does not appear to have written after a model. He possesses a native grace which is all his own, and a naturalness which is not diminished by the effect of polish. He never writes invitâ Minervâ, nor possesses any of the stiffness or constraint of the desperate poet; but, if we may venture to be figurative, he rises without an effort, and spreads his even wings, and cuts the clear ether like a genial bird of song. Whatever he handles, in no instance does he depart from the dictates of a taste cultured and refined to the last degree by the studies which he loved; no matter how trifling be the subject, an Address to a Fly,' or an Invitation to a Robin-red-breast,' Ad Rubeculam Invitatio,' or a sharpening of Prior's epigramatic verses, or Master William Shakspeare's 'Cruel Deceit ;' or whether he rises to higher topics, to an Address to the Prince, or to translating the hymns of Addison. It is not without reason then, that he has been thought in some of his productions to rival the elegance and tenderness of those elegiac poets who wrote in the golden age of Roman literature, when refinement had reached its highest pitch, and style was rendered perfect. In some respects it will not be denied that he was their superior. For although they seemed imbued with sensibility, and loved to engraft upon the Roman tongue, in idiom, thought and expression, the spiritual grace which is found in all the poetry of the Greeks, and which is the very offspring of their delicious skies; yet fostered as they were in the lap of wealth, and within the reach of a voluptuous capital, their works are infected with the blemish of their lives; whether like Ovid, they have made love the burden of their song, or like the melancholy Tibullus, mingled with it the frequent images of death. Their passions are too contagious to be told, and their loves too warm to be painted; and with all their delicacy, they are often sullied by indelicacies of thought, and grossness of expression which accorded with their own licentiousness, and the age in which they lived. Bourne certainly approached them nearly in neatness, while he refrained from their immodesty ; but to pronounce him their superior would be to forget those exquisite verses of Catullus, in the 'Carmen Nuptiale:'

Ur flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis,
Ignotus pecori, nullo contusus aratro,

Quem mulcent auræ, firmat sol, educat imber:
Multi illum pueri, multæ optavere puellæ :
Idem, quum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
Nulli illum pueri, nullæ optavere puellæ :
Sic virgo dum intacta manet, dum cara suis est:
Quum castum amisit polluto corpore florem,
Nec pueris jucunda manet, nec cara puellis,
Hymen O Hymenæe, Hymen ades O Hymenæe.

WHEN in the garden's fenced and cultur'd ground

Where browse no flocks, where plough-shares never wound,
By sunbeams strengthened, nourished by the shower

And soothed by Zephyr, blooms the lovely flower.

Maids long to place it in their modest zone,

And youths enraptur'd wish it for their own.

But from the stem once pluck'd in dust it lies,
Nor youth nor maiden then desire or prize.
The virgin thus her blushing beauty rears,
Loved by her kindred, and her young compeers.
But if her simple charm, her maiden grace
Is sullied by one spoiler's rude embrace,
Adoring youths no more her steps attend,
Nor loving girls salute the maiden friend.
Oh Hymen, hear! Oh sacred Hymen, haste,
Come god and guardian of the fond and chaste.

LITERARY NOTICES.

LIFE AND ELOQUENCE OF THE REV. SYLVESTER LARNED: First Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New-Orleans. By R. R. GURLEY. In one volume: with a portrait. pp. 412 New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

If we may credit the warm commendations of many friends, whom we have heard describe the effect upon them of Mr. LARNED's preaching, we may well believe, with the author of the volume before us, that no minister of the same age has ever, at least in this country, left behind him deeper impressions of his eloquence.' And however much might be ascribed to his voice and manner, the matter and style of his discourses are remarkable; they are worthy of critical examination and study; and those who would combine in their sermons ease and elevation, simplicity and energy; who would leave to their hearers no time to sleep and no wish to be absent, but regret only at the brevity of the service and delight at the return of the Sabbath, will find the perusal and re-perusal of Mr. LARNED'S discourses greatly to their advantage. A clear synopsis of his peculiar characteristics is afforded us toward the close of that portion of the work which is devoted to his personal memoirs. A combination of great and original endowments disposed and enabled him to open, comparatively, a new path in his profession, and with an independence, moral and intellectual, peculiarly his own, to cast aside some of its traditional formalities and restraints, to dispense with useless technicalities, and to carry home his doctrines and appeals, in expressions natural yet select, in a style at once simple, compact, elevated and energetic, to the business and bosoms of men. This was high merit; but it was not all. He possessed in an eminent degree the quality of good sense, which enabled him to understand the thoughts and workings of other minds, so as to meet them effectually, on their own principles, and penetrate and move the inmost depths of their own feelings. His language was ever subordinate to thought—his imagination to reason. He sought successfully to give unity to his subject, so that its parts and divisions, like the bones and sinews of the human body, should be invisible in their strength, and while clothed in beauty, the whole should be animated by one spirit, and bear upon one end. He had the rare talent of being eloquent without seeming sensible of it, of hiding from himself and others the power by which he moved them. As by an invisible wand, a look or a word, so simple at the time as to escape observation, he opened the fountains of sensibility, and the streams gushed forth. The more unexpected the effect, the more certain, and the greater, the less apparent the cause. In the various qualities of his mind, and his personal endowments, he approached as near as any man whom we have known, or of whom we have read, to our idea of a perfect orator. Though no man expressed his own views on religious subjects, with more candor and decision, he possessed a catholic spirit, and was ready to welcome to his communion, regardless of the peculiarities of their creeds, all true Christian disciples. Well armed for controversy, he appears to have been averse to it, preferring rather to win the affections, than confound the reason; to exhibit Truth with her attractions, rather than in the attitude and brandishing the weapons of war.'

We proceed to make two or three extracts, taken almost at random from the discourses before us; commencing with a passage from the sermon on CHRIST as Man,' from the text, 'What think ye of CHRIST:'

'WHEREVER we look at him, there is nothing which wears the aspect of enthusiasm. His devotions are most strikingly appropriate. Solemn and impressive they may be, but they are never heated. In the inimitable prayer prescribed for his followers, and in the discourses which he delivered, there is a majesty of thought, an elevation of piety, and a tenderness of heart, which no man ever did or ever will attentively examine without admiration. In his conduct, too, we find no affected singularity; he dressed, he ate, he conversed, like other people; he accepted their invitations; he was a guest at their entertainments; he was a partaker of their joys and their sorrows; he was engaging in his manners, and affectionate in his attachments; and unpopular only because he spoke the truth. And so of his precepts. They were all suited to the condition of human life. He taught a plain and sober religion, which thousands and tens of thousands have found to comfort them here, to sustain them in death, and to save them forever. Look, my hearers, at the manner in which our SAVIOUR behaved in his last moments. He had no legal trial at all; but at such as he had, the officers of government were convinced of his innocence, and accordingly acquitted him. This, however, did not appease the mob. They were determined on taking his life, and frightened the court into submission. Had he not a right to complain? Where is the man who would not have complained? He did not. His friends appeared in arms to rescue him, but instead of permitting it. he went forward in person and dissuaded them from the attempt. In the face of all the laws of the Roman empire, he was led out to execution the very day he had been publicly acquitted. His deportment on the occasion was entirely tranquil. Had he been an impostor he would at least have remonstrated against the cruelty of his sentence; or had he been an enthusiast, he would have betrayed that high-wrought excitement which sets danger and death at defiance. But he did neither. I know not that in his whole life he evinced more composure than during the hour which finally closed it. After arriving on the ground, he seems to have been extremely exhausted, and to have said but little. That little, however, was not in his own defence; it was chiefly in bidding farewell to his family and friends, and in pardoning one of the criminals who was nailed by his side. Just before he expired, he cast a look of tenderness on the crowd, and instead of reproving them for their cruelty, he lifted up his eyes to Heaven, and said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' O, my hearers, what a sentiment on the quivering lips of an innocent and murdered man! How do the fashionable ideas of honor, and the popular tribunal of pistols and balls, and the bleeding and frenzied bosom of premature widow hood and orphanage, how do they appear at the foot of Mount Calvary! What must we think of him, so cool in enthusiasm, or so godlike in imposture, as to be the first to inculcate the forgiveness of injuries, and the first to exemplify his own lesson while bathed in the blood of the Cross! With such a scene before me, I can no longer wonder that infidelity itself, in one of its lucid intervals, should have burst into that impressive exclamation, 'If SOCRATES died like a philosopher, JESUS CHRIST died like a GOD!'

The following passages are taken from a discourse preached on the occasion of Mr. LARNED's leaving his church, during the prevalence of the yellow fever. After speaking of the presence of a Protecting Power in affliction, and the extending trophies of the grace of GOD, the reverend orator bursts forth into this exalted strain:

WHEN I see the flowers of Eden again blossoming on earth; when I catch the spires of Christian churches glittering amidst the pagoda and funeral piles of Hindostan; when I find the rude and revengeful savage exchanging the war-whoop of the wilderness for the songs of salvation; when I behold the benignity of the Gospel beginning to beam through the mosques of the Arabian prophet, whose disciples were converted at the point of the bayonet, and baptised in blood; in a word, when I watch the dawnings of twilight breaking through the eastern sky, and shedding their splendor over the dark and dismal expanse of human desolation, I cannot help thinking that the Gop of peace and love is once more about to visit our benighted world, and to fill and animate it with all the evidences of His glory. Yes, my brethren. the aged father, who was once abandoned to the waves on the charge of years and infirmity, is now followed by his children to the tomb; the mother, who once poisoned the nutriment of her bosom, to preserve her little babe from the anticipated troubles of protracted life, now gives that babe to its Saviour; the devoted Hindoo, who once panted to be crushed under the clotted wheels of his idol, is now telling what God has done for his soul. Already have the missionaries of Christ begun to smother the fires of the widow's pile, to arrest the immolations of Juggernaut, and to redeem the endearing loveliness of woman from the degradation to which every country but Christendom has consigned her. The night is far spent; the day is at hand; Christianity is awaking from the slumber of centuries, and moving on with accelerated triumph. Genius, and learning, and office are weaving laurels for her brow, and adding their hosannas to the thundering acclamations which unnounce her magnificent march. The whole world is in motion. The jubilee of earth is commenced. The dove has gone out of the ark, and brought back the signal that the waters are retiring. On every shore are displayed the banners of the Cross. You may see them waving from the frozen ledges of Greenland to the burning sands of Sierra Leone; from the isles of the Pacific to the banks of the Gauges; from the snows of the poles to the scorching suns of the equator. The Indian is burning his Shaster, the Arab his Koran, and the Hottentot his consecrated relics. The tenant of every soil is cheered by the tidings of pardon, and the complexion of every climate irradiated by the hope of immortality. The Gospel- the everlasting Gospel-the Gospel of the God of peace and of love, is beginning to extend; and it will extend, and extend, and extend, till the ruins of Sin, amidst the blaze of the last conflagration, shall be lost in the splendors of eternal day!'

The following closing remarks are inexpressibly touching. Their pathos is akin to that

exhibited by SAINT PAUL, when bidding his sorrowing brethren farewell, before departing 'for to go into Macedonia :'

'THE period has arrived, when personal obligations, as well as the interests of the infant flock over which I have been called to preside, require that I should leave this city. Never in my life have I cherished a more sincere design than that of returning to the people of my charge; but I know not how it is, and perhaps it is weakness to confess it, but I feel an unaccountable presentiment that I shall never meet you again. O, my GOD! is this the last time? Will the return of November find this voice stilled in death, and this frame mouldering under the clods of the valley? If it should be so I can only say, that the kindness and affection I have found here will animate the last prayer of my heart for your happiness. But whatever may become of me, I beseech you go forward with the undertaking in which you have embarked. Discard the incentives of sectarian rivalry, and build a church for yourselves, your children, your city, and your GOD. Above all, prepare for the judgment seat of CHRIST. O! when I cast my eye through the pews where you are now sitting, and remember the awful pestilence which has so lately shrouded this place in mourning, I cannot repress the inquiry, Who of our number, before the summer is closed, will be sleeping in yonder grave-yard? For whom is that funeral knell to be next sounded, which within three days has twice rung its admonitions in our ears? And if I should live to return, which of you shall I find missing from the dear little circle of friendship? Ye saints of the living GOD, farewell! Keep near the hill of Calvary; and as you cluster in gratitude and devotion around the Cross on which your SAVIOUR expired, forget not to pray for your pastor. Farewell, ye who are seeking an interest in JESUS; do not despond; the darkest hour is nearest to day. It was not till Peter had begun to sink that his REDEEMER rescued him. And, O, ye votaries of the world, what shall I say to you? The sand is rapidly wasting that measures your existence, and yet must I leave you impenitent! Listen to my parting words: When you hear that I am laid in the dust, remember that I warned you to think of eternity! I have done.'

Overcome by his exertions of the previous Sabbath, Mr. LARNED was attacked with the prevailing epidemic. After much suffering, in which the aspirations of faith triumphed over bodily pain, and when the power of speech had gone from him, he made signs for pen and ink, and in tremulous characters wrote the blessed name of JESUS CHRIST.' And thus, on the 31st of August, 1820, this valiant soldier of the cross rested from his labors. The engraved portrait of Mr. LARNED exhibits a face of blended sweetness and intellectual nobleness. 'His body,' says his biographer, 'was the appropriate habitation of his mind, combining in just proportions, dignity grace and strength. Art could have desired no finer model, and seldom, in her noblest statues, has she embodied the idea of a more perfect form. His countenance well expressed his soul; his voice was persuasion, and as he spoke, his eye threw a fascinating brilliancy upon the rich treasures of thought and sentiment, flung out from the depths and stores of his nature so lavishly around him.'

A GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE, principally from the German of KUHNER, with selections from MATTHLÆ, Buttman, THIERSCH, and ROST. For the use of Schools and Colleges. By CHARLES ANTHON, LL. D. In one volume. pp. 536. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS. THIS is a previous Grammar of the learned author, presented in a more enlarged and complete form. The writer here furnishes the student with a general view of the leading features of Greek philology, by placing in his hands a volume that may prove a useful auxili. ary to him throughout the whole of his academical and collegiate career. In order to effect this more thoroughly, he has had recourse to the writings of the latest and best of the German grammarians, and especially to those of KUHNER, which are now justly regarded as the ablest of their kind. Under the head of Paradigms, the work contains much more numerous and complete exemplifications of declension and conjugation than any that has preceded it in an English garb. Another new feature, is the frequent reference to the Sanscrit and other cognate languages, without which, at the present day, no Greek grammar can be regarded as complete. In the Syntax, which in the present is presented in a much more enlarged form than in the previous Grammar, the author has taken care that the rules shall be full and accurate, and yet conveyed in language tinged as slightly as possible with that technical and peculiar diction, which, however well it may suit the schools of Germany, is at present still out of place with us.' Like all the series of schoolbooks issued by the HARPERS, the present work is executed with great typographical propriety.

TALES OF GLAUBER SPA. By Miss C. M. SEDGWICK, Messrs. J. K. PAULDING, W. C. BRYANT, R. C. SANDS, and WILLIAM LEGGETT. Two volumes in one. pp. 537. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

A NEW edition (in the cheap form, compressed into one cover, and printed upon the thinnest of paper,) of an old work, which was noticed at some length in these pages on its first appearance. To our taste, the best things in the number are the papers by the lamented ROBERT C. SANDS, one of the finest wits this country has ever produced. The introductory letter from Mr. SHARON CLAPP, giving an amusing account of the manner in which the Glauber Spa rose into existence, and the means by which he obtained the manuscripts which compose the contents of the volumes, is in SANDS's best vein. The story of 'Mr. Green' is capital. The Mr. GREEN-BICE' of the tale is a portrait of Dr. JAMES M'HENRY, author of The Antediluvians,' in composing which the writer was compelled to labor so hard to keep below MILTON.' Hear him explain to his friend Mr. GREEN,' (a gentleman who is 'indifferent' to every thing,) what he understands by the Lake school of poetry.' Observe that it is from his own 'Pleasures of Friendship' that the pseudo poet quotes:

6

'IT is a school, Sir, in which the prosody of the language is sacrificed. Now, Sir, you can clearly understand what prosody is, if you will just listen to me and mark me. Hear a passage from the first of our poets, as last revised by him in his twentieth edition. Now mark the regularity of the rhythm, the tumti, tumti, the flowing and majestic and classical tumti, which pervades it:

How sweet, oh, friendship! is thy magic charm!
Our souls to elevate-our hearts to warm!
Within thy realm no discord's jarring sound
Is heard, nor Cain and Abel there are found!
Congenial friendship brings the potent spell,
To bid the young affections softly swell,
The sweets of fond society impart,
Whose cordial balm exhilarates the heart,
The friendly bosom that can share our grief

Is the best sanctuary to yiell relief;

To quench the fiery aspect of despair,

And ease the laboring mind of half its care.'

Mr. Bice illustrated his recitation by making iambics on the fingers of his left hand (one of which had a crooked joint) with the forefinger of the right.

'I am indifferent about hearing any more of that, Sir, said Green. If I cared about poetry, I believe I could make such myself. But what is that line with a 'sanctuary' in it?'

'Is the best sanct-twer-ry-to yield relief,' recited Mr. Bice.

'Oh! very well. That is in the new dictionary, I suppose. They made me call it sanctuary when I went to school; but I am indifferent as to pronunciation. If you call it sanktery your tum-ti will answer well enough. But I thought you had to double up your pinkie twice when you said it first. Won't you smoke a cigar? or are you indifferent about it? I never swear; but for heaven's sake, if it is not inconvenient to you to stop reading that, it will be very convenient to me.'

Mr. GREEN-BICE stops reading, as he is requested; but he continues his dissertation upon the elements of poetry. Were he ten times as tedious, he could find it in his heart to bestow it all upon his listener:

'POETRY, Mr. Green, is a natural art. It is both inspired and mechanical. If I say that the grass is green (begging your pardon for playing on your name, which I do not mean to do,) do I talk poetry? No. Why not? Because there is no curious jingle, or metrical arrangement. If I say,

•The grass is green,
As may be seen,'

that is poetry. Why? Because it rhymes. There are no epithets in it without meaning; and there is no sentiment in it without pathos. It is easy, and not careless; polished, and not laborious. Its decorations are not tawdry, and it cannot be made more elegant without losing its simplicity. The versification is neither sluggish nor rugged. All who may have any relish for delightful melody will be charmed with it; because it is congenial to the soul of every true bard.'

It was just such critical acumen as this which Dr. M'HENRY displayed in the reviews from his pen that used to awaken so broad and general a laugh at the old American Quarterly.'