250

LOVE AT A GRAVE.

Oh! do

to

* Can you give me any circumstances or particulars. * * * not desert your poor friend in this bitter affliction. * * Ask Mr. come, as I must see him to deliver a message to him from my poor Eddie. ** I need not ask you to notice his death and to speak well of him. I know you will. But say what an affectionate son he was to me, his poor desolate mother. *

To hedge round a grave with respect, what choice is there, between the relinquished wealth and honors of the world, and the story of such a woman's unrewarded devotion! Risking what we do, in delicacy, by making it public, we feel-other reasons aside— that it betters the world to make known that there are such ministrations to its erring and gifted. What we have said will speak to some hearts. There are those who will be glad to know how the lamp, whose light of poetry has beamed on their far-away recognition, was watched over with care and pain-that they may send to her, who is more darkened than they by its extinction, some token of their sympathy. She is destitute, and alone. If any, far or near, will send to us what may aid and cheer her through the remainder of her life, we will joyfully place it in her hands

We have occupied so much room that we defer speaking critically of Mr. Poe's writings, as we intended to do when we sat down, and this, and some more minute details of biography, we shall hope to find time for, hereafter.

MR. WHIPPLE.

THE size of parcels of thought is subject to fashion, in a way that is curiously irrational. There was a time when the "Essay" was the only shape of literature in vogue. Subjects which it takes a whole book to treat, suffered then, as subjects suffer now which are spread into two-volume novels, though only properly the stuff for an Essay. An accidental novelty of our time, the delivery of "Lectures," has fortunately restored the obsolete thought-shape of Essay, and to it we owe the delightful book before us, which would have made the author a brilliant reputation in the days of Addison and the Spectator.

The most precious philosophy of life, and nicest observation, is often buried deep in the brain of a merchant, or a business man, unused, because to produce it would be "to write a book," and that is too much of an undertaking. Intellect is a sea of which books are but the chance-named inlets formed by the shaping of the shore-but we are apt to forget that there are boundless deeps of as bright water, only nameless because not separated and imprisoned within traceable limits. How many men there are, for whom the smoke of a cigar creates a medium of thought, and, while a friend listens and the white clouds cluster and thin away,

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VALUE OF LECTURES.

they will give shape to clear-sighted generalizations on human action, pierce motives, glance far ahead to probabilities, and, in fact, give all of an Essay but the inking over of the words to preserve them! Such men are in every community, and it should be (if we may make a suggestion we have often thought of making) the business of "Lyceums" and "Lecture Committees," to procure for many what these thinkers give to one-to look up the men who have "views of their own," and offer them inducements to lecture. In this way the public would get at something which were else lost, and something original and new—whereas, by the lectures of professed authors, they only get some slight variation of the thoughts they find in books and newspapers.

The positive day or the positive night of a subject is easy to handle; but there are dawns and twilights of transition, in all subjects, which it requires the discrimination of a master to define and portray, and these are the regions for Essay-writing. The choice of subjects in the volume before us shows that Mr. Whipple has thus chosen his topics from matters of most difficult analysis :—" Intellectual Health and Disease," "Authors in their Relations to Life," "Wit and Humor," "The Ludicrous Side of Life," "Genius," etc. He is, as our readers probably know, a business man, who does his thinking "on the Rialto," and as an aside from commerce; but, as those who read these Essays will see, he has the keen insight and philosophic comprehension which would have coursed well in any harness of literature. Boston should be proud of such an Essayist among her merchants.

GEORGE P. MORRIS, THE SONG WRITER.

[THE following letter was written to Mr. Graham, in compliance with a request for a written sketch of Morris, (the author's partner in the editorship of the Home Journal) to accompany a portrait of him, published in Graham's Magazine :-]

MY DEAR SIR:-To ask me for my idea of Morris, is like asking the left hand's opinion of the dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the "Brigadier"-known him so intimately—worked so constantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever separating from him, (except by precedence of ferriage over the Styx,) that it is hard to shove him from me to the perspective distance-hard to shut my own partial eyes and look at him through other people's. I will try, however, and, as it is done with but one foot off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you will excuse both abruptness and brevity.

Morris is the best known poet of the country, by acclamation, not by criticism. He is just what poets would be if they sang, like birds, without criticism; and it is a peculiarity of his fame, that it seems as regardless of criticism, as a bird in the air. Nothing can stop a song of his. It is very easy to say that they

are easy to do. They have a momentum, somehow, that is difficult for others to give, and that speeds them to the far gaol of popularity-the best proof consisting in the fact, that he can, at any moment, get fifty dollars for a song unread, when the whole remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell one to the same buyer for a shilling.

It may, or may not, be one secret of his popularity, but it is the truth-that Morris's heart is at the level of most other people's and his poetry flows out by that door. He stands breast-high in the common stream of sympathy, and the fine oil of his poetic feeling goes from him upon an element it is its nature to float upon, and which carries it safe to other bosoms, with little need of deep diving or high-flying. His sentiments are simple, honest, truthful and familiar; his language is pure and eminently musical, and he is prodigally full of the poetry of every-day feeling. These are days when poets try experiments; and, while others succeed by taking the world's breath away with flights and plunges, Morris uses his feet to walk quietly with Nature. Ninety-nine people in a hundred, taken as they come in the census, would find more to admire in Morris's songs than in the writings of any other American poet; and that is a parish, in the poetical episcopate, well worthy a wise man's nurture and prizing.

As to the man-Morris, my friend-I can hardly venture to "burn incense on his moustache," as the French say-write his praises under his very nose-but, as far off as Philadelphia, you may pay the proper tribute to his loyal nature and manly excellences. His personal qualities have made him universally popular, but this overflow upon the world does not impoverish