of the names composing the "under crust" of the poetical pie, according to Mr. Griswold's distribution of the parts and places :

Edward Everett, John Quincy Adams, Henry Pickering, Samuel Woodworth, John Shaw, Robert M. Reid, Katharine A. Ware, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, J. K. Mitchell, Elizabeth Townsend, R. C. Waterston, James J. Fields, Sarah Josepha Hale, George P. Morris (ah, Mr. Griswold! Mr. Griswold! was not this cruel, if not unjust?), Prosper M. Wetmore, Mrs. Lydia M. Child, William B. Tappan, James Nack, George B. Cheever, Alexander H. Bogart, Catharine H. Esling, John B. Van Schaick, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, Hugh Peters, Frederick W. Thomas, C. G. Gamage, Horace Greeley, William H. C. Hosmer, Seba Smith, William Pitt Palmer, James Hall, Charles West Thompson, Robert M. Charlton, Horatio Hall, Charles W. Everest, George W. Patten, William Wallace, Mary E. Brooks, Micah P. Flint, William Lloyd Garrison, Otway Curry, Frances Sergeant Osgood, Nathan C. Brooks, Mrs. Laura M. Thurston, Carter Morris, Rev. George W. Bethune, Job Durfee, Bryan Ransom, Henry Carey, Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman, Benjamin D. Winslow, C. G. Eastman, Ephraim Peabody, John M. Harney, Sarah L. P. Smith, Elizabeth Bogart, P. P. Coke, Julia H. Scott, Caroline M. Sawyer, W. J. Snelling, Lindley Murray, John Rudolph Sutermeister, Theodore S. Fay, Clement C. Moore, Francis S. Key, Joseph Hopkinson.

There is one omission, by the way, in Mr. Griswold's work, which we are sure our readers, after exhausting their breath in the rehearsal of all this long array, will agree with us in censuring. It is on the title-page, and on the back of the cover. The alliteration of the name of the volume ought to have been carried out one step farther, and it should have run "The Poets, Poetry, and Poetasters of America." It is true that in the Preface to the Reader this omission is substantially supplied; but this was hardly enough to give us that fair and public warning we have a right to look for on the outside title to a volume. In the passage of the preface we allude to, Mr. Griswold tells us, with great naïveté, that in selecting the specimens in the work, he

has not hampered himself by any very "strict definition" of " POETRY," but that he has regarded "humorous and other rhythmical compositions, not without merit in their way, as poetry, though they possess but few of its true elements." And he absolves himself from the literary responsibility of the case, and hints at the necessity imposed on him by his contract with his publishers in relation to the cubic bulk of the projected book, by intimating that if he had acted on a different principle he might have experienced difficulty in filling so large a volume." However, we have no idea of seriously finding fault on this ground with either the accomplished editor or the beautiful result of his labors. His remark is as true as it is gratifying, that "nearly everything in the poetic manner produced in this country is free from licentiousness, and harmless, if not elevating in its tendencies." All the selections which he has admitted rise up to the level of a certain degree of merit; many indeed constitute genuine poetry of a high order; and the collected whole makes a truly valuable volume, which the public ought to be glad and grateful to receive, glad and grateful for what is given-in some instances, we are half tempted to add, glad and grateful for what is omitted.

"There is in all this nation hardly a native inhabitant of Saxon origin who cannot read and write," is an exclamation of just patriotic pride in which Mr. Griswold indulges. We think he might almost have ventured to add, "and rhyme." The question among us will not long be, who is a "poet," but who is not; and among all" the mob of gentlemen who write with ease," it will be quite refreshing to find anything over the age of military duty who has escaped the epidemic cacoethes, and who can declare himself, on honor, innocent of all flirtation with the universal muse. Among the various passports to distinction one of the rarest as well as most honorable, it seems to us, will ere long be, that "he is the man who never wrote a verse"-and that man, we venture to predict, will be quickly sought out by a grateful people, in the retirement of his modest merit, and rewarded with at least the just tribute of a presidential election.

It is really astonishing the quantity

of very decent verse which is poured forth by every day's fresh issue of its fresh periodicals of all sorts-abounding in smooth and flowing rhyme and rhythm, correct language, pretty conceits, and imagery that might pass for beautiful were it not all already hackneyed in the service of a thousand bards. Any quantity of this may be collected every year into as large a volume as that before us-all rising up just so high and no higher-all intolerably tolerable. This is all very well, and we have no disposition to quarrel with its amiable authors, who are perfectly welcome to the flattering unction for their souls of fancying themselves possessed of "the vision and the faculty divine." They have an incontestable right to print it too, if such be the impulse of the innocent illusion under which they labor-for no one is under any obligation to read, at least beyond the first stanza. We are strenuous advocates of "the largest liberty "the liberty to write, the liberty to print, and the liberty to skip. We only remark on the fact incidentally in passing,-seeing in it simply one of the consequences of the general diffusion of a certain degree of education; of the influence of republican institutions suggesting universally that sentiment of equality which scorns to shrink from what other men, named Milton, or Shakspeare, or Byron, or Shelley, or Wordsworth, or Bryant, have attempted and achieved; and of the poetical culture which the language has received within the present century, bidding it flow more smoothly and easily than of old into rhythmical moulds and patterns, of every variety of shape and size. They are pretty little things while they last, these my riad ephemera, which thus flutter into their harmless existence with every morning's dawning beam, and fade again out of life and remembrance with the same evening's parting raylet them flutter and let them fade! We have no objection either to any curious entomologist gathering up a few of each kind as specimens, from time to time; spreading out the filmy gauze of their bright little wings, and preserving them pressed and dried for immortality between the leaves of a book-as Mr. Griswold has done. Let them remain there, not only to show that they once existed themselves, but

as mementos of those countless swarms of others just like them, though less fortunate in being thus caught and kept for the gratification of the curiosity of posterity. We take it for granted that-throwing out of view some dozen or half-dozen, perhaps, of the names above transcribed from Mr. Griswold's catalogue raisonné, which will live by their own deathless vitality," for a spirit is in them "—the immortality of this volume, or of some other anthological collection of the same kind, is all that is to be expected for the "Poets and Poetry of America" here embodied.

A few words in conclusion on one other point in Mr. Griswold's preface. He falls into a great mistake in the importance he attaches to what he terms "an honest and politic system of RECIPROCAL COPYRIGHT and PROTECTION to the native mind," for the encouragement of men of the first order of genius to devote themselves to authorship-especially in the poetical "line of business." This argument assumes that fewer English books would be printed for circulation in this country, if they had the benefit of a copyright protection, than is now the case, inferring that a sort of monopoly of the home market would ac crue to the benefit of the "native mind," which would constitute a stimulus to its activity analogous to that supposed to reside in a protective tariff for the promotion of the "native manufac tures." Now we think there is little doubt that a much larger number would in that case be published, of the very works he would discourage. Many books would then be undertaken, with the protection of copyright, by the publishers who now shrink from the insecurity of such enterprises, liable to be baffled to-morrow by the competition of a cheaper edition, driven with steam-engine velocity through the unresting press of their opposite neighbors. The fact, now well settled, that it is the best interest of all concerned, author as well as publisher, in the book trade, to reduce prices down to the minimum point of profit, would prevent the addition of the author's copyright remuneration from being very sensibly felt in the market price, to any extent sufficient to counteract this tendency on the other side of the balance. The only effect would probably

be to discourage the system which has recently grown up of the republication of the current popular novels of the day in the mammoth weeklies-a result which would enure rather to the benefit of the regular book-selling publishers, than either to the American author or the American public; while there can be no doubt that many books in England would be written for the American market, either chiefly, or conjointly with a reference to the English sale; so that the competition of the rich and active talent of the English literary classes with our own would be rather favored and extended than discouraged by the operation of such a law. Not that we are opposed to iton the contrary, on the ground of abstract justice we would rather advocate its passage though neither of the two nations concerned has yet recognised the very principle, of the essential and perpetual right of literary property, on which alone can rest the claim so

strenuously urged for the reciprocal protection of international copyright. Supporting that principle, we must needs admit the inference resulting from it, on the ground of its abstract moral obligation; though we think that in demanding the recognition of the one before that of the other, its necessary "condition precedent," the internationalists commit the mistake of proposing to drag forward the horse by the cart-at the same time that the American portion of them totally mistake the grounds of national interest, and of peculiar benefit to themselves, on which we see them generally rest their argument. This point, however, we propose to discuss more fully and elaborately at an early day-having for some time been compelled or induced, by the claims of other matter for insertion in our pages, to postpone the publication of an article prepared on the subject.

THE events of the following story occurred in England,about fifty years ago, the principal persons concerned being well known to the writer. The established rule of fiction, when an ignoble lover is brought on the stage in conjunction with a high-born mistress, is to compensate for his inferiority of rank by an inverse ratio of superiority in all the truer nobility of nature. If this rule is not strictly adhered to in this instance, it is not her fault but that of the fact.

The sweetest creature in all Cheshire was young Alice B, the pride of one of its proudest old families, and the delight of one of its happiest and most splendid homes. It was one of those families of very ancient and pure descent, and vast landed wealth, in which, though not within the pale of the peerage, the sentiment of aristocracy of birth and blood is perhaps stronger than in the highest ranks of the latter. Her father, Sir Wilmot B—, was a mighty hunter before the Lord-a regular, glorious old fox-chasing squire of the most thorough breed, such as there are but few to be found, lingering like last roses, at the present day. With the finest pack in the county, the places of the numerous retainers in his hunting establishment were no sinecures; and a week rarely passed that the Hall did not ring from foundation to roof-tree with the loud and long revelry that wound up the sports and fatigues of a hard day's hunt.

Next to the chace, his second passion was his beautiful and lovely child. He could never tolerate her absence from his side or sight for many hours at a time; so that from her earliest years he had so trained her up to a participation with him in the sports of the field, that there were few better shots or bolder riders in all the country round than the fair young girl, who, under all other circumstances, was everything that was delicate, feminine, and refined, in womanly sweetness and loveliness. She had never breathed any other atmosphere than one of idolatry and happiness. The early death of her mother had been the only

grief she had known. She had an independence of character and of habits amounting sometimes to a wild wilfulness, which was almost her sole imaginable fault, and to a proud contempt for the opinion of the world, which was the most threatening danger that seemed to await her in life. Romantic, generous to a weakness, with a deep and impetuous tide of affections, not only was there no sacrifice of which she was incapable in obedience to the impulses of any noble passion, but she would be rather likely to find a pleasure in such a sacrifice proportioned to its magnitude, and to the high disinterestedness of her own efforts in making it.

She had a brother, about two years older than herself, who was at Čambridge-a young man of a less high and noble natural mould than Aliceproud and passionate, yet withal affectionate and not ungenerous, though possessed with a morbid jealousy of his family dignity, as also of his sister's charms and claims to the most splendid rank and distinction in society, whenever she should condescend to bestow the priceless treasure of her heart upon any of the applicants who had thronged to aspire to her hand. A very respectable old maiden aunt, the baronet's only sister, as stiff as buckram in a straight-lacing of etiquette and propriety, though kind-hearted and simple, completed the family at the Hall.

But there was another person whose intimacy made him almost an inmate there, though occupying a peculiar and somewhat equivocal relation to the family. It was a young farmer, whose property, very considerable in extent, and held in his family for many generations, adjoined the B- estates, the successive owners of which had frequently in vain attempted to purchase the former, but had always met with a peremptory refusal. The Fletcher farm happened to occupy a situation in which it seemed a very inconvenient intrusion on the completeness and symmetry of the lands surrounding the Hall. Whether from this cause, or from any other, a certain ill feeling seemed to have subsisted for two or