ed upon Dana that he has studied to conceal his opinions, or shrunk from setting them forth in strong lights, yet it is not matter of opinion or of controversy, by any means, that forms the staple of his discourse. He loves rather to dwell upon matters of art and manners, on subjects connected with painting and music, and poetry, the soul of all. Here his fountain of ideas is inexhaustible; and he pours them out so constantly and unerringly towards all that is high and good, that they germinate and grow upward into lofty and true principles in the minds of others. Within this circle, and it is a sufficiently extensive one, few can walk so well as he.

He has also the rare faculty of imperceptibly conducting conversation along these quiet and secure channels. In passing a few hours with Dana, and those by whom he is usually surrounded, men lose for the while a portion of their individuality, and find themselves capable of new states of being. They find themselves refreshed, or perplexed, or excited, they hardly know why or how, but impressed they must be if they possess common susceptibility. There are those who have this secretly influencing faculty in common with Dana — many, it is probable, in all walks of life-individuals who have power to throw a passing light on those around them, to lift them up, as it were, by a strong idiosyncratic or idiodynamic force, deprived of which, they fall back by their own inertness; but few are so highly charged with this spiritual magnetism as Dana. His friends must have remarked that there are many in his circle of personal acquaintance who are different creatures when he is by, much wiser and wittier than at any other times, and more

impressible. This is, perhaps, one of the most desirable species of conversational power. It is not the power of eloquence and intellectual greatness alone, like that of Coleridge; it is rather the Scott faculty, who charmed listeners by his unaffectedness, and health-imparting vigor. It is the free intercourse of one spirit with another-"good talk," as a child of my acquaintance once expressed it.

But while we are enjoying this sort of intercourse two or three hours have slipped away, and the different members of the poet's family, and the guests, if there are any, and there are almost sure to be some, are beginning to drop in from their morning rambles. One comes with a book in hand from the shades of the hill; another with a portfolio; two or three more with baskets of blackberries, for the hill and its environs are said to be one of the best "berrying places" in the vicinity, as the anything-but-ruby lips of all the incomers bear oral though inarticulate evidence. While all this transpires dinner approaches, and it becomes time, as Dana the younger might express it, to "call all hands; for some are still away yonder, looking like Matthew Lee

and some are still ensanguining their fingers in the blackberry thickets, lost to all considerations of time and dining. The call must be sounded, which is a horn, blown by Triton-not a "wreathed horn," however, but a tin one, such as sends welcome echoes in summer time all over New England meadows. They hear; and rock, wood, and hill

"rebellow to the roar." Very soon the truants are brought in, and after the usual metamorposis in apparel, the important duty of the day commences. Think of thus dining, in a parlor with the cool southwest wind blowing through the lattice right off the Atlantic, drowsily murmuring on the beach below!

Were it not, gentle reader, who thus far hast accompanied me were it not that you are invisible to mortal eyes, I should insist on your taking a place at the table, where, I feel sure, if you love what refreshes every department, floor, or story of the inner man, you would enjoy yourself and be welcome; but this is denied me. On the parlor table there, you will find some newspapers, magazines and books; divinity, German metaphysics, novels, and the like, mostly in English; and on the piano is a pile of music, much of which has been sung or played till the notes of all the parts have almost vanished into the air-among the rest, some old masses of Haydn and Mozart, which it may amuse you to put together according to the paging. (I have myself tried it with but indifferent success.) Or if Griswold's "Poets of America" is among the books, perhaps it would suit you better to glance at his sketch of Dana's life and writings. Lest it should not be, I will leave you the following summary:

"Richard Henry Dana was born at Cambridge in 1787. At the age of ten he went to live with his grandfather, the Hon. William Ellery, of Newport, R. I., one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Here he remained until he entered Harvard College. On leaving College in 1807, he went to Baltimore and entered as a law student in

the office of Gen. Robert Goodloe Harper, of Baltimore. Returning thence, he finished his studies and commenced practice in his native town. He soon gave up the law, however, and became an assistant of his relative, Prof. Edward T. Channing, in the conduct of the North American Review, then established about two years. In 1821 he began the "Idle Man," in which he published some of his most admired tales. His first poem, "The Dying Raven," he published in 1825, in the New-York Review, then edited by Mr. Bryant. Two years after he published the "Buccaneer, and other Poems," and in 1833 his "Poems and Prose Writings." His Lectures on Shakspeare, which have been delivered in most of our principal cities, he has not yet given to the public. In 1849 he published a new edition of his entire collected works. He has always resided in Boston or its vicinity, and the incidents of his life are purely domestic."

Such is a brief summary of the life of one whose writings have exercised a great and permanent and healthful influence upon our literature, and whose position is in the first rank of the intellectual men of our nation.

Many such summaries might be read during a dinnertime even during an American dinner-time-but, as the chorus to Henry Vth very sensibly remarks, "time, numbers, and due course of things, cannot be here presented." I shall, therefore, call up ancient Gower to assure the reader, should he doubt it, that dinner is now over. Having already transported him four miles (and I may wish him to walk home with me presently) I do not feel at liberty to draw further upon his credulity without a letter of credit from an approved house. Doctor Johnson observes of Othello, that

"had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related, there had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous regularity." Judging from the success of much of the fictitious and dramatic literature of the day, I fear he had too little confidence in the docility of the human fancy; I would not hesitate, did I know any thing of the matter, to introduce into this sketch an essay on the Tariff question. The public are getting to be like the gentleman who, on doubting the truth of a story, and being taken up for it, pacified the narrator by begging his pardon, and saying that he would believe any thing, "rather than hurt a friend's feelings."

But this is mere after-dinner criticism. We are now in mid-afternoon, seated with the poet's family and guests, in the shade of the house; some of the ladies are in the parlor or under the piazza playing at needlework; but the most of us have brought chairs upon the narrow lawn above the cliff, and are idle according to our several tastes. The childrenMr. Dana's grandchildren and the children of a visitorare occupied with a nest of young sea-gulls which the boys brought yesterday from yonder bare rock about two miles off shore, and which they are trying to tame. Some are endeavoring to count the number of sails that now glisten over the sea in the light of the declining sun, and there is a question whether there are fifty-two or three in all, it being doubtful whether those just visible specks below the eastern horizon ought to be reckoned; also minor questions have arisen as to their rig, whether they are foreign or domestic, and the like-matters which are the fruit of endless discussion with young sailors not yet emerged from the state of