1788, appeared The Miscellaneous Works of Philip Freneau, containing his Essays and Additional Poems, in two volumes, published by Francis Bailey.

In the fall of 1790, the Government was removed to Philadelphia, and on the 31st of October of the next year appeared the first number of the National Gazette, edited by Freneau, which was continued to October 26, 1793, and in which were given the first examples of that partisan abuse which has ever since been the shame of American politics. After the suspension of the Gazette, he published, in 1795, The Jersey Chronicle, at Mount Pleasant, which continued but a year. He then was engaged for many years in various voyages to Savannah, the West Indies, Madeira, &c., and in 1809 again settled in Philadelphia. During the second war with Great Britain he wrote numerous songs and ballads, and in 1815 published A Collection of Poems on American Affairs and a Variety of other Subjects, chiefly Moral and Political, written between 1795 and 1815. In his old age he resided in New Jersey, and died near Freehold, on the 18th of December, 1832.

Freneau was undoubtedly a man of genius, and a very ready and versatile writer; and some of his early pieces of poetry, written when he was ambitious of literary distinction, are richly worthy of preservation. But most that he wrote was of an ephemeral character, strongly tinctured with partisan prejudices and vituperation, and has met with its deserved reward,-oblivion.

THE DYING INDIAN."

"On yonder lake I spread the sail no more!
Vigor, and youth, and active days are past;
Relentless demons urge me to that shore
On whose black forests all the dead are cast;
Ye solemn train, prepare the funeral song,
For I must go to shades below,
Where all is strange, and all is new;
Companion to the airy throng!

What solitary streams,

In dull and dreary dreams,

All melancholy, must I rove along!

"In it Mr. Jefferson was continually referred to with expressions of fulsome adulation, and the public and private characters of Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Knox, and their associates, were vilified with unfaltering industry and malignity. The Rev. Dr. Dwight thus wrote at that time to Oliver Wolcott, then in Congress at Philadelphia:-The late impertinent attacks on the Chief Magistrate are viewed with a general and marked indignation. Freneau, your printer, linguist, and so forth, is regarded here as a mere incendiary, or rather as a despicable tool of bigger incendiaries, and his paper as a public nuisance.' That the National Gazette' was entirely under Mr. Jefferson's control appears never to have been doubted. Freneau said, years after, to Dr. Francis, (of New York,) who became his physician, that it was among his greatest griefs that he had seemed to be an enemy to Washington, but that Mr. Jefferson had written or dictated whatever in the 'Gazette' was reproachful or calumnious of that exalted character."-Griswold's Republican Court, p. 288. But in this case the Latin adage is especially applicable, Quid facit per alium, facit per se.

Tomo-Chequi.

To what strange lands must Chequi take his way!
Groves of the dead departed mortals trace;
No deer along those gloomy forests stray,
No huntsmen there take pleasure in the chase,
But all are empty, unsubstantial shades,
That ramble through those visionary glades;
No spongy fruits from verdant trees depend,
But sickly orchards there

Do fruits as sickly bear,

And apples a consumptive visage show,
And wither'd hangs the hurtleberry blue.

Ah me! what mischiefs on the dead attend!
Wandering a stranger to the shores below,
Where shall I brook or real fountain find?
Lazy and sad deluding waters flow:
Such is the picture in my boding mind!
Fine tales, indeed, they tell
Of shades and purling rills,
Where our dead fathers dwell
Beyond the western hills;

But when did ghost return his state to show,
Or who can promise half the tale is true?

I, too, must be a fleeting ghost! no more;
None, none but shadows to those mansions go;
I leave my woods, I leave the Huron shore,
For emptier groves below!

Ye charming solitudes,

Ye tall ascending woods,

Ye glassy lakes and prattling streams,
Whose aspect still was sweet,

Whether the sun did greet,

Or the pale moon embraced you with her beams-
Adieu to all!

To all that charm'd me where I stray'd,

The winding stream, the dark sequester'd shade:
Adieu all triumphs here!

Adieu, the mountain's lofty swell,
Adieu, thou little verdant hill,

And seas, and stars, and skies,-farewell,

For some remoter sphere!

Perplex'd with doubts, and tortured with despair,
Why so dejected at this hopeless sleep?

Nature at last these ruins may repair,

When fate's long dream is o'er, and she forgets to weep; Some real world once more may be assign'd,

Some new-born mansion for the immortal mind!

Farewell, sweet lake! farewell, surrounding woods!

To other groves, through midnight glooms, I stray,

Beyond the mountains, and beyond the floods,

Beyond the Huron Bay!

Prepare the hollow tomb, and place me low,
My trusty bow and arrows by my side,

The cheerful bottle and the venison store;
For long the journey is that I must go,
Without a partner, and without a guide."

He spoke, and bid the attending mourners weep,
Then closed his eyes, and sunk to endless sleep!

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE.

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouch'd thy honey'd blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet:

No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.

By Nature's self in white array'd,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by ;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died,-nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;

Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews
At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.

THE PROSPECT OF PEACE.

Though clad in winter's gloomy dress1
All Nature's works appear,
Yet other prospects rise to bless
The new returning year:

The active sail again is seen,

To greet our western shore;

Gay plenty smiles, with brow serene,
And wars distract no more.

No more the vales, no more the plains,
An iron harvest yield;

Peace guards our doors, impels our swains
To till the grateful field:

1 The winter of 1814-15.

From distant climes, no longer foes,
(Their years of misery past,)
Nations arrive, to find repose
In these 'domains at last.

And, if a more delightful scene
Attracts the mortal eye,

Where clouds nor darkness intervene,
Behold, aspiring high,

On freedom's soil those fabrics plann'd,
On virtue's basis laid,

That make secure our native land,
And prove our toils repaid.

Ambitious aims and pride severe,
Would you at distance keep,
What wanderer would not tarry here,
Here charm his cares to sleep?
Oh, still may health her balmy wings
O'er these fair fields expand,

While commerce from all climates brings
The products of each land.

Through toiling care and lengthen'd views,
That share alike our span,

Gay, smiling hope her heaven pursues,
The eternal friend of man:

The darkness of the days to come
She brightens with her ray,
And smiles o'er Nature's gaping tomb,
When sickening to decay!

PHILLIS WHEATLEY PETERS, 1754-1784.

Is the year 1761 there was brought to Boston, in a vessel from Africa, a young girl of about seven years of age, slenderly formed, in feeble health from the change of climate and the miseries of the voyage, and not able to speak a word of English. Mr. John Wheatley, a wealthy merchant, saw her, and, touched by her interesting face and modest demeanor, took her to his own house, and his wife, with a true woman's heart, devoted herself to the wants of the little stranger. In a short time, the effects of comfortable clothing, wholesome food, and kind treatment were clearly visible, and Mrs. Wheatley's daughter undertook to teach her to read and write. So astonishing was her progress, that in sixteen months from the time of her arrival in this humane family she had so mastered the English language as to read with ease any portion of the Bible; and to this attainment she soon added that of writing, which she acquired solely by her own unassisted efforts.

So rapid was her progress in learning, that she became an object of general attention, and corresponded with several persons of great distinction.' She attracted the notice of the literary characters of Boston, who supplied her with books and encouraged her intellectual efforts. Mrs. Wheatley, too, did all she could to promote her happiness, and to aid her in the acquisition of knowledge, treating her as a child, and introducing her into the best society of Boston. But, notwithstanding all the attentions she received, she still retained her original and native modesty of deportment, and never presumed upon the kindness of her friends and admirers. She studied Latin, and, at the age of fourteen, made her first attempts at poetry, in translations from Ovid's Fables. So creditable were

these to her scholarship, taste, and poetic talent, that she was encouraged to write

1 Some years after this, she addressed a poem to General Washington, while he was at his head-quarters at Cambridge, Mass., February, 1776; who thus kindly replied: "I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice of me in the elegant lines you enclosed; and, however undeserving I may be of such encomium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talents, in honor of which, and as a tribute justly due to you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that, while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This, and nothing else, determined me not to give it place in the public prints.

"If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near head-quarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the Muses, and to whom Nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations."