intentions, should be found willing to perpetuate a system so ruinous to the wealth, morals, and happiness of the community.

In the year 1836, he removed from Boston to the neighboring village of Roxbury, which is within the precincts of the County of Norfolk, and the ninth Congressional district. He was invited soon after by the Democracy of that district to be their candidate for the seat in Congress which had just become vacant by the retirement of Mr. William Jackson. Consenting to this proposal, he received the vote of the party at the elections of that year and of 1838 and 1840. With a strong Federal majority in the district, and in the highly excited state of parties which then existed, there could, of course, be very little expectation of success; but he regarded it as a duty not to refuse, when requested, his aid, in whatever mode it might be demanded, to principles which he thought so important. During the administration of Mr. Van Buren, he took an active part in the political movements of his friends in Massachusetts and New England. On the fourth of July following the explosion of the banks, in 1837, a meeting was held on Bunker Hill, for the purpose of expressing an opinion upon that proceeding. The chair was occupied by the Hon. W. Foster, of Boston, one of the soundest republicans and most enlightened political economists of the country. Mr. Everett made the draft of the resolutions adopted on that occasion, which contain a lucid and summary exposition of the theory of banking and the currency, and addressed the meeting with great force in support of them. This was one of the earliest demonstrations that took place after the explosion of the banks, and at least as much as any other public document of the day, had its influence in giving to public opinion the direction which it afterwards took, and into which it is now rapidly and conclusively settling down, in regard to this subject.

During all this period, he was also frequently called upon to deliver addresses at political meetings, and also on occasions of a literary and philanthropic character. These were always received with the admiration due to the chaste eloquence of style in which they conveyed the enlightened views and liberal sentiments of the mind and heart from which they proceeded. A number of them have been published at the request of the hearers. Among the subjects which have been thus treated of by Mr. Everett, we may specify the following:-The Progress and Limits of the Improvement of Society; The French Revolution; The Constitution of the United States; State of Polite Literature in England and the United States; Moral Character of the Literature of the last and present century; Literary Character of the Scriptures;

Progress of Moral Science; Discovery of America, by the North-
men;
German Literature; Battle of New Orleans; Battle of
Bunker Hill.

In the winter of 1840, it was thought necessary by the government to send a confidential commissioner to the Island of Cuba, for the purpose of exercising a general superintendence over the consulate during the absence of the Consul, and of investigating the truth of charges that had been made against him for sanctioning the abuse of the American flag, for the purpose of covering the slave trade. At the urgent request of the President, Mr. Everett accepted this commission, and passed two months at the Havana in the execution of it.

In the autumn of the same year (1840) he returned to Havana on private business, and, while there, received a letter from the Governor of Louisiana, requesting him, in the name of the board of directors of Jefferson College, in that State, to accept the presidency of that institution. After some consideration, and a personal visit to the college, he accepted the proposal, and entered on the duties of the office on the first of June; and the last of his publications we have met, is the address delivered on his first public appearance as President, which is well befitting that extended and established reputation, as an accomplished scholar, an elegant writer, and a correct and liberal thinker, which procured for him the unusual honor of such an invitation from so distant a section of the Union. We congratulate the institution and the State upon the acquisition they have thus secured. And as Mr. Everett, still in the full vigor of his powers, is now placed in a position so congenial to his tastes, habits, and pursuits, we trust that in addition to those labors, of which the immediate benefits are to be confined to the students under his administration of the college, he will be able to adorn the literature of his country with many a future contribution, not less valuable to it and worthy of himself, than those of his past career, up to the point at which we have now to suspend the task of the biographer's pen.

The engraving accompanying this slight sketch of one in regard to whom, as both a personal friend and a contributor to the pages of this work, we have felt under some restraints which all can appreciate, upon the freedom of even just praise, is taken from a very fine portrait painted a number of years ago in Paris, by the celebrated Girard, now in the possession of Ex-President Adams. Though the progress of time may have made some change in its original, his friends will not fail to recognise in it a resemblance which will give it an interest and value second to none of the former numbers of this series.

SONNETS.

BY J. R. LOWELL.

I.

As the broad ocean endlessly upheaveth,
With the majestic beating of his heart,
The mighty tides, whereof its rightful part
Each sea-wide gulf and little weed receiveth,―
So, through his soul who earnestly believeth,

Life from the universal Heart doth flow,
Whereby some conquest of the eternal Wo
By instinct of God's nature he achieveth :
A fuller pulse of this all-powerful Beauty

Into the poet's gulf-like heart doth tide,
And he more keenly feels the glorious duty

Of serving Truth despised and crucified,-
Happy, unknowing sect or creed, to rest
And feel God flow for ever through his breast..

II.

Once hardly in a cycle blossometh

A flower-like soul ripe with the seeds of song,
A spirit foreordained to cope with wrong,
Whose divine thoughts are natural as breath,
Who the old Darkness thickly scattereth

With starry words which shoot prevailing light
Into the deeps, and wither with the blight
Of serene Truth the coward heart of Death:
Wo if such spirit sell his birthright high,

And mock with lies the longing soul of man;
Yet one age longer must true Culture lie,
Soothing her bitter fetters as she can,

Until new messages of love outstart
At the next beating of the infinite Heart.

III.

The love of all things springs from love of one;
Wider the soul's horizon hourly grows,
And over it with fuller glory flows
The sky-like spirit of God; a hope begun
In doubt and darkness, 'neath a fairer sun
Cometh to fruitage, if it be of Truth;

And to the law of meekness, faith, and ruth,
By inward sympathy shall all be won:

This thou shouldst know, who, from the painted feature

Of shifting Fashion, couldst thy brethren turn

Unto the love of ever youthful Nature,

And of a beauty fadeless and eterne;

And always 'tis the saddest sight to see
An old man faithless in Humanity.

IV.

A poet cannot strive for despotism;

His harp falls shattered; for it still must be
The instinct of great spirits to be free,
And the sworn foes of cunning barbarism.
He who has deepest searched the wide abysm
Of that life-giving Soul which men call fate,
Knows that to put more faith in lies and hate
Than truth and love, is the worst atheism:
Upward the soul for ever turns her eyes;

The next hour always shames the hour before;
One beauty at its highest prophesies

That by whose side it shall seem mean and poor;
No Godlike thing knows aught of less and less,
But widens to the boundless Perfectness.

V.

Therefore think not the Past is wise alone,
For Yesterday knows nothing of the Best,
And thou shalt love it only as the nest

Whence glory-winged things to Heaven have flown.
To the great Soul alone are all things known,
Present and future are to her as past,

While she in glorious madness doth forecast
That perfect bud which seems a flower full-blown
To each new Prophet, and yet always opes

Fuller and fuller with each day and hour,
Heartening the soul with odor of fresh hopes,

And longings high and gushings of wide power,
Yet never is or shall be fully blown

Save in the forethought of the Eternal One.

VI.

Far 'yond this narrow parapet of Time,

With eyes uplift, the poet's soul should look
Into the Endless Promise, nor should brook
One prying doubt to shake his faith sublime;
To him the earth is ever in her prime

And dewiness of morning; he can see
Good lying hid, from all eternity,
Within the teeming womb of sin and crime;
His soul should not be cramped by any bar,-
His nobleness should be so Godlike high
That his least deed is perfect as a star,

His common look majestic as the sky,
And all o'erflooded with a light from far,
Undimmed by clouds of weak mortality.
BOSTON, April 2, 1842.

THE MINSTREL'S CURSE.

FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND.

A CASTLE Stood in olden time, so lofty and so grand,

Far o'er the plain its splendor shone unto the blue sea's strand,
And round it fragrant gardens a blooming garland made,
Where freshest fountains springing forth, in rainbow glory played.

There sat a haughty monarch, rich in land and victories,
He sat upon his throne, so pale, with darkness in his eyes;
For all his thoughts are horror, and all his looks are rage,
His words are scourges, and he writes in blood upon the page.

Once drew there toward this castle a noble minstrel pair,
The one in golden tresses, and the other gray of hair;
The old man with his harp was seated on a charger pied,
And blithely stepped his blooming mate in beauty at his side.

The old man to the youth thus spake: "Prepare thee now, my son!
Bethink thee of our deepest songs-tune to the fullest tone,-
Gather thy strength together, the gladness and the pain!
For the king's stony heart to-day must melt beneath our strain."

Already stood the minstrels in the pillared hall of state,
And on the throne the monarch and his gentle consort sate;
The king in fearful splendor, like the bloody northern light,
Tender and mild the queen, as if the full moon made her bright.

The old man struck the harp-strings, and he struck so wondrously,
That richer, ever richer, swelled their rising melody;

Then streamed with heavenly clearness forth the young man's tones of fire,
And the old man's song was heard between, like a misty spirit choir.

Of love and spring they're singing, of the happy golden time,
Of freedom, manly worth, of faith and holiness sublime,
And all things sweet that thrill the breast of man are in their lays,
And all that have a lofty spell the heart of man to raise.

courtier crowd,

The jest has died upon the lips of the gay
And the king's stalwart warriors before their God are bowed,
The queen, her soul all melted with mournfullest delight,
Throws to the minstrel pair a rose from off her bosom white.

"Ye have seduced my people, entice you now my wife?"
Raves the fierce king, all trembling with passion's fearful strife;
Sudden his sword, like lightning, at the youth's fair breast he flings,
And forth, 'stead of the golden song, a bloody torrent springs.
VOL. X. No. XLVII.-61