large body of respectable prose writers of this country, the literary orators, lecturers, critics, scholars, translaters. They have carried taste, in its lowest form (cold and cautious), to its point of perfection, and they have exhibited all the marks of colonial writers; good and sensible writers, they are yet no more American (albeit Alexander Everett has written largely of American literature, and Edward Everett has dwelt on the physical features of the country), than if writing from Ireland or the Island of Jamaica, or any other portion of the British possessions.

We have a few words to say on both of these topics. New Englandism has certainly made our writers imitative, constrained, tasteful, and timid. That portion of our country, more English and as decidedly sectional, perhaps more so, than either the South or the West, is certainly far better educated, more intellectual and more desirous of literary fame than either. As a district, New England has (as a matter of fact) produced on a fair allowance two-thirds of the best writers we have yet to show. We say this, though native born New-Yorkers, and proud of Irving and Cooper, still the foremost American classics; we say this with a full knowledge of our best men here. The cause for this superiority lies in their exclusiveness and the sober qualities of the Yankee character, inherited from a peculiar race of men, earnest and vigorous; the absence, formerly almost entire, of public amusements, then held there in disgrace, and now little more than barely allowed; the fact of the establishment, in that part of the country, first of all, of universities and schools. We had no Harvards, Yales, or Berkleys. Our Dutch ancestors were not generally lovers of literature, either here or in the mother country (for though Holland was full of learned men, it has rarely had popular cosmopo

litan writers); commerce, thrift, comfortable living, quiet, chiefly occupied their attention, not the quarrels or the amen ities of literature.

The looking constantly to England gave its provincial tone to the writers of New England, and encouraged imitation, a trait in our writers almost universal. We have had American counterfeits of every English writer of this century, from Scott down to the conductors of the most scurrilous English Sunday newspapers. Too often, an inferior writer has been the model, and from being surpassed perhaps by his American copyist, some have come to place American literature on a par with, or above English.

The Everetts may be regarded as representing the force of the Unitarians who have yet much stronger men to boast of, and who, as including the most intellectual class of Americans, are entitled at least to respectful mention. They count among them now, Bryant, the Sedgwicks, Mrs. Kirkland, the Everetts, Dewey, Bancroft-and formerly Channing and the Wares, Emerson, Brownson, and a number of individuals less able and less well known, yet intelligent and accomplished characters. Rationalism, a love of dialectics and of speculative inquiry, together with much elegance of taste, variety of information and skill in writing, distinguish this sect, and these are qualities and tendencies that curb the fancy and check the flights of imagination. They have, hence, but one true Poet (we think) of their communion; most of them are reasoners, critics, scholars, lecturers, essayists, speculative philosophers. They address the understanding or the moral sentiment; rarely appeal to the feelings; still less frequently to the imagination. Hence their writers are apt to be tame and cautious; they are accurate and neat, but cold and superficial. They have no passion, not much

enthusiasm, nor any marked individuality. Channing's eloquence is noble declamatory sentiment, not the fire of native eloquence.

The style and reach of thought and rhetorical skill of the Everetts (in a lower degree) are much the same; and we think any judicious reader must confess, that we have told only the truth, without circumlocution or evasion respecting these gentlemen; who, both as writers, scholars, public characters, and private gentlemen, deserve well of their countrymen, though merely as writers we should place them lower than in their other characters; not overlooking, in recording their best qualities, in a literary point of view, of elegance of mind and style, general justness and propriety of sentiment, with much varied acquisition.

3

POEMS BY CLEMENT C. MOORE, LL. U.

THIS is a pure volume of refined and classic Poetry, in its genuine sense. Not to be sure in the highest sense, for these pages include none of the higher aspirations of the Muse. There is nothing dramatic nor epical; no Pindaric strains, no Miltonic fervor and sublimity, nor the grand sweep of Dryden's glorious verse, but there is still a great deal that is truly excellent, nay admirable, both positively and negatively.

To begin with the latter cold praise, (which we do not mean to be so considered, in these days of extravagance and crudity, in poetical attempts,) there is not a particle of affectation, cant, false pretence, or straining after effect, in the whole collection. Artistically and morally, it is one of the most honest books we ever read. The author does not once feign a sentiment or court popular prejudice; he is utterly without duplicity or ostentation.

It is true, circumstances may have had something to do with this. Dr. Moore, the son of the excellent Bishop Moore, of New-York, himself not only a pure and refined character, but superadding to the accomplishments of the gentleman the nobler character of a benevolent Christian philanthropist, has been most fortunately placed as well for the culture of refined taste as for the development of individual character.

The author of this volume (we add this for the benefit of those who are ignorant of his name and position) is at present a professor of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, giving his services for the benefit of the Institution (to which he presented the grounds on which the buildings stand, with the beautiful adjacent green) and the Church. The poems here collected, are the fruit of leisure hours, and form the expression of personal feelings. They are mostly occasional poems: a description of verses often styled fugitive, but not assuredly to be such in this instance, and we risk little in predicting a permanent reputation for them and their author.

Refinement is their characteristic; not weakness nor sentimentality, but fine sense, elegance, graceful turns of pleasantry, natural and pleasing sentiment, genuine pathos. Gifford's highly praised verses to his Anna are weak and pue rile compared with the verses to the Poet's Children, to his late wife, and on the death of a favorite daughter.

The purest moral feeling and polished versification are also to be remarked as prominent traits of Dr. Moore's poetry. Neither Bryant nor Dana is more careful in the musical structure of his verse; neither of these finished poets is more deserving of being read, for elevation and high aims. Yet there is no assumption on the part of the poet. From his natural elevation, and from a religious tone of character, surrounded by admiring friends and devoted children, our author writes naturally either as a moralist or as a companion, when he writes for others: it is different when he pours out the full tide of his own feelings, in the purest elegiac verse, far more touching than the verses of Hammond, whom it was once the fashion to call the English Tibullus. In humor, too, our author has been quite