poetry in America needs to be entirely recreated. On examining with anything like deep analysis what now prevails in the United States, the whole mass of poetical works, long and short, consists either of the poetry of an elegantly weak sentimentalism, at bottom nothing but maudlin puerilities, or more or less musical verbiage, arising out of a life of depression and enervation, as their result; or else that class of poetry, plays, &c., of which the foundation is feudalism, with its ideas of lords and ladies, its imported standard of gentility, and the manners of European high-life-below-stairs in every line and verse. . . Instead of mighty and vital breezes, proportionate to our continent with its powerful races of men, its tremendous historic events, its great oceans, its mountains, and its illimitable prairies, I find a few little silly fans languidly moved by shrunken fingers." His ambition is, he says in the same letter, "to give something to our literature which will be our own, with neither foreign spirit, nor imagery, nor form, but adapted to our case, grown out of our associations, boldly portraying the West, strengthening and intensifying the national soul, and finding the entire fountains of its birth and growth in our own country." He wrote on a sheet of paper, in large letters, these words-" MAKE THE WORK," and fixed it above his table, where he could always see it whilst writing. Thenceforth every cloud that flitted over him, every distant sail, every face and form encountered, wrote a line in his book. He was passionately fond of opera music, and many verses were written in the galleries of the opera house. He notes everything and forgets nothing. His brain is indeed a kind of American formation, in which all things print themselves like ferns in the coal. Every thought, too, signs itself in his mind by a right and immutable word. Walt Whitman continued writing poems, that appeared from time to time in enlarged editions of the "Leaves of Grass❞—which in 1860 reached its sixth edition-until the breaking out of the war. He then repaired to the city of Washington, and devoted himself to nursing and conversing with the wounded soldiers who were in the hospitals. His labours among them-for which he never asked nor received any compensation whatever-were unremitting; and he so won the poor fellows from all thought of their sorrows by his readings and conversation, that his entrance was the signal in any room for manifestations of the utmost delight. He certainly has a rare power of attaching people to him. A friend of mine writing from Washington says, "I speak within bounds when I say that, during those years, he has been in contact with, and, in one form or another, either in hospital or on the field, personally ministered to, upward of one hundred thousand sick and wounded men." At the close of the war he was appointed to a clerkship in the Department of the Interior, and in the intervals of official work wrote a new volume of poems entitled "Drum-Taps," which has been recently published. This volume is entirely free from the peculiar deductions to which the other is liable, and shows that the author has lost no fibre of his force. There is in this volume a very touching dirge for Abraham Lincoln,-who was his warm friend and admirer, which is worthy of being quoted. It is as follows: "O captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done; The ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought is won. Leave you not the little spot, Where on the deck my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. "O captain! my captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills; This arm I push beneath you; It is some dream that on the deck "My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; Exult, O shore, and ring, O bells! But I with silent tread, Walk the spot my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead." The late Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Harlan, recently had pointed out to him—probably by some one who desired Whitman's clerkship-some passages of the "Leaves of Grass" in which he could see only grossness, and for this cause ejected the poet from his office. The indignation which this caused throughout the country proves that Walt Whitman has quietly obtained a very wide influence. After a very curious controversy, chiefly notable for an able and caustic pamphlet written by Mr. O'Connor, showing that the Secretary would equally have dismissed the Scriptural and classical writers, the bard was appointed to an office in the Attorney-General's department, which he now holds. It is understood by his friends that he is writing a series of pieces which shall be the expression of the religious nature of man, which he regards as essential to the completion of his task. MONCURE D. CONWAY. RUSSIAN SOCIETY. THE radical error lying at the bottom of all the late and current misconceptions concerning Russia, appears to consist in the assumption that Russia being diplomatically a European Power, Russian society and the Russian people must be European too, and should therefore be judged of according to the rules applicable to European communities in general. Now nothing can be farther from the truth. Without going into the much-vexed—and, from a political point of view, scarcely relevant question of the Slavonic or Asiatic (Turanic) origin of the Russians, it will be sufficient to consider the following points. The history and social development of Russia, such as they have been till now, have had nothing, or scarcely anything, in common with those of the rest of Europe. The great leading features and principal factors of European civilisation were, on the whole, much the same in England and France, in Germany, in Spain, and in Italy. The Roman Imperium, with its wellorganised administration and its civil law; feudalism, with its sharply-divided classes and the overwhelming influence of aristocracy; the Church of Rome, first humanising and then coercing and oppressing; lastly, the rise and growth of the middle class, fighting its way through innumerable obstacles to its present preponderating position-all these historical and social phenomena are common to the whole of Western Europe, and not one of them has been repeated in Russia. Official nomenclature may talk of Russian princes and merchants, but the Dolgorouhofs, the Galitzins, and the Vjazemskis, are politically, historically, and even morally, no more like the Percys, the Stanleys, and the Gowers, than the Màmontofs and the Kokorefs of Moscow are like the Couttses and the Barings of London. Of course this does not mean that a radical and, so to say, à priori difference exists between the Russian nation and those of Western Europe; but only that the history and social development of the various classes in Russia having been so entirely different from those of the other European countries, it would be false to conclude merely upon the strength of outward denominations, that a Russian nobleman, priest, merchant, or peasant-taken as the representative of his class-may be expected to be or act, in any important respect, like a nobleman, priest, merchant, or peasant of any other European country. It is quite possible that, in the course of time, there may grow up in Russia a gentry quite as polished, politically independent, and liberal-conservative in its tendencies; a merchant class as enterprising, almost as rich and influential, quite as pompous and hungering after riches; a bureaucracy as efficient and honest; lastly, a peasantry and labouring class as independent legally, and as much fettered and bound in all other respects, as all these classes exist at this day in England. For the moment, however, nothing of all this, and in most cases, just the very opposite of all this, is to be found in Russia, and that for the simple reason, that the causes which have produced the present social condition of the English nation have nothing in common with those which influenced the history and development of the Russian. It may seem trite to insist so strongly upon the rather elementary principle that, the causes not being the same, the consequences cannot be the same; and yet it was the non-application of this very truism to Russia, which was the principal if not the only cause of the recent diplomatic failure of the English and French Governments in their endeavours in favour of Poland. The English Government, or rather the whole of Western Europe, for the same opinion prevailed also in France and Germany, seeing the embarrassed financial condition of Russia, hearing continually of the universal discontent of the nobles in consequence of the emancipation of their serfs, lastly, judging by the facility with which incendiary proclamations were distributed at St. Petersburg and in the interior, the English Government, I say, actually came to believe almost everything the Polonophiles in the French press or Russian publications like those of M. Herzen and Prince Dolgorouk of proclaimed to the world about the utter demoralisation of the Russian Government, the complete disaffection of its army, the existence of a well-organised and widespread secret association only waiting for the first opportunity to join the Poles in their efforts against the common enemy, and the general apathy, not to say antipathy, of the educated classes to the efforts of the Emperor's Government to put an end to the revolutionary movement in Poland. This was the first mistake; a mistake, however, which was almost entirely shared not only by the Russians themselves, but even by the Secret Political Police at St. Petersburg, and for which, consequently, the English Government should not be taxed very severely. Far greater blame attaches to it for its second mistake in this whole affair, viz., for falling into what was neither more nor less than a rather clumsily devised, but, as the event proved, perfectly successful trap set for the public opinion of Europe by perhaps the only really clever man in the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, viz., M. Valujef, Minister of the Interior. The whole affair is far too instructive from a diplomatical point of view, and besides, bears too directly upon the subject in hand, for me not to mention it here with all the details I may prudently give. In the spring of 1863, a few weeks after the war had broken out in Poland and Lithuania, the Nobiliary Assembly of the Government of St. Petersburg was holding its regular triennial session in the capital, for the purpose of electing its marshal and other functionaries. On the present occasion, however, the Petersburg nobles had to consider a question rather more important, though perhaps not quite so pleasant, as to who should for the next three years fill the posts of Marshal of the whole Government, Marshals of the Districts, Judge of the Criminal Court, &c. A considerable old debt, contracted by the Nobiliary Assembly towards the Ministry of Finance, had become due already for some time; the Minister was getting clamorous as to its payment, and, the finances of the Assembly being naturally in so bad a condition as to preclude all thought of paying off this debt, it had been absolutely proposed to sell the palace of the Assembly, for the erection of which the money had originally been borrowed from the State. At the nick of time, however, when the Assembly, having in vain tried all sorts of expedients, was already preparing to face its houseless and homeless condition, and simply do like other people in reduced circumstances, viz.,-" go into lodgings," a friendly hand was stretched forth to help it out of its difficulties. The hand belonged to no less personage than the Minister of the Interior, and the reason of his sudden tenderness for the Petersburg nobles was the following. A short time previously, the first notes of Lord Russell and M. Drouyn de Lhuys on the subject of Poland had been read and delivered to Prince Gortchakof by the representatives of England and France at St. Petersburg. M. Valujef, wishing to help his colleague at the Foreign Affairs, sent for the Marshal of the Petersburg Nobiliary Assembly, Prince Shcherbatof, and promised him in the name of the Government, that that unpleasant little affair of the 100,000 and odd roubles should not be mentioned again, if only the Prince would prevail upon the Assembly to present an address to the Emperor, expressive of the unalterable fidelity and attachment of the Petersburg nobles to the Imperial throne, an address which the Prince was assured-would immensely strengthen the hands of the Government in its difficult position with reference to foreign Powers. Who could be happier than Prince Shcherbat of? The address of the Assembly was drawn up then and there, signed, and presented to the Emperor, and a few days later published in all the newspapers of the capital. Then followed a secret circular from the Minister of the Interior to all the Governors of the Empire, enclosing copies of the Petersburg address, and calling upon them to influence the nobles of their respective Governments to present similar addresses. The result probably astonished M. Valujef himself. The addresses began to arrive, first slowly, then faster and faster, till at last this avalanche of paper-loyalty exceeded all bounds, and the mere enumeration of the various localities, from which addresses had arrived on the previous day, would sometimes occupy two or even three columns of the very smallest print of |