In 1835, Address delivered at the conse- | he drew a Report on our so-called Reciproccration of Green Mount Ceme-ity Treaties, and their effect on the shipping

interest of this country, which widely comsub-manded attention. Several other reports from his Committee evinced like ability and research. He also, in behalf of a Committee appointed by a meeting of the Whig members of both Houses, drew the celebrated "MANIFESTO" of the Whig members at the close of the extra session, exposing and denouncing the treachery of John Tylera document rarely surpassed in ability, perspicuity and scathing vigor.

In this speech, which is a wonderfully, England, which gave its peculiar character condensed history of the rise of the present to the Jackson administration. In the numWhig and Locofoco parties, Mr. Kennedy ber of this Journal for January, 1849, this has identified the Jackson faction with the speech of Mr. Kennedy's is fully reviewed. older Federalists, by showing that the Federal On a future occasion it is our hope to present leaders went over almost en masse to the a complete memoir of our accomplished Jackson standard, and carried with them statesman and historian, together with a rethose Tory doctrines, derived originally from view of his writings.

THE SORCERESS.

BY H. P. WEBSTER.

THERE is a palace built of clay, and, mildly as the moon,
A clear and quenchless light illumes an inner lone saloon;
And there in dreams reclined, or pacing to and fro erect,
A Caliph lives who bears the merry name of Intellect.

His footmen slumber, watch, or play around the outer gate,
And strangely are they named-Despair and Hope, Affection, Hate,
Sorrow and Joy: he calls them so, for 'tis his idle whim,
And gently rules them, or, if not, they only laugh at him.

His thoughts, a motley populace, as little fear his word;
They mock his indolent police, and shame their vaunting lord
Whene'er he tries to marshal them, and through the land he goes
In burnished mail of poesy, or flowing robes of prose.

More oft he sits at home, and trusty Memory mixes draughts
Of sweet and bitter taste for him to sip, the while he wafts
A cloudy fragrance from the bubbling hookah Fancy fills-
The slave he keeps to dance, or tell him stories, if he wills.

Such are his lighter pleasures, and his graver are to read
The rolls of parchment he has gathered with a sateless greed,
Or, leaving these, to cheer with lofty words his Heart of Heart,
Who sits, a weeping princess, in her silent room apart.

For there, with pallid fingers prest upon her burning eyes,
She mourns her only child, (his name was Love,) who ever lies
Embalmed, and fresh as if in living beauty, near her side-
A double grief, for twice the boy had lived, and twice he died.

He was in truth a glorious child, all music, life and light,
With hope and force instinctive reaching toward the infinite:
Oh, he would conquer all the world, when he became a man ;
But passed away, ere half a score of sparkling summers ran.

The mourning princess smiled in peace, nor ever shed a tear,
And "Allah's will be done," she only said from year to year,
Until, one autumn day, a wise and lovely maiden came,
With melting glances, drooping eyelids, and a nectar name.

She was so beautiful, the menials, Scorn and Sorrow, fled,
But Hope and Joy unlocked the doors before her silent tread;
She passed from room to room,-the Caliph bowed, and Fancy knelt,—
And last she found the place where Heart of Heart in secret dwelt.

The princess heard a voice of sweet enchantment, raised her eyes,
And saw the stranger and her own lost child, in mute surprise;
The Caliph came: "My palace, princess, and myself," he said,
"Are thine, fair sorceress, who thus hast given back the dead."

The lady left; the boy remained, and with so bright a bloom,
It seemed that he had grown in beauty in the very tomb;
And so unearthly were his simple words and saintly looks,
The prince confessed that Love is wiser than the wisest books.

A

year flew by; the stranger then returned, and calmly spake : "The joyous life that I restored I needs again must take;

For I can keep no two alive, and now a princelier one,

Whose other spurns him, longs to save from death his second son."

She vanished, and a fatal pallor smote the noble child;
And now embalmed he slumbers there, and there in sorrow wild
The loving Heart of Heart for ever says, with stifled breath,
"I could have borne it all, but that it is a double death."

The Caliph puffs his solemn pipe, or takes a sacred scroll
And reads to her the words that hopeless woe may best console:
"Thy Love is now in heaven." "Then let me yield my weary breath,"
She moans, "and find him there; I cannot bear the double death."

LESSING'S LAOCOON.

THE SECRET OF CLASSIC COMPOSITION IN POETRY, PAINTING, AND STATUARY.

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THE "Laocoon" of Lessing has been | ated on the modern stage; and that only but little read in America. Copies of the elegant translation by Ross are rare on this side of the Atlantic. Readers of German profess to understand it in German; but like our collegiate Grecians, they read it, as Homer is read in schools, with little advantage. The Laocoon cannot, however, be classed among "difficult books." In the translation of William Ross, it is easily and soon read. The style of that translator, which is clear and flowing, facilitates, no doubt, an easy comprehension of the author's meaning. At two sittings one may read the whole. Lessing was neither a mystic nor a transcendentalist. His characteristics are perspicuity and judgment, and an understanding very free of prejudice.

The purpose of the Laocoon is to ascertain the limits of poetry and painting; to show what subjects, or rather, what conditions of subjects, are proper for poetic, and what for pictorial representation.

the painters and the sculptors, in representing the passions, kept within the limits proscribed by Winkelman for all the representative arts. Stoicism," says Lessing, "is undramatic, and our sympathy is always commensurate with the suffering, exhibited by its object." "If it be true, that to give utterance to the expression of pain is perfectly compatible-at least, according to the notions of the ancient Greeks-with grandeur of soul, it follows, that it could not have been from the fear of diminishing this elevation of character, that the artist refrained from tracing on his marble (the Laocoon) the outward indications of painful shrieks. He must then have had some other motive for departing, in this instance, from the line adopted by his rival, the poet, who has chosen deliberately to express those shrieks."

In the second section of his work Lessing endeavors to show that beauty is the primary object of the arts, and that they were conThe work opens with an examination of fined by the Greeks to the narrow limits of Winkelman's theory, "that the primary law beauty. Mere representation, made for its of the arts of design among the ancients, own sake, was not permitted. There was consisted in a noble simplicity and tranquil even a law among the Thebans, which orgrandeur, both of attitude and expression." dained the imitation of the beautiful alone : The illustrations of their principles are taken, this law was directed against the caricaboth by Lessing and by Winkelman, who turists and delineators of vulgar subjects. were contemporaries, from the celebrated The ancient statuaries avoided every kind group in marble of Laocoon and his two and degree of passion which contorts the sons, represented as perishing together in the countenance and destroys the beauty of the folds of two enormous serpents. The father figure; while to the poets, every liberty of appears to be in the very agony of death, representation was permitted. Jupiter, hurlbut his features, in the marble, are not dis-ing his thunder-bolt, was fierce with indigtorted to a revolting degree; they represent nation in the song of the poet; while in the agony subdued by an exertion of the will, sculptor's image he was simply grave. and yet agony extreme, even to death. Winkelman argues that the representation of the moral power which subdues unseemly manifestations of pain and passion, was the true object of classic art. Lessing shows, on the contrary, that the poets and dramatists of Greece did not confine themselves to the expression of subdued and dignified emotions; but gave room, in their dramatic exhibitions, to every variety and extreme of passionate expression, to a degree not toler

VOL. VII. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

Imitation by the sculptor is confined to a single moment, and that of the painter to a single point of view, while it is the art of the poet to describe a series of movements, one following another, in the relation of cause and effect. Since, therefore, the arts are limited by their own intrinsic necessities, truth and expression ought not alone to be regarded. The difficulty of the artist is to select such a moment, and such a point of view, as shall be sufficiently pregnant

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with meaning. "Nothing," says Lessing, | describes what he has seen; taking for his can possess this important qualification but example Virgil's description of the shield of that which leaves free scope to the imagina- Æneas, where the poet is also the inventor tion. The sight and the fancy must be per- of the imagery described upon the shield. mitted reciprocally to add to each other's Lessing argues that it would have been a enjoyment. There is not, however, any one degradation for the poet to have taken a moment less favorable for this purpose, in hint from the marble group of Laocoon. the object of art, than that of its highest He might, however, show as great an origistate of excitement." Transient situations nality and power in describing the series of and appearances, our author argues, are to events which led to the catastrophe of Laobe avoided. The portrait of a man laugh-coon, though his first hint of them may ing disgusts upon a second view. Falling have been given by the marble group, as bodies cannot be represented. Ajax dis- the statuary himself, who, from some ancient tracted, after having murdered the sheep and story or, tradition, executed the work in oxen, which he mistook for men, leans marble. It is not originality, which is degloomily upon his sword, meditating self-manded of the artist or the poet, and this destruction. That is the moment for the we say of ourselves, and not after Lessing,sculptor or the painter; and if an excess but the power of producing a combined of passion is represented, it must be at effect of pleasure and elevation, by whatinstants of amazement and stupefaction, or ever means that effect may be produced. at the pause or point of hesitation, on the eve of some terrible catastrophe. Thus we see the poet and the artist occupy the entire range of representation, and fill out the circle, one representing motion, and the

other rest.

Passing over several chapters in which our author discusses questions that are interesting rather to the classical critic and the antiquary than to the artist, we come upon the seventh division of his subject, in which he distinguishes two kinds of imitation, that of the genuine artist, and that of the servile copyist. The artist imitates the poet, and the poet the artist; but with different degrees of propriety. When Virgil gives us a description of the shield of neas, he imitates in a certain sense the sculptor of the shield; but it was a true imitation only when he had seen such a shield, and when he described what he had seen. "If, on the other hand, Virgil had taken the marble group of the Laocoön for his model," says Lessing, "he would have produced an imitation of the second kind; he would have copied the subject only, and his description would not have been taken from any particular attitude chosen by the sculptor, nor would he describe it as one would draw it, piece by piece, and limb by limb. He would take the group as the suggestor of a series of actions leading to the catastrophe represented in the particular attitude selected by the statuary." Our author is careful to give a superior credit to the more original kind of imitation, in which the poet

"The Count de Caylus recommends the artist to make himself thoroughly acquainted with Homer, that greatest of all pic orial poets-that faithful follower of nature. The Count assures the artists that their execution will be more perfect in proportion to their intimacy with the minutest details of the poet's description."

The

The effect of the system here recommended," continues Lessing, in his 11th section, "would b, to unite the two kinds of imitation, which I have already distinguished from each other. painter would not only have to imitate that which the poet had imitated before him, but he would also be required to do so with the identical lineaments which the other had employed;—he not only in his character of narrator, but in that would be required to make use of his prototype of roet likewise.

"But how does it happen that this second kind of imitation, which is so derogatory to the poet, is not equally so to the artist? If such a series of pictures as that which the Count de Caylus gives from Homer, had been in existence before the poet wrote; and if we knew that he had drawn his story from those materials, would not our admiration of him be infinitely diminished? How then does it happen, that we withhold none of our approbation from the artist, even when he does nothing more than embody the poet's words in forms and colors?"

To this question Lessing replies, that in the works of the painter or statuary, the execution seems more difficult than the invention; while, with the poet, invention is the test.

In offering this explanation, Lessing departs from his own principle; or rather, he loses sight of it, and neglects it. By his own showing, the merit of the painter or sculptor is never the merit of the poet, in any case. Neither is invention more credit