to feel for the trifles that were to relieve them in the present emergency, and then anxiously withdrawing it again, took out each little article, one by one, to the last but neither purse nor jewels were there! a shadow fell on her sweet face; and the tears trembling for a moment on the long eye-lash, fell, unperceived by the blind parent, upon her nerveless hand.

In the hurry of the moment she had brought away the wrong casket; yet she would not reveal the mistake to her poor father, for fear of utterly overwhelming a heart already prostrated by misfortune. Silently pressing upon her the few piastres which the exigencies of the day had left, we turned to depart, fully resolved — at least it was so with myselfnever again to entertain a murmuring or desponding sentiment while the craving hunger of this poor frame could find the coarsest crumb for its relief!

I have seen suffering and sorrow in almost every degree and form, but never encountered a spectacle of such extended and unrelieved wretchedness as here presented itself. Not only had the hundreds around me been deprived of their dwellings and scanty furniture, but they were suffering from the real and apprehended horrors of the plague. There was no community that would increase their present exposures by affording them an asylum; for one of the first effects of this terrible scourge is an unnatural indifference to the fate of others, and a selfish, engrossing anxiety for personal safety. It is a pestilence which most truly walks in darkness; and its approaches are so mysterious and inexplicable, and its visitation so fatal, that the sympathies of the human heart appear to be bewildered in the general dread, to be paralyzed in the stunning consternation. Men become like a desperate crew escaping from a sinking wreck, where each, with frantic force, appropriates to himself the plank or oar that comes within his grasp. It was this excess of calamity, this overpowering dismay, that, in the fatal retreat of the French from Russia, induced the soldier, naturally a generous being, to leave his exhausted companion to perish in the snow, and to close his ears to those affecting cries for succor which only the dying can utter.

Every hill and valley without the walls of Constantinople and its swelling suburbs was shadowed by tents, in which the victims of the plague had been forced to take refuge. Every breeze, as it passed over the great city, came loaded with the wail and lamentations of the survivors over their dead companions: yet the multitude moved on, pursuing their individual ends, with an eagerness and directness which, so far from being disconcerted, seemed to be increased by the general dismay. They appeared to exonerate themselves from all the claims of sympathy, affection, and kindness, on the score of their own liabilities. They scarcely noticed the hearse as it went past, simply because each one apprehended that he might possibly be the next over whom its pall should be spread. I have ever observed that a common danger, so peculiarly calculated, as we should suppose, to make the heart enter directly into the feelings, anxieties, and despair of those around, only renders it the more callous, selfish, and cruel. A man who is walking himself upon thin ice, will seldom do more than turn a glance to those who have fallen through.

LITERARY NOTICES.

PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. BY N. P. WILLIS, Esq., author of 'Melanie,' the 'Slingsby' Papers, etc. In two vols. 12mo. Philadelphia: CAREY, LEA AND BLANCHARD. New-York: WILEY AND LONG.

COMMUNICATED but recently, as these 'Pencillings' were, to a widely-circulated American journal, they require at this period but brief notice at our hands. Their merits have been effectually canvassed by the writer's countrymen, and both before and since their re-publication in England have been even more freely scanned by trans-atlantic critics. The editor of the London Quarterly led the van in an attack upon the series, wherein he very justly reprehended the violations of gentlemanly courtesy, and tacitly-sacred confidence which the letters contained; but at the same time, as we conceive, did injustice to them as a whole, and evinced a zeal in censure evidently not altogether disinterested. The Edinburgh Review was scarcely less severe, and in sweeping terms denounced the 'Pencillings' as flippant and superficial. The London Metropolitan Magazine followed, and with a bitter scourge lashed the writer without stint. And truth to say, this latter flaying was not administered without some show of reason. Although not penned, as it should seem, by the editor, Captain MARRYAT, the critique was doubtless in a great measure primarily induced by a ridiculous attack, in one of Mr. Willis's early letters, upon the literary reputation of that distinguished writer. The assertion, that the productions of the author of 'Peter Simple' could not be dignified with the name of literature, and that they only met with favor among the ignoble vulgar, should never-as the universal dissent which the opinion elicited proved-have been permitted to sully the reputable journal for whose columns the letters were 'pencilled.' Ever true to nature— rarely below refinement, and always above grossness skilful in arrangement, and rich in ease and simplicity of style - Captain Marryat has, in our humble judgment, few living equals, and no superior. No author (even Bulwer not excepted, if we are rightly informed by those who should needs know,) is more popular in the United States than the author of 'Jacob Faithful.' The judgment, therefore, passed upon his labors by one whose all of talent not equals his moiety - passed too, it appears, when not even ten pages of his works had been perused-was, to say the least, presumptuous injustice. Frazer's Magazine came down next, with a sprawling pounce, upon our ill-fated author. The critic, howbeit, has overleaped all bounds, and is simply abusive, without argument, wit, or decency, to back his cause withal. There is strong internal evidence, that in this case the censor is some malignant obscure, of whom it might well be said:

'Did he not speak ill of others,
None would ever speak of him.'

We think we cannot be mistaken in the genus. Judging alone from the frequent bloated and compound epithet, and the inflated but feeble severity, we would be willing to wager 'something handsome' that the critic is a blatant pauper from the Emerald Isle, doing small literary jobs to order, to gain his bread-and-butter in the British metropolis. To such a critic, no author, with a due respect for himself, would deem it other than degradation to reply.

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Mr. Willis sees all things in his travels with the eye of a poet; he ever 'feels or feigns a flame.' Generally, his sketches are agreeably broken, his minor topics delicately handled, and his coloring light, free, and transparent. Sometimes, however, his prodigality of antithesis fatigues; an overweening vanity and apish ostentation often peep out from beneath a thin screen of affected indifference, ease, and dainty diction; and not unfrequently he violates both nature and probability, without any poetical necessity to plead in extenuation of the offence. In fine, we believe that unprejudiced readers will rise from a perusal of the original 'Pencillings' with the fixed impression, that although the writer may possess a pleasing command of language, a fertile imagination, and a keen eye for the beautiful in nature, animate and inanimate, yet his genius is not one of great compass, nor his sentiments of much depth.

THE OUTCAST, AND OTHER POEMS. By S. G. GOODRICH. In one vol. pp. 200. Boston: RUSSELL, SHATTUCK AND WILLIAMS.

IN so far as mere fame is concerned, Mr. Goodrich might very well afford to leave the poetical field untrodden. Were his merits as a successful wooer of the Nine equal to the best of his contemporaries, they would not procure for him the reputation which he at present enjoys, nor a tenth part of the widely-extended and daily increasing company of admirers who hold pleasant communion with him. Peter Parley! What crowds of agreeable associations rise up with the very name!-associations that cluster around the golden period of youth, that blessed age of hope and admiration! Let it be, as we have heard it urged, we know not with how much truth, that Peter is, after all, but a clipping compiler; his books, in their way, are nonpareils, and none but a man of superior tact, ay, and of talent too, could prepare them. But let us revert to the neat little book before us.

The poems embraced in this volume, have, with one or two exceptions, already appeared in print- many of them, as we remember, in the Boston Token, or Atlantic Souvenir, of which publications Mr. Goodrich has been for a considerable period the editor. He informs us, with becoming modesty, that he has but collected into a volume what was written in moments snatched from engrossing cares, and under circumstances little propitious to a cultivation of the divine art, but which met with considerable favor in a more fugitive form. With portions of several of the longer poems, and many of the shorter ones, in this collection, we profess ourselves well pleased. We admire the happy faculty which the writer possesses of insinuating a valuable moral, in a manner both simple and instructive; and now and then too, he illustrates a thought with a striking figure, that sends the sentiment warmly home to the heart of the reader. His main excellence, however, consists in the characteristics we have indicated, and in spirit and variety, rather than in elaborate execution, or polish. It must be confessed that he sometimes exaggerates nature- - that his metaphors are occasionally displeasingly mixed, and his words not always well chosen. To say nothing of a few hackneyed terms, which were old when Spenser wrote, such as 'nature's bowers,' and the like, we must also object to such similes as compare the roused ocean to a scowling giant, flinging billows around him; to illustrations that represent the insensible rock as 'thrilling with fear;' to the evident familiarity which exists between the writer and his hand-worked friends, 'thunder' and 'lightning;' and to the occasional coupling of such rhyming words as 'breeze' and 'caprice.' The author, we hope, will not think us

either captious or querulous. One who can write with the feeling and simplicity that mark the following passage, which we take from 'The Outcast,' needs little save the exercise of his better judgment to cause him to eschew such errors as we have pointed out:

I loved those hills, I loved the flowers,
That dashed with gems their sunny swells,
Aud oft I fondly dreamed for hours,
By streams within those mountain dells.
I loved the wood-each tree and leaf,
In breeze or blast to me was fair,

And if my heart was touched with grief,
I always found a solace there.

My parents slumbered in the tomb;
But thrilling thoughts of them came back,
And seemed within my breast to bloom,
As lone I ranged the forest track.

The wild flowers rose beneath my feet,
Like memories dear of those who slept,
And all around to me was sweet,
Although, perchance, I sometimes wept.
I wept, but not, oh not in sadness,
And those bright tears I would not smother,
For less they flowed in grief than gladness,

So blest the memory of my mother.

And she was linked, I know not why,

With leaves and flowers, and landscapes fair,
And all beneath the bending sky,
As if she still were with me there.
The echo bursting from the dell,
Recalled her song beside my bed,
The hill-side with its sunny swell,
Her bosom-pillow for my head.

The breathing lake at even-tide,
When o'er it fell the down of night,

Seemed the sweet heaven, which by her side,

I found in childhood's dreams of light:

And morning, as it brightly broke,

And blessed the hills with joyous dies,
Was like her look, when first I woke,
And found her gazing in my eyes.'

We should be tempted to copy The Rivulet,' and 'The Burial at Sea,' but for their previous publicity. There is a pleasing vein of mingled truth and satire running through The Spirit Court, or Practice and Pretence.' Would that there were less cause for our author's strictures upon the stage that we were not

'Induced to sanction what is vile and silly,

Because, forsooth, 'tis done in Picadilly.'

The theatre-going reader shall judge whether the following be not a graphic and artist-like picture:

'The curtain rose, and bursting on the view,

From mimic bowers a form fantastic flew ;

Ample above, below, with wondrous art,
Her insect waist seemed nearly cut apart.
With twinkling feet she came, and tripped along,

As if she floated on a fairy's song:

No envious ganze her swelling bosom dims,
No prudish drapery hides her tapering limbs ;
Poised on her toe, she twirling flew around,
Then upward leaped with high aërial bound-
And then-but stay! the decent muse must pause,
And drop the curtain, midst the loud applause.

The Ballet o'er, again the crashing choir,
Poured forth their volley like a muster-fire.
Not theirs the task to elevate the soul,
And banish vice by melody's control.
Despising simple strains that touch the heart,
They only sought to show their wond'rous art!
To draw down thunders from the shouting band,
Who most applaud what least they understand;
Or please the few, whose souls are in the ear,
Alive to sounds, but dead to music dear-
On heartless execution' ever bent,
Feeling with sense, but not with sentiment."

We close our extracts with a scene of oozing courage and pseudo honor:

'Two duellists we saw, twelve yards apart,

Waiting the word to fire, with flickering heart.
Swelling they stood, and bravely sought to bear
A lofty courage in their haughty air,
While hid beneath we read the thin deceit,
And saw each breast confess the shallow cheat.
Fear of light fashion's law, which bade them fight,
And do the law of God and man despite-
Fear of disdain, forsooth, from ladies' lashes,
Fear of the wit from leaden brains that flashes-
Fear, and the craven hope, that luck would guide
His bullet true, and turn his foeman's wide, -
These were the motives playing round the heart,
In either bosom veiled with conscious art.'

The volume is embellished with three of the best engravings of The Token for the present year, and some very good wood-cuts. Were it not for numerous typographical blunders, the execution of the work would be unexceptionable.

A LIFE OF WASHINGTON. BY JAMES K. PAULDING. In two volumes. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

SHOULD this work attain general popularity as a book for schools, and doubtless it will, such is the deathless nature of the subject that henceforth it will never be found out of print. Mr. Paulding has brought to his task the requisite reverence and admiration for the great and good man whose varied life he depicts, and the means to render it every way complete. He has been engaged upon the work at intervals since the conclusion of the late war, shortly subsequent to which period, and during a residence of several years in Washington, the idea of the work was first suggested and carried onward. Copious information, derived from the most authentic sources, relative to the private life and domestic habits of the Father of his Country, is here embodied, in a style plain and unaffected, and in a form both convenient and cheap, adapted to the intelligence and means of all classes. Nothing is contained in the volume that has not a firm footing in fact- nothing for which the authority of history, of Washington himself, or undoubted tradition, may not be produced. Mr. Paulding observes, in concluding a well-expressed preface, that his desire was to enlist the affections of the youth of America' to call forth their love as well as veneration for the great and good man whose life and actions he has attempted to delineate, and in so doing, he has appealed rather to the feelings of nature than to the judgment of criticism.' We subjoin two or three extracts which have never before been published. The first was copied by the author from the journal of Washington himself, kept while on a volunteer mission to the French commandant on the Ohio, soon after his appointment as Adjutant-General. The contrast' says our author' between Washington trudging through the pathless wilderness, with no other garment than his watch-coat, a gun in his hand, and a pack on his shoulders, with Washington at the head of armies, wielding the destiny of a great people, sustaining the inestimable rights of the human race, living the object of the world's admiration, and dying with the sacred name of Father of his Country, is alike striking for its romantic singularity, as for its sublime mural :'

"I took,' says Washington, 'my necessary papers, pulled off my clothes, and tied myself up in a watch-coat. Then, with gun in hand, and pack on my back, in which were my papers and provisions, I set out with Mr. Gist the 26th (of December.) The next day, after we had passed a place called Murdering Town, we fell in with a party VOL. VII. 55