FOOTNOTES:

VALLEYS AND MOUNTAINS OF WAILUKU, MAUI.VALLEYS AND MOUNTAINS OF WAILUKU, MAUI.

Whatever may be said of the influence of European and American profligacy in the Islands, they may be pointed to with perfect satisfaction for illustrations of the benefits of Christian civilization, and the people of this country are greatly indebted to the Rev. Henry T. Cheever, whose works on the subject we have had frequent occasion to praise, for the eminently judicious and interesting accounts he has given us of society, manners, and religion, and of industrial resources, and every kind of natural phenomena, throughout the "island world," especially in the Sandwich Islands, to which his last work[6]is altogether devoted. Of the important question of the political destiny of this group Mr. Cheever says:

"Perhaps it is in the providential plan of the world's great Ruler, that the Sandwich Islands should yet be adopted into the Great American Confederacy. Won as they have been from the lowest barbarism by American missionaries,—having had expended upon them in the process nearly a million and a half of dollars from America, and the services of fifty families now possessing there valuable homesteads,—harboring a permanent American population, foremost in energy and influence, now little short of one thousand, besides a floating American population that touch and recruit annually to the number of fifteen thousand, in whaleships and merchantmen, and consuming yearly a million of dollars' worth of American merchandise; on all these grounds there would seem to be a propriety in their enjoying an American Protectorate, if not an admission under the flag of the American Republic."'American enterprise,' says a writer[7]who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, 'both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance—bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, and civilization—and will soon add to these gifts language; for the English tongue is rapidly superseding the Hawaiian. The Islanders have thus a moral claim upon the American nation for protection. In no way can this be more efficiently bestowed than by receiving them into the family of this great republic. The native population are as well prepared to be American citizens as the multitude of European emigrants. Unlike the generality of them, they can read and write, and have already acquired democratic ideas under the operation of their own liberal constitution of government, which will readily enable them to incorporate themselves under our institutions. They are destined to be supplanted in numbers and power by a foreign race. They desire us to be their successors and protectors. The present revenues of the Islands are more than adequate to the expenses of their government—time, opportunity, the interests of the inhabitants and ourselves point to this result.' Events will soon determine whether they are to retain their independency, or to be merged in the nation that has civilized them."

"'American enterprise,' says a writer[7]who has been for many years familiar with the history and progress of the Hawaiian Islands, 'both commercial and philanthropic, has invested the group with its present political importance—bestowing upon the inhabitants laws, religion, and civilization—and will soon add to these gifts language; for the English tongue is rapidly superseding the Hawaiian. The Islanders have thus a moral claim upon the American nation for protection. In no way can this be more efficiently bestowed than by receiving them into the family of this great republic. The native population are as well prepared to be American citizens as the multitude of European emigrants. Unlike the generality of them, they can read and write, and have already acquired democratic ideas under the operation of their own liberal constitution of government, which will readily enable them to incorporate themselves under our institutions. They are destined to be supplanted in numbers and power by a foreign race. They desire us to be their successors and protectors. The present revenues of the Islands are more than adequate to the expenses of their government—time, opportunity, the interests of the inhabitants and ourselves point to this result.' Events will soon determine whether they are to retain their independency, or to be merged in the nation that has civilized them."

The work abounds in interesting details of Island Life, and we regret that our limits will not permit us to enrich theInternationalwith more liberal extracts. We can at present add but the following paragraphs on a sport for which the islanders have been celebrated ever since the days of Cook:

"It is highly amusing to a stranger to go out into the south part of this town, some day when the sea is rolling in heavily over the reef, and to observe there the evolutions and rapid career of a company of surf-players. The sport is so attractive and full of wild excitement to Hawaiians, and withal so healthful, that I cannot but hope it will be many years before civilization shall look it out of countenance, or make it disreputable to indulge in this manly though dangerous exercise. Many a man from abroad who has witnessed this exhilarating play, has no doubt only wished that he was free and able to share in it himself. For my part, I should like nothing better, if I could do it, than to get balanced on a board just before a great rushing wave, and so be hurried in half or a quarter of a mile landward with the speed of a race-horse, all the time enveloped in foam and spray, but without letting the roller break and tumble over my head."In this consists the strength of muscle and sleight of hand, to keep the head and shoulders just ahead and clear of the great crested wall that is every moment impending over one, and threatening to bury the bold surf-rider in its watery ruin. The natives do this with admirable intrepidity and skill, riding in, as it were, upon the neck and mane of their furious charger; and when you look to see them, their swift race run, dashed upon the rocks or sand, behold, they have slipped under the belly of the wave they rode, and are away outside, waiting for a cruise upon another. Both men and women, girls and boys, have their times for this diversion. Even the huge Premier (Auhea) has been known to commit her bulky person to a surf-board; and the chiefs generally, when they visit Lahaina, take a turn or two at this invigorating sport with billows and board. For a more accurate idea of it than can be conveyed by any description, the reader is referred to the engraving."I have no doubt it would run away with dyspepsia from many a bather at Rockaway or Easthampton, if they would learn, and dare to use a surf-board on those great Atlantic rollers, as the Hawaiians do on the waves of the Pacific. But there is wanting on the Atlantic sea-board that delicious, bland temperature of the water, which within the tropics, while it makes sea-bathing equally a tonic, renders it always safe."The missionaries at these islands, and foreigners generally, are greatly at fault in that they do not avail themselves more of this easy and unequalled means of retaining health, or of restoring it when enfeebled. Bathing in fresh water, in a close bath-house, is not to be compared to it as an invigorating and remedial agent; and it is unwise, not to say criminal, in such a climate, to neglect so natural a way of preserving health, as washing and swimming in the sea. In those who live close to the water, and on the leeward side of the Islands, it is the more inexcusable, for it could be enjoyed without exposure in the dewless evenings; or in some places a small house might be built on stone abutments over the water, and facilities so contrived that both sexes could enjoy this great luxury of a life within the tropics."

"In this consists the strength of muscle and sleight of hand, to keep the head and shoulders just ahead and clear of the great crested wall that is every moment impending over one, and threatening to bury the bold surf-rider in its watery ruin. The natives do this with admirable intrepidity and skill, riding in, as it were, upon the neck and mane of their furious charger; and when you look to see them, their swift race run, dashed upon the rocks or sand, behold, they have slipped under the belly of the wave they rode, and are away outside, waiting for a cruise upon another. Both men and women, girls and boys, have their times for this diversion. Even the huge Premier (Auhea) has been known to commit her bulky person to a surf-board; and the chiefs generally, when they visit Lahaina, take a turn or two at this invigorating sport with billows and board. For a more accurate idea of it than can be conveyed by any description, the reader is referred to the engraving.

"I have no doubt it would run away with dyspepsia from many a bather at Rockaway or Easthampton, if they would learn, and dare to use a surf-board on those great Atlantic rollers, as the Hawaiians do on the waves of the Pacific. But there is wanting on the Atlantic sea-board that delicious, bland temperature of the water, which within the tropics, while it makes sea-bathing equally a tonic, renders it always safe.

"The missionaries at these islands, and foreigners generally, are greatly at fault in that they do not avail themselves more of this easy and unequalled means of retaining health, or of restoring it when enfeebled. Bathing in fresh water, in a close bath-house, is not to be compared to it as an invigorating and remedial agent; and it is unwise, not to say criminal, in such a climate, to neglect so natural a way of preserving health, as washing and swimming in the sea. In those who live close to the water, and on the leeward side of the Islands, it is the more inexcusable, for it could be enjoyed without exposure in the dewless evenings; or in some places a small house might be built on stone abutments over the water, and facilities so contrived that both sexes could enjoy this great luxury of a life within the tropics."

The volume has several spirited engravings, and is excellently printed.

HAWAIIAN SPORT OF SURF PLAYINGHAWAIIAN SPORT OF SURF PLAYING

FOOTNOTES:[6]Life In the Sandwich Islands, or the Heart of the Pacific, as it was and as it is. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever, author of "The Island World of the Pacific," "The Whale and his Captors," &c. 1 vol. 12 mo. New-York. A. S. Barnes & Co., 51 John-street.[7]J. J. Jarves.

[6]Life In the Sandwich Islands, or the Heart of the Pacific, as it was and as it is. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever, author of "The Island World of the Pacific," "The Whale and his Captors," &c. 1 vol. 12 mo. New-York. A. S. Barnes & Co., 51 John-street.

[7]J. J. Jarves.

Among our pleasantest friends in many years was the author of theFroissart Ballads. We think of him as a friend, but we never saw him; his features are familiar to us only by this poor counterfeit, and all we know of his voice is that it has been described to us as musically joyous, sometimes varying to a sad sweetness, sometimes wild. For half a dozen years visits to him were written of, and hoped for, and it was settled, we thought, that we were to share with him a turkey-hunt in the Old Dominion, in a few weeks, when suddenly the intelligence came that he was dead.

Philip Pendleton Cooke was born in Martinsburg, Berkeley county, Virginia, on the twenty-sixth of October, 1816. His father, Mr. John R. Cooke, was then and is now honorably distinguished at the bar, and his mother was of that family of Pendletons which has furnished so many eminent names to that part of the Union.

At fifteen he entered Princeton college, where he had a reputation for parts, though he did not distinguish himself, or take an honor, and could never tell how it happened that he obtained a degree, as he was not examined with his class. He liked fishing and hunting better than the books, and Chaucer and Spenser much more than the dull volumes in the "course of study." He had already made rhymes before he became a freshman, and the appearance of the early numbers of theKnickerbocker Magazineprompted him to new efforts in this way; he wrote for theKnickerbocker, in his seventeenth year,The Song of the Sioux Lover, andThe Consumptive, and in a village paper, about the same time, humorous and sentimental verses.

When he left college his father was living at Winchester, and there he himself pursued the study of the law. He wrote pieces in verse and prose for theVirginian, andThe Southern Literary Messenger(then just started), and projected novels and an extensive work in literary criticism. Before he was twenty-one he was married, admitted to the bar, and had a fair prospect of practice, in Frederick, Jefferson, and Berkeley counties. "I am blessed by my fireside," he wrote, "here on the banks of the Shenandoah in view and within a mile of the Blue Ridge; I go to county towns, at the sessions of the courts, and hunt, and fish, and make myself as happy with my companions as I can."

"So," he wrote to us in 1846, "have passed five, six, seven, eight years, and now I am striving, after long disease of my literary veins, to get the rubbish of idle habits away and work them again. My fruit-trees, rose-bushes, poultry, guns, fishing-tackle, good, hard-riding friends, a long-necked bottle on my sideboard, an occasional client, &c., &c., &c., make it a little difficult to get from the real into the clouds again. It requires a resolute habit of self-concentration to enable a man to shut out these and all such real concerns, and give himself warmly to the nobler or more tender sort of writing—and I am slowly acquiring it."

The atmosphere in which he lived was not, it seems, altogether congenial—so far as literature was concerned—and he wrote:

"What do you think of a good friend of mine, a most valuable and worthy and hard-riding one, saying gravely to me a short time ago, 'I would'nt waste time on a damned thing like poetry; you might make yourself, with all your sense and judgment, a useful man in settling neighborhood disputes and difficulties.' You have as muchchance with such people, as a dolphin would have if in one of his darts he pitched in amongst the machinery of a mill. "Philosophy would clip an angel's wings," Keats says, and pompous dulness would do the same. But these very persons I have been talking about, are always ready, when the world generally has awarded the honors of successful authorship to any of our mad tribe, to come in and confirm the award, andbuy, if not read, the popular book. And so they are not wholly without their uses in this world. But woe to him who seeks toclimbamongst them. An author must avoid them until he is already mounted on the platform, and can look down on them, and make them ashamed to show their dulness by keeping their hands in their breeches pockets, whilst the rest of the world are taking theirs out to give money or to applaud with. I am wasting my letter with these people, but for fear you may think I am chagrined or cut by what I abuse them for, I must say that they suit one half of my character, moods, and pursuits, in being good kindly men, rare table companions, many of them great in field sports, and most of them rather deficient in letters than mind; and that, in an every-day sense of the words, I love and am beloved by them."

Soon afterward he wrote:

"Mr. Kennedy's assurance that you would find a publisher for my poems leaves me without any further excuse for not collecting them. If not the most devoted, truly you are the most serviceable, of my friends, but it is because Mr. Kennedy has overpraised me to you. Your letter makes me feel as if I had always known you intimately, and I have a presentiment that you will counteract my idleness and good-for-nothingness, and that, hoisted on your shoulders I shall not be lost under the feet of the crowd, nor left behind in a fence corner. I am profoundly grateful for the kindness which dictated what you have done, and to show you that I will avail myself of it, I inclose a proem to the pieces of which I wrote you in my last."

The poem referred to was so beautiful that we asked and obtained permission to put it in Graham's Magazine, of which we were at that time editor. The author's name was not given, and it excited much curiosity, as but two or three of our poets were thought capable of such a performance, and there was no reason why one of them should print any thing anonymously. It was most commonly, however, attributed to Mr. Willis, at which Mr. Cooke was highly gratified. The piece, which was entitled "Emily," contained about three hundred lines, and was a feigned history of the composition of tales designed to follow it, exquisitely told, and sprinkled all along with gems that could have come from only a mine of surpassing richness. For examples:

Young Emily has temples fairCaress'd by locks of dark brown hair.A thousand sweet humanitiesSpeak wisely from her hazel eyes.Her speech is ignorant of command,And yet can lead you like a hand.Her white teeth sparkle, when the eclipseIs laughter-moved, of her red lips.She moves, all grace, with gliding limbsAs a white-breasted cygnet swims.I know some wilds, where tulip trees,Full of the singing toil of bees,Depend their loving branches overGreat rocks, which honeysuckles coverIn rich and liberal overflow.In the dear time of long agoWhen I had woo'd young Emily,And she had told her love to me,I often found her in these bowers,Quite rapt away in meditation,Or giving earnest contemplationTo leaf, or bird, or wild-wood flowers;And once I heard the maiden singing,Until the very woods were ringing——Singing an old song to the hours!

I know some wilds, where tulip trees,Full of the singing toil of bees,Depend their loving branches overGreat rocks, which honeysuckles coverIn rich and liberal overflow.In the dear time of long agoWhen I had woo'd young Emily,And she had told her love to me,I often found her in these bowers,Quite rapt away in meditation,Or giving earnest contemplationTo leaf, or bird, or wild-wood flowers;And once I heard the maiden singing,Until the very woods were ringing——Singing an old song to the hours!

One jocund morn:

I found her where a flowering treeGave odors and cool shade. Her cheekA little rested on her hand;Her rustic skill had made a bandOf rare device which garlandedThe beauty of her bending head;Some maiden thoughts most kind and wiseWere dimly burning in her eyes.When I beheld her—form and faceSo lithe, so fair—the spirit race,Of whom the better poets dream'd,Came to my thought, and I half deem'dMy earth-born mistress, pure and good,Was some such lady of the wood,As she who work'd at spell, and snare,With Huon of the dusky hair,And fled, in likeness of a doe,Before the fleet youth Angelo.But these infirm imaginingsFlew quite away on instant wings.I call'd her name. A swift surpriseCame whitely to her face, but soonIt fled before some daintier dyes,And, laughing like a brook in June,With sweet accost she welcomed me.It was a golden day to me,And its great bliss is with me yet,Warming like wine my inmost heart——For memories of happy hoursAre like the cordials press'd from flowers,And madden sweetly.

Then the poet recited ancient lays which tell some natural tales; and then:

Pity look'd lovely in the maiden;Her eyes were softer, when so ladenWith the bright dew of tears unshed.But I was somewhat enviousThat other bards should move her thus,And oft within myself had said,"Yea—I will strive to touch her heartWith some fair songs of mine own art"——And many days before the dayWhereof I speak, I made essayAt this bold labor. In the wellsOf Froissart's life-like chroniclesI dipp'd for moving truths of old.A thousand stories, soft and bold,Of stately dames, and gentlemen,Which good Lord Berners, with a penPompous in its simplicity,Yet tipt with charming courtesy,Had put in English words, I learn'd;And some of these I deftly turn'dInto the forms of minstrel verse.I know the good tales are the worse—But, sooth to say, it seems to meMy verse has sense and melody——Even that its measure sometimes flowsWith the brave pomp of that old prose.

It was a good while before the promised contents of the book were sent to us, and Cooke wrote of the delay to a friend:

"Procrastination is a poison of my very marrow. Moreover, since 'the first wisping of the leaf,' my whole heart has been in the woods and the waters—every rising sun that could be seen,I have seen, and I never came in from my sport until too much used up to do more than adopt this epitaph of Sardanapalus: 'Eat, drink,' &c. Moreover (2d), Mr. Kennedy and others were poking me in the ribs eternally about my poems;and I was driven to the labor of finishing them. I groaned and did it, and sent them to Griswold, and have left the task of carrying them through the press to him; and only lie passive, saying with Don Juan (in the slave-market of Adrianople, or some other place), 'would to God somebody would buy me.'"

At length through his cousin and friend, John P. Kennedy—(a name that makes one in charity with all mankind)—the MS. of all the poems was sent to us. It makes a book about the size of the printed volume, written with a regular elegance to match that of the old copyists. In an accompanying letter he says:

... "They are certainly not in the high key of a man warm with his subject, and doing the thing finely; I wrote them with the reluctance of a turkey-hunter kept from his sport—only Mr. Kennedy's urgent entreaty and remonstrance whipped me up to the labor. You will hardly perceive how they should be called "Ballads." You are somewhat responsible for the name. I designed (originally) to make them short poems of the old understood ballad cast. I sent you the proem, which you published as a preface to the "Froissart Ballads." Words in print bore a look of perpetuity (or rather of fixedness) about them, and what I would have changed if only my pen and portfolio had been concerned, your type deterred me from changing. The term "Froissart Ballads," however, is after all correct, even with the poems as they are. The Master of Bolton is as much asongas the Lay of the Last Minstrel, although I have no prologue, interludes, &c., to show how it was sung; and as for Orthone, &c. Sir John Froissart may as easily be imagined chanting them as talking them."

Again he wrote:

"You will find them beneath your sanguine prognostic. They are mere narrative poems, designed for the crowd. Poetic speculation, bold inroads upon the debatable land—"the wild weird clime, out of space out of time"—I have not here attempted. Iwillhereafter merge myself in the nobler atmosphere; in the mean time I have stuck to the ordinary level, and endeavored to write interesting stories in verse, with grace and spirit. I repeat my fear that in writing for the cold, I have failed to touch the quick and warm—in writing for a dozen hunting comrades, who have been in the habit of making my verse apost prandiumentertainment, and never endured an audacity of thought or word, I have tamed myself out of your approbation."

The book was at length published, but though reviewed very favorably by the late Judge Beverly Tucker, in the Southern Literary Messenger, and by Mr. Poe, in the American Review, and much quoted and praised elsewhere, it was, on the whole, not received according to its merits or our expectations. Yet the result aroused the author's ambition, and after a few weeks he remarked in a letter:

"My literary life opens now. If the world manifest any disposition to hear my 'utterances,' it will be abundantly gratified. I am thirty: until forty literature shall be my calling—avoiding however to rely upon it pecuniarily—then (after forty) politics will be asequitur."It has occurred to me to turn my passion for hunting, and 'my crowding experiences' (gathered in fifteen or sixteen years of life in the merriest Virginia country society) of hunting, fishing, country races, character and want of character, woods, mountains, fields, waters, and the devil knows what, into a rambling book. Years ago I used to devour the 'Spirit of the Times.' Indeed, much of my passion for sports of all kinds grew out of reading the 'Spirit.' Like Albert Pike's poet, in 'Fantasms,' I'Had not known the bent of my own mind,Until the mighty spell of 'Porter' wokeIts hidden passions.'Only Albert Pike, says 'Coleridge' and 'Powers' for 'Porter' and 'passions.' Then, I have a half-written novel in my MS. piles, with poems, tales, sketches, histories, commenced, or arranged in my mind ready to be put in writing,to order. In a word, I am cocked and primed for authorship. My life here invites me urgently to literary employments. My house, servants, &c. &c.,—all that a country gentleman, really wants of the goods of life,—are in sure possession to me and mine. I want honors, and some little more money. Be good enough, my dear sir, to let me know how I am to go about acquiring them."

"It has occurred to me to turn my passion for hunting, and 'my crowding experiences' (gathered in fifteen or sixteen years of life in the merriest Virginia country society) of hunting, fishing, country races, character and want of character, woods, mountains, fields, waters, and the devil knows what, into a rambling book. Years ago I used to devour the 'Spirit of the Times.' Indeed, much of my passion for sports of all kinds grew out of reading the 'Spirit.' Like Albert Pike's poet, in 'Fantasms,' I

'Had not known the bent of my own mind,Until the mighty spell of 'Porter' wokeIts hidden passions.'

Only Albert Pike, says 'Coleridge' and 'Powers' for 'Porter' and 'passions.' Then, I have a half-written novel in my MS. piles, with poems, tales, sketches, histories, commenced, or arranged in my mind ready to be put in writing,to order. In a word, I am cocked and primed for authorship. My life here invites me urgently to literary employments. My house, servants, &c. &c.,—all that a country gentleman, really wants of the goods of life,—are in sure possession to me and mine. I want honors, and some little more money. Be good enough, my dear sir, to let me know how I am to go about acquiring them."

We wrote with frankness what we thought as true, of possible pecuniary advantages from the course he proposed, and were answered:

"What you say about the returns in money for an author's labors is dispiriting enough,—and I at once give over an earnest purpose, which I had formed, of writingbooks. Thank God, I am not dependent on the booksellers, but have a moderate and sure support for my family, apart from the crowding hopes and fears which dependence on them, would no doubt generate. But I must add (or forego some gratifications) two or three hundred dollars per annum to my ordinary means. I might easily make this by my profession, which I have deserted and neglected, but it would be as bad as the tread-mill to me; I detest the law. On the other hand, I love the fever-fits of composition. The music of rhythm, coming from God knows where, like the airy melody in the Tempest, tingles pleasantly in my veins and fingers; I like to build the verse cautiously, but with the excitement of a rapid writer, which I rein in and check; and then, we both know how glorious it is to make the gallant dash, and round off the stanza with the sonorous couplet, or with some rhyme as natural to its place as a leaf on a tree, but separated from its mate that peeps down to it over the inky ends of many intervening lines.... That unepistolary sentence has considerably fatigued me. I was saying, or about to say, that I would be obliged to you for information as to the profitableness of writing for periodicals."

From this time Mr. Cooke wrote much, but in a desultory way, and seemed, in a growing devotion to a few friends, and in the happiness that was in his home, to forget almost the dreams of ambition. He had commenced an historical novel to be called "Lutzen," in which that great battle was to end the adventures of his hero; this he threw aside, and his love for that age appeared in "The Chevalier Merlin," suggested by the beautiful storyof Charles the Twelfth, as given by Voltaire, several chapters of which appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. In the same magazine he printed "John Carpe," "The Two Country Houses," and other tales, parts of a series in which he intended to dramatize the whole life and manners of Virginia. As for any applause that these might win for him, he wrote to his friend John R. Thompson:

"I look upon these matters serenely, and will treat renown as Sir Thomas More advises concerning guests; welcome its coming when it cometh, hinder not with oppressive eagerness its going, when it goeth. Furthermore, I am of the temper to look placidly upon the profile of this same renown, if, instead of stopping, it went by to take up with another; therefore it would not ruffle me to see you win the honors of southern letters away from me."

The chivalric poetry had filled his mind early and long, and he was only banishing it for the more independent and beautiful growth of his nature, when his untimely death destroyed hopes of fruits which the productions of his youth seemed to precede as blossoms. He died suddenly, at his home, on Sunday, the 20th of January, 1850, at the age of thirty-three.

At the time of his death he was writing "The Women of Shakspeare," "The Chariot Race," and a political and literary satire.

Undoubtedly Philip Pendleton Cooke was one of the truest poets of our day, and what he has left us was full of promise that he would become one of the most famous. Of his love poems, this little song, written when he was scarcely more than twenty, is perhaps the finest:

I loved thee long and dearly,Florence Vane;My life's bright dream, and earlyHath come again;I renew, in my fond vision,My heart's dear pain,My hopes, and thy derision,Florence Vane.The ruin lone and hoary,The ruin old,Where thou didst hark my story,At even told,——That spot—the hues ElysianOf sky and plain——I treasure in my vision,Florence Vane.Thou wast lovelier than the roses,In their prime;Thy voice excelled the closesOf sweetest rhyme;Thy heart was as a riverWithout a main;Would I had loved thee never,Florence Vane.But fairest, coldest wonder!Thy glorious clayLieth the green sod under——Alas the day!And it boots not to rememberThy disdain——To quicken love's pale ember,Florence Vane.The lilies of the valleyBy young graves weep,The pansies love to dallyWhere maidens sleep;May their bloom, in beauty vying,Never waneWhere thine earthly part is lying,Florence Vane!

I loved thee long and dearly,Florence Vane;My life's bright dream, and earlyHath come again;I renew, in my fond vision,My heart's dear pain,My hopes, and thy derision,Florence Vane.

The ruin lone and hoary,The ruin old,Where thou didst hark my story,At even told,——That spot—the hues ElysianOf sky and plain——I treasure in my vision,Florence Vane.

Thou wast lovelier than the roses,In their prime;Thy voice excelled the closesOf sweetest rhyme;Thy heart was as a riverWithout a main;Would I had loved thee never,Florence Vane.

But fairest, coldest wonder!Thy glorious clayLieth the green sod under——Alas the day!And it boots not to rememberThy disdain——To quicken love's pale ember,Florence Vane.

The lilies of the valleyBy young graves weep,The pansies love to dallyWhere maidens sleep;May their bloom, in beauty vying,Never waneWhere thine earthly part is lying,Florence Vane!

We cannot quote others; in the lines "To my Daughter Lilly," may be discovered the tenderness and warmth of his affections; in his Ballads, the fiery and chivalrous phase of his intelligence; in "Ugolino," his pathos; in "Life in the Autumn Woods," his love of nature; and in all his writings, the thoroughly healthy character of his mind.

As a boy and as a young man, we understand, his life was always poetical—apart, original, and commanding affectionate respect. As he grew older, and married, he became practical in his views, reaching that point in the life of genius in which its beautiful ideals take the forms of duty or become the strength of wise resolves. Toward his family, including his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he cherished a deep and unfaltering devotion. A short time before his last illness he introduced into his household morning and evening prayers. He died, as he had lived, a pure-minded gentleman and humble Christian.

Of his personal appearance a just impression is given by the portrait at the beginning of this article. His carriage was graceful and upright; his frame vigorous and elastic, trained as he was by constant hunting in the Blue Ridge; his hair was black and curling; his eye dark and bright; his expression calm and thoughtful; his manner impressed with dignity.

——"Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer."

The author ofAliceandAlbanhas written the following piquant letter on the important subject ofInternational Copyright.

To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

As an American deeply interested in the subject of international copyright, and much struck by the fallacies of some of the speakers at a meeting of authors and publishers, recently reported in the London journals, may I, as the subject is fresh so long as it is undecided, beg of your courtesy a little space to point them out.

Let me begin by admitting the force of most that was said by the distinguished chairman on that occasion, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. No man living, perhaps, has a better right than he to complain of my countrymen, to whose intellectual pleasures and moral instruction he has contributed ever since I was a boy, out of the hard labor of his brains—helping to enrich our publishers and booksellers, and to stimulate all the trade connected with bookmaking, and vivifying the circulation of magazines and newspapers—for all which he has never received a penny. The same may be said of Dickens, whose works are of course as familiar to us as to you, and whose characters have become a part of our stock of ideas, more precious than the gold from our new-discovered mines. It is true that neither of these great men has benefited us so much as he might have done if we had paid for our pleasure honorably, for the influence of genius is like that of grace—the fertilizing shower falls in vain on the arid, stony places of selfish and unjust enjoyment. Charles Dickens has never received a penny from us, although we insulted our unpaid creditor when he came among us by asking him to Boz balls and dinners, given on a scale of splendor which showed how well we could have afforded to pay our debt if we had been honest enough to have admitted it. How degrading—how incongruous—for a great nation, such as we boast of being, to be thus the literary pensioners, the intellectual beggars of England, meanly enjoying what we won't pay for? An American would scorn to be fed or clothed gratis; he would "stand treat" with the world; yet he lets an Englishman (of all men!) gratuitously amuse his leisure, satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and clothe the nakedness of his mind. If Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, or Mr. Dickens, were to offer to pay for a pair of trousers for Brother Jonathan, he would knockhim down; or if Miss Bell, or whatever is the name of the lady who wrote "Jane Eyre," and her sisters, pretended to make him up a dozen fine shirts as a charity, I think he would go out of his senses. He would rather go bare to the end of his days than owe such an obligation to any he or she Briton in existence; but what are such favors to those which he unblushingly accepts, year after year, from Sir Edward Bulwer and Miss Bell?

But I think, sir, with submission, that an injury has been done to the cause of copyright by resting it on false abstract grounds, which cannot be, and never have been, carried out. If a man has a rightful monopoly in his book, merely because he has produced it, your law is unjust and piratical in fixing a term to copyright—for why should you take away a man's property after he has enjoyed it a certain number of years? On the contrary, one would suppose that the longer he has enjoyed it the more perfect his right, and the greater the wrong to deprive him of it. Time converts even what is unjustly acquired into a legitimate possession—how much more that which the owner has actually created? I would put the matter on simple, concrete grounds, which all men can appreciate. The production of books is an element of civilization, by the common consent of nations. Books cannot be produced unless in some way they procure the authors a subsistence. And whoever produces by his labor a beneficial thing, is entitled to a reasonable compensation from those who are thereby benefited. In former times, when readers were scarce, as copies were costly, the rich, or sovereigns, supported authors directly, by pensions or otherwise. It is now conceded that the best mode of rewarding them is by allowing them an exclusive copyright in their works, and all civilized nations do so. But this mode of remuneration being once established, a foreign author, coming personally, or in his work, into a country, "has as much moral right to his book as he has to his baggage," and it is as barbarous to plunder him of the one as of the other. Why, when was there a time in Europe, or even in Asia or the antique world, that princes and states did not receive and cherish, and nobly reward, foreign men of letters? Are they to be more ignobly treated now that the people have become patrons? But, if deaf to the voice of honor, hear that of justice. Those who enjoy their works are bound to remunerate them for what they have produced at a great expenditure of time, money, and soul-wearing labor. That "the laborer is worthy of his hire," is a divine sentence which sooner or later will judge all those by whom that hire is by fraud "kept back." A country which refuses a fair copyright to authors, whether native or foreign, condemns itself to barbarism. It cultivates in itself a spirit of violence, aggravated by ingratitude to benefactors. There is, too, a sort of indelicacy in this injury, which even the law of reprisal cannot excuse. The benefit which the author of genius confers is something personal. You might as well, if some savage tribe ravished your women, condemn its females, when captured, to insult and dishonor.

Moreover, to refuse copyright to any class of authors (and here, again, I agree with Sir Bulwer), is to refuse it, in part, to all. The native author is robbed of his just hire by such a law, as much as the foreigner. I am compelled by the existing law of American copyright to part with my books for a sum which is under their natural price, and which is not a remunerating price, because I am undersold by reprints for which the authors are paid nothing. Look the fact in the face, ye readers of cheap reprints, who are unwilling to abandon an unjust privilege, which affords you so much pleasure at so low a rate. I have written a book. I have spent years in writing or learning to write it. Perhaps I could do nothing else. The influence of the literary atmosphere in which all who read the English language are forced to live, acting on my special organization, has made literary production a necessary resource. It is the same as if I were a poor shirt-maker, over whose sorrows a Hood has taught you to weep and be indignant. At all events, you approve of my writing, or you would not have read my book so extensively. And yet, because you can refuse to pay foreign authors for books of the same kind, you oblige me to take a nominal price for mine—a price for which it could not be produced by any man living, and less than it would command if you honestly paid for such labor in other instances. You have beaten me down most unfairly. I consider it so; and if every one of the 10 or 12,000 buyers of the cheap edition of "Lady Alice" were to send me a "quarter" (1s.) by mail, I should regard it as a simple restitution; nor would the sum total cover my expenses while writing it.

So far, then, Sir Edward Lytton and myself (if it is not too great presumption in me to join myself with him) cordially agree. And further, it is a most nonsensical and absurd policy for a country thus to swamp its native literature, and to depress and degrade the whole class of native writers. No nation can afford to let foreigners write for it; it would be as unwise as to let them fight its battles. I may add that no nation can afford to embitter its own writers against itself by producing in their minds a sense of injustice. Strong as our feeling of nationality undoubtedly is, it will not stand this for ever. It has seemed strange to some that an American should have written such a book as "Lady Alice," the author of which appears, at first sight, to have expatriated his mind, if not his heart. His being an episcopal clergyman accounts for it in part—for the Church is essentially of Old England, and its clergy and more devoted members are morally domiciled in England, with whose institutions and social system they have a stronger sympathy than with those of their own country. Moreover, for years, he lived only among Englishmen of that class which is most intensely attached to things as they are—a part of the time in England itself. These circumstances made the thing possible. But despair of obtaining any thing like a fair copyright for an American book made it actual—led him to lay aside a projected American story, and try his hand at an English novel, with a bent less serious: at first, indeed, not without some idea of caricature, in a gay, lawless, audacious spirit, in defiance of cant of every kind: but the calm, methodical, somewhat mechanical ηθος of actual English life, when he saw it and felt its restraints, tamed down these peculiarities somewhat. The result was a book which truly excited more surprise than sympathy in England—but which, in America, proved its real nationality by burstingin a trice all the bonds of clique, and, in spite of its acknowledged faults, securing near a hundred thousand readers in a few months. If copyright had been protected as it ought, I should have been reimbursed by so large a sale; but, as it was, even this successful book paid me less than a day laborer could have earned in the time I was writing it, in any part of the States.

But now I want Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Colburn to tell me what good it will do English authors and publishers for you to imitate in this respect the injustice and folly of your transatlantic cousins. Because "literature is in a depressed state," which Sir Edward asserts to be a fact—and because Mr. Colburn cannot afford to give one hundred pounds for a book for which once he would have given £1000—they propose, if I understand them, to have recourse to an unlimited pirating of American literature. I should think (if your British pride will tolerate the expression of my opinion) that the true remedy would be to give a stringent copyright to American authors. Pray which injured the English book-market most—Mr. Colburn's issue of a few hundreds of "Lady Alice" at a guinea and a half, or Mr. Bohn's issue of as many thousands of Mayo's "Kaloolah" at a shilling? Or do they think, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton seems to imply, that, except Cooper and Irving, we have no authors whose works are readable in Britain? "Typee," and "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Reveries of a Bachelor," and the two works above mentioned, tell a different story. Who can deny the genius and artistic power of Hawthorne, or the clear English simplicity of his style? And if Ik Marvel falls much behind Geoffrey Crayon, we, their countrymen, are no judges—although it is true that the former has fallen upon an affected age. I admit our deterioration. Or is it supposed that we shall cease producing if the possibility of English copyright is taken away? That would be a great mistake. Men who have a vocation for it will write, well or ill, even if they starve, as London garrets can testify. And there is no danger of our starving absolutely. Successful books pay their authors, not adequately, but enough to keep soul and body together. In light literature (so-called, perhaps, because it demands entire devotion and unceasing toil to arrive at excellence in it)—in light literature, which pays best here as well as elsewhere, there is a distinct demand for native works, which all the competition of the cheap pamphlet novels of the Harpers cannot wholly extinguish, and it is by the feeble, but real aid of this national taste that we exist. For my part, I feel a sort of Coriolanus pride in having got nothing, as I may say, for a book which had an unprecedented run; and if my countrymen object, as some of them do, to its principles, I tell them fairly that beggars cannot be choosers. I can live, thank Heaven, in many ways. I could not, indeed, keep school—as my countrymen, I believe, think every literary man should, the better to amuse them at his own expense. Two such drains on the cerebro-nervous system would soon lay me beneath the sod. But I can invest what remains of my patrimony in wild land, till it for my bread, and write a tale every winter, in defiance of the buccaneers.

But suppose that we continue to write (as we shall, depend on it), and that our impracticable Congress—from the difficulty of getting it to look at any question not bearing upon "Who is to be the next President?" or from the general apathy in regard to the injuries of authors, and want of perception as to the important interests of the heart—will not or does not pass an international copyright law, what sense or what honesty will there be in your strangling yourselves meanwhile by permitting Mr. Bohn his black-flag reprisals? Whom do you injure by this species of retaliation? First, and chiefly, your own authors and publishers, and your own literature (and, therefore, you must abandon such a policy sooner or later); and next, your friends on this side the water. For what does our government care if our native authors, even of the highest ability, earn less than common stevedores? Not a rush. Do the people enjoy our works with a less magnanimous gusto, because we have coined our brains and hearts in composing them for bread and patched elbows? Will they be less, in their own estimation, the greatest, the freest, the wisest, and the most enlightened nation upon earth? You retaliate, gentlemen, by injuring those whose sufferings (greater than yours) are already disregarded by the power you would influence; and if you ruined them, you would not ruffle one self-complacent feather of the American eagle. You but do what you can to depress and extinguish the only class of Americans who have a direct interest in getting you what you want, and who are already as eager to obtain it as men usually are to protect themselves from ruinous competition. I do not know what you expect from such a method, unless you think that our government, which has no pity on its native men of letters, will be touched by the distresses of yours.

Believe me, further, that it is the most unlikely way to succeed with the American people, to offer them an international copyright as a matter of bargain. They immediately suspect a design of obtaining an advantage for you, without any real equivalent to themselves. Show them, by granting a free and perfect copyright to all the world, on the same terms as your own subjects, that you regard such a course as the true policy of every state (which it is), and you will be much more likely to gain a hearing. I see nothing in this movement against foreigners getting a copyright, but selfishness overreaching itself.

The Americans are sometimes obtuse to appeals to their sense of justice, when they have an immediate interest in repudiating the claim. I admit it with regret, but it cannot be denied. They do not know how to relinquish the present advantages of a cheap pirated literature—forgetting that the endless reading of cheap books is a vice, and that this deluge of foreign under-priced novels and magazines, good, bad, and indifferent, is washing away every manly national taste. But on the other hand you are too grasping. It is undignified and unbecoming. Why should you so eagerly clutch at a foreign sale for your works, as to sacrifice what you can secure—freedom from injurious competition at home? For my own part (and I am sure I speak the sentiments of every American writer of respectability), give me on this side of the Atlantic, what you may have on yours at pleasure—a fair chance, without being under-bid by pirates—and I ask no more. I will cheerfully relinquish all the advantage to bedrawn from an English sale. Without vanity, justly as we are charged with it, or boasting (our national infirmity—heaven knows we came honestly by it), all we want is "a fair field" at home, "and no favor," and we will write books, if not intrinsically so good as those of English authors, yet more congenial to the tastes, and better adapted to supply the intellectual wants, of our countrymen.

To conclude: although the American people appear at times obtuse, as I have said, on the question of justice, and take, as in this instance, a "mighty narrow" view of expediency, they are very open to an appeal to their generosity. Present a bill—above all, an unusual bill—to Brother Jonathan, and he may dispute it, or turn his back on you with all the coolness imaginable; but offer to contribute your sovereign for those poor devils of authors, and he is up to the gentlemanly thing—he will cover your subscription with an eagle. I should be glad to persuade him to do justice under the idea that it was a sort of charity, convinced as I am that, as soon as he had done it, he would see the true nature of the transaction, and blush to have ever stood out about so plain a thing. You Englishmen pretend, even in your national capacity, to believe the Bible (I wish it were true of either us or you). There is one passage which I commend to your consideration, as bearing directly on the practical solution of this question, and sustaining my view of it by a sentence which cannot fail: "Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal shall it be measured to you again." And there is another maxim more universal still, which among us is thus familiarly expressed: "Do as you would be done by." By reversing Lord Campbell's decision, you will act ungenerously, that's certain, and I think, unjustly, you will injure your own writers more than ours, and rob us of one of our strongest arguments.

I remain, sir, very respectfully yours,THE AUTHOR OF "LADY ALICE."New-York, July 26.

This is the title of a chapter in "The Age of Veneer," a series of papers appearing from month to month inFraser's Magazine. At the beginning of it a certain preeminence is claimed for England which some have thought belonged to our own country, but we are not unwilling to yield the distinction:

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