traits of eminent contemporaries, most faithfully and exquisitely drawn. The same year, he gave to the world, from his prolific and caustic pen, The Bigelow Papers, written in the broad Yankee dialect, no little characterized. It is a keen and well-merited political satire against our Mexican war, and the ascendency so long maintained in our Government by the slave-power.3

Since 1848, Mr. Lowell has published no volume, but has written for many reviews and magazines ;5 and-whatever the publishers may say-common fame will make him the editor of the ablest magazine ever published on this side the water,-"The Atlantic Monthly."

THE HERITAGE.

The rich man's son inherits lands,

And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,

And he inherits soft, white hands,

And tender flesh that fears the cold,

Nor dares to wear a garment old;

A heritage, it seems to me,

One scarce would wish to hold in fee.

I The fine lines under Washington Irving, page 274, will show what the book is, more effectually than any criticism.

"The rhymes are as startling and felicitous as any in Hudibras, and the quaint drollery of the illustrations is in admirable keeping with the whole character of the forlorn recruit from Massachusetts."-North American Review, lxviii. 187.

3" All at once we have a batch of small satirists-Mr. Bailey at their head-in England, and one really powerful satirist in America,-namely, Mr. J. R. Lowell, -whose Bigelow Papers we most gladly welcome as being not only the best volume of satires since the Anti-Jacobin, but also the first work of real and efficient poetical genius which has reached us from the United States. We have been under the necessity of telling some unpleasant truths about American literature from time to time; and it is with hearty pleasure that we are now able to own that the Britishers have been, for the present, utterly and apparently hopelessly beaten by a Yankee in one important department of poetry. In the United States, social and political evils have a breadth and tangibility which are not at present to be found in the condition of any other civilized country. The 'peculiar domestic institution,' the fillibustering tendencies of the nation, the tyranny of a vulgar 'public opinion,' and the charlatanism which is the price of political power, are butts for the shafts of the satirist which European poets may well envy Mr. Lowell. We do not pretend to affirm that the evils of European society may not be as great, in their own way, as those which afflict the credit of the United States, with the exception, of course, of slavery, which makes 'American freedom' deservedly the laughing-stock of the world; but what we do say is, that the evils in point have a boldness and simplicity about them which our more sophisticated follies have not, and that, a hundred years hence, Mr. Lowell's Yankee satires will be perfectly intelligible to every one."-North British Review.

4 In 1857, Ticknor & Fields issued a beautiful edition of all his poems, in two volumes.

5 His reviews and essays have appeared in the "North American Review," "Southern Literary Messenger," "Knickerbocker," "Democratic Review," "Graham's Magazine," "Putnam's Magazine," "Boston Miscellany," and "National Anti-Slavery Standard."