We dismiss this subject for the present, in the hope that it may receive that attention which is commensurate with its importance and proportionate to the value of the interests it involves. Whatever may be the result of these suggestions, we are sure that no patentee can be secure in the enjoyment of those rights for which he has expended his ingenuity or his capital, unless means of adjudicating disputes respecting these rights be provided, better and more efficient than those which are now available. THE RAVEN, BY QUARLES. [The following lines from a correspondent-besides the deep quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author-appear to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, have been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few poets in the language. While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of "The Raven" arises from alliteration, and the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. In regard to its measure, it may be noted that if all the verses were like the second, they might properly be placed merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon form; but the presence in all the others of one line-mostly the second in the versewhich flows continuously, with only an aspirate pause in the middle, like that before the short line in the Sapphic Adonic, while the fifth has at the middle pause no similarity of sound with any part beside, gives the versification an entirely different effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble languge, in prosody, were better understood.-ED. AM. REV.] Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain This it is, and nothing more." L Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Then into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Let my 'Tis the wind, and nothing more!" Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only Wondering at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, yore This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." "Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!-prophet still, if bird or devil!- Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!-prophet still, if bird or devil! Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!-quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting Shall be lifted-nevermore! LITERARY PROSPECTS OF 1845. We see no reason why, when so much is written at the commencement of a New Year upon the interests of politics, commerce, why when there are so many sermons reviewing the spiritual state of believers from the pulpit, so many harangues and prophecies of the coming Administration from Editors, and so many well-braced statistical money articles from Wall-street--a word should not be said in the same fashion and with equal zeal on the prospects of Literature. It is not because the latter is of less consequence, that it should be so neglected; the spiritual and eternal are at least worth as much as the bodily and fugitive. It is of quite as much importance to a man that he preserve his self-respect by one new and generous thought per diem, as to notice the fractional advance of cotton or exchange. The opening of a new department of literature by native authors may be as well worth talking about as the acquisition of Texas-with this little difference in the subject matter of the two, that while one is an enlargment of the freedom of the mind, the other is a question of the slavery of the body. There are sumptuous East India products of the Imagination, rare and costly as any thing to be obtained from within the secret walls of China. Shall there be great celebration and triumph over the new Treaty, with not a thought of the better alliances by which the man may bind himself in a league longer than life, and the dim Chinese history itself, to the Spiritual? There are various reasons why we hear less of literature than of the markets and the tariff and they are not all equally dishonorable. The business of literature, though it is incomplete without the interest the world takes in the matter, is carried on by the true student and author in quiet. He lives at home among his family, his friends, his books, oftener, perhaps less happily, alone with himself. He can do nothing without retirement. He must be jealous of his thoughts and go from stillness to society not from society to stillness. The true author is a proud, humble man, who does not bray his affairs constantly before the world. While the quack sends his noisy nostrums through the street with trumpet and placard at all hours, he is the invisible angel who appears only seldom, but sacred Bethesda. We must be content, then in great beauty, at the life-giving then, if we do not find every Newspaper criticism or Magazine article full of life and truth-if printed pages are constantly aver run with falsehood and foolery. light" in the back-ground. They are Another cause keeps the "children of commonly poor and with no intrigue or cunning to supply the defects. They have not always command of the external resources by which their intellect must be made available to the public. They are low in the esteem of booksellers, who prefer gilded mediocrity. "Let but a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens and the sense refines." ones. There are dollar lords as well as patented If there is one thing that a man of honor avoids more than another it is debt. And the good author being a man of the truest honor, will not sell himself to printers and booksellers. Setting aside as nought the great brood of puffers and pretenders who write today what to-morrow destroys; who make reputations without authors, and constantly employ themselves in the child's game of putting up a pith figure on one end, which its leaden weight soon brings to the other-the world certainly hears very little of Literature. It is quite worth while that this matter heart and confidence to the few timid, should be plainly stated, if only to give genuine writers, who continue, with reluctance and distrust, to employ their pens-especially in the department of periodical literature-lest they be driven altogether from the field. The world should know them and honor them, or the world will be the worse for it. Conscientiously pursued, there is no nobler labor than that of the man of letters who devotes his time and talents to the improvement of society through the press. He sacrifices, frequently, many of the higher honors of literature to his benevolence. He writes continually, hour after hour, pouring out his fresh perceptions, his most eager sentiments, to fur nish thousands of readers with their daily mental entertainment, by which little pains of body are alleviated, petty bick erings and family quarrels overpowered, and an inch or two of elevation given to common men to make them at all endurable. All this is done with little fee or reward and is immediately buried, given away, generously, to yesterday's newspaper and the last month's magazine. There should be some vindication, some distinct recognition of the position of the periodical writer. He should be so established in public esteem as to say, without diffidence or apology, when called upon for his profession--that he writes for the press, content with this reputation, without seeking the incidental worldly aids and advantages of being an Editor beside. There will soon be no contributors, but all editors-we hope not, for the sake of the occasional baskets of grapes and strawberries, and the personal attention of puff-seeking tradesmen in MSS. books and groceries. We have no exaggerated idea of the periodical writer; but where he is true and sincere, we honor him as a noble and peculiar specimen of the literary character. We are quite of the opinion of the political valet in the Vicar of Wakefield, who read all the papers, including "the seventeen magazines and the two reviews: " Though they hate each other, I love them all." Consider, of what a good magazine is capable, or a weekly review, or a newspaper. We read a passage of it in the morning, for instance, while the cloth is laid for breakfast, or in some interval that would probably be otherwise employed in impatience, and it gives tone to the mind all the day. It sets us above the low and frivolous, and if the passage is pleasantly stated, as it ought to be, imparts a relish to our words and thoughts. There is a great deal in having the soul wound up for the day-as poor Lord Ogleby says of his body and his cordials, in the play. We cannot well do a mean action with the melody of Milton or of Keats ringing in our ears; or a foolish one after a satirical rhyme or two of Hudibras or Pope; or a malevolent one after a glimpse of the Man of Feeling; or an indifferent one, stung by the earnestness of Carlyle; or a despondent one, magnetized by the humanity of Shakspeare, the all in all of the rest. These are the great reservoirs from which the miscellaneous writer, like the water-carrier of the East, draws refreshment and bears it to the thirsty multitude of the city, who having neither time nor training to ascend to the fountain would otherwise perish. Honor, then, to the race, though they bear no higher title than the Water Carriers of Literature; but they may be original and more-they may be Jeffreys, Macaulays, Sydney Smiths, Southeys, Coleridges, Hazlitts, Charles Lambs, Leigh Hunts, Douglas Jerrolds, Thomas Hoods, Harriet Martineaus, Elizabeth B. Barrets; or in America they may write Clios, the Idle Man, Sketch Books, Croakers, Motley Books, Analysts, Pencillings by the Way, Harry Francos, John Waters, Twice Told Tales, &c. Altogether, this subject is worthy of a much more extended consideration than it has yet received provided only, that the right men and the right things get the honor. What is 1845 to do for us in literature? It has at least good opportunities of its own. It is a fresh and youthful year with the excitement and noise of party politics, with all the hideous brood of liars, gamblers, false toned declaimers and other unwholesome insects swept entirely out of the atmosphere. The country has rest. Its vexatious questions of public affairs have been shaken and worried into repose. There is a new year opening of the Christian Era ;-let it be so indeed, and like Boniface's ale, savor of the Anno Domini ! "Sweet are In Literature itself, things appear, too, to have come to something like a crisis. The old is worn out, the reign of humbug is extinct. Heaven defend us from any returning claimants to that dynasty. Old literary hacks, like the coach hacks of London, according to John Randolph, smell villainously of dead bodies. Reputations have grown, withered and died, and the field of letters, like the vegetation of the prairies, is enriched by the loam of countless fallen authors. the uses of adversity." The bad prepare a reception for the good. It is surely some compensation for filth and nastiness when we see their rank juices distilling in the green leaf and snowy whiteness of the rose or the camelia. So may the year '45 reap its triumphs. Like its predecessor, one hundred years ago, let it be a year of Rebellion, of protest against all shabbiness and unworthiness in literature-fighting not for Pretenders, but against them. We would fain hope that the literary system which has been distinguished by |