He has caught, according to Tuckerman, the very spirit of American scenery, as well as faithfully pictured its details" his best poems have anthem-like cadence, which accords with the vast scenes they celebrate" -"his harp is strung in harmony with the wild moan of the ancient boughs"-his forest studies are not English parks formalised by art, not legendary wilds like Ravenna's pine-grove, not gloomy German forests with their phantoms and banditti-but they realise those "primal dense woodlands" of the New World (whose title of New seems a libel on their hoary eld) where "the oak spreads its enormous branches, and the frostkindled leaves of the maple glow like flame in the sunshine; where the tap of the woodpecker and the whirring of the partridge alone break the silence that broods, like the spirit of prayer, amid the interminable aisles of the verdant sanctuary." And Washington Irving claims for his friend's descriptive poetry, the power of transporting us at will into the depths of the solemn primæval forest, to the shores of the lonely lake, the banks of the wild nameless stream, or the brow of the rocky upland, rising like a promontory from amidst a wide ocean of foliage." Nevertheless, we own to a sense of general dulness and disappointment when doing our best to catch the inspiration of the "Forest Hymn," nor do we find in his picture of "The Prairies," those Gardens of the Desert, those any Unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name such "proof impression" of the poet's art, as the subject seems capable of. Very graphic, however, are the lines Lo! they stretch Mr. Bryant's residence in Queen's County,* as described by pencillers His house is at the foot of a woody hill, facing Hempstead Harbour, to which the flood tide gives the appearance of a lake, bordered to its very edge with trees. The house itself, surrounded with "square columns and a heavy cornice," which help to shade "a wide and ample piazza," is described (" Homes of American Authors," 1852) as "one bower of greenery," July's hottest sun leaving the inner rooms cool and comfortable at all times." The library, as the haunt of the poet and his friends, is "supplied with all that can minister to quiet and refined pleasure," in addition to books. "Here, by the great table covered with periodicals and literary novelties, with the soft, ceaseless music of rustling leaves, and the singing of birds making the silence sweeter, the summer visitor may fancy himself in the very woods, only with a deeper and more grateful shade; and when 'wintry blasts are piping loud,' and the whispering trees have changed to whirling ones, a bright wood-fire lights the home scene, enhanced in comfort by the hospitable sky without, and the domestic lamp calls about it a smiling or musing circle, for whose conversation or silence the shelves around afford excellent by the way, would appear favourable to the "consecration and the poet's dream," without excluding the "common things that round us lie" in active practical life. But he leaves now to others the "accomplishment of verse, ," and reposes on such laurels as he has long-ago won, be they ever-greens or not. His prose writings are numerous, but chiefly scattered among reviews, The "Letters of a Traveller," collected magazines, and newspapers. for English publication two or three years ago, form an agreeable miscellany, but without pretension to novelty in matter or any distinctive excellence in style. The subjects are trite, the treatment so-soish. The repast is a sort of soup-maigre, presented in no very lordly dish. Enthusiasm of description is as much awanting as singularity of incident. But to those who love quiet communications on quiet topics, these letters have an interest and value not to be gainsaid. The subjects range over a pretty wide surface of time and space; from 1834 to 1849, and from New England to Old, plus France and Holland, Austria and Italy. If there is a deficiency of colouring and warmth in the traveller's sketches of Italian scenery and arts-of what is picturesque in Shetland life-of England's home beauties-and of the swamps of Florida, and the rugged wilds of Canada, and the tropic vegetation of Cuba,-at least they are free from the showy verbiage and fustian neologisms in which some New Englanders so profusely indulge. Nevertheless, they are distinctively American; for Mr. Griswold is right in affirming, as respects the poet's prose writings, especially the political part of them, that, whatever is in them of intrinsic truth, his views on every subject disputed internationally, are essentially American, born of and nurtured by his country's institutions, experience, and condition, "and held," it is added, only by ourselves and by those who look to us for instruction and example." The Evening Post has been the main channel of the expoet's political effusions. Prose belles lettres he seems to have abjured, together with verse-though once so welcome and prominent a contributor to the North American Review, the New York Review, and other home journals. As in the case of James Montgomery, Thomas Aird, and others, in the old country, this devotement to newspaper partisanship is held a thousand pities by most who pay homage to his muse. materials. The collection of books is not large, but widely various; Mr. Bryant's tastes and pursuits leading him through the entire range of literature, from the Fathers to Shelley, and from Courier to Jean Paul. In German, French, and Spanish, he is a proficient, and Italian he reads with ease; so all these languages are well represented in the library. He turns naturally from the driest treatise on politics or political economy, to the wildest romance or the most tender poem -happy in a power of enjoying all that genius has created or industry achieved in literature." THE FRENCH ALMANACKS FOR 1854. "Education, amélioration, progrès"—such is the motto of the French Almanacks for 1854, which reflect, we hardly dare say how faintly, the spirits which they invoke. Astrology, prophecy, devilry, and magic, with frivolities of ultra-Gallican insignificance, are still the order of the day; and to these are added, this year, table-turning, hat-turning, and man-moving, concerning which phenomena our lively neighbours appear to entertain ideas indicative of anything but progress in a sound and inductive philosophy. Literature, to judge from M. Jules Janin's annual exposition, has received but slender additions. "Like Homer," says the spirituel feuilletonist, "who, according to Horace, goes sometimes to sleep, so also French wit is found to be occasionally somnolent." Exceptions are perhaps to be found in the work of M. Eugène Pelletan, entitled "The Profession of Faith of the Nineteenth Century," said to be a marvel of piety, poetry, and philosophy; in the "Histoire de Madame de Longueville," by Victor Cousin, an episode of the Fronde, related in the most spirited manner; in Auguste Thierry's "Essai sur l'histoire de la formation et du progrès du tiers état en France;" Theophile Gauthier's "Voyage en Orient;" Gerard de Nerval's "Châteaux de Bohême;" Eugène Sue's "Gilbert et Gilberte;" Maxime Ducamp's "Livre Posthume;" Alexis Blondel's "l'Inimitable Falambelle ;" and lastly, in Madame Emile de Girardin's " Marguerite, ou les Deux Amours." Amid such poverty of national literature, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had a succès de fureur. Janin cleverly designates Uncle Tom as the modern Epictetus, whose earthen lamp, we may add, archæologists have as yet failed to recover. Of Mrs. Stowe he says, if France failed in imitation of the English to prostrate itself at her feet, it is because it is not the custom in France to admire persons who write, so much as a performer on the piano, or a travelling opera-dancer. This is also the case in England, M. Janin. One or two tales are also noticed, so brief in their narration that they might be read between courses, the "Vase Etrusque," and "l'Enfant Maudit;" which are yet said to have created such a sensation as that the dates of their publication have become literary events; and Etienne Bequet, since dead, is declared to have earned immortality by a story of only four pages in length, called "Le Mouchoir Bleu." Nor must we omit to mention that a young man with a great name, M. Albert de Broglie, has thrown himself into the breach now so long open, in defence of antiquity, and has joined himself to the Villemains, Remusats, and Cousins of the day, in opposing the repeated onslaughts of a corrupt and narrow bigotry, as represented by the Abbé Gaume and his followers. Apart from these literary passes, republication has, as with us, assumed formidable proportions in France, to the serious injury of the literature of the day. Janin, however, applauds the system, which certainly has its advantages. "This reproduction, or rather resurrection," he says, "of so many beautiful works, which were the spoilt children of our youth, is a happy symptom full of hope. It gives courage, and it is worthy of giving courage to new efforts. It is full of consolation for honest and well-cut' pens: it resembles life, glory, and fortune." The point of the last epigrammatic sentence is not very clear. It reminds us of an illustration of the learned discussions on table-turning in one of the almanacks-a yawning gulf, dark as Erebus, leading only to darkness still more intense -nothing could illustrate more emphatically the exceeding obscurity of the subject. The "Répertoire du Théâtre" has been far more prolific than that of publications. At least 300 new pieces have been brought before the public; among the most remarkable of which were "Le Cœur et la Dol," by M. Felicien Mallefille, and "Lady Tartuffe," by Madame Emile de Girardin, both produced at the Théâtre Français. The first is a comedy of the most legitimate description, the scene of which is placed at Vichy; the second is a bit of spite, a repulsive idea carried through by dint of combined skill and audacity. The great success of the year has, however, been achieved by M. Ponsard, in his comedy called "L'Honneur et l'Argent." This successful piece was refused by the Théâtre Français, and accepted without reading at the Odéon. Then there were lots of small things, among which, Jean le Cocher," the “Lundis de Madame," the "Souvenirs de Voyage," the "Tante Ursule," the "Loup dans la Bergerie," were the most applauded. None, however, equalled in success the "Filles de Marbre, which, when we say that it is universally admitted to be twin-sister to the "Dame aux Camélias" of last year, we give a sufficient idea of its tendencies and character. The "marble fair" being, however, at once heartless and rapacious, they are, in reality, the opposite of the fair one with the camelias, but still the social circle in which both move being the same, they fully authorise Jules Janin's exclamation, "Is it possible, just Heaven, that the Tarpeian Rock shall always be so near to the Capitol ! 'A woman, an asp! a worm, a god!' said Pascal." It only remains to add, that the dramatic success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" cut short the career of many a piece which otherwise might have had a fair run; witness the "Lys dans la Vallée," and the resuscitation of Prudhommelike Paturot, the acknowledged representative of the bourgeois-the blind, fat, national guard, victimised by boys and troopers, by the "marble fair," and by his own wife, and then laughed at by the public. In connexion with a more general progress, of all the marvels of the past year, after table-turning, the one which appears to have created the greatest sensation is the propagation of fish, or pisciculture as they designate it on the Continent. The said art of pisciculture was well known to the Romans, and has been practised from time immemorial by the Chinese.* Messrs. Van Voorst published a treatise on the subject in this country years ago; and we know a gentleman who undertakes for ten pounds sterling to stock a pond with choice fish within a given time. But the secret was apparently new to the French, and therefore a discovery. A poor fisherman of Bresse had found time to alternate hours devoted to the capture of fish, to studies relative to the mode of propagation of the same. After prolonged observations, and many failures, he succeeded in discovering the secret of artificial propagation, and he laid the result of his researches before government, offer * Spallanzani and De Golstein have written on the artificial incubation of fish. ing not only to replenish the exhausted stock of rivers and lakes, but also to introduce more particularly into them the rare and most esteemed descriptions of fresh-water fish. Government, as is customary in France, shrugged its shoulders-in this country it would have pooh-poohed the project-till the subject having been mooted in public and attracted attention, a commission of inquiry was instituted. The result was propitious. Thirty thousand francs were voted for a model pond at Huningue, and it is said that there are now nearly a hundred piscicultural establishments in France. The joy of the Parisians at the prospects held out to them of a glut of matelotes is boundless. Their imaginations soar far beyond the more common kinds; they aspire to filling the Seine with trout, salmon, and sturgeon. A professor of the Garden of France repaired to Prussia in search of living specimens of a fish much esteemed in that country; unfortunately, they all perished in the ponds of Versailles-possibly they degenerated into another species, as the roach becomes a rudd in tidal and other ponds. Thousands of little trouts and salmon have been cast into the Rhone from the reservoirs at Huningue; had they been thrown into the Thames, they would have been devoured as whitebait. The Parisians glorify themselves not only in anticipation of a glut of fresh-water fish, but also in the fact that they alone know how to cook the same. "The Frenchman," writes one contributor, "clever by nature, created the matelote! And he did not stop even at this splendid creation; he suggested that turbot should be eat with capers, and pike should be disguised-brochet au bleu. Colbertthe great Colbert himself-did not consider it beneath his genius to invent a new method of dressing soles, let it be said to his eternal honour!" The art of directing balloons-which was to attain perfection each succeeding year, according to the prophecies we have recorded for years past-has made no progress. A M. Henri Giffard made an experimental ascent from the Hippodrome on the 24th of September, 1852, in a machine, from which, as usual, marvellous results were anticipated, but, as usual also, nothing resulted. The progress of aërial navigation will receive a further blow by the establishment of stationary balloons in the Bois de Boulogne, where piscicultural reservoirs are also to be excavated, and other sources of recreation are to be founded under imperial patronage. A M. Jussienne having invented a machine, not larger than a man's hat, which by means of compressed air can be made to draw a chariot with two persons in it, horses we are told are to be suppressed. Every one will have his carriage in his house, and his locomotive in his pocket. Every workman will have in his workshop a little machine that will spare him the use of his arms. The Messrs. Barrat have, it is said also, invented a machine, which, by means of steam, will plough the land as quickly as a steam-boat ploughs the ocean. Others have invented machines for mowing, hoeing, cutting, thrashing, &c., &c. Wonderful France, it can dispense with the more humble inventions of its neighbours; everything there is an original creation! Add to this, the French have discovered during the past year a new rat-trap, and a new method of getting rid of flies; they have, however, been much terrified by mad dogs, but have discovered no cure; and ex |