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296 ing to the childish expedient of counting a hun dred, Os course, we do not succeed. Like Mel ville’s guitar music, the word seems to be actually waltzing among the ligures. At last, utterly baf iled and wearied, we lapse into the realm of dreams, where we have all kinds of visions of verbs, participles, adjectives, and adverbs, in ex traordinary shapes and places. Awaking in the morning, we light upon the word in the most natural manner. Then what hard names we give ourselves ! What a poor leliow we were in sooth, to allow so simple a thing to frustrate us for the space of twelve hours ! tiow we chuckle as we commit it rapidly to paper! And then with what triumphant rapidity we linish our article, and con sign it to the printer. from an Unfinished drama. Let the boy have his will! I tell thee, brother, We treat these little ones too much like flowers, Training them, in blind selfishness, to deck Sticks of our own poor setting, when they might, If left to clamber where themselves incline, Find nobler props to cling to, litter place, And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong : Thou’d’st strive to imbue with feelings ail thine own, With thoughts, and hopes, anxieties and aims, Which nature gave thee, as the gave thine eye it, blue and glorious beauty like the day, And to thy child’s its melancholy night, A heart as different and distinct from thine, As love of goodness is from love of glory, Or noble poesy from noble prose. 1 could forgive thee, if thou wast of them Who do their fated parts in this world's business, Scarce knowing how or why—lor common minds See not the difference ’twixt themselves and others— But thou, thou, with the visions which thy youth did cherish Substantialized upon thy regal brow, Shoulcl’st boast a deeper insight. Dear my bro ther, I would not to achieve my dearest purpose, (Whilst 1 could see no vice that called for oeu sure,) Check one faint instinct of a baby’s breast, And so, pei haps, with clumsy ignorance mar A great and goodly nature. We are born, It is my faith, in miniature completeness, And like each other only in our weakness. Even with our mother’s milk upon our lips, Our smiles have different meanings, aud our hands Press with degrees of softness to her bosom. It is not change we undergo, as months And years advance—whatever in the heart That wears its semblance, we, in looking back, With gratulation or regret peiceive— It is not change we undergo, but only Growth or development. Yes ! what is childhood, But alter all, a sort of golden daylight, A beautiful and blessed wealth of sunshine, VV herein the powers and passions of the soul Sleep star-like, but existent, till the night Oi Time and Manhood call the slumberers forth, And they rise up in glory. Early grief, A shadow like the darkness of eclipse, Hath sometimes waked them sooner. SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE. S ffiai) of Gossip. In Memoriam. In the second series of Essays from the London Tunes, is a criticism of this poem of Tennyson’s, which fails to do it justice. Not that the details ol the notice are false, lut the critic does not un derstand, or ha3 overlooked the proper character ot the production. As others before him, he has classed it with the elegies of Milton and Spenser. But it is not merely, like Lycidas, a touching and solemn tribute to a departed Inend. Nor is it “composed solely of miniatures of the same individual.” it is something more. It is a history, as iull of philosophical truth as of poetical beau ty, of a great sorrow, of its various shades and shapes ol feeling, from tile lirst agony to the mo ment when it cuds in quiet and pensive resigna tion ; ol its doubts, its fears, its passion and its melancholy, ol ns inliuences upou the heart, and its mea m God’s providence, lie who reads the poem with tins lact in view, will at once percei v e us perfect harmony and completeness, lie whi see how the eouimuuiugs with sell and with ex ternal nature, in which lire author indulges, grad ually untold, without injuring tiis pathos of the subject, the whole metapnysies ol grief. He will rind described, with exquisite sweetness and pre cision, many of those subtle states of mind, those suadowy emotions watch all men experience—but usually with a sort oi half unconsciousness —and to which the majority of us would certainty des pair of ever giving expression, indeed it is tins vvouderiul lineuess oi perception winch is the cause ol many ol i ennysou’s obscurities. That we do not always understand him is sometimes as much the fault ol ouisclves as that of ihe poet. Uneii we have paused puzzied over a ver_e, until by concentialing the aileuliou upou tile passage, tne nebulous oOscuniy lias resolved used into stais ol thought and ieeinig, clear, distiuct and peilect. We siiouid like much to illustrate our meaning by quotations,.but vve uie writing iu our otiioe, and the volume is not Within leach. We fancy, however, that we have made ourselves sui heiemly intelligible to enable any one to verily lor hniisell, the correctness ol our theory. W e do not say that this explanation of Tenny son’s obseuuty applies to any ol those examples ot want of meaning given by the critic ol the Times. We diller with him only in his geneiul description and classification oi a very unique and original poem. But one passage winch he liuds totally incomprehensible, wo think susceptible ol elucidation. “That each wiio seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts oi sell again, should lad, Remergiug in tlie general soul.” The expression “fusing the skirts ol self” is undoubtedly nonsense, but the general sense ol the stanza is evident. It is an allusion to a doc trine which Emerson often hints at in his writings, and which Foe lias expounded iu Eureka—the doctrine that God is all, and all is God, and that at the liuule of the Universe, there will be an ab sorption of every thing into the being of Deity, in volving of course a loss of individuality upon the part ol every member of the human lace. The doctrine is an ugly one, but Tennyson condemns it in a succeeding verse, justly putting the horror ol the idea upon a level with that excited by the thought of total annihilation. Professor Anderson. We have not yet seen the wizard of the North, but we have heard the most astonishing accounts of his performances. One little girl of our ac quaintance declares that he is certainly an enchan ter almost as potent as those .n the Fairy books. She described to us a number of his leats, one of which appeared to us particularly astounding, though we do not remember it with exactness. It was either that lie pulled a very large boy out of a very small portmanteau, or a very large port manteau out of a very small boy. The difference however, is not a material one. Epigrams, Here are two more epigrams upon Disraeli’s theft: “In sounding great Wellington’s praise, Dizzy’s grid and his truth both appear, For a great liood ot tears (Thiers) lie lets fall, Winch were certainly uieuut lor sincere (St. Cyr.” And auother has the following : “Now fr m the chamber ail are gone Who gazed and wept o’er Wellington ; Derby and D’ls. do all they cau To emulate so great a man. ll neither can be quite so great, Resolved is each to lie in state.” Mistress of Hearts. We copy the following from the Ashtabula Sentinel: Professor Silliman, in a speech before the Phi- Beta-Kappa Society, at Yale College, remarked that—“ ine best diploma lor a woman is a large family ol children and au honoured and happy husband.” The Protessur thought with regard to the degree ol Mistress ot Arts, lately coulerred by a Western College, llial tne title would be mote becoming with ll prefixed to it. * Sharp. Here is one of Prentice’s last and very best hits: We feel that we can now go forward to our de signation witii homing to obstruct our progress. [ IVashing ton Union. We suppose you can. The New-Yoik papers say, “the obstructions at Hell Gate have all been leinoved.’’— Louiscille Journal. Au Epitaph. 1 he lollowing epitaph may be found in a grave yard in New-Jersey: “Reader, pass on !—don’t waste your time O’er bad biography and bitter rhyme : For what 1 am, this crumbling clay insures, And what 1 was, is no affair of yours !” Inspiration of Smoke. We copy the following from the Literary World : A word for smokers, iti an autograpli note of Count D’Orsay to Dickens, which comes to us via a translation from the French in the Boston Atlas. “Gore House, April 31), 1846. “My Dear Dickens: —I send yeu the cherry stick, which will now produce better Iruit titan jt bore while a branch of a cherry tree, for it is said smoke inspires authors. I saw B—[Babington Macaulay ?] one day when he visited me in my small house, fill the chamber with a cloud ot [.December 25,