Our attention is arrested by the address "To the Evening Star." The force with which, in certain dispositions of the soul, the contemplation of the never-changing brightness of the starry firmament, draws our reflections to the Being who formed it, and on to his brighter abode, has not escaped any man whose heart is not corrupted, and his understanding brutalized. To our mind, nothing more triumphantly overthrows all the pretensions of Chance in the formation of "this goodly frame," than to look steadfastly at the full-orb'd moon. Just as thou art now, and where thou art, so wast thou a thousand ages ago; unwasted in splendour; unchanged, even by an instant, in thy course, the same moment that brings thee to that spot now, brought thee there from the beginning, and will bring thee there for unknown ages to come. How sublime is this unvarying uniformity of motion; this immeasurable duration and identity of existence! Was this the work of what men, most unmeaningly, call chance? Could the fortuitous assemblage of floating atoms produce a body of such enduring and unerring constancy; whose every motion is governed by a power that never falters nor fails?

Star of evening, mild and bright,

I love thy calm and holy ray;

It seems so gently to invite

My soul to heaven, and point the way:
Then holier feelings take their turn,
The soul is silenced into prayer,
The heart with quicker throb discerns
The presence of its Maker there.
And with the flashings of thine eye
Come bright revealings from above-
From Him who hung thee in the sky,
To light us to his throne of love.
More bright the lamp of day may be,
Of ampler orb the queen of night;
But thine are holier rays to me,

And dearer than a world of light.

We would willingly transcribe the whole of "The Shipwrecked," if our space would allow. We shall make some extracts. The awful situation of the only survivor of the storm's fury; the variety of his terrors and depth of his despair, while clinging to a broken mast, tossed on the wild waters; are imagined and described in a fine spirit of poetry; particularly the incident of the dead body of one of his comrades floating to his side, and continuing there, as if unwilling to be forsaken by him. We also notice the new species of dismay, produced by the calm, which succeeded the storm. After all have perished but himself, the sufferer proceeds:

At length awakes:

The tempest, when the day was gone,
More fiercely with the night came on;
But, howling o'er the trackless sea,
Gave neither hope nor fear to me;
Despair had made me brave my fate,-
To die-thus lone and desolate.
I saw another morning sun,

But yet my struggles were not done:-
A passing billow wafted then

A comrade's body to my side,
Who lately, with his fellow-men,

Had bravely stemmed the dashing tide.
His calm cheek and half-open eye
Betokened that in agony

His spirit had not left him-he
Seemed as if slumbering on the sea.
I calmly gazed, and without dread,
Upon the dull eye of the dead;

But when his cold hand touch'd my cheek,
My voice came from me in a shriek:
At mine own voice I gazed around,
'Twas so unlike a human sound;
But on the waters none were near,
Save the corpse upon its watery bier,
And hungry birds that hovered nigh,
Screaming his sole funereal cry.
My sum of human pangs to fill,
There came a calm-more deathly still,
Because its sullen silence brought
A dull repose that wakened thought.
But oft the sea-bird o'er me flew,

And once it flapped me with its wing:

That I must be its prey I knew,
And smiled at my heart's shivering;
But yet I could not bear to see

Its yellow beak, or hear its cry

Telling me what I soon must be;

I moaned, and wept, and feared to die.
Where'er I drifted with the tide,

My comrade's corpse was by my side.

[March,

exhausted, he falls into a sleep or swoon, and then

Returning reason came at last,

And bade returning hope appear:

That remnant of the broken mast,

And my dead comrade-both were near;

Not floating o'er the billows now,
For they had drifted us to land-
And I was saved-I knew not how-
But felt that an Almighty hand
Had chased the waters from the strand.
Beside the corpse, and by the wave,

I knelt, and murmured praise to Him,
Who, in the fearful trial, gave

Strength to the spirit and the limb!

There is much more in this volume to instruct and amuse; but we are warned, by the number of our pages, that we must here part with it.

We shall introduce one more of these charming productions for the present year, published, also, in London, under the title of" The Literary Souvenir." It is highly distinguished, as well for its literary merit, as for the excellence of its workmanship in printing, engraving, and all its ornamental parts. It is a fair rival to the "Forget Me Not" in every respect; and, perhaps, in some of the plates, superior to it. We shall offer to our readers two specimens of its poetical effusions, without comment; their beauties are at once perceptible, and will be their best recommendation. The prose part of its contents may, also, be generally commended. The first article, entitled the Contented Man, from the pen of Washington Irving, is a fine sample of his best

manner.

TO A DEAD EAGLE.

It is a desolate eve;

Dim, cheerless is the scene my path around;
Patters the rain; the breeze-stirred forests grieve;
And wails the stream with melancholy sound:
While, at my feet, behold,

With vigorous talons clenched, and bright eye shut,
With proud curved beak, and wiry plumage bold,
Thou liest, dead eagle of the desert, but

Preserving yet in look thy tameless mood,

As if, though stilled by death, thy heart were unsubdued.
How cam'st thou to thy death?

Did lapsing years o'ercome, and leave thee weak,—
Or whirlwinds, on thy heaven descending path,
Dash thee against the precipice's peak?—

'Mid rack and floating cloud

Did scythe-winged lightning flash athwart thy brain,
And drive thee, from thine elevation proud,
Down whirling lifeless to the dim-seen plain?-
I know not-may not guess; but here, alone,

Lifeless thou liest outstretched beside the desert stone.
A proud life hath been thine:

High on the herbless rock thou 'wok'st to birth,
And, gazing down, saw far beneath thee shine,
Outstretched, horizon-girt, the maplike earth.
What rapture must have gushed

Warm round thy heart, when first thy wings essayed,
Adventurously, their heavenward flight, and rushed
Up towards day's blazing eye-star undismayed,-
Above thee space's vacancy unfurled,

And, far receded down, the dim material world!
How fast-how far-how long

Thine had it been from rack-veiled eyrie high
To swoop, and still the woodlark's lyric song,
The leveret's gambols, and the lambkin's cry

The terror-stricken dove

Cowered down amid the oak wood's central shade;
While ferny glens below, and cliffs above,
To thy fierce shriek responsive echo made,
Carrying the wild alarm from vale to vale,
That thou, the forest king, wert out upon the gale!
When downward glens were dark,

And o'er moist earth glowed morning's rosy star,
High o'er the scarce-tinged clouds 'twas thine to mark
The orient chariot of the sun afar:

And, oh! how grand to soar

Beneath the full moon, on strong pinion driven;
To pierce the regions of grey cloudland o'er,
And drift amid the star-isled seas of heaven!
Even like a courier sent from earth to hold
With space-dissevered worlds unawed communion bold.
Dead king-bird of the waste!

And is thy curbless span of freedom o'er?
No more shall thine ascending form be traced?
And shall the hunter of the hills no more

Hark to thy regal cry?

While 'spiring o'er the stream-girt vales, thy form,
Lessening, commingles with the azure sky,
Glimpsed 'mid the masses of the gathering storm,
As if it were thy proud resolve to see

Betwixt thee and dim earth the zig-zag lightnings flee!
A child of freedom thou-

Thy birthright the tall cliff and sky beyond:
Thy feet were fetterless; thy fearless brow
Ne'er, quailing, tyrant man's dominion owned,
But Nature's general law

The slave and freeman must alike obey:

Pride reels; and Power, that kept a world in awe, The dreadful summons hears;-and where are they? Vanished like night-dreams from the sleeper's mind, Dusk 'mid dissolving day, or thunder on the wind!

BUCKFASTLEIGH ABBEY.

Sweet pastoral vale!-When hope was young,
And life looked green and bright as thou,

Ere this world's toils or cares had flung

A shade of sadness on my brow,

A loiterer in thy sylvan bowers,

I whiled away uncounted hours,

And, by thine own sequestered Dart,
Poured forth, in song, by burning heart!

Wild river! as it lapsed along

In glory on its winding way,
Like Youth's first hopes, rejoicing, strong,
And full of Heaven's own hues as they,
I little thought that storms would fling
Their shadows o'er so bright a thing;
Or that my course would ever be
Less calm than then it seemed to me.

I came when wintry winds were high,
And storms were brooding in the air;
Thy river rushed in fierceness by,

Thy skies were dim, thy trees were bare;
And that lone ruin, erst that rose
An emblem of thy charmed repose,
Now, struggling with the fitful blast,
Frowned like the spectre of the Past.

A change was on my aching heart,

As dark as that I kenned in thee;
Thoughts, like thy waves, impetuous Dart,
Thronged o'er my soul tumultuously,
As gazing on that altered scene,

I turned to what we both had been!-
Thy charms are lovelier than of yore,
When will my storms of life be o'er?

And thou art now a fairy dream,

To stir the source of sweetest tears;
That sun-touched fane, and sparkling stream,
My beacon-lights to other years.

Oh might my toil-worn spirit close
Its weary pinions in repose,

I would not ask more perfect bliss
Than such a paradise as this!

*

We have already noticed the usefulness of these annual offerings, in the encouragement and employment they give to modest and meritorious authors, and to ingenious and skilful artists. We do not pretend to exactness in our calculation, but believe we may safely affirm, that such a work as the "Forget Me Not," must have distributed, among men of genius and taste, many thousand dollars; and so of the "Literary Souvenir," the "Amulet;" and "Friendship's Offering;" all of the same character. The spirit of enterprise and emulation which animates our own publishers, has not failed to exert itself on this subject; and while we do not affirm that their productions are quite equal to those of London, we do not hesitate to say, they are respectable imitations, and press close on the footsteps of their prototypes. "The Memorial," published at Boston, in its paper, typography, and literary matter, both poetry and prose, is entitled to high commendation. Its material deficiency is in the engravings; which are but few and in general coarsely executed. Of the "Atlantic Souvenir," we forbear to say more than striat justice demands. It has been prepared with the freest liberality of expenditure, and is fully worthy of its cost. The plates are the works of our best artists at their best prices; the paper and printing excellent, and the text all original, full of interest