The prayer is hushed; the solemn stave He sleeps! but o'er his ocean grave And night winds oft shall whisper there,― F. M. BE HUMBLE. TRIUMPH not, frail man; thou art Misdeeds are all thou dost. Thou seem'st most proud of thine offence, Thou sinn'st e'en where thou want'st pretence. Triumph not, though nothing warns Of vigor waning fast; A pleasant morn, a sultry noon, Triumph not, though fortune sends If then thou countest many friends, But triumph not; that gold may go, And thou may'st love a smooth, soft cheek, But triumph not,—a single week, And cold those lips may lie,— Or worse, that trusted heart may rove, And leave thee for another love. But triumph, if thy soul feels firm J. CRITICAL NOTICES. The Atlantic Souvenir, a Christmas and New Year's Offering. 1827. Philadelphia. H. C. Carey and I. Lea. 12mo. pp. 360. THIS book would be well deserving of notice were it only for the uncommon beauty of its typography and embellishments. In the latter of these respects it is superior to its predecessor of last year, and quite equal in our opinion to any of the similar publications which have issued from the English presses, and which have been so much sought after in this country. There is a numerous class of readers in this country who are not rich; there is also a considerable class of rich men who do not read. These latter, however, are not generally insensible to the pleasures of show;-they fill their houses with splendid furniture, and if they do not lay out their money in the purchase of books, it is because such an expense gratifies none of their tastes. Messrs. Carey and Lea have taken the proper method of recommending the literature of our country to the patronage of these worthy people. A book got up like the one before us, with splendid binding, beautiful type, fine paper, and elegant engravings, filled with tales and poems, furnished by the most popular writers of our country, solicits their attention as a pretty object for a parlour window or a dressing-table. The first experiment of the publishers in this way has been completely successful; we understand that the whole impression of the last year's Atlantic Souvenir was quickly disposed of, and the present one seems likely, to say the least, to meet with an equally favorable reception. The first of the prose articles in this collection, is a tale entitled "Modern Chivalry," by the author of Redwood. We remember that some years since, a book in which there was a good deal of drollery, not always of the most delicate kind, was published in the United States with this very title, and it is rather odd that it should now be chosen as the name of a very serious and affecting story. It is a narrative of the services rendered by an American seaman to a beautiful and noble young lady of England, and is told with that power of exciting interest, and that sagacity in the delineation of character, which the author never loses. The principal incidents are said to have actually taken place about the period of the American Revolution, and are worthy of being recorded and embellished by the pen of so successful a writer. "The White Indian," by Paulding, one of the most voluminous and popular of American authors, is written with his usual talent, and in that pure idiomatic English for which he is so distinguished, and which presents so striking a contrast to the affectations of style, the hard words, pompous sentences, and foreign idioms, which prevail too much among us. There is exquisite truth and beauty in the following description. It sets us at once amidst the coolness, darkness, and silence of the thick old forests of our country, which never felt the axe. "By degrees, as custom reconciled me more and more to fasting and long rambles, I extended my excursions farther from home, and sometimes remained out all day without tasting food or resting myself, except for a few minutes upon the trunk of some decayed old tree or moss-covered rock. The country, though in a great degree in its native state of wildness, was full of romantic beauties. The Mohawk is one of the most charming of rivers, sometimes brawling among ragged rocks, or darting swiftly through long narrow reaches, and here and there, as at the Little Falls, and again at the Cohoes, darting down high perpendicular rocks in sheets of milk white foam, but, its general character is that of repose and quiet. It is no where so broad, but that rural objects and rural sounds may be seen and heard distinctly from one side to the other; and in many places the banks on either hand are composed of rich meadows or flats, as they were denominated by the early Dutch settlers, so nearly on a level with the surface of the water as to be almost identified with it at a distance, were it not for the rich fringe of water willows that skirt it on either side and mark the lines of separation. In these rich pastures may now be seen the lowing herds half hidden in the luxuriant grass, and a little farther on, out of the reach of the spring freshets, the comfortable farm houses of many a sanguine country squire, who dreams of boundless wealth from the Grand Canal, and in his admiration of the works of man, forgets the far greater beauty, grandeur, and utility of the works of his Maker. But I am to describe the scenery as it was in the days of my boyhood, when, like Nimrod, I was a mighty hunter before the Lord. "At the time I speak of, all that was to be seen was of the handy work of nature, except the little settlement, over which presided the patriarch Veeder. We were the advance guard of civilization, and a few steps beyond us was the region of primeval forests, composed of elms and maples, and oaks and pines, that seemed as if their seeds had been sown at the time of the deluge and that they had been growing ever since. I have still a distinct recollection, I might almost say perception, of the gloom and damps which pervaded these chilling shades, where the summer sun never penetrated, and in whose recesses the very light was of a greenish hue. Here, especially along the little streams, many of which are now dried up by the opening of the earth to the sunbeams, every rock and piece of mouldering wood was wrapped in a carpet of green moss fostered into more than velvet luxuriance by the everlasting damps, that, unlike the dews of heaven, fell all the day as well as all the night. Here and there a flower reared its pale head among the rankness of the sunless vegetation of unsightly fungus, but it was without fragrance, and almost without life, for it withered as soon as plucked from its stem. I do not remember ever to have heard a singing bird in these forests, except just on the outer skirts, fronting the south, where occasionally a robin chirped or a thrush sung his evening chant. These tiny choristers seem almost actuated by the vanity of human beings, for I have observed they appear to take peculiar delight in the neighbourhood of the habitations of men, where they have listeners to their music. They do not love to sing where there is no one to hear them. The very insects of the wing seemed also to have abandoned the gloomy solitude, to sport in the sunshine among the flowers. Neither butterfly nor grasshopper abided there, and the honey-bee never came to equip himself in his yellow breeches. He is the companion of the white man, and seems content to be his slave, to toil for him all the summer, only that he may be allowed the enjoyment of the refuse of his own labors in the winter. To plunge into the recesses of these woods was like descending into a cave under ground, there was the coolness, the dampness, and the obscurity of twilight. Yet custom made me love these solitudes, and many are the days I have spent among them, with my dog and gun, and no other guide but the sun in heaven and the moss on the north sides of the trees." pp. 61–64. "The Little Dutch Sentinel of the Manhadoes," is from the pen of the same writer. It is a sprightly, amusing tale, but not so happy either in the humor or the management of the story as some others which he has written, and there is now and then an odd kind of briskness in the style, which does not seem to us quite natural. "The Green Mountain Boy," we do not greatly like. Ethan Allen is made to swagger more furiously than is necessary. There is a want of clearness in the story and of neatness in the style. The "Legend of the Grisons," which we should judge to be from the same hand, is beautiful in the descriptive parts, but somewhat heavy in the narrative. The tale entitled, "The Rival Brothers," by the author of Hobomok, possesses the merit which might be expected from the fine powers of the author, and is one of the best in the collection. is thus beautifully introduced. It "It was in the middle of one of the most delightful days in June, that I began a short journey which led me through the cool, sequestered forests on the eastern shore of Massachusetts. Few things are more enchanting than to saunter through the woods during a summer's noon. Nature enjoying the deep tranquillity of a most voluptuous repose, the gay warbling of the birds changed for that occasional twitter, which speaks the full enjoyment of their little hearts more plainly than the rich burst of their morning song; the very butterflies, like gay coquettes weary of conquest, closing and spreading their gorgeous wings in languid indifference, the deep shade, the drowsy splendor mantling the distant hills, all these bring to me a delicious sense of quiet existence which no other scene produces. 66 During my ride every thing tended to heighten this feeling to the utmost. I could not mistake that I was in the land of my forefathers. Even nature bears the rigid aspect of these venerable heralds of our freedom, and time, while he has led wealth, taste, and fashion through all our favored land, has passed by these 'secluded spots with religious awe, and scarcely brushed the antiquated scene with his noiseless wing. The faces you meet are as a titlepage, on which 'by-gone days' are written; the children have the reverential demeanour of the olden time; the sea breeze |