WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

THERE is a calm classical dignity about Mr. Bryant's muse, which in the eyes of many is considered as an equivalent for that fire and energy which is so fascinating to the lovers of poetry. The tone of his productions is elevated,

but not stirring. We assent to his reflections: we do not feel with him. There is nothing rapid and breathless in his flights: they are equable and sustained. There is an air of Grecian elegance about his writings, which convinces us he never abandons himself to the impulses of the Pythoness. At times, this amounts to a severity which chills his readers, and impresses them with the idea that he is moralizing in verse, and not throwing off the rushing thoughts that crowd his brain in the first bold snatches of sound. There is more of the cultivation of the poet than of the nature or instinct; indeed, occasionally, the determination to compose is painfully apparent; it seems the effort of his will, and not a revelation of his hidden spirit.

It is not, however, for the reader or the critic to deter

mine in what shape or manner a poet is to write. We ought to allow thankfully the gifted one to develope himself according to his own taste. There would be an end to individuality if we were to insist upon an author's putting himself into this or that character. We cheerfully admit that the man of mind ought to choose his own circle to discourse in; nevertheless, there is implanted in every reader's breast, however faintly, a predisposition for the more exciting kinds of composition, more especially in its poetical spirit. This constitutes the cause of that popularity which ever and anon attends an author who seizes vigorously on the most salient points of human attention. This was pre-eminently the case with Byron. Every being has a certain love of the romantic implanted in him, which at once responds to the poet's appeal. It is the sound of a trumpet to the war-horse. Who ever heard military music without feeling somewhat of the soldier's spirit roused within, however apparently peacefully-disposed and gentle in everyday life?

What Mr. Bryant gains as a philosopher, he loses as a poet. Not that a poet should not be a philosopher, for indeed he cannot be one without, but because he makes the secondary the ascendant. Poetry includes philosophy, but it should be hidden by the poetical glow, as the color of blooming health hides the white skin of the fair maiden's cheek. This substitution of the lower for the higher faculty is very apparent in the fine poem called the "Ages." This is the longest and most ambitious of Mr. Bryant's attempts. The subject is admirably fitted for the display of power. What can be more susceptible of poetical thought and expression than a

rapid review of the history of the world? The theme is a half-inspiration of itself. Mr. Bryant, however, looks with the eye of a philosopher on the varying phases of humanity, and although we read with an attentive pleasure, we do not feel that delight which we know the subject is so admirably calculated to afford. We miss those vigorous, golden passages, which compel us to pause, and read again out of the mere enthusiasm of admiration.

We quote a few stanzas as illustrations of the manner in which our poet treats the scenes presented to his imagination.

The first we offer is a very striking one:

"Look on this beautiful world, and read the truth
In her fair page; see, every season brings
New change, to her, of everlasting youth:
Still the green soil, with joyous living things,
Swarms, the wide air is full of joyous wings,
And myriads, still, are happy in the sleep
Of ocean's azure gulfs, and where he flings
The restless surge. Eternal Love doth keep

In his complacent arms, the earth, the air, the deep."

The critic will observe a very awkward "doth keep." A poet of Mr. Bryant's great powers of versification should not have sat down under this verbal defect, small as it is. We are more exacting from him, because he is one of the few American poets who have attained a classical polish.

The opening to the panorama of the past is admirably introduced:

"Sit at the feet of history-through the night
Of years the steps of virtue she shall trace,
And show the earlier ages, where her sight
Can pierce the eternal shadows o'er the face ;--
When, from the genial cradle of our race,

Went forth the tribes of men, their pleasant lot

To choose, where palm-groves cooled their dwelling-place,

Or freshening rivers ran; and there forgot

The truth of heaven, and kneeled to gods that heard them not.

"Then waited not the murderer for the night,
But smote his brother down in the bright day,
And he who felt the wrong, and had the might,
His own avenger, girt himself to slay;
Beside the path the unburied carcase lay;
The shepherd, by the fountains of the glen,
Fled, while the robber swept his flock away,
And slew his babes. The sick, untended then,

Languished in the damp shade, and died afar from men."

The poet very felicitously alludes to the dark ages of history, where so great a gap of annals exists-when even tradition dies into silence—and oblivion would be complete were it not for the mouldering ruins of unknown cities.

"Those ages have no memory-but they left

A record in the desert-columns strown
On the waste sands, and statues fallen and cleft,
Heaped like a host in battle overthrown;
Vast ruins, where the mountain's ribs of stone
Were hewn into a city; streets that spread
In the dark earth, where never breath has blown
Of heaven's sweet air, nor foot of man dares tread
The long and perilous ways-the Cities of the Dead:

"And tombs of monarchs to the clouds up-piledThey perished-but the eternal tombs remainAnd the black precipice, abrupt and wild,

Pierced by long toil and hollowed to a fane;—

Huge piers and frowning forms of gods sustain

The everlasting arches, dark and wide,

Like the night-heaven, when clouds are black with rain.
But idly skill was tasked, and strength was plied,

All was the work of slaves to swell a despot's pride."

The poet's eye then rests on Greece, and in two stanzas gives his impressions.

In the apostrophe to Rome we feel the philosophical coolness of Mr. Bryant in its full force of negativing his poetry. There is too much of the abstract. More can be gathered often from a small event than from a dry balance-sheet of the result. We may call these personal traits of a nation. As an instance of the two styles of treating the subject, we will compare Mr. Bryant with Byron. One, all philosopher; the other, all poet: we mean, of course, so far as these views go.

"And Rome-thy sterner, younger sister, she
Who awed the world with her imperial frown-
Rome drew the spirit of her race from thee,-
The rival of thy shame and thy renown.

Yet her degenerate children sold the crown

Of earth's wide kingdoms to a line of slaves;

Guilt reigned, and woe with guilt, and plagues came down,
Till the north broke its floodgates, and the waves

Whelmed the degraded race, and weltered o'er their graves.”

The generalization here materially interferes with the clear