clear apprehension of the incongruity between his own convictions, and the ecclesiastical condition of his country; or he may have felt that after the execution of Huss and Jerome, death was likely to be the penalty of too great freedom of speech. But whether these considerations had weight with him or not, he had seen enough of a world from too rude contact with which he shrunk instinctively back. He knew but too well the impiety and atheism that ruled the Church under the guise of sanctity; and whether he suspected it or not, it is probable that more good was accomplished by his writings a century after his death-when they were eagerly caught up by the Reformers and circulated over Europe-than he, by any other method, could have accomplished in his lifetime.

Such a man is most valuable to us as a witness. His letters bring us behind the scenes. His incorruptible integrity, his sound common sense, his sagacity and penetration mark him as the very man whom we of this nineteenth century would depute to go back to the age of John XXIII. and of John Huss, and tell us by pictures presented to our eyes, what was doing then.

At another time, we may take occasion to advert to his works; but for the present we dismiss him as one of the most vigorous thinkers, eloquent writers, and learned men of his age—a man in earnest; a conscientious devotee of truth; a friend of pure religion; a reader and a lover of the Bible, with which his writings betray a surprising familiarity.

ARTICLE V.

1. The Song of Hiawatha. By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 1856. pp. 316.

2. Poems. By CHARLES KINGSLEY, author of "Amyas Leigh," "Hypatia," &c. Same publishers. 1856. pp. 284.

3. The Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A new Edition, carefully corrected by the last London Edition. With an Introductory Essay. New-York: C. S. Francis & Co. 2 volumes. pp. 312, 300.

4. Poems. By ROBERT BROWNING. A new Edition. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 2 vols. pp. 384, 416.

5. The Panorama, and other Poems. By JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 1856. pp. 141.

6. Poems. By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Sixth Edition. Same publishers. 1854. pp. 251, 254.

7. The Poetical Works of WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. With a Memoir of his Life. A new Edition, containing his posthumous Writings. Same publishers. Two volumes in one. pp. 327, 187.

8. English Songs, and other small Poems.

By BARRY CORNWALL. A new and enlarged Edition. Same publishers. pp. 387. 9. Poems. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, author of "The Study of Words," &c. New York: Redfield. 1856. pp. 336. 10. Poems and Ballads. By GERALD MASSEY. Containing the

Ballads of Babe Christobel. Printed from the third London
Edition, with several new Poems never before published. New
York J. C. Derby. pp. 228.

11. Lilian and other Poems. BY WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED. Now first collected. New York: Redfield.

pp. 290.

12. Voices from the Mountains and from the Crowd. By CHARLES MACKAY. Boston: Ticknor & Co. pp. 373.

13. The New Pastoral. By THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. Philadelphia Parry & McMillan. pp. 252.

14. Plays and Poems. By GEORGE H. BOKER. In two volumes. Boston Ticknor & Fields.

WE suppose that our readers are not so much as we reviewers in the way of looking up the poetry of the time, and for their gratification we have gathered together the bouquet which we now present. The flowers are not all of equal beauty

or fragrance; but as a whole they are well worth examination, and may be productive of much enjoyment.

We were, not very long since, looking at the Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, when, meeting an artist, we began, naturally enough, a slight discussion upon ancient and modern masters. He presently avowed it as his opinion, that there are more painters of a high order now alive than were ever before living at any one time. The opinion startled us, when he began deliberately to mention the names of the men-German, French, English, American-which gave at least plausibility to his opinion, and so came much nearer to drawing us over to it than we expected.

It would certainly startle men of classic tastes if we should avow any such opinion in regard to poetry; and yet our younger readers, who have freshly inhaled the sweetness of the rhymed wisdom of the time as it blossomed to them, would not think the opinion so absurd-and the most ardent admirer of past times, would find that the heresy has more to say for itself than he would imagine. He looks at things too much in the gross, and pronounces that because there is no Homer, no Milton, no Shakspeare, that it is preposterous to talk of poets of a high order. But Hayden has taught us by example, and Ruskin by precept, that large pictures are not always high art; and that as true feeling and power may be shown in a cabinetgem, as in a historical monster, forty feet by twenty.

There is an unquestionable family likeness, on the whole, in the poetry of the time, as the reader may see by glancing over the titles at the head of this Article, and thinking over what he knows of them. Let us see if we can gather up some of these family features, before we proceed to any individual analysis, extract, or criticism.

In almost all there is a something which, comparing them with the poets before Coleridge, we may call mystic. Pope, Gray, Campbell, and the rest up to, and including, Scott, had a straight forward and plain object in each poem, which they carried out to the end. But the recent schools, almost all of them, envelop their meaning, more or less, in myths, fancies, allegories, or other unusual shapes; and even when the poem is not so constructed, a romantic or involved aspect is given to VOL. V.-30

it by its peculiar style or some quaint fantasy. We are not prepared wholly to blame this; it is a reäction from our prosaic commercial times. Poetry is in the heart of man, and must come out in some form; perhaps it is natural that where there is much poetry in even external life, there should be less enwrapping of the heart in it in books, and, on the other hand, in an age of stocks and railways, that human hearts should surround themselves with arbors of their own planting, to fence out the garish light and too curious eye.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to settle the question whether there be more genius in a poem like the Iliad, or one like the Christabel. We must learn to understand that both are great, and that instead of rigid standards in such cases, the freer the career the better for truth and genius both. Ruskin in his last volume-the third-of "Modern Painters" defines poetry to be the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for noble emotions. Without adopting this fully, the reader will be set thinking by it sufficiently for our present purpose. The Prometheus Bound, of Eschylus, and the Prometheus Unbound, of Shelley, may be taken as fair examples of the two forms of poetry, inasmuch as successive generations of classic men acknowledge the greatness of the former, and the latter is certainly intensitive of the "Lake school." Yet both are "of imagination all compact," and both give, through it, this suggestion of noble emotions on noble grounds.

The reader, then, will come to the examination of these poems in a truer spirit, if he quite discharge from his mind the impression that poetry must conform to any one of the classic standards, whether the special irregularity of Pindar, or the special regularity of Pope. We should not give much for the fancy or taste of a man who did not appreciate the Dunciad, and still less for his who could see nothing in a Greek dithyrambic. But why insist upon stretching every thing on one bed? Why not allow the freedom and variety every where visible in the universe?

But while recent poetry has this mystic form, it is remarkable that its aim is mainly practical. We may say, indeed, that the poet is, as to his main character, always a reformer. He sees too deeply into the reality of things not to know that

virtue is wisdom. Even when he pursues the wrong path, like poor Burns, he generally points out the right path to others, and when his music is perverted to evil, it is with a conscious sense of degradation; for poetry was born for the service of religion and the highest is its most appropriate sphere.

But poetry is too susceptible not to be influenced by the spirit of the age, and hence whatever form it now took, it must of necessity be in spirit and essence practical. We mean by this, not only that there is good hidden in it somewhere, but that there is direct and earnest aim at an impression-a moral. The age when poets sung like birds, or like children, has passed away; for some cause they have taken to heart the sins and the sorrows of mankind, political, social, and ecclesiastical, and it is as much as they can do to avoid being didactic, and invading the pulpit. They yearn to teach; they "have a mission ;" they press upon mankind their follies and their duty; the philosophy of the age is much of it in metrical forms. This is not only true of clergymen, like Trench and Kingsley; we find it equally in Longfellow and Mrs. Browning.

The transition is natural here to another characteristic. Poetry now is hopeful; trustful; looking out for a better timea millennium in some form. It would be a tempting subject to look at this as an indication of a great and common movement in the heart of humanity towards the time of which holy men have spoken. Certainly poetry is now enthusiastic. The age of mere worldliness as in Moore and Scott, and the writers of their time is past; the age of skepticism beginning in the last century, and ending with Byron and his imitators, is equally forgotten and distasteful; the age of faith, of trust, of spirituality, beginning with Wordsworth and Coleridge, manifests itself through the genius of our time. In spite of all that seems opposed to hopefulness; in spite of the revival of the war-spirit; of the ferocity of politics; of the want of dignity in legislation; of the want of fineness in the intercourse of society, or of social organization; and above all, notwithstanding the tendency in the Church to division and alienation instead of unity and Catholicity-still, the poet, strong in a faith which seems to spring from within, and to belong to all alike, believes in progress, the coming, even the speedy coming, of a good that is to be ultimate. He