Mr. Quincy's recent memorial of that institution.* The society was incorporated in 1807. It received numerous important gifts, especially from the Perkins family. The collection of books exceetls fifty thousand volumes. Its American department is valuable, and its series of foreign reports of socie ties, etc., extensive. Among other specialities it has a large number of books and pamphlets which belonged to General Washington, that were purchased for the institution by a liberal subscription of gentlemen at Cambridge and Boston. After several changes of position the Library is now located in a sumptuous building in Beacon street, where the gallery of fine arts connected with it is also established. The price of a share is three hundred dollars; that of life membership, one hundred. The use of the library, without the privi lege of taking out books, is extended to others on an annual payment of ten dollars. Mr. Charles Folsom, an accomplished and efficient presiding officer, is the present litrarian. THE ELYSIAN FIELDS-FROM GEBEL TEIR. The setting sun had now left the assembly in the shadow of the ancient rocks under which they met, aud the approach of twilight was accompanied with the freshness of evening. The numerous assembly, true to nature, were preparing for repose, when the attention of the whole was irresistibly drawn to the form of a bird, which seemed an Ibis, that now occupied the perch, whose appearance was sudden, and whose coming was noiseless and unseen. The older members exhibited awe more than surprise, but those who were present for the first time felt a chilling dread. The mysterious delegate seemed unearthly and unsubstantial, a spectral hollowness marked his aspect, and the first sepulchral tones of his voice penetrated the whole audience, which sat in solemn, mute expectation. "I come, Mr. President, to make my annual return from the shades below. Many of this assembly, whom I have seen before, know that after my death, three thousand years ago, my earthly remains were carefully embalmed by the priests of Memphis, and still repose in the catacombs of that ancient city. Nought created by God ever perishes, matter is transmuted into new combinations, but the essence of birds as well as of men, each in their kinds, is sublimated at once for an incorporeal, imperishable existe: ce in the world of spirits. Many of the secrets of that world we are not allowed to disclose, and to gross corporeal minds they would be unintelligible. Such things as may be told I shall now relate to this assembly. Birds have instinct, and men have reason, to guide them in this world; the former seldom errs, the latter often; could either race behold the terrific consequences of these errors, they would be less frequent; but sufficient warnings of them have been given, which it is not incumbent on me to repeat. My life having been adjudged blameless, my spirit winged its way to the fields of Elysium, while some of those who worshipped and embalmed my body were doomed to the banks of Phlegethon. Sad and harrowing would be the description of those dreary regions. I have dwelt upon and enforced it from time to time for twenty centuries, since I was first deputed to attend this assembly: I shall not now repeat it. But to instruct and incite the younger The History of the Boston Atheneum, with Biographical Notices of its deceased Founders. By Josiah Quincy. Cambridge: 1851. members here present, I will mention a few of the sights that gladden the eye in the Elysian Fields, where birds who have shown themselves faithful in their duties, vigilant sentinels when stationed on that service, valiant defenders of their nests, and careful providers for their young, enjoy the unceasing delights of Elysium, on a wing that never tires. They are there secure from attack and from suffering, in a blissful region, where peace for ever dwells, and violence or want can never enter. "In these abodes of ever-during felicity a deep harmony and universal participation increase the charm of every delight. Among the varieties of ethereal enjoyment it is one to see the tenants of Elysium attended by the semblances of all those creations of their genius which ennobled their existence in this world. It is one of the rewards allotted to them that these embodied shadows shall there follow them; and the pleasure is mutual, as each purified from envy and all earthly passion enjoys the creations of others as well as his own. There the Grecian poets and artists are accompanied by the classic designs they invented. Homer is followed by Achilles, Nestor, Ulysses, Ajax, and a crowd of others. Sophocles and Euripides are attended by Clytemnestra, Iphigeria, Orestes, Jason, &c. The clouds and birds hover over Aristophanes. The sculptors have for companions their Apollo, Venus, and the Graces; and the painters their representations, even to the grapes that deceived the birds, and the curtain that deceived the artist. gil sees Æneas, Creusa, and Ascanius, Dido, Nisus, and Euryalus, and all his heroic and pastoral characters. Raphael is surrounded with the beautiful mothers and children he painted for Catholic worship, and Michael Angelo here compares that awful scene which he spread on the walls of the Sistine Chapel with the reality that exists around him. Vir "Petrarch sees his laurel covered with sonnets to Laura, who sits beneath its shade. Dante with Beatrice here realizes the scenes he tried to discover in this world; Ariosto has his wild, gay imaginations of ladies, magicians, and knights to recreate his fancy. Cervantes is accompanied by Don Quixote, Sancho, and all the characters of his brilliant genius. Rabelais has Panurge and his grotesque companions, and Fenelon is escorted by Mentor, Telemachus, Calypso, and Eulalia. Spenser has his allegorie visions. But of all who are thus gratified and contribute to the general delight, none is so distinguished as Shakespeare, around whom every creation of fancy, the gay, sad, heroic, terrific, fantastic, appears in a hundred forms. Falstaff and his buffoons, Autolycus and his clowns, Hamlet and Ophelia, Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Desdemona, Lear, Macbeth, Ariel, Miranda, Caliban, the Fairies of a Midsummer's Night, and the Witches of a Highland Heath, all attend his beck. Of late new groups have made their appearance as yet without their master. Some of these in all the various measures of poetry, others in the more serious steps of prose; and these were multiplied so fast, and exhibited so much invention, that it was at last thought they would realize the prodigies of any other imagination. "The heroes and statesmen who are rewarded with a residence in these blissful fields, have yet one mark to designate their errors. They are at times partially or wholly enveloped in an appearance of mist, which impedes them from seeing or being seen by others. When this is examined, it is found to consist of an infinite number of minute, vapory pieces of paper, to represent their delusive statements, and their intrigues of ambition and rivalry; when this is dissipated, there appear over their heads in aerial letters of light, the great and useful measures they prosecuted. The mist that encircles heroes is composed of an innumerable quantity of weapons of destruction, in miniature; as every man who fell in battle in a useless war, is here typified by a sword, ball, or spear, or if he perished of disease, by a small livid spot. Some are thus surrounded more than others. An illustrious chief, recently arrived, who extended his march to this spot where we assemble, is sometimes wholly enveloped: when the mist breaks away we see in the air inscriptions of religious toleration,' 'road over the Alps,' 'protection of the arts,' &c. But among all those who as a statesman or a warrior walks these blessed groves, there is but one combining both attributes, whose majestic form is for ever unshrouded; around whom there never flits the representation of a delusive statement, nor an effort of personal intrigue, nor a single minute resemblance of a destructive weapon to signify that a soldier perished in a battle fought with ambitious views; over his head appears in mild radiance an inscription: First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.' The form of the Ibis had now vanished as suddenly and silently as it first appeared; the influence of the hour replaced the feeling of awful attention by which it had been suspended. The nocturnal birds, the owls, whip-poor-wills, and bats began their career of nightly occupation and watching, while the rest of the immense assembly soon had their heals under their wings, and presented a more numerous collection than could be formed by the afternoon patients united of a thousand somniferous preachers. ROBERT C. SANDS, ONE of the most original of American humorists, a fine scholar, and a poet of ardent imagination, was born in the city of New York, May 11, 1799. His father, Comfort Sands, was a merchant of the city, who had borne a patriotic part in the early struggles of the Revolution. Sands early acquired a taste for the ancient classics, which his education at Columbia College confirmed, to which he afterwards added a knowledge of the modern tongues derived from the Latin. One of his college companions, two years his senior, was his friend and partner in his poetical scheme, James Wallis Eastburn. They projected while in college two literary periodicals, The Moralist and Academic Recreations. The first had but a single number; the other reached a volume;-Sands contributing prose and verse. Graduating with the class of 1815, he entered the law office of David B. Ogden, and contrary to the habit of young poets, studied with zeal and fidelity. His talent for writing, at this time, was a passion. He wrote with facility, and on a great variety of subjects; one of his compositions, a sermon, penned for a friend, finding its way into print, with the name of the clergyman who delivered it. In 1817 he published, in the measure which the works of Scott hal made fashionable, The Bridal of Vaumond, founded, his biographer tells us, 66 on the same legend of the transformation of a decrepit and miserable wretch into a youthful hero, by compact with the infernal powers, which forms the groundwork of Byron's "Deformed Transformed."* This, though spoken of with respect, is not included in the author's writings. His literary history is at this time interwoven with that of his friend, Eastburn, with whom he • Memoir, by G. C. Verplanck, p. 7. was translating the Psalms of David into verse, and writing a poem, "Yamoyden," on the history of Philip, the Pequod chieftain. This was planned by Eastburn, while he was pursuing his studies for the ministry, during a residence at Bristol, Rhode Island, in the vicinity of the Indian locality of the poem. It was based on a slight reading of Hubbard's Narrative of the Indian Wars. The two authors chose their parts, and communicated them when finished to each other; the whole poem being written in the winter of 1817 and following spring. While it was being revised, Eastburn, who in the meantime had taken orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church, died in his twenty-second year, December 2, 1819, on a voyage to Santa Cruz, undertaken to recover his health. The poem was published the year following, in 1820, with an advertisement by Sands, who, on a further study of the subject, had made some additions to the matter. The proem, which celebrates the friendship of the two authors, and the poetical charm of their Indian subject, is justly considered one of the finest of Sands's literary achievements. The basis of the poem belongs to Eastburn. The literary productions of the latter have never been collected. That they would form a worthy companion volume to the writings of his friend Sands, while exhibiting some characteristic differences of temperament, there is abundant proof in all that is known to the public to have proceeded from his pen. In the absence of further original material, we may here present the tribute paid to his genius by his brother, the Right Reverend Manton Eastburn, of the diocese of Massachusetts, in an oration pronounced in 1837, at the first semi-centennial anniversary of the incorporation of Columbia College by the legislature of New York. The remains," said Dr. Eastburn, “which Eastburn has left behind him are amazingly voluminous. I will venture to say that there are few, who, on arriving at the age of twenty-two, which was the limit of his mortal career, will be found to have accomplished so much literary composition. His prose writings, many of which appeared anonymously in a series of periodical essays, conducted by himself and some of his friends, take in an extensive range of moral and classical disquisition; and are models of the purest Addisonian English. The great charm, however, of all 'his writings, is the tone that breathes through them. Whatever be the subject, the reader is never allowed to forget, that the pages before him are indited with a pen dipped in the dew of heaven. An illustration of this peculiar feature of his productions will form the most appropriate ending of this brief offering to his memory. On one glorious night of June, 1819, during his residence as a parochial clergyinan upon the eastern shore of Virginia, and a few months before his death, he sat up until the solemn hour of twelve to enjoy the scene. The moon was riding in her majesty; her light fell upon the waters of the Chesapeake; and all was hushed into stillness. Under the immediate inspiration of such a spectacle, he penned the following lines, which he has entitled The Summer Midnight.' After having given them to you, my fellow-collegians, I will leave you to decide whether the character I have just drawn be a true portrait, or has been dictated only by the natural enthusiasm of a brother's love. "The breeze of night has sunk to rest, Were beating round her gloriously; "Stars of the many-spangled heaven! That slumbers not its minstrelsy. That yet upon my heart shall close, In 1822 and 1823, Sands was writing for the Literary Review, a monthly New York periodical, in conjunction with some friends, associated in a junto known as the Literary Confederacy. They were four in number, and had already contributed the series of papers, "The Neologist" to the Daily Advertiser, and "The Amphilogist" to the Commercial Advertiser; and in 1822 and 1823 he furnished, in conjunction with his friends, numerous articles to the Literary Review, a New York monthly periodical, and in the winter of 1823-4, the confederacy published the seven numbers of the St. Tammany Magazine. In May, 1824, Sands commenced the Atlantic Magazine, which he edited, and for which he wrote many of the articles during its first volume; Robulbhunde when it became the New York Review he again entered upon the editorship, which he continued, supplying many ingenious and eloquent papers till 1827. After this he became associated in the conduet of the Commercial Advertiser, a post which he occupied at his death. In 1828, he wrote an Historical Notice of Hernan Cortes, to accompany a publication of the Cortes Letters for the South American market. For this purpose it was translated into Spanish by Manuel Dominguez, and was not published in the author's own language till the collection of his writings was made after his death. In this year The Talisman was projected. It turned out in the hands of its publisher, Elam Bliss, to be an annual, according to the fashion of the day, but it was originally undertaken by the poet Bryant, Verplanck, and Sands, as a joint collection of Miscellanies, after the manner of Pope, Swift, and their friends. The Talisman, under the editorship of the imaginary Francis Herbert, Esq., and written by the three authors, was continued to a third volume in 1830. It was afterwards reissued according to the original plan, with the title of Miscellanies. The "Dream of the Princess Papantzin," first published in the Talisman, founded on a legend recorded by the Abbé Clavigero, a poem of more than four hundred lines of blank verse, is considered by Mr. Verplanck "one of the most perfect specimens left by Mr. Sands of his poetic powers, whether we regard the varied music of the versification, the freedom and splendor of the diction, the nobleness and affluence of the imagery, or the beautiful and original use he has made of the Mexican mythology." In 1831 Sands published the Life and Correspondence of Paul Jones. The next year he was again associated with Bryant in the brace of volumes entitled Tales of the Glauber Spa, to which Paulding, Leggett, and Miss Sedgwick were also contributors, and for which Sands wrote the hu ROBERT C. SANDS. morous introduction, the tale of Mr. Green, and an imaginative version of the old Spanish founHis last tain of youth story, entitled Boyuca. finished composition was a poem in the Commercial Advertiser, The Dead of 1832. At the very instant of his death he was engaged upon an article of invention for the first number of the Knickerbocker Magazine upon Esquimaux Literature, for which he had filled his mind with the best reading on the country. It was while engaged on this article on the 17th December, 1832, that he was suddenly attacked by apoplexy. He had written with his pencil the line for one of the poems by which he was illustrating his topic, Oh think not my spirit among you abides, some uncertain marks followed from his stricken arm; he rose and fell on the threshold of his room, and lived but a few hours longer. The residence of Sands for the latter part of his life was at Hoboken, then a rural village within sight of New York. In that quiet retreat, and in the neighborhood of the woods of Weehawken, The Wood at Hoboken. celebrated by his own pen as well as by the muse of Halleck, he drew his kindly inspirations of nature, which he hardly needed to temper his always charitable judgments of men. His character has been delicately touched by Bryant in the memoir in the Knickerbocker,* and drawn out with genial sympathy by Verplanck in the biography prefixed to his published writings.t Sands was a man of warm and tender feeling, a loving humorist whose laughter was the gay smile of profound sensibility; of a kindling and rapid imagination, which did not disdain the labor and acquisitions of mature scholarship. He died unmarried, having always lived at home in his father's house. It is related of him, in connexion with his love of nature, that he was so near-sighted that he had never seen the stars from his childhood to his sixteenth year, when he obtained appropriate glasses. That American literature experienced a great loss in the early death of Sands, will be felt by the reader who makes acquaintance with his well cultivated, prompt, exuberant genius, which pro mised, had life been spared, a distinguished career of genial mental activity and productiveness. HOBOKEN.* For what is nature? ring her changes round, The tedious chime is still-grounds, wood, and water. Is it so, Master Satirist?-does the all-casing air, with the myriad hues which it lends to and borrows again from the planet it invests, make no change in the appearance of the spectacula rerum, the visible exhibitions of nature? Have association and contrast nothing to do with them? Nature can afford to be satirized. She defies burlesque. Look at her in her barrenness, or her terrific majesty-in her poverty, or in her glory-she is still the mighty mother, whom man may superficially trick out, but cannot substantially alter. Art can only succeed by following her; and its most magnificent triumphs are achieved by a religious observance of her rules. It is a proud and primitive prerogative of man, that the physical world has been left under his control, to a certain extent, not merely for the purpose of raising from it his sustenance, but of modifying its appearance to gratify the eye of taste, and, by beautifying the material creation, of improving the spiritual elements of his own being. When the Duke of Bridgewater's engineer was examined by the House of Commons as to his views on the system of internal communication by water, he gave it as his opinion that rivers were made by the Lord to feed canals; and it is true that Providence has given us the raw material to make what we can out of it. This may be thought too sublime a flourish for an introduction to the luxuriant and delightful landscape by Weir, an engraving from which embellishes the present number of the Mirror. But, though it may be crudely expressed, it is germain to the subject. Good taste and enterprise have done for Hoboken precisely what they ought to have done, without violating the propriety of nature. Those who loved its wild haunts before the metamorphosis, were, it is true, not a little shocked at what they could not but consider a desecration; and thought they heard the nymphs screaming-" We are off," when carts, bullocks, paddies, and rollers came to clear the forest sanctuary. They were ready to exclaim with the poet, Cardinal Bernis Quelle étonnante barbarie Au cordeau de la symmetrie; D'un bois fait pour la reverie, Et d'orner la simplicité De cette riante paririe !t But "cette riante prairie" is now one of the pret tiest places you may see of a summer's day. It is appropriately called the Elysian Fields, and does, indeed, remind the spectator of Yellow meads of asphodel, And amaranthine bowers. It is now clothed in vivid, transparent, emerald green; its grove is worthy of being painted by * First published in the New York Mirror, to accompany a landscape by Weir, of which the wood engraving in this article is a copy. + Oh, what a shocking thing to sacrifice Variety to symmetry, In such a wise! To polish the rusticity Of that old wood, designed for revery, And ornament the simple grace, Of that fair meadow's smiling face.-PEINTER'S DEVIL Claude Lorraine; and from it you may look, and cannot help looking, on one of the noblest rivers, and one of the finest cities in the universe. Hoboken has been illustrated so often, in poetry and prose, and by the pencil of the limner, in late years, that it would be vain and superfluous to attempt a new description. A "sacred bard," one who will be held such in the appreciation of posterity, has spoken of the walk from this village to Weehawken as one of the most beautiful in the world," and has given, in prose, a picture of its appearance. Another writer, whose modest genius (I beg your pardon, Messrs. Editors he is one of your own gang) leavens the literary aliment of our town, and the best part of whom shall assuredly "escape libitina," has elegantly and graphically described the spot in illustrating another series of pictorial views. Halleck's lines are as familiar as household words. Francis Herbert has made the vicinity the scene of one of his tough stories. At least half a dozen different views have been taken of it within the last two years. They embraced, generally, an extensive view of the river, bay, and city. Weir has selected a beautiful spot, in one of the new walks near the mansion of Colonel Stevens, with a glimpse of the splendid sheet of water through the embowering foliage. That gentleman, and lady with a parasol, in front of the prim, and who look a little prim themselves, seem to enjoy the loveliness of the scene, as well as the society of one another. Our country has reason to reckon with pride the name of Weir among those of her artists. The sunny Italy may boast The beauteous hues that flush her skies; he has seen, admired, studied, and painted them; but he can find subjects for his pencil as fair, in his own land, and no one can do them more justice. It is a fact not generally known, that there is, or was, an old town in Holland called Hoboken, from which, no doubt, this place was named. There was also a family of that name in Holland. A copy of an old work on medicine, by a Dutch physician of the name of Hoboken, is in the library of one of the eminent medical men of this city. The oldest remaining house upon it, for it is insulated, forms the rear of Mr. Thomas Swift's hotel upon the green, and was built sixty years ago, as may be seen by the iron memorandums practicated in the walls. There is at present a superb promenade along the margin of the river, under the high banks and magnesia rocks which overlook it, of more than a mile in length, on which it is intended to lay rails, for the edification of our domestic cockneys and others, who might not else have a chance of seeing a locomotive in operation, and who may be whisked to the Elysian fields before they will find time to comb their whiskers, or count the seconds. In this genial season of the year, a more appropriate illustration could not be furnished for the Mirror than a view of this pleasant spot. We say, with Horace, let others cry up Thessalian Tempe, &c, our own citizens have a retreat from the dust and heat of the metropolis more agreeable— Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis, Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda But, as some of your readers may not undertand Latin, let us imitate, travesty, and doggrelize the ode American Landscape. Edited by W. C. Bryant, No. 1. This work was projected by the New York artists; but the project has been abandoned. +Views of New York and its Environs. Published by Peabody & Co., and edited by T. S. Fay. of Flaccus bodily. There is an abrupt transition in the middle of it, which critics have differed about; but I suppose it is preserved as he wrote it the whole of the old rascal's great argument being, that with good wine you may be comfortable in any place, even in Communipaw. Laudabunt alii clarum Rhodon, &c. Let voyageurs Macadamize, Geneva's lake and city; And poor old Rome-the proud, the great, Of travellers there is no lack, God knows each one of them a hack, For me who never saw the sun By blood of patriot martyrs With all thy monarch's charters. To the great sea keep flowing: The wave beneath the rushes bright, [Here occurs the seeming hiatus above referred to. He proceeds as follows:] Though lately we might truly say, Of scribblers like the present: Will make all places pleasant. Suns Telamon's dead body; "Come, my brave boys, and let us go, Is promised by the Delphic shrine: The papa of the two Ajaces charged them, when they started for Troy, to bring one another home; or else he threatened not to receive the survivor. Ajax Telamon being miffed, because the armour of Achilles was awarded to Ulysses, went crazy, killed sheep, and made a holocaust of himself. When Teucer went home without him, the old gentleman shut the door in his face.-Free translation of Mad. Dacier. |