apart. Left alone with the foreigner, his account was this. I held up one finger to say there was but one God-the Father; your professor held up two fingers, to signify that there was another, the Father and the Son. I then held up three, to signify there were Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Upon this my opponent closed his hand, to certify that those Three are One. The monarch was charmed; the explanation was entirely confirmed by the facts; he was present and saw all.

Still, to render assurance doubly sure, he resolved to question the other. His explanation, which was in broad Scotch, was this: "Please your majesty, when I saw the fool hold up one finger I held up two, to show I could beat him there. When the dog held up three to mock me, I got angry, and doubled my fist, signifying I could knock him down if I had any more of that nonsense." The critical king was perfectly satisfied that two persons may very differently explain the same thing.

We hope our readers will pardon this story, but we think the critics may receive it with some profit.

Among the occasional pieces of Mr. Longfellow are his lines. to the Village Blacksmith. There is a vigor of portraiture about them which is not very often the characteristic of our poet's muse. He is seldom so graphic as this:

"Under a spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,

With large and sinewy hand,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

"And the children coming home from school

Look in at the open door;

They love to see the flaming forge,

And hear the bellows roar,

And catch the burning sparks that fly

Like chaff from a threshing floor."

To this fine poem the author very unnecessarily appends the moral in the old way of Æsop's Fables:

"Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,

For the lesson thou hast taught!

Thus at the flaming forge of life

Our fortunes must be wrought,

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought."

There is a great sympathy with nature in most of Mr. Longfellow's writings, but it is not of that fresh, dewy kind which shows nature. There is too much of being persuaded into the loveliness of outward things by an effort of the mind, and not of the heart; there is more of the scholar than the lover in his

admiration. He is too fastidious to be natural. His hymns to

his Goddess breathe too strongly of the lamp.

"Pleasant it was, when woods were green,

And winds were soft and low,

To lie amid some sylvan scene,

Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternately come and go.

"Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

"Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me

Clapped their little hands in glee,
With one continuous sound.

"A slumberous sound-a sound that brings

The feeling of a dream,

As of innumerable wings,

As when a bell no longer swings,

Faint the hollow murmur rings,

O'er meadow, lake, and stream."

All this, though reminding us strongly of Coleridge, both in

thought and expression, is a very favorable specimen of that elegant sympathy with nature which is so distinguishing a feature in our author's poetry. It lacks that freshness which has made Wordsworth so great a writer. Listen for a moment to the great High Priest of the open air:

We should, however, be doing Mr. Longfellow injustice were we to confine our extracts to his descriptions of nature. He is a firm believer in the better part of human kind. In his Psalm of Life he has declared this faith.

"Life is real-life is earnest !

And the grave is not its goal!

Dust thou art-to dust returnest

Was not spoken of the soul!

"Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way:

But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us further than to-day.”

The following verse contains a beautiful image :

"Art is long, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts though stout and brave,
Still like muffled-drums are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

The acorn

This "psalm" is eminently poetical, and has doubtless in the future much fine effect locked up in it. holds the oak, and the oak in time floats a palace o'er the ocean. How often has the unregarded phrase of one time been the inspirer to the glorious deed of another! We remember one instance, in which a father named his child