head, until catgut and voice became merged in a grunt or snort, when he would start up, perhaps, strain his eyes wide open, and go on again: Sister Sally's mighty sick, oh what de debil ails her, She used to cat good beef and beaus, but now her stomach fails her. The last words spun out again into a drawl to ae company a monotonous symphony, until all were lost together, by his head being brought in wonderful propinquity to his heels in the ashes. While old June thus kept up a running accompaniment to Sylvia's Moorish monotony, on the opposite side of the fire, the front of the circle was occupied by more important characters. Old Essex, the major-domo of the establishment, sat there in all the panoply of state. He was a tall, dignified old negro, with his hair queued up behind and powdered all over, and not a little of it sprinkled upon the red collar of his otherwise scrupulously clean livery. He wore small-clothes and knee-buckles, and was altogether a fine specimen of the gentlemanly old family servant. He felt himself just as much a part and parcel of the Governor's family as if he had been related to it by blood. The manners of Essex were very far above his mental culture; this no one could perceive by a slight and superficial observation, because he had acquired a most admirable tact (like some of his betters) by which he never travelled beyond his depth; added to this, whatever he did say was in the most appropriate manner, narrowly discerning nice shades of character, and suiting his replies to every one who addressed him. For instance, were a gentleman to alight at the hall door and meet old Essex, he would instantly receive the attentions due to a gentleman; whereas, were a gentlemanly dressed man to come, who feared that his whole importance might not be impressed upon this important functionary, Essex would instantly elevate his dignity in exact proportion to the fussiness of his visitor. Alas! the days of Essex's class are fast fading away. Many of them survived the Revolution, but the Mississippi fever has nearly made them extinct. On the present occasion, though presumed to be not upon his dignity, the old major sat with folded arms and a benignant but yet contemptuous smile playing upon his features, illuminated as they were by the lurid fire-light, while Martin the carpenter told one of the most marvellous and wonder-stirring stories of the headless corpse ever heard within these walls, teeming, as they were, with the marvellous. Essex had often heard stories first told over the gentlemen's wine, and then the kitchen version, and of course knew how to estimate them exactly: now that before-mentioned incredulous smile began to spread until he was forced to laugh outright, as Martin capped the climax of his tale of horror, by some supernatural appearance of blue flames over the grave. Not so the other domestics, male and female, clustering around his chair; they were worked up to the highest pitch of the marvellous. Even old June ceased to twang his banjo, and at length got his eyes wide open as the carpenter came to the sage conclusion, that the place would be haunted. It was really wonderful, with what rapidity this same point was arrived at by every negro upon the plantation, numbering more than a hundred; and these having wives and connexions on neighboring plantations, the news that Temple Farm was haunted became a settled matter for ten miles round in less than a week, and so it has remained from that day to this. On the occasion alluded to, the story-teller for the night had worked his audience up to such a pitch of terror, that not one individual dared stir for his life, every one seeming to apprehend an instant apparition. This effect on their terrified imaginations was not a little heightened by the storm raging without. The distant thunder had been some time reverberating from the shores of the bay, mingling with the angry roar of the waves as they splashed and foamed against the beach, breaking, and then retreating for a fresh onset. JAMES OTIS ROCKWELL. JAMES O. ROCKWELL was, to a great extent, a selfmade man. He was born at Lebanon, Conn., in 1807, and at an early age placed as an operative in a cotton factory at Paterson, New Jersey. When he was fourteen the family removed to Manlius, N. Y., and James was apprenticed to a printing establishment at Utica. He remained there about four years, writing for as well as working at the press, and then after a short sojourn in New York removed to Boston. After working a short time as a journeyman printer he obtained the situation of assistant editor of the Boston Statesman, from which he was soon promoted, in 1829, to the exclusive charge of a paper of his own, The Providence Patriot. "He continued," says his biographer Everest, "his editorial labors until the summer of 1831, when a 'card apologetic' announced to the readers of the Patriot that its editor had been accused of ill health--tried-found guilty-and condemned over to the physicians for punishment. The following number was arrayed in tokens of mourning for his death."* His poems are scattered through his own and other periodicals, having never been collected. They are all brief, and though bearing marks of an ill regulated imagination and imperfect literary execution, are animated by a true poetic flame. SPRING. Again upon the grateful earth, Thou gentle Spring!-the brooding sky The moon looks down with a milder eye, And float in pride o'er the earth below, Thou smiling Spring!-again thy praise And the water-falls loud anthems raise, Sing with the stirring breeze; The tallest in the grove; And the forest leaves are putting forth *Poets of Connectient, p. 857. See also a further notice from the same pen, South Lit. Mess., July, 1838, in which a suspicion of suicide is hinted at. MEMORY AND HOPE. Memory has a sister fair, Blue-eyed, laughing, wild, and glad, Oft she comes, with jocund air, When her twin-born would be sad; And to neither traitor prove, Memory has a downcast face, Yet 'tis winning, sweet, and mild, Then comes Hope, with cheerful grace, Like a bright enchanting child. Now, I kiss this rosy cheek, And the dimpling beam appears, Then her pensive sister seek, She too smiles, through pleasant tears. Thus the heart a joy may take, Love like this is sure to last,- NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. THE family of Nathaniel Parker Willis trace back their descent to George Willis, who was born in England in 1602, and who, as a newly settled resident of Cambridge near Boston, was admitted "Freeman of Massachusetts," in 1638. By the-maternal branch, dividing at the family of the grandfather of N. P. Willis, he is a descendant of the Rev. John Bailey, pastor of a church in Boston, in 1683. The portrait of the Rev. John Bailey was presented some years since to the Massachusetts Historical Society, by Nathaniel Willis, the father of N. P. Willis, to whom it had descended as the oldest of the sixth generation. Mr. Bailey was an exile for opinion's sake. He had begun his ministry at Chester, in England, at the age of 22, but was imprisoned for his non-conformist doctrines; and while waiting for his trial, had preached to crowds through the bars of Lancashire jail. He afterwards preached fourteen years in Limerick, Ireland, and was again imprisoned and tried for his opinions. He then fled from persecution to this country. The memoir of his ministry in Boston has been written by the Rev. Mr. Emerson. He died in 1697, and his funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. Cotton Mather. The numerous descendants of these two names have been principally residents in New England, and are traceable mainly in the church records of their different locations. The majority have been farmers. Nathaniel Willis, the grandfather of N. P. Willis, was born in Boston in 1755. He Independent Chronicle, a leading political paper, was one of the proprietors and publishers of the from 1776 to 1784. He removed from Boston to Virginia, where he established the "Potomac Guardian," which he published several years at Martinsburgh. He thence removed to Ohio, and established the first newspaper ever published in that state, the "Scioto Gazette." He was for several years the Ohio State printer. It was among the memorabilia of his life that he had been an apprentice in the same printing-office with Benjamin Franklin; and that he was one of the adventurous "Tea-Party," who, in 1773, boarded the East India Company's ship in Boston harbor, and threw overboard her cargo of tea, to express their opinion of the tea-tax. He died at an advanced age on his farm near Chillicothe, to which he had retired, to pass his latter years in repose. The poet's father, Nathaniel Willis, was for several years a political publisher and editorthe "Eastern Argus" having been established by him at Portland in 1803. With a change in his religious opinions and feelings, he returned to Boston, his native city, and there founded in 1816, the first religious newspaper in the world, the "Boston Recorder." This he conducted for twenty years, establishing, during the latter part of the same time, the first child's newspaper in the world, the "Youth's Companion." The latter he still conducts, having parted with the Recorder as too laborious a vocation for his advancing years, and its eminent success having realized for him a comfortable independence. Nathaniel Parker Willis was born in Portland, | Jan. 20, 1807. His father removed to Boston when he was six years of age. He was for a year or two a pupil of the Rev. Dr. McFarlane of Concord, N. H.; but at the Latin School of Boston and at the Phillips Academy at Andover, he received his principal education, previous to entering college. He was graduated at Yale in 1827. While in college he published several religious pieces of poetry under the signature of "Roy," and gained the prize of fifty dollars for the best poem, offered by "The Album," a gift book published by Lockwood. His mother, by whom he takes the name of Parker, was the daughter of Solomon Parker, a farmer of Massachusetts. She was a woman of uncommon talents, and of very exemplary piety and benevolence. Her husband's house being for many years the hospitable home of the clergy of their denomination, her friendship with some of the most eminent men of her time was intimate and constant; and her long and regular correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Payson, the Rev. Dr. Storrs, and others of the first minds of the period in which she lived, will, some day probably, be formed into a most interesting memoir. She died in 1844. After his graduation, Mr. Willis first became the editor of "The Legendary," a series of volumes of tales published by S. G. Goodrich. He next established the "American Monthly Magazine," which he conducted for two years, then merging it in the "New York Mirror," conducted by Geo. P. Morris-that he might carry out a cherished purpose of a visit to Europe. His "Pencillings by the Way," contributed to the Mirror, give the history of his next four years of travel and adventure. During his first stay in Paris, Mr. Rives, the American Minister, attached him to his Legation, and it was with diplomatic passport and privilege that he made his leisurely visit to the different Courts and Capitals of Europe and the East. In 1835, after two years' residence in England, he married Mary Leighton Stace, daughter of the Commissary General William Stace, then in command of the arsenal at Woolwich, a distinguished officer, who was in the enjoyment of a large pension from government for his gallant conduct at Waterloo. Before he returned to America, his contributions to the Mirror giving an account of the society in which he moved and the places which he saw, had found their way to England, and falling into the hands of Lockhart, were reviewed by him with severity in the Quarterly for 1835. The chief points of the article were the correction of some technical errors touching the artificial distinctions of the aristocracy, and the charge that Willis had committed himself by printing his "unrestrained table-talk on delicate subjects, and capable of compromising individuals." This referred mainly to an account which Willis had published of the conversation of Moore at Lady Blessington's, in which the Irish poet commented with freedom on the career of O'Connell. It was an injudicious passage, which Willis regretted was published, not thinking at the time it was written that it would re-appear in England, though it contained, probably, nothing more than was generally known of the opinions of Moore on the Irish agitation. Moore, at any rate, was writing similar opinions himself in his Diary (since published), for the benefit of posterity. The immediate consequence of the agitation of the subject in the Quarterly was a public demand for the book, and a publisher's offer of three hundred pounds for the portion on hand in England,-about one half of what subsequently appeared in America, with the title of the collection thus made, Pencillings by the Way. Captain Marryatt, then editing the Metropolitan Magazine, made the volumes, on their publication, the subject of a personal article in that journal. Satisfaction was demanded by Willis, and shots were exchanged between the parties at Chatham. Immediately after his marriage, Mr. Willis returned to this country, and gratified his early passion for rural life, which had grown upon him with time and weariness of travel, by the purchase of a few acres in the valley of the Susquehannah, and the building of a small cottage in which he hoped to pass the remainder of his life. At this place, which he called "Glenmary," and from which he wrote the Letters from Under a Bridge, he passed four years. His one child by his first wife, Imogen his daughter, was born here. By the failure of his publisher, the death of his father-in-law, and other simultaneous calamities, involving entirely his means of support, Mr. Willis was driven once more to active life; and returning to New York, he established, in connexion with Dr. Porter, The Corsair, a weekly journal. To arrange the foreign correspondence for this and visit his relatives, he made a short trip to England, engaging, among others, Mr. Thackeray, who was less known then than now to fame, and who wrote awhile for the Corsair. While abroad on this second tour, Mr. Willis published in London a miscellany of his magazine stories, poems, and European letters, with the title Loiterings of Travel. He also published in London his two plays "Bianca Visconti” and "Tortesa the Usurer," with the joint title Two Ways of Dying for a Husband. He also wrote about this time the letter-press for two serial publications by Virtue, on the Scenery of the United States and Ireland. On his return to New York, he found that his partner Dr. Porter had suddenly abandoned their project in discouragement; and he soon after established, in connexion with his former partner Gen. Morris, the "Evening Mirror." The severe labor of this new and trying occupation made the first break in a constitution of great natural vigor, and the death of his wife occurring soon after, his health entirely gave way, and he was compelled once more to go abroad." A brain fever in England, and a tedious illness at the Baths of Germany, followed. On reaching Berlin, however, he met with his former literary partner, Theodore S. Fay; and Mr. Wheaton, the American minister, appointing him attaché to the Legation of which Mr. Fay was the Secretary, he determined to make this the home of his literary labors. Visiting England to place his daughter at school, however, he found himself too much prostrated in health to return to Germany, and soon after sailed once more with his daughter for home. The change from the Evening Mirror to the Home Journal, which was made soon after by both partners, was a return to the more quiet paths of literature, which were better suited to both. Upon this last enterprise, Mr. Willis is still actively employed, and its career has been, as is well known, eminently successful. Since that time, the publications of Mr. Willis have of late consisted of editorial articles in the journal, and a series of special contributions written on his journeys in the western and southern states and among the West India islands, or from his new country residence of Idlewild on the plateau of the Highlands of the Hudson beyond West Point. A collection of his works in royal octavo Idlewild. was published in 1846 by Redfield with the addition to the writings which we have enumerated up to that date of Ephemera, a gathering of brief newspaper miscellanies. His poems have beenpublished in octavo, in a volume illustrated by Leutze. A newly arranged edition of his writings, with new collections from his articles in his journal, is in course of publication by Scribner. The titles of these volumes are Rural Letters, and Other Records of Thoughts at Leisure; People I have Met, or Pictures of Society and People of Mark, drawn under a Thin Veil of Fiction; Life Here and There, or Sketches of Society and Adventures at Far-Apart Times and Places; Hurry-Graphs, or Sketches from Fresh Impressions of Scenery, Celebrities, and Society; Pencillings by the Way; A Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean on board an American Frigate; Fun Jottings, or Laughs I have taken a Pen To; A Health Trip to the Tropics, etc.; Letters from Idlewild; Famous Persons and Places; The Pag Bag. In 1845, Mr. Willis married Cornelia, only daughter of the Hon. Joseph Grinnell, member of Congress from Massachusetts. The Home Jour nal, his "Health Trip to the Tropics," and his "Letters from Idlewild" give the outlines of his life for these latter years. By his second marriage he has three children, one son and two daughters. The contributions of Mr. Willis to the various periodicals upon which he has been engaged, have been written with that invariable care and finish, which enable him now, in their collected form of nine volumes, to look upon them as the even and steady product of a career of literary industry, varying only in place and circumstances. They are severally characterized by their acute perception of affairs of life and the world; a delicate vein of sentiment, an increased ingenuity in the decoration and improvement of matters which in the hands of most writers would be impertinent and wearisome; in fine, their invention which makes new things out of old, whether among the palled commonplaces of the city, or the scant monotony of the country. In a series of some twenty years, Mr. Willis has ministered, with but few intervals of absence from his post, weekly through the journals with which he has been connected, to the entertainment and delight of the American public. That his pen is as fresh at the end of that time as at the beginning, is the best proof of his generously gifted nature. If, in the course of his "spiritings," he has occasionally provoked the more fastidious of his readers by far-fetched expressions or other conceptions, he has made his ground good, even on this debatable territory, since the eccentricities have been offshoots of his originality, and maintained by a style, fresh, idiomatic, and in its construction really pure. As a gentleman may take many liberties not allowed to a clown, an author who writes English as well as Mr. Willis may be indulged with some familiarities with Priscian. The poetry of Mr. Willis is musical and original. His Sacred Poems belong to a class of compositions which critics might object to, did not experience show them to be pleasurable and profitable interpreters to many minds. The versification of these poems is of remarkable smoothness. Indeed, they have gained the author reputation where his nicer powers would have failed to be appreciated. In another view, his novel in rhyme, of Lady Jane, is one of the very choicest of the numerous poems cast in the model of Don Juan; while his dramas are delicate creations of sentiment and passion, with a relish of the old poetic Elizabethan stage. As a traveller, Mr. Willis has no superior in representing the humors and experiences of the world. He is sympathetic, witty, observant, and at the same time inventive. Looking at the world through a pair of eyes of his own, he finds material where others would see nothing: indeed, some of his greatest triumphs in this line have been in his rural sketches from Glenmary and Idlewild, continued with novelty and spirit, long after most clever writers would have cried out that straw and clay too for their bricks had been utterly exhausted. That this invention has been pursued through broken health, with unremitting diligence, is another claim to consideration, which the public should be prompt to acknowledge. Under the most favorable circumstances, a continuous career of newspaper literary toil is a painful drudgery. It weighs heavily on dull men of powerful constitution. The world then should be thankful, when the delicate fibres of the poet and man of genius are freely worked from day to day in its service. THE BELFRY PIGEON. On the cross-beam under the Old South bell Whatever is rung on that noisy bell- |