I roved all day through the wood-walks wild, A ETILL DAY IN AUTUMN. I love to wander through the woodlands hoary, And, like a dream of beauty, glides away. To light the gloom of Autumn's mouldering halls, With hoary plumes the clematis entwining, Where, o'er the rock, her withered garland falls. Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled, Till the slant sunbeams through their fringes raining, Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold. The moist winds breathe of crispèd leaves and flow ers, In the damp hollows of the woodland sown, Mingling the freshness of autumnal showers With spicy airs from cedarn alleys blown. Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow, The gentian nods, in dewy slumbers bound. Upon those soft, fringed lids the bee sits brooding Like a fond lover loth to say farewell; Or, with shut wings, through silken folds intruding, Creeps near her heart his drowsy tale to tell. The little birds upon the hillside lonely, Flit noiselessly along from spray to spray, Silent as a sweet, wandering thought, that only Shows its bright wings and softly glides away. The scentless flowers, in the warm sunlight dreaming, Forget to breathe their fulness of delight,And through the tranced woods soft airs are streaming, Still as the dew-fall of the summer night. BLOOMS NO MORE. Oh primavera, gioventù dell' anno, Bella madre di flori, Tu torni ben, ma teco Non tornano i sereni E fortunati di delle mie gioie. GUARINI. I dread to see the summer sun Come glowing up the sky, And early pansies, one by one, Opening the violet eye. Again the fair azalia bows Beneath her snowy crest; The tulips lift their proud tiàrs, But she can bloom on earth no more, Her eyes of dewy light; HENRY REED. HENRY REED, the late Professor of Literature and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania, whose sudden death among the passengers of the steamer Arctic cast a shade over the intelligent circle in which he moved, belonged to an old and honored family in the state. His grandfather was Joseph Reed, the President of Pennsylvania, the secretary and confidant of Washington, and the incorruptible patriot, whose memorable answer to a munificent proposal of bribery and corruption from the British commissioners in 1778, is among the oft-repeated anecdotes of the Revolution :-"I am not worth purchasing, but, such as I am, the king of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it." * The wife of this honored lawyer and civilian also holds a place in the memoirs of the Revolution. Esther de Berdt, as she appears from the correspondence and numerous anecdotes in the biography prepared by her grandson, the subject of this notice, was a lady of marked strength of character and refined disposition. She was the daughter of Dennis de Berdt, a London merchant much connected with American affairs, and the predecessor of Dr. Franklin as agent for the Province of Massachusetts. Having become acquainted with Mr. Reed in the society of Americans in which her father moved, she became his wife under circumstances of mournful interest, after the death of her parent, when removing to America she encountered the struggle of the Revolution, sustaining her family with great fortitude during the necessary absence of her husband on public duties. After acting well her part of a mother in America in those troublous times, and receiving the congratulations of Washington, she died in Philadelphia before the contest was closed, in 1780. The memoir by her grandson is a touching and delicate tribute to her memory, *The Life of Esther De Berdt, afterwards Esther Reed, of Pennsylvania Privately printed. Philadelphia: C. Sherman, Printer, 1853. and a valuable contribution to the historical literature of the country. Henry Reed Henry Reed was born in Philadelphia, July 11, 1808. He received his early education in the classical school of James Ross, a highly esteemed teacher of his day in Philadelphia. Passing to the University of Pennsylvania, he attained his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1825. He then pursued the study of the law in the office of John Sargent, and was admitted to the bar in 1829. After a short interval, he was, in the year 1831, elected Assistant Professor of English Literature in his University, and shortly after Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy. In 1835 he was elected Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature. It was on a leave of absence from these college duties, that, in the spring of 1854, he left America for a summer visit to Europe, a pilgrimage which he had long meditated; and it was on his return in the ill-fated Arctic that he perished in the wreck of that vessel, September 27 of the same year. He had thus passed onehalf of his entire period of life in the literary duties of his college, as professor. When we add to these few dates, Professor Reed's marriage in 1834 to Elizabeth White Bronson, a grand-daughter of Bishop White, we have completed the external record of his life, save in the few publications which he gave to the world. A diligent scholar, and of a thoroughbred cultivation in the best schools of English literature and criticism, of unwearied habits of industry, he would probably, as life advanced, have further served his country by new offerings of the fruits of his mental discipline and studies. The chief compositions of Professor Reed were several courses of lectures which he delivered to the public at the University of Pennsylvania, and of which a collection has been published since his death, by his brother, Mr. William B. Reed, with the title, Lectures on English Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson. The tastes, mental habits, and associations of the writer, are fully exhibited in these productions, which cover many topics of moral and social philosophy, besides the criticism of particular authors. As a scholar and thinker, Mr. Reed belonged to a school of English writers who received their first impulses from the genius of Wordsworth and Coleridge. It is characterized by its sound conservatism, reverential spirit, and patient philosophical investigation. He was early brought into communication with Wordsworth, whom he assisted by the supervision and arrangement of an American edition of his poems. The preface to this work, and an elaborate article in the New York Review, of January, 1839, which appeared from his pen, show his devotion to this master of modern poetry. After the death of the poet, he superintended the publication of the American edition of the memoirs by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth. With the Coleridge family, he maintained a similar correspondence and intimate relation. A memoir which he prepared of Sara Coleridge for the Literary World, though brief, was so carefully and characteristically executed, that it appeared not long after reprinted entire among the obituaries of the Gentleman's Magazine. A passage, referring to his foreign tour, from the personal introductory notice prefixed to the Lectures, will exhibit this relation to his English friends. No American, visiting the Old World as a private citizen, ever received a kinder or more discriminating welcome. The last months of his life were pure sunshine. Before he landed in England, his friends, the family of Dr. Arnold, whom he had only known by correspondence, came on board the ship to receive him; and his earliest and latest hours of European sojourn were passed under the roof of the great poet whose memory he most revered, and whose writings had interwoven themselves with his intellectual and moral being. "I do not know," he said in one of his letters to his family," what I have ever done to deserve all this kindness." And so it was throughout. In England he was at home in every sense; and scenes, which to the eye were strange, seemed familiar by association and study. His letters to America were expressions of grateful delight at what he saw and heard in the land of his forefathers, and at the respectful kindness with which he was everywhere greeted: and yet of earnest and loyal yearning to the land of his birth his home, his family, and friends. It is no violation of good taste here to enumerate some of the friends for whose kind welcome Mr. Reed was so much indebted; I may mention the Wordsworths, Southeys, Coleridges, and Arnolds, Lord Mahon, Mr. Baring, Mr. Aubrey De Vere, Mr. Babbage, Mr. Henry Taylor, and Mr. Thackeray-names, one and all, associated with the highest literary or political distinction. He visited the Continent, and went, by the ordinary route, through France and Switzerland, as far south as Milan and Venice, returning by the Tyrol to Inspruck and Munich, and thence down the Rhine to Holland. But his last associations were with the cloisters of Canterbury (that spot, to my eye, of matchless beauty), the garden vales of Devonshire, the valley of the Wye, and the glades of Rydal. His latest memory of this earth was of beautiful England in her summer garb of verdure. The last words he ever wrote were in a letter of the 20th September to his venerable friend, Mrs. Wordsworth, thanking her and his English friends generally for all she and they had done for him. Professor Reed edited several books in con No. 290, Aug. 21, 1852. nexion with his courses of instruction. In 1845 he prepared an edition of Alexander Reid's Dictionary of the English Language, and in 1847 edited "with an introduction and illustrative authorities," G. F. Graham's English Synonymes -the series of poetical citations added by him, being confined to Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. He also edited American reprints of Thomas Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, and Lord Mahon's History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Paris. In 1851 he edited the Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, for which he prepared a new memoir, written with his accustomed judgment and precision. An Oration on a True Education was delivered by him before the Zelosophic Society of the University of Pennsylvania in 1848. To this enumeration is to be added a life of his grandfather, Joseph Reed, published in Mr. Sparks's series of American biography.* The life and correspondence of Joseph Reed have been given to the public at length by Mr. William B. Reed, who is also the author of several published addresses and pamphlets, chiefly on historical subjects. Among them are A Letter on American History in 1847, originally written for circulation among a few friends interested in the organization of a department of that study in Girard College; an Address before the Historical Society in Pennsylvania in 1848; an Address before the Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania in 1849; and a Reprint of the original Letters from Washington to Joseph Reed, in connexion with the Sparks and Lord Mahon controversy.t POETICAL AND prose reading. It is a good practical rule to keep one's reading well proportioned in the two great divisions, prose and poetry. This is very apt to be neglected, and the consequence is a great loss of power, moral and intellectual, and a loss of some of the highest enjoyments of literature. It sometimes happens that some readers devote themselves too much to poetry; this is a great mistake, and betrays an ignorance of the true use of poetical studies. When this happens, it is generally with those whose reading lies chiefly in the lower and merely sentimental region of poetry, for it is hardly possible for the imagination to enter truly into the spirit of the great poets, without having the various faculties of the mind so awakened and invigorated, as to make a knowledge of the great prose writers also a necessity of one's nature. The disproportion lies usually in the other direction-prose reading to the exclusion of poetry. This is owing chiefly to the want of proper culture, for although there is certainly a great disparity of imaginative endowment, still the imagination is part of the universal mind of man, and it is a work of education to bring it into action in minds even the least imaginative. It is chiefly to the wilfully unimaginative mind that poetry, with all its wisdom and all its glory, is a sealed book. It sometimes happens, however, that a mind, well gifted with imaginative power, loses the capacity to relish poetry simply by the neglect of reading metrical literature. This is a sad mistake, inasmuch as the mere reader of prose cuts himself off from the very highest literary enjoyments; for if the giving of power to the mind be a characteristic, the most essential literature is to be found in poetry, especially if it be such as English poetry is, the embodiment of the very highest wisdom and the deepest feeling of our English race. I hope to show in my next lecture, in treating the subject of our language, how rich a source of enjoyment the study of English verse, considered simply as an organ of expression and harmony, may be made; but to readers who confine themselves to prose, the metrical form becomes repulsive instead of attractive. It has been well observed by a living writer, who has exercised his powers alike in prose and verse, that there are readers "to whom the poetical form merely and of itself acts as a sort of veil to every meaning, which is not habitually met with under that form, and who are puzzled by a passage occurring in a poem, which would be at once plain to them if divested of its cadence and rhythm; not because it is thereby put into language in any degree more perspicuous, but because prose is the vehicle they are accustomed to for this particular kind of matter, and they will apply their minds to it in prose, and they will refuse their minds to it in verse.' The neglect of poetical reading is increased by the very mistaken notion that poetry is a mere luxury of the mind, alien from the demands of practical life—a light and effortless amusement. This is the prejudice and error of ignorance. For look at many of the strong and largely cultivated minds, which we know by biography and their own works, and note how large and precious an element of strength is their studious love of poetry. Where could we find a man of more earnest, energetic, practical cast of character than Arnold?-eminent as an historian, and in other the gravest departments of thought and learning, active in the cause of education, zealous in matters of ecclesiastical, political, or social reform; right or wrong, always intensely practical and single-hearted in his honest zeal; a champion for truth, whether in the history of ancient politics or present questions of modern society; and, with all, never suffering the love of poetry to be extinguished in his heart, or to be crowded out of it, but turning it perpetually to wise uses, bringing the poetic truths of Shakespeare and of Wordsworth to the help of the cause of truth; his enthusiasm for the poets breaking forth, when he exclaims, "What a treat it would be to teach Shakspeare to a good class of young Greeks in regenerate Athens; to dwell upon him line by line and word by word, and so to get all his pictures and thoughts leisurely into one's mind, till I verily think one would, after a time, almost give out light in the dark, after having been steeped, as it were, in such an atmosphere of brilliance!" This was the constitution not of one man alone, but of the greatest minds of the race; for if our Anglo-Saxon character could be analysed, a leading characteristic would be found to be the admirable combination of the practical and the poetical in it. This is reflected in all the best English literature, blending the ideal and the actual, never severing its highest spirituality from a steady basis of sober good sense-philosophy and poetry for ever disclosing affinities with each other. It was no false boast when it was said that "Our great poets have been our best political philosophers;" nor would it be to add, that they have been our best moralists. The reader, then, who, on the one hand, gives himself wholly to visionary poetic dreamings, is false to his Saxon blood; and equally false is he who divor ces himself from communion with the poets. There is no great philosopher in our language in whose genius imagination is not an active element; there is no great poet in whose character the philosophic element does not largely enter. This should teach us a lesson in our studies of English literature. For the combination of prose and poetic reading, a higher authority is to be found than the predominant characteristic of the Saxon intellect as displayed in our literature. In the One Book, which, given for the good of all mankind, is supernaturally fitted for all phases of humanity and all conditions of civilization, observe that the large components of it are history and poetry. How little else is there in the Bible! In the Old Testament all is chronicle and song, and the high-wrought poetry of prophecy. In the New Testament are the same elements, with this difference, that the actual and the imaginative are more interpenetrated-narrative and parable, fact and poetry blended in matchless harmony; and even in the most argumentative portion of holy Writ, the poetic element is still present, to be followed by the vision and imagery of the Apocalypse. Such is the unquestioned combination of poetry and prose in sacred Writ-the best means, we must believe, for the universal and perpetual good of man; and if literature have, as I have endeavored to prove, a kindred character, of an agency to build up our incorporeal being, then does it follow that we should take this silent warning from the pages of Revelation, and combine in our literary culture the same elements of the actual and the ideal or imagi native. COMPANIONSHIP OF THE SEXES IN THE STUDY OF LITERATURE. All that is essential literature belongs alike to mind of woman and of man; it demands the same kind of culture from each, and most salutary may the companionship of mind be found, giving reci procal help by the diversity of their power. Let us see how this will be. In the first place, a good habit of reading, whether in man or woman, may be described as the combination of passive recipiency from the book and the mind's reaction upon it; this equipoise is true culture. But, in a great deal of reading, the passiveness of impression is well nigh all, for it is luxurious indolence, and the reactive process is neglected. With the habitual novelreader, for instance, the luxury of reading becomes a perpetual stimulant, with no demand on the mind's own energy, and slowly wearing it away. The true enjoyment of books is when there is a co-operating power in the reader's mind-an active sympathy with the book; and those are the best books which demand that of you. And here let me notice how unfortunate and, indeed, mischievous a term is the word "taste" as applied in intercourse with literature or art; a metaphor taken from a passive sense, it fosters that lamentable error, that literature, which requires the strenuous exertion of action and sympathy, may be left to mere passive impressions. The temptation to receive an author's mind unreflectingly and passively is common to us all, but greater, I believe, for women, who gain, however, the advantages of a readier sympathy and a more unquestioning faith. The man's mind reacts more on the book, sets himself more in judgment upon it, and trusts less to his feelings; but, in all this, he is in more danger of bringing his faculties separately into action; he is more apt to be misled by our imperfect systems of metaphysics, which give us none but the most meagre theories of the human mind, and which are destined, I believe, to be swept away, if ever a great philosopher should devote himself to the work of analysing the processes of thought. That pervading error of drawing a broad line of demarcation between our moral and intellectual nature, instead of recognising the intimate interdependence of thought and feeling, is a fallacy that scarce affects the workings of a woman's spirit. If a gifted and cultivated woman take a thoughtful interest in a book, she brings her whole being to bear on it, and hence there will often be a better assurance of truth in her conclusions than in man's more logical deductions, just as, by a similar process, she often shows finer and quicker tact in the discrimination of character. It has been justly remarked, that, with regard "to women of the highest intellectual endowments, we feel that we do them the utmost injustice in designating them by such terms as 'clever,' 'able,' 'learned,' 'intellectual;' they never present themselves to our minds as such. There is a sweetness, or a truth, or a kindness-some grace, some charm, some distinguishing moral characteristic which keeps the intellect in due subordination, and brings them to our thoughts, temper, mind, affections, one harmonious whole." A woman's mind receiving true culture and preserving its fidelity to all womanly instincts, makes her, in our intercourse with literature, not only a companion, but a counsellor and a helpmate, fulfilling in this sphere the purposes of her creation. It is in letters as in life, and there (as has been well said) the woman" who praises and blames, persuades and resists, warns or exhorts upon occasion given, and carries her love through all with a strong heart, and not a weak fondness-she is the true helpmate." Cowper, speaking of one of his female friends, writes, "She is a critic by nature and not by rule, and has a perception of what is good or bad in composition, that I never knew deceive her; insomuch that when two sorts of expressions have pleaded equally for the precedence in my own esteem, and I have referred, as in such cases I always did, the decision of the point to her, I never knew her at a loss for a just one." His best biographer, Southey, alluding to himself, and to the influence exerted on Wordsworth's mind by the genius of the poet's sister, adds the comment, "Were I to say that a poet finds his best advisers among his female friends, it would be speaking from my own experience, and the greatest poet of the age would confirm it by his. But never was any poet more indebted to such friends than Cowper. Had it not been for Mrs. Unwin, he would probably never have appeared in his own person as an author; had it not been for Lady Austin, he never would have been a popular one.' The same principles which cause the influences thus salutary to authorship, will carry it into reading and study, so that by virtue of this companionship the logical processes in the man's mind shall be tempered with more of affection, subdued to less of wilfulness, and to a truer power of sympathy; and the woman's spirit shall lose none of its earnest, confiding apprehensiveness in gaining more of reasoning and reflection; and so, by reciprocal influences, that vicious divorcement of our moral and intellectual natures shall be done away with, and the powers of thought and the powers of affection be brought into that harmony which is wisdom. The woman's mind must rise to a wiser activity, the man's to a wiser passiveness; each true to its nature, they may consort in such just companionship that strength of mind shall pass from each to each; and thus chastened and invigorated, the common humanity of the sexes rises higher than it could be carried by either the powers peculiar to man or the powers peculiar to woman. Now in proof of this, if we were to analyse the philosophy which Coleridge employed in his judg ment on books, and by which he may be said to have made criticism a precious department of literature-raising it into a higher and purer region than was ever approached by the contracted and shallow dogmatism of the earlier schools of critics-it would, I think, be proved that he differed from them in nothing more than this, that he cast aside the wilfulness and self-assurance of the more reasoning faculties; his marvellous powers were wedded to a child-like humility and a womanly confidingness, and thus his spirit found an avenue, closed to feeble and less docile intellects, into the deep places of the souls of mighty poets; his genius as a critic rose to its majestic height, not only by its inborn manly strength, but because, with woman-like faith, it first bowed beneath the law of obedience and love. It is a beautiful example of the companionship of the manly and womanly mind, that this great critic of whom I have been speaking proclaimed, by both principle and practice, that the sophistications which are apt to gather round the intellects of men, clouding their vision, are best cleared away by that spiritual condition more congenial to the souls of women, the interpenetrating the reasoning powers with the affections. Coleridge taught his daughter that there is a spirit of love to which the truth is not obscured; that there are natural partialities, moral sympathies, which clear rather than cloud the vision of the mind; that in our communion with books, as with mankind, it is not true that "love is blind." The daughter has preserved the lesson in lines worthy of herself, her sire, and the precious truth embodied in them: Passion is blind, not love; her wondrous might GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD Was born at Machias, Maine, September 22, 1808. He was educated at the Boston Latin school, of which he afterwards published some curious reminiscences. He entered Harvard, where his name appears in the catalogue of graduates in 1828, and where, in the senior year of his course, he was one of the editors of the college periodical, The Harvard Register. He next passed to the law school of the college and the office of Charles P. Curtis, where he pursued his legal studies, and soon became an accomplished member of the Suffolk bar. In 1833 or 1834 Mr. Hillard was, with Mr. George Ripley, a conductor of the weekly les. S. Helland Unitarian newspaper, the Christian Register. In 1835 he delivered the anniversary address on the Fourth of July before the city authorities. He has been a member of the city council and an influential representative in both branches of the State Legislature. The literary occupations with which Mr. Hillard has varied an active professional life are numerous. He edited in 1889 a Boston edition of the Poetical Works of Spenser, to which he wrote a critical introduction. In 1843 he was the Phi Beta Kappa orator at Cambridge. In 1847 he delivered twelve lectures, in the course of the Lowell Institute, on the genius and writings of John Milton, which remain unpublished. Having made a tour to Europe in the years 1846 and 1847, he published in 1853, some time after his return, a record of a portion of his journey, entitled Six Months in Italy. It is a book of thoughts, impressions, and careful description of objects of history, art, and of social characteristics of a permanent interest; and has acquired a position with the public seldom accorded to the mere record of personal adventure. In 1852 Mr. Hillard was chosen by the city council of Boston to deliver the public eulogy, in connexion with the procession and funeral services of the thirtieth of November, in memory of Daniel Webster. His address on this occasion was marked by its ease, dignity, and eloquence. Besides these writings, Mr. Hillard is the author of a memoir of Captain John Smith, in Mr. Sparks's series of American Biography. As a contributor to the best journals of his time articles from his pen have frequently appeared on select topics. He was one of the body of excellent writers attached to Mr. Buckingham's New England Magazine, where he wrote a series of Literary Portraits, the articles Selections from the Papers of an Idler, etc. To the North American Review and Christian Examiner he has occasionally furnished critical articles.* In addition to the addresses already enumerated we may mention discourses on Geography and History, read before the American Institute of Instruction, Boston, 1846; on the Dangers and Duties of the Mercantile Profession, before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, in 1850; and an oration before the New England Society of the Pilgrims of New York, in 1851. RUINS IN ROME-FI OM SIX MONTHS IN ITALY. The traveller who visits Rome with a mind at all inhabited by images from books, especially if he come from a country like ours, where all is new, enters it with certain vague and magnificent expectations on the subject of ruins, which are pretty sure to end in disappointment. The very name of a ruin paints a picture upon the fancy. We construct at once an airy fabric which shall satisfy all the claims of the imaginative eye. We build it of such material that every fragment shall have a beauty of its We shatter it with such graceful desolation that all the lines shall be picturesque, and every broken outline traced upon the sky shall at once charm and sadden the eye. We wreathe it with a becoming drapery of ivy, and crown its battlements with long grass, which gives a voice to the wind own. We may refer to his articles in the North American Review on Sebastian Cabot, vol. xxxiv.; Chief-Justice Marshall, vol. xlii.; Prescott's Mexico, vol. lviii. In the Christian Examiner he has reviewed Ticknor's Spanish Literature, vol. xlviii.; and Everett's Orations and Speeches, vol. xlix. |