In 1791, BARLOW published in London "Advice to the Privileged Orders," a work directed against the distinguishing features of kingly and aristocratic governments; and in the early part of the succeeding year, "The Conspiracy of Kings," a poem of about four hundred lines, educed by the first coalition of the continental sovereigns against republican France. In the autumn of 1792, he wrote a letter to the French National Convention, recommending the abolition of the union between the church and the state, and other reforms; and was soon after chosen by the "London Constitutional Society," of which he was a member, to present in person an address to that body. On his arrival in Paris he was complimented with the rights of citizenship, an "honour" which had been previously conferred on WASHINGTON and HAMILTON. From this time he made France his home. In the summer of 1793, a deputation, of which his friend GREGORIE, who before the Revolution had been Bishop of Blois, was a member, was sent into Savoy, to organize it as a department of the republic. He accompanied it to Chamberry, the capital, where, at the request of its president, he wrote an address to the inhabitants of Piedmont, inciting them to throw off allegiance to "the man of Turin who called himself their king." Here too he wrote "Hasty Pudding," the most popular of his poems. On his return to Paris, BARLOW's time was principally devoted to commercial pursuits, by which, in a few years, he obtained a considerable fortune. The atrocities which marked the progress of the Revolution prevented his active participation in political controversies, though he continued under all circumstances an ardent republican. Toward the close of 1795, he visited the North of Europe, on some private business, and on his return to Paris was appointed by WASHINGTON consul to Algiers, with power to negotiate a commercial treaty with the dey, and to ransom all the Americans held in slavery on the coast of Barbary. He accepted and fulfilled the mission to the satisfaction of the American Government, concluding treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, and liberating more than one hundred Americans, who were in prisons or in slavery to the Mohammedans. He then returned to Paris, where he purchased the splendid hotel of the Count CLERMONT DE TONNERE, and lived several years in a fashionable and costly manner, pursuing still his fortunate mercantile speculations, revising his "great epic," and writing occasionally for the political gazettes. Finally, after an absence of nearly seventeen years, the poet, statesman, and philosopher returned to his native country. He was received with kindness by many old friends, who had corresponded with him while abroad or been remembered in all his wanderings; and after spending a few months in travel, marking, with patriotic pride, the rapid progress which the nation had made in greatness, he fixed his home on the banks of the Potomac, near the city of Washington, where he built the splendid mansion, known afterward as "Kalorama," and expressed an intention to spend there the remainder of his life. In 1806, he published a prospectus of a National Institution, at Washington, to combine a university with a naval and military school, academy of fine arts, and learned society. A bill to carry his plan into effect was introduced into Congress, but never became a law. In the summer of 1808, appeared the "Columbiad," in a splendid quarto volume, surpassing in the beauty of its typography and embellishments any work before that time printed in America. From his earliest years BARLOW had been ambitious to raise the epic song of his nation. The "Vision of Columbus," in which the most brilliant events in American history had been described, occupied his leisure hours when in college, and afterward, when, as a chaplain, he followed the standard of the liberating army. That work was executed too hastily and imperfectly, and for twenty years after its appearance, through every variety of for tune, its enlargement and improvement engaged his attention. The events of the Revolution were so recent and so universally known, as to be inflexible to the hand of fiction; and the poem could not therefore be modelled after the regular epic form, which would otherwise have been chosen. It is a scries of visions, presented by HESPER, the genius of the western continent, to COLUMBUS, while in the prison at Valladolid, where he is introduced to the reader uttering a monologue on his ill-requited services to Spain. These visions embrace a vast variety of scenes, circumstances, and characters. Europe in the middle ages, with her political and religious reformers; Mexico and the South American nations, and their imagined history; the progress of discovery; the settlement of the states now composing the federation; the war of the Revolution, and establishment of republicanism; and the chief actors in the great dramas which he attempts to present. The poem, having no unity of fable, no regular succession of incidents, no strong exhibition of varied character, lacks the most powerful charms of a narrative; and has, besides, many dull and spiritless passages, that would make unpopular a work of much more faultless general design. The versification is generally harmonious, but mechanical and passionless, the language sometimes incorrect, and the similes often inappropriate and inelegant. Yet there are in it many bursts of eloquence and patriotism, which should preserve it from oblivion. The descriptions of nature and of personal character are frequently condensed and forceful; and passages of invective, indignant and full of energy. In his narrative of the expedition against Quebec, under ARNOLD, the poet exclaims: Ah, gallant troop! deprived of half the praise That deeds like yours in other times repays, Since your prime chief (the favourite erst of Fame,) Hath sunk so deep his hateful, hideous name, That every honest muse with horror flings It forth unsounded from her sacred strings, Else what high tones of rapture must have told The first great actions of a chief so bold! These lines are characteristic of his manner. The "Columbiad" was reprinted in Paris and London, and noticed in the leading critical gazettes, but generally with little praise. The London "Monthly Magazine" attempted in an elaborate article to prove its title to a place in the first class of epics, and expressed a belief that it was surpassed only by the "Illiad," the "Eneid" and "Paradise Lost." In America, however, it was regarded by the judicious as a failure, and reviewed with even more wit and severity than in England. Indeed, the poet did not in his own country receive the praise which he really merited; and faults were imputed to his work which it did not possess. Its sentiments were said to be hostile to Christianity,* and the author was declared an infidel; but there is no line in the "Columbiad" unfavourable to the religion of New England, the Puritan faith which is the basis of the national greatness; and there is no good reason for believing that BARLow at the time of his death doubted the creed of which in his early manhood he had been a minister. After the publication of the "Columbiad," BARLow made a collection of documents, with an intention to write a history of the United States; but, in 1811, he was unexpectedly appointed minister plenipotentiary to the French government, and immediately sailed for Europe. His attempts to negotiate a treaty of commerce and indemnification for spoliations were unsuccessful at Paris; and in the autumn of 1812 he was invited by the Duke of BASSANO to a conference with NAPOLEON at Wilna, in Poland. He started from Paris, and travelled without intermission until he reached Zarnowitch, an obscure village near Cracow, where he died, from an inflammation of the lungs, induced by fatigue and exposure in an inhospitable country, in an inclement season, on the twentysecond day of December, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. In Paris, honours were paid to his memory as an important public functionary and a man of letters; his eulogy was written by DUPONT DE NEMOURS, and an account of his life and writings was drawn up and published, accompanied by a canto of the "Columbiad," translated into French heroic verse. In America, too, his death was generally lamented, though without any public exhibition of mourning. BARLOW was much respected in private life for his many excellent social qualities. His manners were usually grave and dignified, though when with his intimate friends he was easy and familiar. He was an honest and patient investigator, and would doubtless have been much more successful as a metaphysical or historical writer than as a poet. As an author he belonged to the first class of his time in America; and for his ardent patriotism, his public services, and the purity of his life, he deserves a distinguished rank among the men of our golden age. To THE HASTY PUDDING. CANTO I. YE Alps audacious, through the heavens that rise, cramp the day and hide me from the skies; Ye Gallic flags, that, o'er their heights unfurl'd, Bear death to kings and freedom to the world, I sing not you. A softer theme I choose, A virgin theme, unconscious of the muse, But fruitful, rich, well suited to inspire The purest frenzy of poetic fire. Despise it not, ye bards to terror steel'd, Who hurl your thunders round the epic field; Nor ye who strain your midnight throats to sing Joys that the vineyard and the stillhouse bring; Or on some distant fair your notes employ, And speak of raptures that you ne'er enjoy. *It is now generally believed that BARLOW, while in France, abjured the Christian religion. The Reverend THOMAS ROBBINS, a venerable clergyman of Rochester, Massachusetts, in a letter written in 1810, remarks that "BARLOW's deistical opinions were not suspected previous to the publication of his Vision of Columbus,' in 1787;" and further, that "when at a later period he lost kis character, and became an open and bitter reviler of Christianity, his psalm-book was laid aside; but for that cause only, as competent judges still maintained that no revision of WATTS possesses as much poetic merit as BARLOW's." I have seen two letters written by BARLOW during the last year of his life, in which he declares himself "a sincere believer of Christianity, divested of its I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, O! could the smooth, the emblematic song corruptions." In a letter to M. GREGORIE, published in the second volume of DENNIE'S "Port Folio," pages 471 to 479, he says, "the sect of Puritans, in which I was born and educated, and to which I still adhere, for the same reason that you adhere to the Catholics, a conviction that they are right,” etc. The idea that BARLOW disbelieved in his later years the religion of his youth, was probably first derived from an engraving in the "Vision of Columbus," in which the cross, by which he intended to represent monkish superstition, is placed among the "symbols of prejudice." He never "lost his character" as a man of honourable sentiments and blameless life; and I could present numerous other evidences that he did not abandon his religion, were not the above apparently conclusive. Declare what lovely squaw, in days of yore, Through the rough sieve to shake the golden In boiling water stir the yellow flour: Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy roam, Each clime my country, and each house my home, For thee through Paris, that corrupted town, Cold from his cave usurps the morning board. But here, though distant from our native shore, But man, more fickle, the bold license claims, And while they argued in thy just defence There are who strive to stamp with disrepute The milk nutritious; am I then a calf? mine? Sure the sweet song I fashion to thy praise, My song, resounding in its grateful glee, Let the green succotash with thee contend; CANTO II. To mix the food by vicious rules of art, To kill the stomach and to sink the heart, To make mankind to social virtue sour, Cram o'er each dish, and be what they devour; For this the kitchen muse first framed her book, Commanding sweat to stream from every cook; Children no more their antic gambols tried, And friends to physic wonder'd why they died. Not so the Yankee: his abundant feast, With simples furnish'd and with plainness dress'd, A numerous offspring gathers round the board, And cheers alike the servant and the lord; [taste, Whose well-bought hunger prompts the joyous And health attends them from the short repast. While the full pail rewards the milkmaid's toil, The mother sees the morning caldron boil; To stir the pudding next demands their care; To spread the table and the bowls prepare: To feed the children as their portions cool, And comb their heads, and send them off to school. Yet may the simplest dish some rules impart, For nature scorns not all the aids of art. E'en Hasty Pudding, purest of all food, May still be bad, indifferent, or good, rear As sage experience the short process guides, When now the ox, obedient to thy call, Ere yet the sun the seat of Cancer gains; The busy branches all the ridges fill, Entwine their arms, and kiss from hill to hill. Here cease to vex them; all your cares are done: Leave the last labours to the parent sun; Beneath his genial smiles, the well-dress'd field, When autumn calls, a plenteous crop shall yield. Now the strong foliage bears the standards high, And shoots the tall top-gallants to the sky; The suckling ears the silken fringes bend, And, pregnant grown, their swelling coats distend; The loaded stalk, while still the burden grows, O'erhangs the space that runs between the rows; High as a hop-field waves the silent grove, A safe retreat for little thefts of love, When the pledged roasting-ears invite the maid To meet her swain beneath the new-form'd shade; His generous hand unloads the cumbrous hill, And the green spoils her ready basket fill; Small compensation for the twofold bliss, The promised wedding, and the present kiss. Slight depredations these; but now the moon Calls from his hollow trees the sly raccoon; And while by night he bears his prize away, The bolder squirrel labours through the day. Both thieves alike, but provident of time, A virtue rare, that almost hides their crime. Then let them steal the little stores they can, And fill their granaries from the toils of man; We've one advantage where they take no partWith all their wiles, they ne'er have found the art To boil the Hasty Pudding; here we shine Superior far to tenants of the pine; This envied boon to man shall still belong, Unshared by them in substance or in song. At last the closing season browns the plain, And ripe October gathers in the grain; Deep-loaded carts the spacious cornhouse fill; The sack distended marches to the mill; The labouring mill beneath the burden groans, And showers the future pudding from the stones; Till the glad housewife greets the powder'd gold, And the new crop exterminates the old. CANTO III. The days grow short; but though the falling sun Where the huge heap lies center'd in the hall, The laws of husking every wight can tell, And sure no laws he ever keeps so well: For each red ear a general kiss he gains, With each smut ear he smuts the luckless swains; But when to some sweet maid a prize is cast, Meanwhile, the housewife urges all her care, First with clean salt she seasons well the food, I leave them to their feast. There still belong Bless'd cow! thy praise shall still my notes em- for me, Great source of health, the only source of joy; Yes, swains who know her various worth to prize, Milk then with pudding I would always choose; Performs not well in those substantial things, Fear not to slaver; 'tis no deadly sin: BURNING OF THE NEW ENGLAND THROUGH Solid curls of smoke, the bursting fires Crowds of wild fugitives, with frantic tread, Back on the burning domes revert their eyes, |