and, over all, flashed at frequent intervals red vivid lightning; one moment breaking forth in a wide sheet, as though an overcharged cloud had burst at once asunder; the next, descending in zigzag lines, or darting through amongst the tall pines and cypress trees; whilst the quick patter of the horses' hoofs were for a time heard loudly rattling over the loose hollow planks, and then again drowned wholly by the crash of near thunder." The annexed paragraphs are taken from the description of a passage down the Alabama to Mobile: "Down this noble stream we journeyed for four days and nights; in clear weather making tolerably good way, but often compelled by thick fogs and drift timber to lay our ship alongside the forest, and make fast to some large tree. Occasionally the stream would cant our head suddenly, and, before the helm could be shifted, rush we went right stem on into the nearest grove of willows, with such a crashing and rattling as måde one wonder at first what the deuce was the row. In one instance, whilst at dinner, a huge branch burst open a side door, and nearly impaled a French conjurer of celebrity on his way to New-Orleans. We were nearly a hundred souls on board, and each day our limits grew more and more circumscribed; for the side galleries were filled in with bales of cotton, the windows blocked up, at last the very door-ways, all but one; lights were burned in the cabin day and night: the Carolina became, in fact, a floating mass of cotton. "A night scene, whilst lying beneath some of the noble bluffs towering above the river, was often worthy the delay we paid for it. One or two of these heights were two hundred feet perpendicular, or nearly so: from the summit there is laid down, in a slanting direction, a slide or trough of timber, wide enough to admit of the passage of a cotton bale; and at the bottom of the bluff this side rests upon a platform of loose planks, alongside of which the boat is moored; the cotton-bag is guided into the slide at top, and thence, being launched, is left to find its own way to the bottom; if it keeps the slide until it strikes the platform, communicating with the vessel by a plane inclined according to circumstances, it is carried on board by its own impetus and the spring of the planks; but it often chances that through meeting a slight inequality on the slide, or from some unknown cause, the bale bounces off in its passage, either sticking amongst the trees by the way, or rolling headlong into the river. At any jutting intermediate stand of the precipice, negroes are stationed to keep up the huge fires which afford light for the operation, as well as to forward such bales as may stick by the run; these black, half-naked devils, suspended in mid-air as it were, laughing, yelling, or giving to each other confused directions, make the forest ring to the water's edge; whilst through this occasional din swells the wild chorus of the men upon the summit, who are regularly engaged rolling the bales from the near barn to the slide. Add to all, the hissing sound of the spare steam, the blaze of the great fires, and the crackling of the trees which feed them, with the many strange figures presented on all sides, — and a wilder group imagination cannot well conceive." A picture taken from the edge of a lofty bluff, between whose foot and the river "Natchez-under-the-Hill' reposes: "On one hand lay the town of Natchez, sunk in repose; the moon at full, was sleeping over it, in as pure a sky as ever poet drank joy and inspiration from; far below, wrapt in shade, lay the scene of my almost dream, the line of houses denoted by a few scattered lights, and in its front was the mighty Mississippi, rolling on in its majesty through a dominion created by itself, through regions of wilderness born of its waters and still subject to its laws; I could distinctly hear the continuous rush of the strong current; it was the only sound that moved the air. I hearkened intently to this rushing; it had indeed an absolute fascination for the ear; it was not like the hoarse roar of the ocean, now breaking along a line of beach, then again lulled as though gathering breath for a renewed effort; it was a sound monotonous and low, but which filled the ear and awed the very heart. I felt that I was listening to a voice cöeval with creation, and that ceased not either by night or day; which the blast of winter could not rouse, or the breath of summer hush; a voice which the buzz and bustle of noon might drive from the ear, but which the uplifting of the foundations of the world alone could silence." From some 'General impressions of the country, and the American people,' toward the close of the second volume, we take the subjoined paragraphs. The opening thoughts are suggested by an article in an English Review, wherein the idea of a successful American rail-road was ridiculed as absurd and visionary : "I never in my life perused any article more philosophical in spirit or more conclusive in argument; the scheme was clearly shown not only to be absurd but impracticable, and the projectors proved either to be presumptuous imitators, or men profligately speculating upon the ignorant credulity of their fellow-citizens. "I closed the review, in short, admiring the clear judgment and practical far-sightedness of the writer; pitying the Yankees, for whom I cherished a sneaking kindness, and inwardly hoping that this very clever exposition of the folly of their seeking to counteract the manifest designs of Providence, which had so clearly demonstrated their paths, might produce as full conviction on their minds as it had on mine. "Well, I forgot the article and its subject, and was only reminded of it by finding myself one fine day whisking along at the rate of twenty miles an hour, over a wellconstructed railway, one of a cargo of four hundred souls. The impossibility had, in fact, been achieved; and, in addition to the natural roads offered by Sea, Lake, and River, I now found railways twining and locomotives hissing like serpents over the whole continent from Maine to Mississippi. Binding the cold North to the ever-flowing streams of Georgia and Alabama, literally with bonds of iron, and forming, indeed, the natural roads of a country, whose soil and climate would set at nought all the ingenuity of M'Adam, backed by the wealth of Cræsus and the flint of Derbyshire to boot. "Now, had such a result been prognosticated only a very few years back, the man whose foresight had led to such a large view of the subject would have been mouthed at as mad all over the American continent, and written down knave or ass, or both, in every practical journal of Europe. "Such great changes constantly agitated, and reduced to practice with a promptitude of which even England, with her wealth, industry, and enterprise, has little notion, make discrepancies between the facts and opinions of rapidly-succeeding travelers, for which neither the veracity nor the judgment of the parties can fairly be impugned. "Action here leaves speculation lagging far behind; the improvement once conceived is in operation by such time as the opposing theorist has satisfactorily demonstrated its impracticability; and the dream of to-day is the reality of to-morrow. "I feel, in fact, a difficulty in describing without seeming hyperbole, the impressions I daily received, and beheld confirmed by facts, of the extraordinary spirit of movement that appears to impel men and things in this country; this great hive wherein there be no drones; this field in which every man finds place for his plough, and where each hand seems actually employed either to hold or drive.' ་ "For ever wandering about as I was, and visiting, as I frequently did, the same places at intervals again and again, I had occasion to be much struck with a state of things of which I was thus afforded constant evidence; take for instance: "My first journey in Sept. 1833, between New-York and Philadelphia, was by steamboat and railway, having cars drawn by horses over thirty-five miles, which thus occupied five and a half hours. In October of the same year I did the same distance by locomotive in two hours. When first I visited Boston, the journey was performed in twenty-four hours, by steamer to Providence, thence to Boston by stage; the same distance now occupies fifteen hours, a railway having been last spring put in operation between Providence and Boston. "Again, in 1834, the traveler had but one rough route from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. You can now go a third of the distance by railroad, and, getting into a canal-boat, are dragged over the Alleghany mountains, through a series of locks not to be surpassed for strength or ingenuity of contrivance. "In 1833, the journey from Augusta, Georgia, to New-York, was an affair of eleven or twelve days; it is now performed in three. Steam and railroad, are in fact, annihilating time and space in this country. In proof of it, I can safely assert that if a traveler visiting the South-west, say from Savannah to New-Orleans, will be at the truble of recollecting this book in the year 1837, he will find the account of the difficulties of any journey extremely amusing; since, in all human probability, he will perform that in five days, which took me, with hard labor, perseverance, discomfort, not to say some peril of life or limb, just eighteen. "It is these revolutions, and such as these, that form the true wonders of this country; that stimulate curiosity, excite interest, and well repay the labor of any voyager imbued with a grain of intelligence or observation, to say nothing of philosophy. "It is to these results, their causes, and their immediate and probable effects, his mind's eye will be irresistibly drawn, not to spitting-boxes, tobacco, two-pronged forks, or other bagatelle, the particulars of each of which, as a solecism in polite manners, can be corrected and canvassed by any waiter from the London Tavern, Ludgate-street, and by every grisette from American Square to Brompton Terrace, who may choose to display their acquired gentility for the nonce.' "It is the absence of a spirit of philosophy generally in our writers, and this affectation of prating so like waiting-gentlewomen, that stings Americans, and with some show of reason, when they see the great labors of their young country and the efforts of its people passed lightly by, and trifles caught up and commented upon, whose importance they cannot comprehend, and the which they have neither leisure nor example to alter or attend to." "After much and close observation, I say fearlessly, that in all conventional points, good society in the States is equal to the best provincial circles in England. The absence of a court, together with the calls of business, necessarily preclude the possibility of any class from acquiring that grace of repose, that perfection of ease, which cultivation, example, and a conscious knowledge of the world gives to the beau-monde of Europe. On the other hand, in the absence of this, you are seldom pestered with the second-hand ladies-maid airs of your pretenders to exclusive gentility, so common amongst Europeans. "The great mass of Americans are natural, therefore rarely vulgar; and if a freshness of spirits and an entire freedom from suspicion, together with the many guards which ill-bred jealousy draws around the objects of its care, may be viewed, as indeed it ought to be, as a proof of high feeling and true culture, then are the men of America arrived at a point of civilization at once creditable to themselves and honorable to their women, as nothing can be more perfectly unrestrained than the freedom enjoyed in all good families here. Strangers once introduced find every house at all times open to them, and the most frequent visits neither create surprise nor give rise to suspicion. Hospitality is inculcated and practised, and the people entertain with a liberality bordering on profuseness: the merit of this is enhanced by the great trouble the absence of good domestics entails on the mistress of even the best establishments. Ladies are here invariably their own house-keepers, yet no where is the stranger more warmly welcomed, and in no country is more cheerful readiness evinced in preparing for his entertainment." The Impressions' are dedicated to The Public-the writer choosing rather to trust to the merits of his work for its transatlantic success than to the éclat likely to be gained by the high-sounding name of some titled patron. There are some errors of taste to give them the least censurable name—which we could wish had been corrected in the final revision. Such personal expletives as 'I swear!' 'I vow!' ‘D— me !' etc., will, to say the least, make the judicious grieve. Their occurrence, it is true, is very rare; but we trust that the author in subsequent editions will perceive the blemish we have indicated, and 'reform it altogether.' CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Vol. I. By FRANCIS L. HAWKS, Rector of St. Thomas' Church, New-York. THIS large and well-executed volume forms the first of a series of works intended to embrace so much of the ecclesiastical history of America as has relation to the Protestant Episcopal Church. The book before us is devoted to an account of the establishment and progress of this church in Virginia, which, intimately connected as it is with the history of the colony from its earliest settlement, furnishes much that is interesting and instructive, not only to the antiquary but the general reader. Appended to the volume, is a record of the proceedings of the different conventions of the church in Virginia, from the year 1785 to 1835, inclusive. In his preface, the author remarks, that his labors in preparing the present work have shown him that the materials are more ample than they are generally supposed to be, for the history of all the leading religious denominations in the United States; and he suggests to his fellow Christians of other denominations, the propriety of preserving their several histories, without which the book of our national story must always be incomplete. The author modestly and happily observes in conclusion: If the effort now respectfully submitted to the public, and especially to the Episcopal community, should serve in the humble office of a guide, to direct the researches of some future historian; if it should contribute to strengthen the attachment of but one man who already loves the church, or to soften the hostility of one who does not, the author will feel that he has not labored in vain : for his book is the offering of filial affection to that church, in the communion of which he has, through life, found his best comfort, and in the bosom of which he trusts to enjoy, in death, a Christian's consolation.' THE PASSIONS: A Poem pronounced at the Odeon, December 28, 1835, on occasion of the anniversary of the birth of SPURZHEIM. By GRENVILLE MELLEN. Boston: MARSH, CAPEN AND LYON. PHRENOLOGY has much less to do with this poem than might be inferred from its title. It is a vivid picture of human passions, drawn with skill, well-colored, and displaying no small knowledge of the human heart: moreover, there is now and then a delicacy of taste and a refinement of imagination, both novel and refreshing. We annex an extract from that part of the poem which touches distinctively upon SPURZHEIM. The writer has here passed, with good judgment and fine effect, from the Spenserian stanza (in which the main poem is written,) to a less regular but more bold and stirring measure: And now from hearth and home, Forth on the weltering sea, Here, where the forest mount and shore, But now where sounding cities pour On their loud way to Fame! New radiance round the immortal image here, Did on its brow appear, And a new lustre flash'd along its eye! To see the royalty and front of Heaven The change that goes Over that front-cold- deep - and still 'Clos'd was the Pilgrim's task- and full his years - Gather'd that world in tears, As erst men gather'd round the bold and high- When they pass'd to the sky! And now on that tomb-pillar'd Mount, How beautiful he sleeps with garlands o'er his head, How beautiful his sleep! How lone! how deep! Mid that unceasing harmony of great trees- The far faint voices of the city steal, And sullen requiem bell, with broken peal! How beautiful his sleep! With Mem'ry thus to keep Her quiet watch, like sentinel, around The consecrated mount of bloom-the hallow'd ground!' There are occasional evidences of a lack of heedful revision, especially in some of the closing lines of the Spenserian verse. Byron somewhere speaks of the necessity as well as difficulty of ending this species of stanza gracefully; and in two or three instances Mr. Mellen appears either to have lost sight of this necessity, or to have been unable to combat successfully with the difficulty. We give a single example: 'But the sad story 's told the hapless wire Would not add sorrow to the heart 't was doom'd to tire.' The last line is prose, and poor prose, too. The faults, however, of the poem are few, in comparison with its numerous excellencies, both of thought and versification. It is faultless in typographical execution; and we commend it to the hearts and tastes of our readers. EDITORS' TABLE. 1 THE DRAMA. Tragedy, comedy, opera, and farce, have by turns held their sway at the Park Theatre during the past month. Miss MITFORD's beautiful composition, the tragedy of 'RIENZI,' was revived under the direction of Mr. WALLACK, and produced for his benefit, before a large audience. His personation of the noble tribune was, to say the least of it, equal to any of his former efforts in those melo-dramatic characters which he has already made his own; and far, very far superior to any of his previous performances in tragedy. The temperament of Rienzi, however, as drawn by Miss Mitford, partakes as much perhaps of the bold, enthusiastic character of a melo-dramatic hero, as it does of the higher and more refined attributes of a classically-tragic personage: and is therefore much better suited to the style of Mr. Wallack than a composition more strictly tragic. Mr. Wallack, among his other good qualities as a melo-dramatic actor, possesses a fine idea of the picturesque, which makes his situations always remarkable for effect. This peculiarity is particularly prominent in his personation of the Roman enthusiast, and exhibited as it always is without an appearance of effort, was no doubt a great cause of the marked approbation with which this performance was received. Mrs. GURNER played Claudia in a manner which delighted while it surprised her audience. She gave an effect to the exquisite tenderness of the part, which could hardly be expected from one who has heretofore made no pretensions to superiority in the serious drama. Her last scene with Rienzi, urging him to rescue her husband from the hands of the executioners, was a beautiful picture of urgent affection, united with the exquisite suffering of a young and devoted wife. Mr. Wallack richly deserves the thanks of the public for his revival of this beautiful tragedy; and from the great applause with which it was received, he will, no doubt, on his return, be induced to favor us with its repeated representation. There is nothing perfect, however, in theatrical performances; and there was one especial draw-back to the just effect of the tragedy of Rienzi. One of the supernumeraries, a Mr. RUSSELL, a beardless youth, was, from some unaccountable obliquity of management, made to undertake the part of the old and infirm Camillo. His exits and his entrances were saluted by peals of laughter, and the most serious scenes of the drama (being those in which his presence is required) were thereby turned from their true purpose, into one directly opposite; and the truth of the adage that 'there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous' was never more practically demonstrated. There is no excuse for such indignities: they are insults to the play, the actors, and the audience, and alike destructive of the interests of each. 'Rural Felicity' is one of Jerrold's best, if not indeed the best of his humorous productions. The morale of the play consists in the disappointment of two young lovers, who, having been slighted by their coquettish mistresses in the city, make an excursion to the country in the Quixotic hope of finding, amid the rural scenes of nature, that simple, unsophisticated excellence which was denied them in London. Mrs. Culpepper, a busy, meddling, jealous, gossipping, old maid- a sort of feminine Paul Pry-is the first specimen of native purity which our two errant philosophers encounter. Mrs. Culpepper is just such another as an observer will meet with in almost every country village, on this side of the water at least; and as human nature is the same in all countries, she is no doubt an honest specimen of the same genus all over the world. She is a VOL. VII. 40 |