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death to vanish in a dark eternity. Demon forms which are truly American, it may be said that are gathering around him. Horror-struck, the they give a more correct and comprehensive idea Pilgrim lets fall his staff, and turns in despair to of our glorious scenery, than do the productions the long-neglected and forgotten Cross. Veiled of any other American artist. In looking upon in melancholy night, behind a peak of the moun- his better pictures of American scenery we fortain, it is lost to his view forever. get the pent up city, and our hearts flutter with

The above pictures are in the possession of the a joy allied to that which we may suppose aniartist's family.

mates the woodland bird, when listening in its We did think of describing at length all the solitude to the hum of the wilderness. Perpetimaginative productions of our great master in ual freedom, perpetual and unalloyed happiness, landscape, but upon further reflection we have seem to breathe from every object which he porconcluded merely to record their titles, by way trays, and as the eye wanders along the mounof giving our readers an idea of the versatility tain declivities, or mounts still farther up on the of Cole's genius. They are as follows:-The chariot-looking clouds, as we peer into the transDeparture and Return, which is a poetical repre- lucent waters of his lakes and streams, or witness sentation of the Feudal Times, The Cross in the the solemn grandeur and gloom of his forests, we Wilderness, П Penseroso, L' Allegro, The Past cannot but wonder at the marvellous power of and Present, The Architect's Dream, Dream of Ar- genius. The style of our artist is bold and mascadia, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve, and terly. While he did not condescend to delineate Prometheus Bound. As the last mentioned pic-every leaf and sprig which may be found in nature is owned in England, and is unquestionably ture, yet he gave you the spirit of the scene. To one of the wildest and most splendid efforts of do this is the province of genius, and an attainthe painter's pencil, we cannot refrain from a ment beyond the reach of mere talent. The brief description. The scene represented is productions of Cole appeal to the intellect more among the snow-covered peaks of a savage than to the heart, and we should imagine that mountain land, and to the loftiest peak of all, is Milton was his favorite poet. He loved the unchained the being who gives the picture a name. common efforts in nature, and was constantly givImmediately in the foreground, is a pile of rocks ing birth to new ideas. He had a passion for and broken trees, which give a fine effect to the the wild and tempestuous, and possessed an imdistant landscape, while, just above this fore- agination of the highest order. He was also a ground, is a solitary vulture slowly ascending to lover of the beautiful and occasionally executed the upper air, to feast upon its victim. The idea a picture full of quiet summer-like sentiment: of leaving the devouring scene to the imagina- but his joy was to depict the scenery of our tion, could only have been conceived by the mountain land, when clothed in the rich garnimind of the most accomplished artist. The ture of autumn. He was the originator of a time represented is early morning-and the cold new style, and is now a most worthy member of blue ocean of the sky is studded with one bril- that famous brotherhood of immortals whom we lant star, which represents Jupiter, by whose remember by the names of Lorraine, Poussin, order Prometheus was chained to the everlasting Rosa, Wilson and Gainsborough.

rock.

star, one

The name of Cole is one which his countryThis is one of the most truly sublime pictures men should not willingly let die. A man of fine, we have ever seen, and possesses all the quali- exalted genius, by his pencil he has accomplished ties which constitute an epic production. The much good, not only to his chosen art, by beunity of the design is admirable,—one figure, one coming one of its masters, but eminently so in a prominent mountain, a cloudless sky, one lonely moral point of view. And this reminds us of representative of the feathery tribes, the influences, which may be exerted by the landand one cluster of rocks for the foreground, scape painter. That these are of importance no and it is also completely covered with an atmos-one can deny. Is not painting as well the exphere which gives every object before us a dreamy pression of thought as writing? With his penappearance. In point of execution we cannot cil, if he is a wise and good man, the artist may possibly find a fault with this glorious picture, portray, to every eye that rests upon his canvass, and we do not believe that the idea of the poet the loveliness of virtue and religion, or the dewas ever better illustrated by any landscape formity and wretchedness of a vicious life. He painter. may warn the worldling of his folly and impendWith regard to the actual views and other less ing doom, and encourage the Christian in his ambitious productions of Cole, we can only say pilgrimage to heaven. He may delineate the hat the entire number might be estimated at marvellous beauty of nature, so as to lead the bout one hundred. The majority of them are mind upward to its Creator, or proclaim the ravllustrative of European scenery, but of those ages of time, that we may take heed to our ways

and prepare ourselves for a safe departure from | with great independence, and to have denied the this world, into that beyond the Valley of the immortality of song to such as were unworthy of Shadow of Death. A goodly portion of all these it. Hence it was not uncommon for the leaders things have been accomplished by Thomas Cole. to place them near their own persons when going As yet, he is the only landscape painter in this into battle: that the Scalds might be eye-witnesses country who has attempted imaginative paint- of the prowess which they were expected to ing, and the success which has followed him in commemorate. Thus the warlike temper of the his career, even in a pecuniary point of view, af-nation and the heroic spirit of the bards stimufords great encouragement to our younger paint-lated each other, and united to swell the tide of ers in this department of the art. He has set a war, upon which the Gothic conquerors rode noble example, which ought to be extensively fol- triumphantly over the armies of the Roman lowed. Observe, we do not mean by this that his Empire. subjects ought to be imitated. Far from it; be- The Anglo-Saxons, and perhaps their predecause they are not stamped with as decided a cessors, the Britons, were descendants of these national character, as the productions of all paint- fierce barbarians: the Danes were a later swarm ers should be. Excepting his actual views of from the same great northern hive: and even the American scenery, the paintings of Cole might Normans were but the remote progeny of kinhave been produced had he never set foot upon dred-tribes who had possessed themselves of a our soil. Let our young artists aspire to some- part of Gaul some centuries before the memothing above a mere copy of nature, or even rable invasion of England. In the history and a picture of the fancy; let them paint the traditions of them all, antiquarians trace the visions of their imagination. No other country presence and agency of the old bards; modified, ever offered such advantages as our own. Let at one time, by local circumstances—at another our young painters use their pencils to illustrate by revolutions in the political or social condition the thousand scenes, strange, wild, and beautiful, of the people; and changing their name and of our early history. Let them aim high, and character with the vicissitudes of language and their achievements will be distinguished. Let manners. It is related of the great Alfred, that them remember that theirs is a noble destiny. What though ancient wisdom and modern poetry have told us that "art is long and time is fleeting!"-let them toil and persevere with nature as their guide, and they will assuredly have their reward.

ENGLISH BALLADS.

in the year 878 he entered the Danish camp the disguise of a minstrel, accompanied by one trusty friend who officiated as harp-bearer. Secure of hospitable treatment in his assumed character, he had leisure to survey all their military arrangements, and to plan the attack, which resulted in the overthrow of the invaders. Sixty years afterwards the Danish king Aulaff (or Olave) tried the same experiment upon the Saxon, Athelstan, but with different success. He got out of the camp in safety: but was observed to bury the money which he had received; which circumstance excited suspicion and led to a disThe earliest poets of Europe were the Scalds, covery of the stratagem. Whether these tales or bards of the Scandinavian tribes. Their name be received with implicit credit or not, it is fair is explained to mean "Smoothers (or Polishers) of to presume that they must have accorded with Language;" though some derive it from "skal," the manners of the age in which they gained a word which often occurs in their poems. Com-currency and belief. And, thus considered, they ing from the East, with Odin and his followers, prove not only that the Danes and Saxons rewhen those wild hordes overran the countries tained their hereditary regard for the masters of which lie along the shores of the Baltic, they song, but that, even in time of war and amid hoscelebrated in verse the great wants in the history tile armies, their profession entitled them to great of their people, and the martial renown of their and peculiar privileges. kings and heroes. They were held in the high- Among the Normans the combined arts of poest esteem and reverence-were honored with etry and music (acts always combined in their the companionship of monarchs and warriors-infancy, and separated only in a very advanced and looked up to by the inferior classes with su- state of society) were cultivated to a much higher perstitious veneration. It was their province to degree of excellence than among their contempreserve the memory of glorious deeds of arms, poraries. Their minstrels preceded by more and to transmit to posterity the fame of the illus-than half a century the famous Troubadours of trious brave. Unlike the laureates of later days. Provence, who exerted so large an influence over they are said to have exercised their high calling the poetry of France, Italy and Spain. And

one of the most romantic incidents connected memories of former days, and loved the native with the Norman Conquest is to be found in the tongue which preserved them. To all these the conduct of Taillefer, a minstrel, at the battle of Saxon harper or gleeman was still a welcome Hastings. Having obtained the permission of guest, and oftentimes a favored officer in the serWilliam he advanced to the combat, in front of vice of the great. In process of time the vigor of the Norman army, rousing the hearts of his countrymen by chanting ballads in praise of Charlemagne, and of the gallant peers who fell at Roncesvalles: till at last inflamed by the ardor with which he sought to inspire others, he rushed forward into the thickest ranks of the Britons and, fighting desperately, was slain.

the old language prevailed over its more polished but weaker antagonist: and, enriched by additions, not only from the modern dialects of Europe, but from the classic originals of Greece and Rome, it has become the nervous, varied and comprehensive English of the present day.

But while "the pure well of English undefiled" During the first ages after the Norman Con- has been certainly replenished and refreshed by quest, the language of the conquerors was the the tributes thus poured into it, we have to laonly one spoken and written at Court. In the ment, on the other hand, the loss of the early Norman French, therefore, the minstrels, who ballads and romances, the diction of which was aspired to please noble ladies and knights, com- rendered by these changes obsolete and uncouth. posed their romances: and hence the productions Ritson, a critic of unsurpassed erudition and of Englishmen, at that period, are very difficult acuteness, gives it as his opinion, that not more to be distinguished from those of their contemporaries in France. Another cause has contributed to this confusion. We refer to the common usufruct, which all the romances of Europe then enjoyed, in the heroes of chivalry and their adventures. So that an English poem about King Arthur or Charlemagne, Roland or Sir Lancelot, would have been nearly, or quite, the same thing in subject matter, dialect and style, as if it had been produced on the other side of the

channel.

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than two ballads have descended to us of a higher antiquity than the age of Elizabeth: though Dr. Percy and other eminent scholars have received a much larger number as genuine productions of the preceding reigns. However, this may be, it is obvious, that almost all of the ballads now extant are either modernized versions of the older poems, translated as it were (time after time) from a dead into a living dialect, or acknowledged imitations of them, which have attempted only to clothe the substance of the ancient poesy in the familiar phraseology of the eighteenth century. Both of these processes, while they have added to the smoothness and elegance of the verse, have detracted not a little from its boldness, energy and fire: as will readily appear to the reader of taste, who will take the pains to compare the few genuine reliques which have come down to us, with the paraphrases and imitations already alluded to.

We cannot choose a better illustration of these remarks than that which is to be found in the two versions of "Chevy Chase" now extant: although even to the elder of the two is not ascribed an earlier date than the reign of Elizabeth, while the later one was so old, in the time of Addison, as to have been mistaken by him for its more venerable predecessor. His admirable critique upon this ballad, in Nos. 70 and 74 of the Spectator, is familiar to every English reader, as well as the eulogium of the gallant Sir Philip Sidney, there quoted, which obviously referred to the old ballad "I never heard the old song of Peirce and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blinde crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which beeing so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivill age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindare!" We fully agree, by

the way, with the illustrious critic in his dissent
from this objection of Sir Philip to the rude style
and evil apparel which (in his eyes) disfigured
the beauty of the poem. It would have been no
gainer by being travestied in the fashionable ele-
gance
and quaintness of Sydney's contempora-
ries; nor even by assuming the classic attire and
the lyric fervors of the Grecian bard. We have
Old Version.

The Perse owt of Northombarlande,

And a vowe to God mayd he,
That he wolde hunte in the mountaynes
Off Chyviat within days thre,
In the mauger' of doughtè Dogles,
And all that ever with him be.

The fattiste hartes in all Cheviat

He sayd he wold kill, and cary them away:
Be my feth, sayd the dougheti Doglas agayn,
I will let that hontyng if that I may.

The dryvars thorowe the woodes went
For to reas3 the dear;
Bomen bickartes uppone the bent
With ther browd aras' cleare.

Then the wyld thorowe the woodes went
On every syde shear;9

Grea-hondes thorowe the greves11 glent12
For to kyll thear dear,

The begane in Chyviat the hyls above
Yerly on a monnyn15 day;

Be1 that it drewe to the oware17 off none,18
A hondrith1 fat hartes ded ther lay.

The blewe a mort uppone the bent,
The semblyd on sydis shear;21
To the guyny 22 then the Persè went,
To se the bryttlynge23 off the deare.

more reason to lament, that it did not enjoy the good fortune of Addison's acquaintance: whose keen appreciation of the merits of the paraphrase sufficiently indicates what would have been his admiration of the original.

The following quotations from the two ballads will serve to exhibit the contrasts in style and language, already suggested:—

Later Version.

The stout Erle of Northumberland,
A vow to God did make,
His pleasure in the Scottish woods,
Three summers days to take;

The cheefest harts in Chevy-chace
To kill and beare away.
These tydings to Erle Douglas came,
In Scotland where he lay :

Who sent Erle Percy present word,
He would prevent his sport-

The gallant greyhounds swiftly ran,
To chase the fallow deere :
On Munday they began to hunt,
Ere daylight did appeare;

And long before high noone they had

An hundred fat buckes slaine;
Then, having dined, the drovyers went
To rouze the deere againe.

The bowmen mustered on the hills,
Well able to endure;
Theire bucksides all, with speciall care,
That day were guarded sure.

The hounds ran swiftly through the woods,
The nimble deere to take,

And with their cryes the hills and dales
An echo shrill did make.

Lord Percy to the quarry went,
To view the slaughtered deere-

While the English are busily engaged in "the noble heart, purposes to spare the lives of their bryttlynge off the deare," and while the Percy respective followers, and to decide the quarrel is in the act of expressing his chagrin at the non-between Percy and himself by single combat. appearance of Douglas, according to the chal- To this Percy eagerly consents: but their purlenge sent and accepted, the Scottish army is pose is defeated by the resolute spirit of an Engseen approaching-"twenty hundrith spearmen lish squire, named Wytharynton or Withoringbold:" and the "fifteen hundrith archares" of ton, whose refusal to stand idly by, as a spectamerry England make ready to receive them. tor, brings on a general engagement. Douglas, with the courage and humanity of a Old Version.

"Leave off the brytlyng of the dear," he sayde"And to your bowys look ye tayk good heed; For never sith 25 ye wear on your mothers borne Had ye never so mickle26 need."

The dougheti Dogglas on a stede27
He rode att his men beforne ;28

Later Version.

-"O cease your sports, "Erle Percy said,
"And take your bowes with speede :-

"And now with me, my countrymen,
Your courage forth advance;
For never was there champion yett,
In Scotland or in France,

His armer glytterydde2 as dyd a glede ;30 A bolder barne" was never borne.

"Tell me what men ye ar," he says,
"Or whos men that ye be :
Who gave youe leave to hunte in this

Chyviat chays in the spy:33 of me?"

The first mane4 that ever him an answear mayd, Yt was the good lord Persè :

"We wyll not tell the36 what men we ar," he says, "Nor whos men that we be :

But we wyll hount hear in this chays,

In the spyte of thyne, and of the.

The fattiste hartes in all Chyviat,

We have kyld, and cast to carry them away"Be ," sayd the doughtè Dogglas agayne, my troth," s "Ther-for the tons of us shall de 39 this day."

Then sayd the doughtè Doglas

Unto the lord Persè"To kyll all these giltless men Alas! it wear great pittè!"40

"But, Persè, thowe11 art a lord of lande,

I am a yerle callyd within my contre ;43 Let all our men uppone a parti stande ;44

And do the battell off the and of me."45

"Nowe Christes cors46 on his crowne," sayd the lord Persè "Who-soever ther-to says nay;

"Be my troth, doughtè Doglas," he says, "Thow shalt never se47 that day;

"Nethar* in Ynglonde, Skottlonde, nar France, Nor for no man of a woman born, But and fortune be my chance,

I dar met him on man for on."50

Then bespayke a squyar1 off Northombarlonde,
Ric: Wytharynton was his nam;52

"It shall never be told in Sothe-Ynglonde," he says, "To king Herry the fourth, for sham-53

I wat1 you byn's great lordes twaw,56

I am a poor squyar of lande;

I wyll never se my captayne fyght on a fylde,57
And stande my-selffe, and looke on,
But whyll I may my weppone welde,58
I wyll not fayl both harte and hande."

The battle was commenced, as usual, by the English archers; whose cloth-yard shafts told fatally upon their enemy, at a distance too great for the employment of other weapons. But the intrepid advance of the Scottish spearmen soon placed them foot to foot with their adversaries; who now threw aside bows and arrows and fought no less valiantly, sword in hand. And now also the heroic leaders encountered each Old Version.

The Ynglyshhe men let thear bowes be,
And pulde owt brandes that wer bright;

It was a hevy sight to se

Bryght swordes on basuites lyght.

"That ever did on horsebacke come,

But if my hap it were,

I durst encounter man for man,

With him to break a spere."

Erle Douglas on his milke-white steede, Most like a baron bold,

Rode formost of his company,

Whose armour shone like gold.

"Show me," said hee, "whose men you bee, That hunt soe boldly heere,

That, without my consent, doe chase

And kill my fallow-deere."

The first man that did answer make, Was noble Percy hee;

Who sayd, "wee list not to declare, Nor show whose men wee bee:

"Yet wee will spend our deerest blood, Thy cheefest harts to slay."

Then Douglas swore a solempne oathe, And thus in rage did say,

"Ere thus I will outbraved bee,

One of us two shall dye :

I know thee well, an Erle thou art; Lord Percy, soe am 1.

"But, trust me, Percy, pittye it were, And great offence to kill Any of these our guiltlesse men,

For they have done no ill.

"Let thou and I the battell trye, And set our men aside." "Accurst bee he," Erle Percy said, "By whome this is denied."

Then stept a gallant squier forth, Witherington was his name, Who said, "I wold not have it told To Henry our king for shame,

"That ere my captaine fought on foote, And I stood looking on.

You bee two erles," sayd Witherington, "And I, a squier alone:

"Ile doe the best that doe I may,
While I have power to stand:
While I have power to weeld my sword,
Ile fight with hart and hand."

other. A fierce conflict ensues between them; followed by a short breathing time, and what Addison aptly terms "a generous parley." Their discourse is unhappily cut short by an English arrow, which stretches Douglas dead upon the field: and his loss is speedily revenged by the fall of his gallant foe, beneath the spear of Sir Hugh Montgomery.

Later Version.

They closed full fast on every side
Noe slacknes there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman
Lay gasping on the ground.

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