only a historian; Tacitus is also a philosopher. The former gives you images; the latter, impressions. In the narration of events, Livy produces his effect by completeness and exact particularity; Tacitus, by selection and condensation. The one presents to you a panorama: you have the whole scene, with all its complicated movements and various appearances, vividly before you. The other shows you the most prominent and remarkable groups, and compensates in depth what he wants in minuteness. Livy hurries you into the midst of the battle, and leaves you to be borne along by its tide; Tacitus stands with you upon an eminence where you may have more tranquillity for distinct observation; or, perhaps, when the armies have retired, walks with you over the field, points out to you the spot of each most interesting particular, and shares with you those solemn and profound emotions which you have now the composure to feel.

MORAL TASTE.

Sensibility to beauty is in some degree common to all; but it is infinitely varied, according as it has been cultivated by habit and education. To the man whose taste has been formed on just principles, and who has been led to perceive and relish what is truly beautiful, a new world is opened. He looks abroad over nature, and contemplates the productions of art, with sentiments to which those who are destitute of this faculty are strangers. He perceives in the works of God, and in the contrivances of man, all the utility for which they were destined and adapted, in common with others; but besides this, his heart is filled with sentiments of the beautiful or the grand, according to the nature of the object. It is in literature that taste, in the more common use of the word, has its most extensive sphere, and most varied gratifications; yet, whether it be exercised on nature, the fine arts, or literature, we are aware how much depends on associations with life, feeling, and human character. Why does the traveller wander with such peculiar interest over the mountains and plains of Italy and Greece, but because every spot is consecrated by the memory of great events, or presents to him the memorials of departed genius? It is for this reason that poetry peoples even solitude and desolation with imaginary life; so that, in ancient days, every forest had its dryads, every fountain its nymphs, and the voice of the naiades was heard in the murmuring of the streams. It is partly in reference to the same principle that deserts and mountains, where all is barrenness and solitude, raise in the mind emotions of sublimity. It is a feeling of vastness and desolation that depends in a great degree on the absence of every thing having life or action. The mere modifications of nature are

beautiful; the human form from its just proportions, the human face from the harmonious combination of features and coloring; but it is only when this form is living and moving, and when this face is suffused with emotion and animated with intelligence, when the attitude and the look alike express the workings of the heart and mind, that we feel the perfect sentiment of beauty.

Thus inanimate nature, and literature in its transcripts of the aspects of nature, become most interesting by association with life and action, and, above all, with man. It is from descriptions of man, considered as a moral being, that even literary taste receives many of its highest gratifications. There is a moral as well as natural beauty and grandeur. A rational agent, animated by high principles of virtue, exhibiting the most generous affections, and preferring on all occasions what is just to what is expedient, is the noblest picture whigh the hand of genius can present. Very few indeed are insensible to those fine touches of moral feeling which are given in our best writers; but their full effect requires not only an improved mind, but a heart in harmony with whatever is most excellent in our natures, and a lively susceptibility to moral greatness. This susceptibility is moral taste.

From Professor Frisbie's beautiful and finished fugitive poetry we select the following little gem :

Stay, stay, sweet vision, do not leave me;
Soft sleep, still o'er my senses reign;
Stay, loveliest phantom, still deceive me;
Ah, let me dream that dream again!
Thy head was on my shoulder leaning;
Thy hand in mine was gently press'd;
Thine eyes, so soft and full of meaning,
Were bent on me, and I was blest.

No word was spoken: all was feeling,
The silent transport of the heart;
The tear, that o'er my cheek was stealing,
Told what words could ne'er impart.

And could this be but mere illusion?
Could fancy all so real seem?
Sure fancy's scenes are wild confusion;
And can it be I did but dream?

I'm sure I felt thy forehead pressing,
Thy very breath stole o'er my cheek;
I'm sure I saw those eyes confessing
What the tongue could never speak.

Ah, no! 'tis gone, 'tis gone, and never
Mine such waking bliss can be:
Oh, I would sleep, would sleep forever,
Could I thus but dream of thee!

JOHN PIERPONT.

JOHN PIERPONT was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 6th of April, 1785, and received his collegiate education at Yale College, where he graduated in 1804. The next year he went to South Carolina, and was private tutor in the family of Colonel William Allston, where he commenced his legal studies. In 1809, he returned home, entered the celebrated law-school of his native town, and in 1812, having been admitted to the bar of Essex County, Massachusetts, opened an office in Newburyport. He soon, however, as other poets have done, abandoned the law, determining to find his pleasure and his occupation in literary pursuits; and in 1816 he published The Airs of Palestine, which was received with very great favor. At the close of that year, he entered the theological school of Harvard University, determined to devote himself to the ministry, and in April, 1819, was ordained as pastor of the Hollis Street Church, in Boston. In 1835 and 1836, he visited Europe for his health, going through the principal cities of England, France, and Italy, and extending his tour to the East, visiting Athens, Corinth, Constantinople, and Asia Minor. Soon after his return home, he collected and published, in 1840, all his poems, in one volume, in the preface to which he says, "If poetry is always fiction, there is no poetry in this book. It gives a true, though an all too feeble, expression of the author's feelings and faith,-of his love of right, freedom, and man, and of his correspondent and most hearty hatred of every thing that is at war with them; and of his faith in the providence and gracious promises of God." The longest poem of the volume is The Airs of Palestine. The subject is music, principally as connected with sacred history, but with occasional digressions into the land of mythology and romance. It has no unity of plan, but consists of a succession of brilliant pictures. Though this subject, so congenial to the "poet's verse," had been often handled, from Pindar to Gray, yet our author, nothing daunted, did not shrink from trying his own powers upon it. It is enough to say that he has succeeded. For beauty of language, finish of versification, richness of classical and sacred allusions, and harmony of numbers, we consider that it takes rank among the very first of American poems and will be among those that will survive their century. But Mr. Pierpont has aimed at something more than gratifying his own scholarly tastes and charming his readers with the love of the beautiful. He is a reformer, a whole-hearted and a fearless one; and a large number of his fugitive pieces have been written to promote the holy causes of temperance and freedom. Mr. Pierpont has also prepared an excellent series of reading-books for schools:-The Little Learner, The Young Reader, Introduction to National Reader, National Reader, and The American First Class Book.

CLASSICAL AND SACRED THEMES FOR MUSIC.

Where lies our path?-though many a vista call,
We may admire, but cannot tread them all.

Where lies our path?-a poet, and inquire

What hills, what vales, what streams, become the lyre?
See, there Parnassus lifts his head of snow;

See at his foot the cool Cephissus flow;
There Ossa rises; there Olympus towers;

Between them, Tempè breathes in beds of flowers,
Forever verdant; and there Peneus glides
Through laurels, whispering on his shady sides.
Your theme is Music: yonder rolls the wave
Where dolphins snatch'd Arion from his grave,
Enchanted by his lyre: Citharon's shade
Is yonder seen, where first Amphion play'd
Those potent airs, that, from the yielding earth,
Charm'd stones around him, and gave cities birth.
And fast by Hamus, Thracian Hebrus creeps
O'er golden sands, and still for Orpheus weeps,
Whose gory head, borne by the stream along,
Was still melodious, and expired in song.
There Nereids sing, and Triton winds his shell;
There be thy path,-for there the muses dwell.
No, no,-a lonelier, lovelier path be mine:
Greece and her charms I leave for Palestine.
There, purer streams through happier valleys flow,
And sweeter flowers on holier mountains blow.

I love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm;

I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm;

I love to wet my foot on Hermon's dews;

I love the promptings of Isaiah's muse;

In Carmel's holy grots I'll court repose,

And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose.

SONG OF THE SHEPHERDS.

While thus the shepherds watch'd the host of night,
O'er heaven's blue concave flash'd a sudden light.
The unrolling glory spread its folds divine

O'er the green hills and vales of Palestine;

And, lo! descending angels, hovering there,

Stretch'd their loose wings, and in the purple air
Hung o'er the sleepless guardians of the fold:

When that high anthem, clear, and strong, and bold,

On wavy paths of trembling ether ran :

66

Glory to God,-Benevolence to man,—

Peace to the world:"-and in full concert came,

From silver tubes and harps of golden frame,

The loud and sweet response, whose choral strains
Linger'd and languish'd on Judea's plains.

Yon living lamps, charm'd from their chambers blue
By airs so heavenly, from the skies withdrew :

All?-all, but one, that hung and burn'd alone,
And with mild lustre over Bethlehem shone.
Chaldea's sages saw that orb afar

Glow unextinguish'd;-'twas Salvation's Star.

LICENSE-LAWS.

"We license thee for so much gold,"1

Says Congress,-they're our servants there,-
"To keep a pen where men are sold
Of sable skin and woolly hair;
For public good' requires the toil
Of slaves on freedom's sacred soil."
"For so much gold we license thee"-
So say our laws-"a draught to sell,
That bows the strong, enslaves the free,
And opens wide the gates of hell:
For public good' requires that some
Should live, since many die, by rum."
Ye civil fathers! while the foes

Of this destroyer seize their swords,
And Heaven's own hail is in the blows

They're dealing,-will YE cut the cords
That round the falling fiend they draw,
And o'er him hold your shield of law?

And will ye give to man a bill

Divorcing him from Heaven's high sway;
And, while God says,
Thou shalt not kill,"

Say ye, for gold, Ye may,-ye may"?
Compare the body with the soul!

Compare the bullet with the bowl!

In which is felt the fiercer blast

Of the destroying angel's breath?

Which binds its victim the more fast?

Which kills him with the deadlier death?

Will ye the felon fox restrain,

And yet take off the tiger's chain?

The living to the rotting dead

The God-contemning Tuscan2 tied,

Till, by the way, or on his bed,

The poor corpse-carrier droop'd and died,

Lash'd hand to hand, and face to face,

In fatal and in loathed embrace.

Less cutting, think ye, is the thong

That to a breathing corpse, for life,

Four hundred dollars is the sum prescribed by Congress-the local legislature of the District of Columbia--for a license to keep a prison-house and market for the sale of men, women, and children. See Jay's "View of the Action of the Federal Government in Behalf of Slavery," p. 87. 2 Mezentius. See Virgil, Eneid, viii. 481-491.