bows, they must submit to the mortification of being reminded by him, that he forewarned them, and in so plain a case that no one contradicted him. Leaving our modes of dress then, we will say a word concerning our modes of thinking, in regard to which it seems to us that of all nations composing what we call the civilized world or christendom, we Americans are the least inclined to a stupid imitation of our predecessors, or a blind adoption of the habits and practices of other nations. It is true that some of our countrymen, who have happened to be abroad or read only of what is thought and done abroad, and who do not look into things very deeply, refer every thing that is done here to some cause in Europe, and judge of every thing that is seen here by some foreign standard. Thus a little while ago many persons of one political party could tell who of the other had a pension in English gold, and many of this other could tell who of the first carried on a personal correspondence with Buonaparte. Thus in matters of taste, some persons cannot proceed a step except by the way of Europe; if you look at the head of a ship where is a figure of a Grecian goddess, or an Indian carved in wood for twenty five dollars, some knowing connoisseur will tell you how inferiour it is to the Belvedere Apollo; if you examine a landscape, representing a water-fall, a grove, and a village, with half a dozen cattle in the foreground, he will thereupon instruct you concerning the gallery of paintings in the Louvre; he can never pass a congregational meetinghouse without saying a word of St. Peter's at Rome, and as for natural scenery, it is enough for him to know and inform you, that the green is not English. So some persons are wonderfully wise and well informed in Europe, though at home one might mistake them for men of quite ordinary capacity and intelligence; they do not understand the affairs that are transacted about them, or in which they themselves are concerned, remarkably well; but they penetrate into the secret of every thing in Europe, and not only know what will happen there for a century to come, and how past events have been brought about as they actually happened, but also how they ought, in some instances, to have turned out altogether differently from what they have. Thus one will demonstrate to you how the English ought not, according to the rules of victory and defeat, to have taken St. Sebastians in Spain, and how Buonaparte actually gained the battle of Waterloo, but made a blunder afterwards in running away and leaving his victory behind to the enemy.

There have been, and still are, people in this country who judge and reason after this fashion, who understand what is about them only by what they know of things a thousand miles off, and who discourse most wisely upon those things, concerning which there is the least means of information. But this is by no means a characteristick of our people; on the contrary, they are remarkable for thinking and acting without any excessive deference for precedent and authority, and for judging of things from what they know of them and from experience, rather than from what they fancy they know of other nations and other ages. They are versatile, inventive, and ready to adopt whatever is better than the past or the present. This leads them into some useless and even hurtful novelties; but this is the fate of every people who are enterprising for improvement. Our commerce and our literature bring us into close contact with two nations, the English and French,-particularly with the former,—both of which are far in advance of us, in many of the arts and elegancies of life, and in much that makes an inindividual happy and a nation glorious. It has been by imitating each other's arts and improvements, that nations have advanced in civilization to their present pitch; France has learned musick, and painting, and sculpture from the Italians, and has attempted to learn political rights and interests from the English-the English have taken their dress, many of their useful and ornamental arts, and their tacticks from the French. It is for us to learn from both, beginning with imitating judiciously, and procceding to rival and excel them, if we can. But this we never can do by setting up for ourselves entirely, and affecting to have a way in every thing that is wholly original and peculiar to ourselves; of which, however, we are in no great danger, as the good sense of our people sufficiently secures us against it.

There is no subject, upon which the writer of these letters dwells with more zeal, than upon the Quarterly Review. He does not speak of that work but with great indignation. There certainly have been much abuse and slander of this country in some articles of that Review, the authors of which seem to have more hatred, than knowledge of us. But after all, the United States seem to go on very well, notwithstanding the Quarterly Review ;-we are sufficiently prosperous at home and respected abroad, and if Mr. Gifford, or some one of his associates, should every quarter give an article to the publick written in the same spirit as that on Inchiquin's Letters, the Vol. VI. No. 3.

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happiness, reputation and dignity of this country, would not probably be much affected by his labours. It is not therefore worth while for us to get into a rage in defence of our national character against the attacks of these gentlemen. It is hardly worthy of the dignity of the country to vindicate it by falling upon Mr. Gifford with personal abuse, and attempting to show that his own character is worse than that he has attributed to the people of this country, and predicting that he will at last be hanged.

On the whole, our general impression, concerning these letters from the south, is, that as far as they are made up of descriptions, sketches of character, and narrations, they are very amusing, pleasant reading, always excepting however the mawkish drollery with which these, as well as the rest of the work, are more or less dashed; and that in other respects the performance has very little merit ;-it is meagre of information, the wit is in general poor, and the opinions and speculations are the result of superficial thinking.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

Translation of a fragment of Simonides.

THE night winds howl'd-the billows dash'd
Against the tossing chest ;-

Danaë, to her broken heart,

Her slumbering infant prest.

My little child-in tears she said

To wake and weep is mine;

But thou canst sleep-thou dost not know

Thy mother's lot, and thine.

The moon is up, the moon beams smile,

And tremble on the main

But dark, within my floating cell,

To me they smile in vain.

Thy folded mantle wraps thee warm,
And thy long locks are dry

Thou dost not hear the shrieking gust,

Nor breakers booming high.

Yet thou, didst thou but know thy fate,
Would'st melt, my tears to see;
And I, methinks, should weep the less,
Would'st thou but weep with me.

Yet, dear one, sleep, and sleep ye winds
That vex the restless brine

When shall these eyes, my babe, be seal'd,
As peacefully as thine!

To a Waterfowl.

WHITHER, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight, to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power, whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-
The desert and illimitable air,

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd,
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form, yet, on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast
And shall not soon depart.

given,

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must trace alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

To a Friend on his Marriage.

WHILE now the tepid skies and gentle rains
Of April bid the gushing books o'erflow;
While scarce their earliest verdure tints the plains
And cold in hollows lurks the lingering snow ;-
Lone, sauntering in the sunny glade to know
If yet upon the moss banks of the Grove
That little flower of golden vesture blow,
Which first the spring receives from Flora's love;
I hum this careless strain as deviously I rove.

Not yet unlovely, nor with song uncheer'd
Is this pale month, and still I love to greet,
At misty dawn, the blue bird's carol heard,
And red breast, from the orchard warbling sweet;
The fogs, that, as the sun slow rises, meet
In snowy folds along the channell'd flood;
The squirrel issuing from his warm retreat,
The purple glow that tints the budding wood,

The sound of bursting streams by gathered mounds withstood.

And now the heaving breast, and glances meek,
The unbidden warmth in beauty's veins declare;
The gale that lifts the tresses from her cheek,
Can witness to the fires that kindle there;
Now is the time to woo the yielding fair ;-
But thou, my friend, may'st woo the fair no more;
Thine are connubial joys and wedded care,
And scarce the hymenean moon is o'er,

Since first, in bridal hour, thy name Eliza bore.

And if thy poet's prayer be not denied,

The hymenean moon shall ever last;

The golden chain, indissolubly tied,

Shall brighten as the winged years glide past;
And wheresoe'er in life thy lot be cast,
For life at best is bitterness and guile-
Still may thy own Eliza cheer the waste,
Soften its weary ruggedness the while,

And gild thy dreams of peace, and make thy sorrows smile.