the breeze by woods and a hill-side; so that elsewhere there might be a hurricane, and here scarcely a ripple across the shaded water. The current lingers along so gently that the mere force of the boatman's will seems sufficient to propel his craft against it. It comes flowing softly through the midmost privacy and deepest heart of a wood, which whispers it to be quiet, while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes, the river sleeps along its course, and dreams of the sky, and of the clustering foliage; amid which fall showers of broken sunlight, imparting specks of vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tint. Of all this scene, the slumbering river had a dream-picture in its bosom. Which, after all, was the most real· the picture or

the original?- - the objects palpable to our grosser senses, or their apotheosis in the stream beneath? Surely the disembodied images stand in closer relation to the soul.

GLACIER COMPARED TO HUMAN LIFE. -J. D. Forbes.

Poets and philosophers have delighted to compare the course of human life to that of a river; perhaps a still apter simile might be found in the history of a glacier. Heavendescended in its origin, it yet takes its mould and conformation from the hidden womb of the mountains which brought it forth. At first soft and ductile, it acquires a character and firmness of its own, as an inevitable destiny urges it on its onward career. Jostled and constrained by the crosses and inequalities of its prescribed path, hedged in by impassable barriers which fix limits to its movements, it yields groaning to its fate, and still travels forward, seamed with the scars of All this while, many a conflict with opposing obstacles.

it

although wasting, it is renewed by an unseen power evaporates, but is not consumed. On its surface it bears the spoils which, during the progress of existence, it has made its own; often weighty burdens devoid of beauty or value — at times precious masses, sparkling with gems or with ore.

Having at length attained its greatest width and extension, commanding admiration by its beauty and power, waste predominates over supply, the vital springs begin to fail; it stoops into an attitude of decrepitude; it drops the burdens, one by one, which it had borne so proudly aloft-its dissolution is inevitable. But as it is resolved into its elements, it takes at once a new, and livelier, and disembarrassed form; from the wreck of its members it arises, "another, yet the same,”noble, full-bodied, arrowy stream, which leaps rejoicing over the obstacles which before had stayed its progress, and hastens through fertile valleys towards a freer existence, and a final union in the ocean with the boundless and the infinite.

a

Ere long he reached the magnificent glacier of the Rhone; a frozen cataract more than two thousand feet in height, and many miles broad at its base. It fills the whole valley between two mountains, running back to their summits. At the base it is arched, like a dome, and above, jagged and rough, and resembles a mass of gigantic crystals of a pale emerald tint, mingled with white. A snowy crust covers its surface; but at every rent and crevice the pale-green ice shines clear in the sun. Its shape is that of a glove, lying with the palm downwards, and the fingers crooked and close together. It is a gauntlet of ice, which, centuries ago, Winter, the king of these mountains, threw down in defiance to the Sun; and year by year the Sun strives in vain to lift it from the ground on the point of his glittering spear.*

* This is a passage of very great beauty. It has the substance of the highest poetry, without the form of verse. Winter is personified as a champion who flings down a gauntlet of defiance to a rival, the Sun, who in vain endeavors to take it from the ground. So far the comparison is strictly imaginative; that is, the resemblance is discerned by the mind only. But subordinate to this there is a purely fanciful similitude. The shape of the glacier is that of a glove, which was the symbol of defiance in the middle ages, and the rays of the sun are further likened to a pointed and glittering spear.

LXXXI.

CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS.

TICKNOR.

[GEORGE TICKNOR, a native of Boston, was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1807. In 1820, after four and a half years' careful preparation in Europe, he assumed the duties of professor of modern languages in Harvard College, and continued to discharge them till 1835. In 1849, he published a History of Spanish Literature, in three octavo volumes- a work which contained the rich and slowly matured fruits of thirty years of study and reflection. It was received with the greatest favor both in Europe and America, has been translated into German and Spanish, and is recognized by the Spaniards themselves as the best account, in any language, of their literature. It is remarkable alike for its thoroughness and learning, for the justice and good taste of its literary criticisms, and for the neatness and precision of its style.

Mr. Ticknor has also, from time to time, made various contributions to the periodi cal literature of our country.

This sketch of the character of Columbus is from The History of Spanish Literature.]

THERE was one man to whose courage even the terrors of this unknown and dreaded western ocean were but spurs and incentives, and whose gifted vision, though sometimes dazzled from the heights to which he rose, could yet see, beyond the waste of waves, that broad continent which his fervent imagination deemed needful to balance the world. It is true Columbus was not born a Spaniard. But his spirit was eminently Spanish. His loyalty, his religious faith and enthusiasm, his love of great and extraordinary adventure, were all Spanish, rather than Italian, and were all in harmony with the Spanish national character, when he became a part of its glory. His own eyes, he tells us, had watched the silver cross, as it slowly rose for the first time above the walls of the Alhambra, announcing to the world the final and absolute overthrow of the infidel in Spain; and from that period, power earlier, when some poor monks from Jerusalem had been at the camp of the two sovereigns before Granada, praying for help and protection against the unbelievers in Palestine, he had conceived the grand project of consecrating the untold wealth he trusted to find in his westward discoveries by devoting it to the rescue of the holy city and sepulchre of Christ; thus achieving by his single power and resources what

or one even

all Christendom, and its ages of crusades, had failed to accomplish.

Gradually these and other kindred ideas took firm possession of his mind, and are found occasionally in his later journals, letters, and speculations, giving to his otherwise quiet and dignified style a tone elevated and impassioned like that of prophecy. It is true that his adventurous spirit, when the mighty mission of his life was upon him, rose above all this, and with a purged vision, and through a clearer atmosphere, saw from the outset what he at last so gloriously accomplished; but still, as he presses onward, there not unfrequently break from him words which leave no doubt that in his secret heart the foundations of his great hopes and purposes were laid in some of the most magnificent illusions that are ever permitted to fill the human mind. He believed himself to be, in some degree at least, inspired, and to be chosen of Heaven to fulfil certain of the solemn and grand prophecies of the Old Testament. He wrote to his sovereigns in 1501, that he had been induced to undertake his voyage to the Indies not by virtue of human knowledge, but by a divine impulse, and by the force of scriptural prediction. He declared that the world could not continue to exist more than a hundred and fifty years longer, and that many a year before that period he counted the recovery of the holy city to be sure. He expressed his belief that the terrestrial paradise, about which he cites the fanciful speculations of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, would be found in the southern regions of those newly-discovered lands which he describes with so charming an amenity, and that the Orinoco was one of the mystical rivers issuing from it; intimating at the same time that perchance he alone of mortal men would, by the divine will, be enabled to reach and enjoy it.

In a remarkable letter of sixteen pages, addressed to his sovereigns from Jamaica in 1503, and written with a force of style hardly to be found in any thing similar at the same period, he gives a moving account of a miraculous vision,

which he believed had been vouchsafed to him, for his consolation, when at Veragua, a few months before, a body of his men, sent to obtain salt and water, had been cut off by the natives, thus leaving him outside the mouth of the river in great peril.

"My brother and the rest of the people,” he says, 66 were in a vessel that remained within, and I was left solitary on a coast so dangerous, with a strong fever and grievously worn down. Hope of escape was dead within me. I climbed aloft with difficulty, calling anxiously, and not without many tears, for help from your majesties' captains, from all the four winds of heaven. But none made me answer. Wearied and still moaning, I fell asleep, and heard a pitiful voice, which said, 'O fool, and slow to trust and serve thy God, the God of all! What did He more for Moses, or for David his servant? Ever since thou wast born, thou hast been His especial charge. When He saw thee at the age wherewith He was content, He made thy name to sound marvellously on the earth. The Indies, which are a part of the world, and so rich, He gave to thee for thine own, and thou hast divided them unto others as seemed good to thyself, for He granted thee power to do so. Of the barriers of the great ocean, which were bound up with such mighty chains, He hath given unto thee the keys. Thou hast been obeyed in many lands, and thou hast gained an honored name among Christian men. What did He more for the people of Israel when he led them forth from Egypt?-or for David, whom, from a shepherd, He made king in Judea? Turn thou, then, again unto Him, and confess thy sin. His mercy is infinite.'

* * *

All this heard I, as one half dead; but answer had I none to words so true, save tears for my sins. And whosoever it might be that thus spoke, he ended saying, 'Fear not, be of good cheer; all these thy griefs are written in marble, and not without cause.' And I arose as soon as I might, and at the end of nine days the weather became calm." Three years afterwards, in 1506, Columbus died at Valladolid, a