has fixed some shelves, are Margaret's flowers; a blood-root in the marble pot Rufus Palmer gave her, and in wooden moss-covered boxes, pinks, violets, and buttercups, green and flowering. Here also, as a sort of mantel-tree ornament, sits the marble kitten which Rufus made under a cedar twig. At one end of the crane in the vacant side of the fire-place hang rings of pumpkin rinds drying for beer. On the walls are suspended strings of dried apples, bunches of yarn, and the customary fixtures of coats, hats, knapsacks, &c. On the sleepers above is a chain-work of cobwebs, loaded and knapped with dust, quivering and gleaming in the wind that courses with little or no obstruction through all parts of the house. Near Hash stands the drawhorse, on which he smoothes and squares his shingles; underneath it ad about lies a pile of fresh, sweetscentel, white shavings and splinters. Through the yawns of the back door, and sundry rents in the logs of the house, filter in unweariedly fine particles of snow, and thus along the sides of the room rise little cone-shaped, marble-like pilasters. Between Hash and his father, elevated on blocks, is the cider barrel. These are some of the appendages, inmates, and circumstances of the room. Within doors is a mixed noise of lapstone, mallets, swifts, fiddle, fire; without is the rushing of the storm.

Hash, spurred on by this double shot, plied his mallet the harder, and declared with an oath that he would not get the wood, that they might freeze first; adding that he hauled and cut it, and that was his part.

Chilion whispered his sister, and she went out for the purpose in question. It was not excessively cold, since the weather moderated as the storm increased, and she might have taken some interest in that tempestuous outer world. Her hens, turkeys, and ducks, who were all packed together, the former on their roost under the shed, the latter in one corner, also required feeling; and she went in and got boiled potatoes, which they seemed glad to make a meal of The wind blazed and racketed through the narrow space between the house and the hill. Above, the flakes shaded and mottled the sky, and fell twirling, pitching, skimble-scamble, and anon, slowly and more regularly, as in a minuet; and as they came nearer the ground, they were caught up by the current, and borne in a horizontal line, like long, quick spun, silver threads, afar over the white fields. There was but little snow in the shed, although entirely open on the south side; the storm seeming to devote itself to building up a drift in front. This drift had now reached a height of seven or eight feet. It sloped up like the roof of a pyramid, and on the top was an appendage like a horn, or a plume, or a marble jet d'eau, or a frozen flame of fire; and the elements in all their violence, the eddies that veered about the corner of the house,

the occasional side-blasts, still dallied, and stopped to mould it, and finish it; and it became thinner, and more tapering, and spiral; each singular flake adjusting itself to the very tip, with instinctive nicety; till at last it broke off by its own weightthen a new one went on to be formed.

snow that had trickled through the roof. She shook the coverlid, undressed, laid herself on her thistledown pallet--such a one had she been able to collect and make-to her sleep. The wind surged, swelled, puffed, hissed, whistled, shrieked, thundered, sighed, howled, by turns. The house jarred and creaked; her bed rocked under her; loose boards on the roof clappered and rattled; the snow pelted her windowshutter. In such a din and tustle of the elements lay the child. She had no sister to nestle with her, and snug her up; no gentle mother to fold the sheets about her neck, and tuck in the bed; no watchful father to come with a light, and see that she slept safe. Alone and in darkness she climbed into her chamber, alone and in darkness she wrapt herself in the bed. In the fearfulness of that night she sung or said to herself some words of the Master's, which he, however, must have given her for a different purpose-for of needs must a stark child's nature in such a crisis appeal to something above and superior to itself, and she had taken a floating impression that the Higher Agencies, whatever they might be, existed in Latin:

O sanctissima, O purissima, Dulcis Virgo Maria, Mater amata, intemerata! Ora, ora pro nobis!

As she slept amid the passion of the storm, softly did the snow from the roof distil upon her feet, and sweetly did dreams from heaven descend into her soul.

HENRY B. HIRST.

MR. HIRST is a native of Philadelphia, where he was born August 23, 1813. In 1830 he commenced the study of the law, but was not admitted to practice, owing to interruptions in his plans, until 1843.

Mr. Hirst's poetical career was also commenced at a comparatively late period, his first published poems having appeared in Graham's Magazine, when he was about thirty. In 1845 he published at Boston The Coming of the Mammoth; the Funeral of Time, and other Poems. The chief production of the volume describes the terror and desolation caused by a herd of Mammoth, all of whom are destroyed by lightning, with the exception of one survivor, who, pursued by warriors, takes his course across the Mississippi, the prairies, traverses the rocky mountains, and plunges unscathed into the Pacific. The remaining poems display vigor and feeling, and include a number of well written sonnets.

Mr. Hirst's next work, Endymion, a Tale of Greece, in four cantos, appeared in 1848. It is an eloquent classic story, varied from the old Greek legend, and was written, the author tells us, before he had perused the poem of Keats.

In 1849 he published The Penance of Roland, a Romance of the Peine Forte et Dure, aad other Poems. The story of the romance is that of a knight, who, having slain his wife in a fit of jealousy, is arrested, and refusing to plead, is subjected to the ingenious old penalty of pressure by weight. He persists in his determination, that his estates, which would otherwise be escheated to the crown, may pass to his heir. In his agony he is visited by his nephew, who confesses to have slandered the murdered lady. The knight's last moments are cheered by a vision of his wife, and he dies repentant and happy. This striking narrative is wrought into a poem of much spirit

and beauty. The volume also contains a ballal, Florence, an interesting story, poetically narrated. The remaining poems are descriptive and reflective, and are eloquent in tone, with occasional traces of imitation.

THE ROBIN.

The woods are almost bare; the mossy trees
Moan as their mottled leaves are hurried by,
Like sand before the Simoom, over the leas,
Yellowing in Autumn's eye:

And very cold the bleak November wind

Shrills from the black Nor'-West, as fitfully blow The gusts, like fancies through a maniac mind, Eddying to and fro.

Borne, like those leaves, with piercing cries, on high
The Robins come, their wild, autumnal wail,
From where they pass, dotting the angry sky,
Sounding above the gale.

Down, scattered by the blast, along the glen,
Over the browning plains, the flocks alight,
Crowding the gum in highland or in fen,

Tired with their southward flight.

Away, away, flocking they pass, with snow
And hail and sleet behind them, where the South
Shakes its green locks, and delicate odors flow
As from some fairy mouth.

Silently pass the wintry hours: no song,
No note, save a shrill querulous cry
When the boy sportsman, cat-like, creeps along
The fence, and then-then fly.

Companioned by the cautious lark, from field

To field they journey, till the winter wanes, When to some wondrous instinct each one yields, And seeks our northern plains.

March and its storms: no matter how the gale May whistle round them, on, through snow, and sleet,

And driving hail, they pass, nor ever quail,

With tireless wings and feet.

Perched here and there on some tall tree-as breaks
The misty dawn, loud, clarionet-like, rings
Their matin hymn, while Nature also wakes

From her long sleep, and sings.

Gradually the flocks grow less, for, two by two,
The Robins pass away,-ench with his mate;
And from the orchard, inoist with April dew,
We hear their pretty prate;

And from the apple's snowy blossoms come
Gushes of song, while round and round them

crowd

The busy, buzzing bees, and, over them, hum
The humming-birds aloud.

The sparrow from the fence; the oriole

From the now budding sycamore; the wren From the old hat; the blue bird from his hole Hard by the haunts of men;

The red-start from the wood-side; from the meadow,

The black-cheek, and the martin in the air;
The mournful wood-thrush from the forest shadow
With all of fair and rare

Among those blossoms of the atmosphere,-
The birds,--our only Sylphids,--with one voice,
From mountain side and meadow, far and near,
Like them at spring rejoice.

May, and in happy pairs the Robins sit
Hatching their young,--the female glancing down
From her brown nest. No one will trouble it,
Lest heaven itself should frown

On the rude act, for from the smouldering embers
On memory's hearth flashes the fire of thought,
And each one by its flickering light remembers
How flocks of Robins brought,

In the old time, leaves, and sang, the while they covered

The innocent babes forsaken. So they rear Their fledglings undisturbed. Often has hovered While I have stood anear

A Robin's nest, o'er me that simple story,
Gently and dove-like, and I passed away
Proudly, and feeling it as much a glory
As 'twas in Cæsar's day

To win a triumph, to have left that nest
Untouched; and many and many a schoolboy

time,

Was the son of a New York merchant, and pursued his father's business. He was engaged in the trade with western Africa, and it was on a business visit to Sierra Leone that his death occurred from a fever of the climate, March 25, 1853. It was about his fortieth year. Mr. McCracken bore a distinguished part in New York society by his fortune, his amateur pursuit of literature, and his fine conversational powers. He wrote for the magazines and journals-in particular for the Knickerbocker, under the editorship of Hoffinan, and Mr. Benjamin's "American Monthly" where one of his papers was entitled The Education of the Blood. A very clever sketch, The Art of Making Poetry by an Emeritus Professor, appeared in the second number of the Knickerbocker. He wrote a few trifles for Yankee Doodle. 1849, he published in the Democratic Review a comedy in five acts, of New York life, entitled Earning a Living. He had also a hand in a Democratic free-trade paper, which had a short

career.

THE ART OF MAKING POETRY.

In

I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, suppers, and sleeping hours excepted-it is the right butter women rate to market.-As You Like It.

Cardinal Richelieu is reported to have said once that he would make so many dukes that it should be a shame to be one, and a shame not to be one. It appears, however, that he changed his mind afterwards, inasmuch as, down to St. Simon's time, there were only twelve or thirteen dukes in France, besides the blood-royal. At present they are more plenty, though it is even yet some distinction to be a duke, out of Italy; and in Poland there is an express law against the title being borne by any man who has not a clear income of three hundred dollars a year to support its dignity. In Bavaria, you may

be made a baron for 7000 rix-dollars (or $5250)—or a count for 30,000 rix-dollars, but in this last case you must not follow any trade or profession; bankers, accordingly, content themselves with baronies, usually, like sensible men, preferring substance to sound; as, in fact, when it is perfectly well known you are able to buy a dozen counts and their titles, the world gives you credit as for the possessionperhaps more. But what Cardinal Richelieu threatened with regard to dukedoms has, in fact, been effected by the progress of the world with regard to another title as honorable, perhaps, as that of duke, though few of its possessors could retain it if the Polish regulation mentioned above were to be applied to it and enforced. I mean the title of poet. To be a poet, or, rather-for there is still some reverence left for that name-to be a versifier, is in these days a shame, and not to be one is a shame. That is, it is a shame for any man to take airs or pique himself on a talent now so common, so much reduced to rule and grown absolutely mechanical, and to be learned like arithmetic: and, on the other hand, for these same reasons, it is a shame not in some degree to possess it, or have it for occasions at command. It is convenient sometimes to turn some trifle from a foreign language, to hit off a scrap for a corner of a newspaper, to write a squib or an epigram, or play a game at crambo, and for all these emergencies the practised versifier is prepared. He has, very likely, the frames of a few verses always ready in his mind, constructed for the purpose, into which he can put any given idea at a moment's warning, with as much certainty as he could put a squirrel or a bird into a cage he had ready for it. These frames may consist merely of the rhymes, or bouts rimés, being common-place words, such as would be easily lugged in a-propos to anything; or they may be very common-place verses ready made, upon which an appropriate travestie could easily be superinduced; or, finally, their places may be supplied by the actual verses of some author, who should, however, be, if possible, but little known, which may be travestied impromptu. This will be better understood by an instance, and as I am now making no secret of the matter, I will take those well-known lines of Moore:

Vain was that man-and false as vain,
Who said, were he ordained to run

His long career of life again,

He would do all that he had done.

It is not thus the voice that dwells

In coming birth-days, speaks to me;
Far otherwise, of time it tells,

Wasted unwisely-carelessly.

I

Now, suppose I wish to make love in poetry. am a despairing lover-or will suppose myself one for the present, and my griefs may be poured out in this same measure, and with so many of these same words, as to leave no ground for any claim to authorship for me in the following stanza :—

Vain are the hopes, ah! false as vain,
That tempt me weary thus to run
My long career of love again,

And only do what I have done.

Ah! not of hope the light that dwells
In yonder glances speaks to me;
Of an obdurate heart it tells,

Trifling with hearts all carelessly.

And now take the same stanza, only change the circumstance to something as different as possible. I am a flaming patriot, the enemy is at our gates, and I am to excite my fellow citizens to arms. will go to the self-same tune and words:

Our country calls, and not in vain,
Her children are prepared to run
Their fathers high career again;
And may wo do as they have done.
vor, 1, -83

In every trumpet voice there dwells
An echo of their fame for me;
Oh, who can hear the tale it tells,
And pause supinely-carelessly.

Again, which is a more possible case in our country, I am disgusted with an unprincipled mob orator, some indescribably low, but gifted scion of perdition, one whom no prose can reach; why, have at him with the same arms,-they are always ready :Thou bad vain man, thou false as vain,

If Satan were ordained to run

A free career on earth again,

He would do all that thou hast done.
It is of him the voice that dwells

In thy gay rhetoric speaks to me,
Of horrors scoffingly it tells,

Of crime and suffering carelessly.

Or, lastly-for one may get too much of this-I am enraged with a bad singer or musician, and want to gibbet him. Lo! is not Tom Moore my executioner:

I stop my ears, but all in vain

In vain to distant corners run:
He imitates the owls again,

And will do all that they have done.
Of roasting cats the voice that dwells
In such discordance, speaks to me;
Of Tophet up in arms it tells,

With doors left open carelessly.

*

I quit here for a moment the subject of rhyme, to say a word or two upon blank verse, that mortal humbug which " prose poets" are so fond of, and, certainly, the world would soon be full of it, if any body were fond of them. There is no more difficul

ty or skill in cutting up a given quantity of prose into blank verse, than there is in sawing up a log into planks. Both operations certainly reflect credit on their original inventors, and would immortalize them if we knew their names; but Fame would have her hands full, and her mouth too, if she should occupy herself in these days with all the handicraftsmen in both or either. The best way, perhaps, of setting this in a clear point of view, is to exemplify it; and, for this purpose, it would not be difficult to pitch upon authors whose whole writings, or nearly so, would bear being written as blank verse, though they were given out as prose. For instance, there is John Bunyan, the whole of whose works it would be easier to set up into verse than to restore some works, now held to be such, to their metrical shape, if, by any accident, the ends of their lines should get confused. Let the reader try his skill in reconstructing, with the visible signs of poetry, the following extract from Samson Agonistes, from line 118, omitting the next three, and going on to line 130:

in

See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused * slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds, o'er-worn and soiled, or do my eyes misrepresent; can this be he, that heroic, that renowned, irresistible Samson, whom, unarmed, no strength of man or fiercest wild beast could withstand; who tore the lion as the lion tears the kid, ran on embattled armies clad in iron, and weaponless himself, made arms ridiculous, &c.

But to return to Bunyan; take the following extract, which is verbatim from his "World to Come." It is more correct metre than much that we find written as verse in the old dramatists, though it is always printed as prose:

:

Now, said my guardian angel, yon are on The verge of hell, but do not fear the power Of the destroyer;

For my commission from the imperial throne Secures you from all dangers.

Here you may hear from devils and damned souls The cursed causes of their endless ruin;

It

Under this act, Governor Seward, who had always manifested a warm interest in the success of the measure, commissioned Mr. Brodhead as agent in the spring of 1841. The particular objects of this agency were to procure such additional historical records as should render the archives of New York as complete and comprehensive as possible; and the agent was accordingly required to procure all papers in the public offices of European governments, in his judgment "relating to or in any way affecting the colonial or other history of this state."

During the three following years Mr. Brodhead devoted his whole time to the execution of this delicate and responsible duty, and was laboriously occupied in searching the archives of Holland, England, and France, for such papers as he thought would illustrate the history of New York, and serve to fill up the gaps in the existing state records at Albany. In this work he received the friendly aid and advice of Mr. Bleecker, Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Everett, and General Cass, who then represented the United States at the Hague, London, and Paris, and by whose intervention the various public offices in those cities were liberally opened to the researches of the agent.

The result of this enterprise was the procurement of a vast collection of historical documents, consisting of more than five thousand separate papers, and comprising a large part of the official correspondence of the colonial authorities of New York with the governments at home. Many of these documents had never before been known to the historian, though they are of acknowledged importance. From the Hague and Amsterdam Mr. Brodhead obtained a collection of Holland records which fill sixteen large volumes, and relate to the period during which New Netherland was under the Dutch dominion. From London forty-seven volumes were procured, containing copies of the instructions of the English government to its officers in New York, and the reports of those officers to the home authorities, with other interesting papers. From the archives of the Marine and War departments at Paris seventeen volumes were collected, which contain, besides many other documents relating to Canada in connexion with New York, most of the correspondence of the French Generals Dieskau, Montcalm, and Vaudreuil.

With this rich harvest Mr. Brodhead came back to New York in the summer of 1844; and Mr. Bancroft, after carefully examining the collection, pronounced that "the ship in which he returned was more richly freighted with new materials for American history than any that ever crossed the Atlantic." Mr. Brodhead was immediately invited to deliver the address before the New York Historical Society at its fortieth anniversary, which took place on the 20th November, 1844. This address, which embodied a statement of some of the results of Mr. Brodhead's researches in Europe, was published by the society, together with an account of the festival which followed, on which occasion John Quincy Adams and Albert Gallatin met in public for the last time.

In February, 1845, Mr. Brodhead, having deposited his transcripts in the secretary's office, submitted his final report as historical agent, which was laid before the Legislature by a message

from Governor Wright, and was printed by order of the Senate as document No. 47 of that session. This report contains a detailed statement of the researches of the agent, and also a full analytical catalogue of the several documents comprised in the eighty volumes of Mr. Brodhead's collection. It may here be added that all these documents are now in course of publication in ten large quarto volumes, under an act of the Legislature passed on the 30th of March, 1849.

Upon the appointment of Mr. Bancroft as Minister to Great Britain in 1846, President Polk, at his request, commissioned Mr. Brodhead to be Secretary of the United States Legation at London. There he remained, until both minister and secretary were recalled by President Tyler in 1849. On his return to New York, Mr. Brodhead applied himself diligently to the execution of the work he had so long meditated, the History of the State of New York, the first volume of which, embracing the period under the Dutch, from 1609 to 1664, was published by the Harpers early in 1853. This book was well received by the public.

The extensive stores of original material collected by the author enabled him to present many curious and important facts of picturesque and local interest for the first time, while the main progress of the work unfolded the peculiar commercial restrictive system of trading monopoly, the regulations of the West India Company, and the domestic institution of the patroonships, which, at first the protection, soon became an impediment to the fortunes of the colony. The various political and social influences of the New Netherlands presenting the earnest, liberal, and popular elements of the home country, are exhibited with care and fidelity to the manuscript and other authorities which are constantly referred to, and passages of which are frequently embroidered in the text. The remaining distribution of the subject by the author, embraces the three periods from 1664 to the cession of Canada in 1763, from that date to the inauguration of Washington in 1789, and thence to the present day.

In the autumn of 1853 Mr. Brodhead was appointed by President Pierce Naval Officer of the Port and District of New York. While his official duties engross the most of his time, he does not neglect the prosecution of his history, nor withdraw his attention from literary labors. Among other things of this nature he prepared and delivered, by special request, an address on the Commercial History of New York, before the Mercantile Library Association, at the opening of the new Clinton Hall in Astor Place on the 8th of June, 1854. This address was published by the association.

In the spring of 1855 Mr. Brodhead received from the President the appointment of Consul-General of the United States at Japan. This office, however, he did not accept; and he still holds the post of Naval Officer of the Port of New York.

LOUIS LEGRAND NOBLE

WAS born in the vale of the Butternut Creek in Otsego county, New York, in 1812. He passed his early years in rural life and its associations at this place and in western New York, when he removed with his parents, in his twelfth year, to Michigan