E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass;
C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues,
And rims common-sense things. with mystical
hues,―

E. sits in a mystery calm and intense,

And looks coolly around him with sharp common

sense;

C. shows you how every-day matters unite
With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,-
While E., in a plain, preternatural way,
Makes mysteries matters of mere every day;
C. draws all his characters quite à la Fuseli,—
He don't sketch their bundles of muscles and thews

illy,

But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews;

E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe,
And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;-
To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords
The design of a white marble statue in words.
C. labors to get at the centre, and then

Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men;

E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted,
And, given himself, has whatever is wanted.

"He has imitators in scores, who omit

No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,-
Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his brain,
And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again;
If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is
Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscu-
rities,

As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute,

While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected within it.

"There comes

rare sport,

for instance; to see him 's

Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully

short;

How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face,

To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace! He follows as close as a stick to a rocket,

His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket. Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of

your own,

Can't you let neighbor Emerson's orchards alone? Besides, 'tis no use, you'll not find e'en a core,—

has picked up all the windfalls before. They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch 'em,

His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch

'em;

When they send him a dishfull, and ask him to try

'em,

He never suspects how the sly rogues came by

'em ;

He wonders why 'tis there are none such his trees

on,

And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this season.

"Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream,

And fancies himself in thy groves, Academe, With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-trees o'er him,

And never a fact to perplex him or bore him, With a snug room at Plato's, when night comes, to walk to,

And people from morning till midnight to talk to, And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening;

So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening, For his highest conceit of a happiest state is Where they'd live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis;

And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked betterEach sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter; He seems piling words, but there's royal dust hid In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid.

While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper,

If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and

paper;

Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write;

In this, as in all things, a lamb among men,

He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen.

"Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full

With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull;
Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he

goes

A stream of transparent and forcible prose;

He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound That 'tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round,

And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind, That the weather-cock rules and not follows the

wind;

Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side, With no doctrine pleased that's not somewhere denied,

He lays the denier away on the shelf,

And then-down beside him lies gravely himself. He's the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing

To convey friend or foe without charging a shil

ling,

And so fond of the trip that, when leisure's to spare,

He'll row himself up, if he can't get a fare.

The worst of it is, that his logic's so strong,
That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong;
If there is only one, why, he'll split it in two,
And first pummel this half, then that, black and
blue.

That white's white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow

To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow. He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,When it reaches your lips there's naught left to believe

But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,) -gisms that squat 'em

Like tadpoles, o'erjoyed with the mud at the bot

tom.

"There is Willis, so natty and jaunty and gay, Who says his best things in so foppish a way, With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o'erlaying

'em,

That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying 'em;

Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,
Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!
His prose had a natural grace of its own,

And enough of it, too, if he'd let it alone;
But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired,
And is forced to forgive where he might have ad-
mired;

Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced,
It runs like a stream with a musical waste,
And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep ;—

'Tis not deep as a river, but who'd have it deep? In a country where scarcely a village is found That has not its author sublime and profound, For some one to be slightly shoal is a duty, And Willis's shallowness makes half his beauty. His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error, And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror. 'Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice,'Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty phiz;

It is Nature herself, and there's something in that, Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat. No volume I know to read under a tree,

More truly delicious than his A l' Abri,

With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book,

Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook; With June coming softly your shoulder to look

over,

Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book

over,

And Nature to criticize still as you read,

The page that bears that is a rare one indeed.

"He's so innate a cockney, that had he been born

Where plain bare-skin's the only full-dress that is

worn,

He'd have given his own such an air that you'd

say

'T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broad

way.

His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam

on't,

As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;

So his best things are done in the flush of the mo

ment,