On your own mountain's side ye taught of yore, Whose honoured hand took not your gift in vain, Worthy the budding laurel-bough it bore,-* Farewell! a long farewell! I worship thee no more.

A MONODY MADE ON THE LATE MR. SAMUEL PATCH, BY AN ADMIRER OF THE BATHOS.

By waters shall he die, and take his end.-SHAKESPEARE. Toll for Sam Patch! Sam Patch, who jumps no

more,

This or the world to come. Sam Patch is dead! The vulgar pathway to the unknown shore

Of dark futurity he would not tread.

No friends stood sorrowing round his dying bed; Nor with decorous woe, sedately stepped

Behind his corpse, and tears by retail shed;The mighty river, as it onward swept,

In one great wholesale sob, his body drowned and kept.

Toll for Sam Patch! he scorned the common way That leads to fame, up heights of rough ascent, And having heard Pope and Longinus say,

That some great men had risen to falls, he went
And jumped, where wild Passaic's waves had rent
The antique rocks;-the air free passage gave,-
And graciously the liquid element
Upbore him, like some sea-god on its wave;
And all the people said that Sam was very brave.
Fame, the clear spirit that doth to heaven upraise,
Led Sam to dive into what Byron calls
The hell of waters. For the sake of praise,

He wooed the bathos down great water-falls;
The dizzy precipice, which the eye appals
Of travellers for pleasure, Samuel found

Pleasant, as are to women lighted halls,
Crammed full of fools and fiddles; to the sound
Of the eternal roar, he timed his desperate bound.
Sam was a fool. But the large world of such,
Has thousands better taught, alike absurd,
And less sublime. Of fame he soon got much,
Where distant cataracts spout, of him men heard.
Alas for Sam! Had he aright preferred
The kindly element, to which he gave

Himself so fearlessly, we had not heard

That it was now his winding-sheet and grave,
Nor sung, 'twixt tears and smiles, our requiem for
the brave.

He soon got drunk, with rum and with renown,
As many others in high places do ;—
Whose fall is like Sam's last-for down and down,
By one mad impulse driven, they flounder through
The gulf that keeps the future from our view,
And then are found not. May they rest in peace!
We heave the sigh to human frailty due
And shall not Sam have his? The muse shall cease
To keep the heroic roll, which she began in Greece-
With demigods, who went to the Black Sea

For wool (and if the best accounts be straight,
Came back, in negro phraseology,

With the same wool each upon his pate), In which she chronicled the deathless fate Of him who jumped into the perilous ditch

Left by Rome's street commissioners, in a state Which made it dangerous, and by jumping which He made himself renowned, and the contractors rich

I say, the muse shall quite forget to sound
The chord whose music is undying, if

She do not strike it when Sam Patch is drowned.
Leander dived for love. Leucadia's cliff

*Hesiod. Theog. 1. 1. 60. 30.

The Lesbian Sappho leapt from in a miff,
To punish Phaon; Icarus went dead,

Because the wax did not continue stiff;
And, had he minded what his father said,
He had not given a name unto his watery bed.
And Helle's case was all an accident,

As everybody knows. Why sing of these?
Nor would I rank with Sam that man who went
Down into Etna's womb-Empedocles,

I think he called himself. Themselves to please, Or else unwillingly, they made their springs; For glory in the abstract, Sam made his, To prove to all men, commons, lords, and kings, That " some things may be done, as well as other things."

I will not be fatigued, by citing more

Who jumped of old, by hazard or design, Nor plague the weary ghosts of boyish lore, Vulcan, Apollo, Phaeton-in fine

All Tooke's Pantheon. Yet they grew divine By their long tumbles; and if we can match Their hierarchy, shall we not entwine One wreath? Who ever came " up to the scratch," And for so little, jumped so bravely as Sam Patch? To long conclusions many men have jumped

In logic, and the safer course they took;
By any other, they would have been stumped,
Unable to argue, or to quote a book,
And quite dumb-founded, which they cannot
brook;

They break no bones, and suffer no contusion,
Hiding their woful fall, by hook and crook,

In slang and gibberish, sputtering and confusion; But that was not the way Sam came to his conclusion.

He jumped in person. Death or Victory

Was his device," and there was no mistake," Except his last; and then he did but die,

A blunder which the wisest men will make. Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of ten thousand eyes,

And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skiesFor this all vugar flights he ventured to despise. And while Niagara prolongs its thunder,

Though still the rock primeval disappears, And nations change their bounds-the theme of wonder

Shall Sam go down the cataract of long years; And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed

When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his pluck had fled. Who would compare the maudlin Alexander, Blubbering, because he had no jeb in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand? His crying was not womanish, nor planned For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand Natural arrangements for a jump beheld, And measuring the cascade, found not his courage quelled.

His last great failure set the final seal

Unto the record Time shall never tear,

While bravery has its honour,-while men feel
The holy natural sympathies which are
First, last, and mightiest in the bosom. Where
The tortured tides of Genesee descend,

He came his only intimate a bear,— (We know not that he had another friend), The martyr of renown, his wayward course to end

The fiend that from the infernal rivers stole
Hell-draughts for man, too much tormented him,
With nerves unstrung, but steadfast in his soul,
He stood upon the salient current's brim;
His head was giddy, and his sight was dim;
And then he knew this leap would be his last,-
Saw air, and earth, and water wildly swim,
With eyes of many multitudes, dense and vast,
That stared in mockery; none a look of kindness

cast.

Beat down, in the huge amphitheatre

"I see before me the gladiator lie," And tier on tier, the myriads waiting there The bow of grace, without one pitying eyeHe was a slave-a captive hired to die ;Sam was born free as Caesar; and he might The hopeless issue have refused to try; No: with true leap, but soon with faltering flight,"Deep in the roaring gulf, he plunged to endless night."

But, ere he leapt, he begged of those who made
Money by his dread venture, that if he
Should perish, such collection should be paid

As might be picked up from the "company"
To his Mother. This, his last request, shall be,—
Tho' she who bore him ne'er his fate should know,-
An iris, glittering o'er his memory-

When all the streams have worn their barriers low,
And, by the sea drunk up, for ever cease to flow.
On him who chooses to jump down cataracts,

Why should the sternest moralist be severe ?
Judge not the dead by prejudice-but facts,
Such as in strictest evidence appear.
Else were the laurels of all ages sere.

Give to the brave, who have passed the final goal,—
The gates that ope not back,-the generous tear;
And let the muse's clerk upon her scroll,

In coarse, but honest verse, make up the judgment roll.

Therefore it is considered, that Sam Patch

Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme; His name shall be a portion in the batch

Of the heroic dough, which baking Time Kneads for consuming ages-and the chime Of Fame's old bells, long as they truly ring,

Shall tell of him; he dived for the sublime, And found it. Thou, who with the eagle's wing Being a goose, would'st fly,-dream not of such a thing!

For where is he*-who lived so long

Who raised the modern Titan's ghost, And showed his fate, in powerful song, Whose soul for learning's sake was lost? Where he who backwards to the birth Of Time itself, adventurous trod, And in the mingled mass of earth

Found out the handiwork of God?t Where he who in the mortal head,t

Ordained to gaze on heaven, could trace The soul's vast features, that shall tread The stars, when earth is nothingness? Where he who struck old Albyn's lyre,§ Till round the world its echoes roll, And swept, with all a prophet's fire, The diapason of the soul?

Where he who read the mystic lore,] Buried, where buried Pharaohs sleep; And dared presumptuous to explore Secrets four thousand years could keep? Where he who with a poet's eye

Of truth, on lowly nature gazed, And made even sordid Poverty

Classic, when in HIS numbers glazed! Where that old sage so hale and staid,** The "greatest good" who sought to find; Who in his garden mused, and made

All forms of rule, for all mankind?
And thou-whom millions far removed++
Revered-the hierarch meek and wise,
Thy ashes sleep, adored, beloved,
Near where thy Wesley's coffin lies.

He too-the heir of glory-where
Hath great Napoleon's scion fled!
Ah! glory goes not to an heir!

Take him, ye noble, vulgar dead!
But hark! a nation sighs! for he,‡‡
Last of the brave who perilled all
To make an infant empire free,
Obeys the inevitable call!

They go, and with them is a crowd,
For human rights who THOUGHT and DID,
We rear to them no temples proud,
Each hath his mental pyramid

All earth is now their sepulchre,

The MIND, their monument sublimeYoung in eternal fame they are

Such are your triumphs, Death and Time.

GRENVILLE MELLEN.

GRENVILLE MELLEN Was boru at Biddeford, Maine, June 19, 1799. He was the eldest son of the eminent Chief-justice Mellen, of the Supreme Court in that state. He was graduated at Harvard in 1818; studied law with his father, and settled at Portland, Maine. In 1823 he removed to North Yarmouth, in the same state, where he remained for five years. His poems at this period and subsequently to his death, appeared frequently in the periodicals, the magazines and annuals, of the time. In 1826 he pronounced before the Peace Society of Maine, at Portland, a poem, The Rest of Empires, and in 1828 an Anniversary Poem, before the Athenian

From Boston he came to reside in New York. His health, which was always delicate, was now much enfeebled; he was lingering with consumption when he made a voyage to Cuba, from which he returned without benefit, and died in New York September 5, 1841, at the residence of his friend, Mr. Samuel Colman, for whose family he felt the warmest affection, and whose house he had called his home for the latter years of his life. Before his death he was engaged upon a collection of his unpublished poems, which still remain in manuscript.

A glance at his poems shows a delicate susceptibility to poetical impression, tinged with an air of melancholy. He wrote with ease, often carelessly and pretentiously-often with eloquence. With a stronger constitution his verse would probably have assumed a more condensed, energetic expression. With a consciousness of poetic power he struggled with a feeble frame, and at times yielded to despondency. The memory of his tenderness and purity of character is much cherished by his friends.

THE BRIDAL.

See at her side

Young Beauty at the altar! Oh! kneel down
All ye that come to gaze into her face,
And breathe low prayers for her.
Stand her pale parents in their latter days,
Pondering that bitter word-the last farewell!
The father, with a mild but tearless eye-
The mother, with both eye and heart in tears!
He, with his iron nature just put off,
Comes from the mart of noisy men awhile,
To witness holier vows than bind the world,
And taste, once more, the fount of sympathy!
She from the secret chamber of her sighs,
The home of woman! She has softly come
To stand beside her child-her only child-
And hear her pale-lipped promises. She comes
With hands laid meekly on her bosom-yet
With eye upraised, as tho' to catch one glance
Like that of childhood, from that pallid face
That hung for hours imploringly on hers,
In the long, watchful years of trial. Now,
She would endure those cruel years again,
To take her as an infant back to arms
That shielded and encircled her-ere she
Had blossomed into life. But lo! she stands
A plighted lovely creature at her side-
The child all lost in woman! The whole world
Contains for her no glory, now, like that
That centres in her full and thrilling heart.
Her eye roves not-is fixed not-but a deep
And lovely haze, as tho' she were in vision,

Has gathered on its dark transparency.
Her sight is on the future! Clouds and dreams!
Her head is bent-and on her varying cheek
The beautiful shame flits by-as hurrying thoughts
Press out the blood from th' o'erteeming citadel.
Roses and buds are struggling thro' her hair,
That hangs like night upon her brow-and see!
Dew still is on their bloom! Oh! emblem fair,
Of pure luxuriant youth-ere yet the sun
Of toiling, heated life hath withered it,
And scattered all its fragrance to the winds.
And doth she tremble-this long cherished flower!
As friends come closer round her, and the voice
Of adulation calls her from her dream!
Oh! wonder not that glowing youth like this,
To whom existence has been sunshine all,
A long, sweet dream of love-when on her ear
The tale of faith, of trial, and of death,
Sounds with a fearful music-should be dumb
And quake before the altar! Wonder not
That her heart shakes alarmingly-for now
She listens to the vow, that, like a voice
From out of heaven at night, when it comes down
Upon our fevered slumbers, steals on her
And calls to the recalless sacrifice!
Young maidens cluster round her; but she vows
Amid her bridal tears, and heeds them not.
Her thoughts are tossed and troubled-like lone barks
Upon a tempest sea, when stars have set
Under the heaving waters:-She hears not
The very prayers that float up round her; but
Veiling her eyes, she gives her heart away,
Deaf to all sounds but that low-voiced one
That love breathes through the temple of her soul!
Young Beauty at the altar! Ye may go
And rifle earth of all its loveliness,
And of all things created hither bring
The rosiest and richest-but, alas!
The world is all too poor to rival this!
Ye summon nothing from the place of dreams,
The orient realm of fancy, that can cope,
In all its passionate devotedness,

With this chaste, silent picture of the heart!
Youth, bud-encircled youth, and purity,
Yielding their bloom and fragrance up-in tears.
The promises have past. And welling now
Up from the lowly throng a faint far hymn
Breaks on the whispery silence-plaintively
Sweet voices mingling on the mellow notes,
Lift up the gathering melody, till all
Join in the lay to Jesus-all, save they
Whose hearts are echoing still to other sounds,
The music of their vows!

THE BUGLE.

But still the dingle's hollow throat,
Prolonged the swelling Bugle's note;
The owlets started from their dream,
The eagles answered with their scream.
Round and around the sounds were cast,
Till echo turned an answering blast.
Lady of the Lake

O, wild enchanting horn!
Whose music up the deep and dewy air,
Swells to the clouds, and calls on echo there,
Till a new melody is born.

Wake, wake again; the night

Is bending from her throne of Beauty down, With still stars beaming on her azure crown, Intense and eloquently bright!

Night, at its pulseless noon!

When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog, lazily and long, Barks at the melancholy moon!

PROSPER M. WETMORE. PROSPER MONTGOMERY WETMORE was born at Stratford on the Housatonic, Connecticut, in 1799. At an early age he removed with his parents to New York. His father dying soon after, he was placed, when scarcely nine years of age, in a counting-room, where he continued as a clerk till he reached his majority. He has since that period been engaged in mercantile business in the city of New York.

With scant early opportunities for literary culture, Mr. Wetmore was not long in improving a natural tendency to the pursuits of authorship. He made his first appearance in print in 1816, at the age of seventeen, and soon became an important aid to the struggling literature, and, it may be added, writers of the times. He wrote for the magazines, the annuals, and the old Mirror; and as literature at that period was kept up rather as a social affair than from any reward promised by the trade, it became naturally associated with a taste for the green-room, and the patronage of the theatrical stars of the day. Mr. Wetmore was the companion of Price, Simpson, Brooks, Morris, and other members of a society which supported the wit and gaiety of the town.

Oh Nation

In 1830 Mr. Wetmore published in an elegant octavo volume, Lexington, with other Fugitive Poems. This is the only collection of his writings which has been made. Lexington, a picture, in an ode, of the early revolutionary battle, is a spirited poem. It has fire and ease of versification. The Banner of Murat, The Russian Retreat, Greece, Painting, and several theatrical addresses possessing similar qualities, are among the contents of this volume.

In 1832 Mr. Wetmore delivered a poem in Spenserian stanza on Ambition, before one of the literary societies of Hamilton College, New York, which has not been printed.

In 1838 he edited a volume of the poems of

James Nack, prefaced with a brief notice of the life of that remarkable person.

Mr.Wetmore, however, has been more generally known as a man of literary influence in society than as an author. He has been prominently connected with most of the liberal interests of the city, both utilitarian and refined-as Regent of the University, to which body he was appointed in 1833, promoting the public school system; as chairman of the committee on colleges and academies in the State Legislature, to which he was elected in 1834 and 1835; as member of the City Chamber of Commerce; as an efficient director of the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb; as President of the American Art-Union, which rapidly extended under his management to a national institution; and as a most active member and supporter of the New York Historical Society. These varied pursuits, the public indexes to more numerous private acts of liberality, have been sustained by a graceful personal manner, a sanguine temperament which preserves the freshness of youth, and a wide versatility of talent.

The military title of General Wetmore, by which he is widely known, is derived from his long and honorable service in the militia organization of the state, of which he was for many years Paymaster-General.

PAINTING.

Peopling, with art's creative power, The lonely home, the silent hour. 'Tis to the pencil's magic skill

Life owes the power, almost divine, To call back vanished forms at will,

And bid the grave its prey resign:
Affeetion's eye again may trace

The lineaments beloved so well;
The speaking look, the form of grace,
All on the living canvas dwell:
'Tis there the childless mother pays
Her sorrowing soul's idolatry;
There love can find, in after days,
A talisman to memory!
"Tis thine, o'er History's storied page,
To shed the halo light of truth;
And bid the scenes of by-gone age
Still flourish in immortal youth-
The long forgotten battle-field,

With mailed men to people forth;
In bannered pride, with spear and shield,
To show the mighty ones of earth—
To shadow, from the holy book,

The images of sacred lore;

On Calvary, the dying look

That told life's agony was o'er-
The joyous hearts, and glistening eyes,
When little ones were suffered near-
The lips that bade the dead arise,

To dry the widowed mother's tear:
These are the triumphs of the art,
Conceptions of the master-mind;
Time-shrouded forms to being start,
And wondering rapture fills mankind!
Led by the light of Genius on,

What visions open to the gaze ! "Tis nature all, and art is gone,

We breathe with them of other days: Italia's victor leads the war,

And triumphs o'er the ensanguined plain: Behold! the Peasant Conqueror

Piling Marengo with his slaia:

That sun of glory beams once more,

But clouds have dimmed its radiant hue. The splendor of its race is o'er,

It sets in blood on Waterloo!
What scene of thrilling awe is here!
No look of joy, no eye for mirth;
With steeled hearts and brows austere,
Their deeds proclaim a nation's birth.
Fame here inscribes for future age,

A proud memorial of the free;
And stamps upon her deathless page,
The noblest theme of history!

JAMES LAWSON,

A CITIZEN of New York, and for many years connected with its literary interests, was born November 9, 1799, in Glasgow, Scotland. He was educated at the University of that city, and came early in life, at the close of the year 1815, to America, where he was received at New York in the countting-house of a maternal uncle. Mr. Lawson seems early to have taken an interest in American letters; for in 1821 we find him in correspondence with Mr. John Mennons, editor of the Greenock Advertiser, who was then engaged in publishing a miscellaneous collection of prose and verse, entitled the Literary Coronal. Mr. Mennons desired to introduce specimens of American authors, then a novelty to the British public, into his book, and Mr. Lawson supplied him with the materials. It was through this avenue and one or two kindred publications, that the merits of several of the best American authors first became known abroad. Halleck's "Fanny” was repul" od by Mr. Mennons in September, 1821, a fac-simile of the New York edition. In a second volume of the Literary Coronal of 1823, it was again re-published with poems by Bryant, Percival, James G. Brooks, and Miss Manley. An English edition of Salmagundi was published in the same year in the style of the Coronal, by Mr. Mennons, who was, perhaps, the first in the old world to seek after American poetry, and introduce abroad those felicitous short pieces of verse which have since become household words in England, through collections like his own. In this, he had a willing co-operator in Mr. Lawson, whose literary and personal friendship with the authors of the country has been a marked trait of his life.

Sumecawend

A third Edinburgh publication followed, "The American Lyre," composed entirely of American poetry. It opened with Ontwa, the Son of the Forest, a poem first published in New York in 1822, the curious and interesting notes to which on Indian character and antiquities, were written by the Hon. Lewis Cass, then Governor of Michigan. Ontwa is a spirited poem, an eloquent commemoration of the manners and extinction of the nation of the Eries.

Another volume of the Coronal, liberally supplied with American verse, appeared in 1826.

About this time the failure of the mercantile house in which Mr. Lawson was a partner, led him to turn his attention to literature. He had been

already connected with the poet and editor, Mr. J. G. Brooks, in writing for the literary priodical of the latter, the New York Literary Gazette, and American Athenæum.*

In this, Mr. Lawson wrote the first criticism on Mr. Edwin Forrest, who had then just made his appearance in New York at the Bowery Theatre, under the management of Gilfert. This opening performance, in November, 1826, was Othello; and Mr. Lawson's criticism of several columns appearIt ed in the next number of his friend's paper. was shrewd, acute, freely pointing out defects, and confidently anticipating his subsequent triumphs.

The Literary Gazette, on its discontinuance, was immediately succeeded by an important newspaper enterprise, founded by Mr. J. G. Brooks, Mr. John B. Skilman, and Mr. James Lawson, as associates. This was the Morning Courier grown into the New York Courier and Enquirer. The first number of this journal was issued in 1827; and its first article was written by Mr. Lawson. 1829, when new financial arrangements were The joint editorship of the paper continued till made, and Noah's Enquirer was added to the Courier. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Lawson retired, when the latter immediately joined Mr. Amos Butler in the Mercantile Advertiser, with which he remained associated till 1833.

In 1830, a volume, Tales and Sketches by a Cosmopolite, from the pen of Mr. Lawson, was published by Elam Bliss, in New York. In these the writer finds his themes in the domestic life and romance of his native land, and in one instance ventures a dramatic sketch, a love scene, the precursor of the author's next publication, Giordano, a tragedy; an Italian state story of love and conspiracy, which was first performed at the Park Theatre, New York, in Nov. 1828. The prologue was written by the late William Leggett, and the epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Hilson, by Mr. Prosper M. Wetmore.

This is Mr. Lawson's only dramatic production, which has issued from the press. He has, however, in several instances, appeared before the public in connexion with the stage. He was associated with Mr. Bryant, Mr. Halleck, Mr. Wetmore, Mr. Brooks, and Mr. Leggett, on the committee which secured for Mr. Forrest the prize play of Metamora by the late J. A. Stone, for which

This weekly periodical was commenced by Mr. Brooks in the octavo form, Sept. 10, 1825, as the New York Literary Gazette and Phi Beta Kappa Repository; the latter portion of the title being taken from some dependence upon the support of members of that Society, which turned out to be nugatory. At the end of the volume, with the twenty-sixth number, the Phi Beta title was dropped, and an association effected with a similar publication. The American Athenæum, also weekly in quarto, conducted by George Bond, which had been commenced April 21, 1825, of which forty-four numbers had been issued. The joint publication bore the title "The New York Literary Gazette and American Athenæum," and as such was published in two quarto volumes, ending March 8, 1827.

↑ John Augustus Stone, the author of Metamora, was born in 1801, at Concord, Mass. He was an actor as well as dramatic writer, and made his first appearance in Boston as "Old Norval" in the play of Douglas. He acted in New York in 1826, and in Philadelphia afterwards at intervals. He received five hundred dollars from Mr. Forrest for Metamora. He wrote two other plays in which Mr. Forrest performed, The Ancient Briton, in which he took the part of Brigantius, and for which he paid the author a thousand dollars; and Fauntleroy, The Banker of Rouen, aversion of the story of the English personage of that name. In the latter, the hero was executed on the stage by a machine bearing a close resemblance to an actual guillotine. The loaded knife descended; the private signal was imperfectly given, and the young American tragedian saved his head by a quick motion at the expense of his locks, which were closely