"To the Driving Cloud," and "The Old Clock on the Stairs." These are all amiable carols, inspirited with poetic life, decorated with chaste image, and shadowed with pensive sentiment, like the hand of manhood laid gently upon the billowing head of a child.

The character of a translator's own genius may be gathered with considerable accuracy from his selection of pieces to translate. In general, the graceful bends to the graceful, the pensive sighs back to the pensive, and the strong shadows the strong. Longfellow has not dared any lofty heights, or sounded any dark hollows, of foreign poetry. The exquisite patriarchal simplicities of the Swedish ballad have attracted his kindred spirit. It is not-" deep calling unto deep." It is one corn-field responding to another, across the hedge, under one soft westerly breeze. Need we do more than allude to "The Children of the Lord's Supper," which, both in verse and spirit, is the model of "Evangeline." Thus he characterizes himself as a translator:-"The translation is literal, perhaps to a fault. In no instance have I done the author a wrong, by introducing into his work any supposed improvements or embellishments of my own. I have preserved even the measure, that inexorable hexameter in which, it must be confessed, the motions of the English muse are not unlike those of a prisoner dancing to the music of his chains; aud perhaps, as Dr. Johnson said of the dancing dog, 'the wonder is not that she should do it so well, but that she should do it at all.'"

We close our paper with feelings of gratitude and respect for our transatlantic author. It is pleasant, in this melancholy world, to "light upon such certain places," where beautiful dreams, and lofty, generous aspirations, lift us up, on a ladder, into ideal regions, which are yet to become real; for every such aspiration is a distinct step upwards to meet our expected New Jerusalem of man, "coming down as a bride adorned for her husband." Every volume of genuine poetry, besides, constitutes a cool grotto of retreat, with the altar of a bloodless sacrifice standing in the midst. We love, too, even better than the poetry of this volume, its sunny, genial, human, and hopeful spirit. Perhaps there are more depth and power, certainly there are more peculiarity and strangeness, in Emerson's volume, but over many parts of it

is suspended a dry, rainless cloud of gloom, which chills and withers you. You become, it may be, a wiser, but certainly a sadder man. Longfellow sheds a chequered autumnal light, under which your soul, like a river, flows forward, serene, glad, strong, and singing as it flows

"Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait."

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.

THESE sketches are by no means intended as a complete literary history of the age; yet we believe that in our two "Galleries" few names of great note will be found altogether omitted. We have not, indeed, analyzed at length such writers as Dickens, Thackeray, Horne, Robert Browning, or our admirable friend Marston, partly because we are not fully acquainted with their works, and partly because they have been thoroughly treated by other writers. To omit, however a distinct notice of such a phenomenon as "Festus" were unpardonable, and to this we now address ourselves. "Festus " is, indeed, a phenomenon. "When I read 'Festus,'" said poor David Scott to us, "I was astonished to find such work going on in a mind of the present day." It seemed to him, as Edinburgh on first view was called by Haydon, a "giant's dream" Indeed it much resembles one of Scott's own vast unearthly pictures, the archetypes of which he may have recognized now in that world of shadows, of which he was born and lived a denizen; for surely, if ever walked "phantom amongst men," it was the creator of "Vasco," "Sarpedon," and the "Resurrection of the Cross."

The first feeling which affected many besides us at the perusal of "Festus was a shock of surprise, mixed with pain, and not free from a shade of disgust. If we did not believe," we trembled; if we did not sympathize, we shud

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dered. Every thing was so strange that the whole seemed monstrous. We can compare our feelings to nothing else than Cain's flight with Lucifer through the stars. We found ourselves caught up on dark and mighty wings, through wildernesses of dim and shadowy objects, worlds unpeopled, worlds half-created, worlds peopled by forms so monstrous that solitude seemed sweet in the comparison-" gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire." But just as disgust and terror were about to drive us away from this weltering chaos, a light appeared, softer than sunlight, warmer than moonlight -the light of genius-which beckoned us on, and in which, at last, all the abortional shapes and unearthly scenery became beautiful as the landscapes of a dream. It was an angel after all, and not an eccentric demon, who was our conductor, and we yielded ourselves gladly to his gentle guidance, although the path lay over all prodigious and unspeakable regions. We want words to express the wonder which grew upon us, as each page opened like a new star, and we felt that the riches of thought, and imagery, and language scattered through the poem, were absolutely" fineless," and that the poet's mind was as vast as his theme. That vague but thrilling wonder has subsided into a calm but profound sense of the various elements of power and beauty which compose the "one and indivisible" "Festus."

Some, indeed,

It is, first of all, an original production. have called it a mere cento from Goethe, Byron, and Shelley. We grant at once that it bears a striking resemblance to some of the productions of those great three; but the resemblance is only that of a kindred subject and a kindred elevation. It is a new comet in an old sky. As well call "Manfred" a copy of " Faust," or "Faust" of Job, as trace "Festus" to a slavish imitation of any preceding poem. It takes its place instantly as the lawful member of a family of sublime eccentrics, who have pierced more or less boldly into forbidden regions "beyond the solar path and milky-way," and whose fiery tresses tell on their return that they have neared the ardors now of the light that is full of glory, and now of the flames that shall never be quenched. In all these, however, the argument and object are different. Job, as we mean to show elsewhere, contains a solution of the grand problem of the re

conciliation of individual man to God, and to the difficulties of the universe, through a divine medium. "Faust" is a fragmentary attempt to settle the same question, apart from supernatural aid. "Manfred" howls back to both, that such reconciliation is impossible, and that the riddle of the universe is absolutely illegible by man. Shelley's "Prometheus" is the argument of the "Faust" extended from man the individual to man the species; while Bailey's "Festus" is the argument of Job applied, in like manner, to the whole human family. He takes a similar view to that which Blake has so beautifully developed in his illustrations of the book of Job. "Festus" is to the one as Job to the other-a type of the fall and recovery of all men. The scene of "Faust" and of "Prometheus" is in earth; that of Job and of "Festus" is (essentially) in eternity.

That the book of Job is intended to teach universal restoration we do not, notwithstanding Blake, believe. But one principal object of "Festus" is to promulgate this dream. A lovely dream, verily, it is. That the surprise of a final deliverance should pierce into the darkness of the second death-that heads bowed down on the pillows of despair should be raised up to look and be lightened by the THIRD ADVENT of a more glorious "star of Lethe" than was ever Mercury as he descended into the Pagan shades-that "faces faded in the fire" should glow with the freshness of eternal youth-that the prey should be taken out of the hands of such mighty ones, and the captives from a fate so terrible that the spring of a sublimer resurrection should reach the remote Hecla of hell, substituting flowers for flames, and for ice sunshine-that the words of the "Devil's Dream" should be fulfilled even in the case of the eldest born of Anarchy and Sin,

"Thou shalt walk in soft white light with kings and priests abroad, And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the hills of God"—

is a most captivating notion, and might be credited, had it the slightest ground in the Word of God, or any where but in the poetic fancy or the wild wish of man. As it is, it rises up before us, a brilliant but unsubstantial and fading pomp, like a splendid evening sky; or if it die not altoge

ther away, it must be from its connection with the imperishable fame of " Festus."

Mil

We could have wished that the author of this poem had severed its masses of beauty from a moral or theological system. All such unions are dangerous to poems. ton, indeed, has surmounted the difficulty; and while we spurn Shelley's assertion that the system of Christianity shall by and by only be remembered in Milton's poem, we grant that the "Paradise Lost" is a subordinate evidence of its truth, as well as a rich halo around its central

and solid greatness. To Pollok's work, again, his high Calvinism has proved partly a blessing and partly a bane -inwrought, as it is, into the entire structure of the poem, it has created either blind partisans or bitter enemies; only a few have been able to look through the "fire-mist" into the poetical beauties which are hid beneath it. In like manner, while Festus has been adopted and fondled by the large sect (large at least in America) calling itself Universalists, its doctrines have repelled many of the orthodox, who otherwise would have rejoiced in the "wilderness of sweets" and the forest of grandeurs, which its circuit includes. Nor must Mr. Bailey imagine that he has, by his notion of a universal restoration, in any effectual way, recommended religion to the skeptical of the present day. Eternal punishment, fifty years ago, was a great stumbling-block to unquiet spirits. Such have generally now travelled on so far towards Naturalism or Pantheism, that they will not return at the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely-they will laugh at the fine dream, as a man would at the offer of sugar-plums for food-and walk on their own ungovernable way. They will ask, must not the reason for a hell at all be an infinite one, and if so, is it not likely to be an eternal reason too? In every great house is there not a furnace for the dross, as well as a light in the drawing-room? If sin be of an expansive character, will not punishment expand along with it? or, if God means to destroy sin hereafter, why does he not begin by abolishing it here? And what need, they will ask again, of any hell afterwards, when justice is done now? And, again, your theory may prove the book human, but does it prove it divine?

Thus innocuously will the milk and rose-water of Bailey's