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HANGS the palette on the easel,
In the light and lonely room,
Hangs the bird in gilded prison,
Where the flowers neglected bloom;
Lurks amid the summer brightness
Something of a winter's gloom.
Heedless of the open window,

Sunlight streaming on her hair,
Tears her gentle eyes obscuring,
Sate a maiden young and fair;
Sate before the half-filled canvas,
Work of one no longer there.

Scanned she that unfinished picture, Sketched with high well-chosen aim: Lineaments of love and wisdom

Crowned a goodly face and frameLips denoting strength of purpose, Eyes that truth herself might claim.

Sadly gazed she on the features,

By her lover's hand portrayed;
Wondering what rich store of beauty
Had the finished form displayed;
Murmuring at the hasty summons,
Mourning bitterly the dead.

Then she thought upon the beauty,
Of the limner's shortened life;
Patient hope, undaunted courage,
Evermore with sin at strife:
Thoughts of wisdom, words of kindness,
Truth in all his actions rife.

And she thought what meed of glory,

Had so fair a course matured;
Had he lived till hairs grew hoary,
Life's long campaign well endured;
Won a place in world-wide story,
Never-dying fame secured.

Maiden, cease thy vain repining,
Lift above thy tearful eyes,
All the springs of future greatness,
From a source celestial rise;
And the heaven-born earnest spirit
Aims not lower than the skies.

Spent in holy high endeavor,

Is the shortest life complete;
And, though scarce at youth's meridian,
He hath climbed to wisdom's seat;
He hath won the crown immortal,
Only for her children meet.

Rise, behold thy place appointed,
God has work for thee to do;
Ponder well thy perfect Model,

Trace thine outline bold and true;

Seek, when growing faint and listless,
Strength to nerve thine hand anew.

Not by one long spell of labor,

Not by one soft line of grace,
Canst thou hope in finished beauty,
Lineaments divine to trace;
Or to throw upon thy picture

Shinings from the holiest place!

Day by day must see thee toiling, Patient, though thy work be scanned; Day by day in constant effort,

Some new beauties shall expand: Day by day some lines erasing, Drawn by too impatient hand. Faithful to thy noblest purpose, Eager, earnest for the prize, Gazing at thy Great Example, Till his glory fill thine eyes; Till, the work of life completed, Rest is thine beyond the skies! -London Society.

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And then strange dreary dreams inspire my lays,
Like lunar rays!

But why should vain chimeras fill my mind?
A brighter future I'll anticipate;
Why to hope's promises should I be blind?
God rules above us, and our God is great;
And then my songs up to Heaven's portals rise,
Gay butterflies!

And when a lovely maid I chance to meet,
O how I revel in her smiles of grace!
O how I look into those eyes so sweet,.
As looks a star upon the lake's calm face!
And then my song with rapturous fragrance glows
Like a wild rose!

And am I loved? I feel a joy divine

I dwell enraptured on a thought like this;
Come! fill my glass with rosy sparkling wine,
And celebrate with me the mighty bliss!
Then are my songs inspired by hope and love,
Rainbows above!

But while I hold the glass I look around,
And see the manacles my country wears.
Then, not the clinking glasses' music-sound,
But the harsh clang of fetters shocks my ears.
What is the song which then I sing aloud?
A mystic cloud!

Will not the people, in a burst sublime,

Break through these chains? Can no release
be wrought

Till they are rusted by corroding time?
Forbid it, Heaven! I cannot bear the thought;
Then do my songs burst forth in shame and ire,
Like lightning's fire!

BRIEF NOTES ON BOOKS.

It is not our aim to follow M. Du Chaillu in his various wanderings from the moment he left the coast till he arrived in the land of the Ashangui. In the portion of his book especially devoted to the record of his progress from day to day among the natives, M. Du Chaillu does not provide a more interesting literary bill of fare than other writers on African travel. There are the same endless disputes with the natives, and the old trick of cultivating diplomatic relations with hoary chieftains, through the assistance of a quantity of beads or a bright cotton umbrella. In one page we are told of some prince with an unpronounceable name, and an equivocal code of morals, who kindly offers to place his "better" halves at the disposal of the accomplished white man. In another, we learn how some amorous

princess, with more sentiment than propriety,
Protects the interests of the traveller. These in-
cidents are varied by an occasional murder, and
the changes are rung upon what African explor-
ers term a "palaver." By the way, it would
seem as if the aboriginal tendencies in this direc-
tion were contagious to Europeans, for we sel-
dom find a work on Africa which does not ex-
tend over double the number of pages into which
it might reasonably have been compressed. We
do not, however, desire to call our author to ac-
count on this score; we would merely mention
that the great bulk of his volume is occupied by
the ordinary details of a traveller's diary, and is
therefore of little importance to the scientific
reader. It must, however, be admitted to M. Du
Chaillu's credit, that his book contains a good
deal of matter highly interesting to the zoologist
and the student of ethnology.
We shall present-

A Journey to Ashango Land, and Further Penetration into Equatorial Africa. By PAUL P. Du CHAILLU. London: Murray. New-York: D. Appleton & Co.-A traveller who writes an account of his explorations, has two serious difficulties to contend against: if he narrates any thing very extraordinary, people are apt to be skeptical as to his love of truth, and if the incidents of his history approach the common-place he is not unusually said to be dull. Unhappily for M. Du Chaillu, his work on Equatorial Africa met with a good deal of opposition from skeptical naturalists, but we think that in the vol-ly quote passages in proof of this, but in doing ume he has now given us he has surmounted the so we may mention that many of the facts recordobstacles we have referred to. He does not tell us ed in his former work, and so strenuously denied "a more wonderful tale," nor is his narrative de- by some of our leading naturalists, have been void of interest either to the geographer or corroborated by the author's later inquiries. the zoologist. The object, the author tells us, Concerning these we may especially refer to the with which he set out upon the expedition, whose controversies on the character and habits of the results he has now recorded, was to substantiate gorilla, and the Potamogale velox. These discusthe statements which he made in his first work.sions may now be looked upon as closed, at least He felt hurt by the "unfair and ungenerous criticisms" which were passed upon his first work, and he determined, by supplying himself with an extensive series of scientific apparatus, and returning to Africa, to put his assertions beyond all question. Such were the author's intentions on setting out a second time to explore that portion of Africa which lies immediately below the equator. M. Du Chaillu thought that, by ascertaining with astronomical exactitude the position of the several points visited by him in his travels, he should thus prevent any of those insinuations with which he was so abundantly assailed on his first appearance as an African explorer. This was why he took with him upon his last voyage a number of philosophical instruments, for estimating the height, temperature, longitude, etc., of each portion of the country which he visited. It is to be regretted, therefore, that his anticipations in regard to the employment of these instruments of research were not fully carried out. In his first disembarkation his boat was upset, and those of his astronomical instruments which were not lost were rendered quite unfit for scientific use through the corrosive action of the salt water.

for the present. Most of M. Du Chaillu's assertions as to the habits, etc., of the gorilla, have been substantiated by his recent examination of these creatures in their wild condition, and the investigations of Professor Allman, of Edinburgh, show that in the affair of the Potamogale the author was correct and his critics did him an injustice.

There are three points in this volume to which our readers' attention should be directed. These are the history of the Obongos or negrodwarfs, the account of the African ant hills, and the description of the skulls which the author brought home with him. It is to Professor Owen's pen that we owe the chapter on these latter, a fact which lends a scientific interest to the work such as might not otherwise attach to it. It seems to us that M. Du Chaillu might have done something more to investigate the tribe of Obongos than he seems to have attempted. The Obongos appear to be a most interesting, diminutive race, of an extremely degraded type, and it would have been of the highest importance to ethnology to have had a careful anatomical description of them. They are a tribe of dwarfs, dwelling in huts of the rudest description, and

living upon the results of their hunting expedi-ball-which, when handled, divided itself into tions. They do not seem to be so small-if we three parts-I always found it full of young white may judge from the author's measurements-as ants, in different stages of growth, and also of M. Du Chaillu would have us believe. Indeed, eggs." so far as we can gather from the following de scription, they are a race closely allied to the Boschismen of more southern Africa:

M. Du Chaillu's further description of his ob servations of this ant colony will prove most attractive reading to lovers of natural history, but "The color of these people was of a dirty yel- the details are too extensive for introduction into low, much lighter than the Ashangos who sur these pages. Professor Owen's portion of the rounded them, and their eyes had an untamable present work has some importance, although it wildness about them that struck me as being very establishes no law which has not already been deremarkable. In their whole appearance, physique duced. He describes, in pure but not simple anand color, they are totally unlike the Ashangos atomical fashion, three skulls, one being that of among whom they live. The Ashangos declare a native of Fernand Vas, and the two others bethat the Obongos intermarry among themselves, ing those of people of the Fan tribe, that strange sisters with brothers, doing this to keep the group of cannibal Africans, of which M. Du families together as much as possible. Their Chaillu has more than once given an account. foreheads are exceedingly low and narrow, and There is one statement of Professor Owen's which they have prominent cheek-bones; but I did not is of considerable interest: it relates to the dolinotice any peculiarity in their hands or feet, or cho-cephalic character of these skulls. Speakin the position of the toes, or in the relative length ing of this term as applied to the skulls brought of their arms to the rest of their bodies; but over by the author, he says that it does not imply their legs appeared to be rather short in propor- a "greater length of cranium than in Indian tion to their trunks; the palms of their hands and European skulls, which would be called seemed quite white. The hair of their heads brachy-cephalic, but merely a want of filling grows in very short curly tufts. This is the out of the brain-case, by lateral or vertical exmore remarkable, as the Ashangos and neighbor- pansion." Here we may remark that the Proing tribes have rather long bushy hair on their fessor takes the opportunity of saying a word in heads, which enables them to dress it in various favor of his view that the brain of man is absoways. The young man examined had an un-lutely different from that of the ape, for in conusual quantity of hair also on his legs and breast, growing in short curly tufts, similar to the hair of the head."

cluding the chapter he writes:

"In all the negro-skulls in the present collection, as in those of Boschismen, Mincopies, Australians, and every other variety that has come under my observation, the essential characters of the archencephalous sub-class, and of its sole genus and species, are as definitely marked as in the skulls of the highest white races."

In his description of the white and other ants, the author displays that lack of minute observation which nothing but a long experience in the study of organisms can give. For example, it appears to us that some of the creatures which he puts along with the white ants (Neuropterous Altogether we may say of M Du Chaillu's work, insects) are genuine Hymenoptera; and again, that it is interesting as a book of travels, and is his descriptions, save in so far as they relate to instructive in relation to those departments of the character of the habitation, and the larger science to which the author has given his attenexternal features of the insect, are useless as tion. If we were to be very critical, we should means of zoological diagnosis. Much excuse for say that in many instances the style was rough this lies in the circumstance that the author's and jerky. But on the whole, the author's Engspecimens were all lost in his retreat from Mo-lish is readable, and his book is good. M. Du noau Kombo, and therefore that he was obliged to describe from memory alone the objects he had seen. He describes five or six different kinds of ant, some of them being unquestionably Termites. His account of the Mushroom-hived Termes is interesting. Speaking of the habitation of this species, he says:

"These singular hives, shaped like gigantic mushrooms, are scattered by tens of thousands over the prairie of Otando. The top is from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, and the column about five inches; the total height is from ten to fifteen inches. They are not all uniformly built, but differ in the roundness or sharp ness of their summits. The hive is not so firmly planted in the ground but that it may be knocked down by a well-planted kick. When felled, the base of the pillar is found to have rested on the ground, leaving a circular hollow, in the middle of which is a ball of earth full of cells, which enters the centre of the base of the pillar, and the cells are eagerly defended by a multitude of the soldier class of the ants, which I took to be males, all striving to bite the intruder with their pincer-like jaws. On breaking open the

Chaillu is not an Englishman, and cannot there fore be expected to distinguish himself in what so many English travellers fail-clear English composition.

Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. By CHARLES DICKENS. With Original Illustrations by S. EYTINGE, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.-This is admitted to be one of the best. works of the great novelist, and is here reproduced in a compact and neat form. The only thing to be regretted in this beautiful "Diamond Edition" is the smallness of the type, which will deprive many of the privilege of renewing their acquaintance with it.

Tegnér, Bishop of Wexiö. By the Rev. WIL-
Frithoof's Saga. From the Swedish of Esaias
LIAM LEWERY BLASKLEY, A.M. First American
York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1867.-Tegnér is one
Edition.
New
Edited by BAYARD TAYLOR,
of the great poets of Sweden, and we are glad
to have his verse rendered into English, and

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introduced to the American public. His poetry | waistcoatdom would writhe with indignation. has but to be known to be highly appreciated. We do not know what Boston and Washington, This volume is the second of a uniform series of Chicago or Saratoga, say of Mr. Dixon's fascinatforeign poems, lately inaugurated by the publi- ing volumes, but we acknowledge that we are cation of King Rene's Daughter, from the not without suspicion that his representation of Danish of Henrik Hertz. We are happy to America may seem to those most concerned to learn from the publishers that the public appre- be almost as one-sided as our conjectural misciate this effort, and that other works are speed- representation of English Society. ily to follow. The next will be Lessing's Nathan the Wise, with the splendid Introductory Essay of Fischer, translated and edited by the Rev. O. B. Frothingham.

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Pastor's Wedding Gift. By WM. M. THAYER. Boston: Nichols & Noyes, 1867.-A beautiful little book, full of wise and judicious counsel and suggestion, appropriate as a bridal gift.

The Story of Martin Luther. Edited by Miss WHATELY. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee. New-York: A. D. F. Randolph. An admirable life of the great Reformer, designed especially for young minds. The style is simple, and the narrative gracefully related. The chief incidents of Luther's life, and the main events of the Reformation, are grouped together in an intelligent and highly interesting Miss Whately is a daughter of the late Archbishop Whately.

manner.

The same publishers have given us another neat volume, well adapted to interest the younger members of the household, entitled The BerryPickers of Wisconsin. Both these volumes should go into the Sunday-School library.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the charm and novelty of these volumes. They introduce us to modes of solving the social problem, which are startling and even terrible to contemplate. which the author gives to various abnormal Notwithstanding the almost exclusive attention relations between the sexes, he has not convinced us that the organizations of which he treats do other than touch the outermost rind of American life. The sympathetic spirit with which Mr. Dixon appears to have studied Mormonism at the Great Salt Lake, Shakerism at Mount Lebanon, and Bible. Communism at Oneida Creek; the couleur de rose in which he paints these revolting excrescences on American society; his surpassing latitude of moral recognition, coupled with repeated and dexterous concessions of the fundamental truths of the religion of Christ, almost remind us of the Catholicity and Christian charity which ooze through every page of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. As the volumes will be probably perused by most of our readers, it is unnecessary to give any detailed exposition of their contents. We may, however, remark that the portion of the work which appears to us by far the most interesting is Mr. Dixon's account of the adventures of his journey, from the banks of the Missouri to the Paradise of Brigham Young. Not often do we find, a traveller's journal so redolent with wit, so piquant and epigrammatic, so diversified with historical allusions and ethnological detail, without entangling the thread of its progress. Rarely has a tedious journey been described in less tedious fashion. The physical strength, pluck, and good temper of the author and his companion appear never to have failed. They do not seem to have encountered imminent perils, and yet, as we follow their course in their little covered van-for the honor of protecting which with their revolvers they had the privilege of paying five hundred dollars-we listen with breathless interest while they relate how they had to combat the prejudices and run the gauntlet of the wild Indian hordes whe claimed as their birthright the new road of the imperial mail. Though neither of them were scalped, or had even their

New America. By WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON. With Illustrations from Original Photographs. In two volumes. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1867. If a distinguished American having an intimate knowledge of men and things gained from an extensive acquaintance with many lands; possessing great descriptive power; capable of forming large and comprehensive views of affairs; an historian of the past; a powerful controversialist; and having abundant means of acquiring information about the old country, were to pay us a visit, and at the end of it were to furnish our Transatlantic cousins with a brilliant account of our "casual wards," and "dens of thieves," devoting great space to the Agapemone of Mr. Prince, chronicling the minutest affairs connected with the Seventhday Baptists, and giving a hundred pages to the exciting controversies which divide the Plymouth Brethren from each other; were he further to give photographs of the leading Mr. Dixon's photographic sketches of natural members of the Wesleyan Association, carefully scenery, the brilliant touches with which he indistinguishing them from the New Connection troduces snipes and carrion crows, prairie dogs, Methodists, to say a few words about Lord Rus- and locusts, and his discriminating, yet at the sell and detail the chit-chat of the club-houses, same time dazzling, pictures of the haunts and make a passing reference to Colenso, and Reform, habits of the Red Indian chief and his squaw, and call the savory Olla Podrida thus concocted give unusual vivacity and charm to the monotNew-England," we imagine that all white-onous pilgrimage. There is an interesting

66

eye-teeth drawn," by Cheyenne, Sioux, or Road agents, yet the air of the Prairies seems to be tremulous with the war-whoop, while ferocity, licentiousness, starvation, and all the wrath of the elements are hovering on their track.

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speculation suggested, en passant, as to the influence of the wild Indian upon the progress of civilization. Thus it has two sides; the immediate contact of the white and red races has produced this melancholy result that each has learned the vices of the other; but Mr. Dixon suggests that the very idea of state rights in the far West found its earliest type in the entire independence of each of the various Indian tribes, and that the confederation of Iroquois may have possibly suggested the idea of the confederation of the Independent States of the Union, and that whatever influence spirit-rapping and sorcery may now have upon American society was prob ably derived from these great adepts in such mysteries. Whether or not this is the case, there is no doubt that European princes, German professors, Oriental patriarchs, and perhaps nearly one fourth of the human race, have learned the art of inhaling the fumes of a wild prairie weed, after a fashion taught in a red Indian wigwam. Mr. Dixon gives a graphic description of the town of Denver, where several routes from the Atlantic to the Pacific intersect, and where his story of rowdyism and license, the lust of gain, and the rude and summary justice administered by Robert Wilson-who is styled cham- The second volume is occupied with numerpion and idol of the West-reads like a narra- ous discussions upon the relations of the sexes tive of some mediæval freebooters' haunt rather in America. Much interesting information is than a piece of contemporary history. Mr. Dixon given-in a style which almost wearies with its puts forth all his power, and devotes the greater dazzle-on the excitement prevailing in various part of one volume, to a description of the Mor- parts of America with reference to the rights of mon settlement in the territory of Utah, and woman, to the ominous renunciation by Amerihis object would seem to be, to induce us to be can ladies of the supreme function and greatest lieve that Mormonism is one of the great facts dignity of their sex, and their premeditated reof the nineteenth century. He will not allow volt against the tyranny of man. Mr. Dixon that the Mormon saints are either fanatics or apparently sympathizes with the allegation that dupes, and he tells the story of their early troubles, the Pandects of Justinian rather than "the Sertheir marvellous exodus from Nauvoo, their har- mon on the Mount" are the veritable basis of assing march through the pathless and inhospit- Christian legislation on these matters; though he able prairie to the shores of the Great Salt Lake, utters bold and we had almost said coarse warning as though it was reasonable to think that a at the appearance of this leprous spot on Ameripillar of heavenly light, or a supernatural in- can society. His account of the Shakers of stinct, had guided their course. That they Mount Lebanon, and the infamous communities of should have transformed an arid plain into a para- Oneida Creek, will help to give his volumes the dise, that their merits and successes should be a popularity of a "sensation" novel, but we entiregreater puzzle to the Americans than their ly dispute the principle which incautious readfaults, that they should now have their emis- ers might be tempted to infer, that the mercansaries in all parts of the world, and that the tile prosperity which appears to attend these slums of Whitechapel and the Bazaars of Cal- various and questionable methods of solving the cutta, the Staffordshire Potteries, and the Hert-problem of the sexes, is to be regarded as the fordshire hamlets should perpetually send recruits to this strange community, that they should reckon two hundred thousand adherents in various parts of the world, and that in Republican America, a pope king, self-elected, should have undisputed sway over these thou sands, are, without doubt, noticeable social phe

spicuous influence in the history of the world. From Mr. Dixon's own showing it is the lending of religious sanction to sensual indulgence of a most attractive kind, and this, working on the unbelief and misery created by the artificial condition of European society, which proves the great incentive to the Mormon pilgrimage. It is not our purpose to give any account of the organization, religious faith, or social condition of these misguided dupes; it is enough to say that vice the most hideous, and practices the most revolting, are strangely coupled with a considerable amount of practical sense and a keen eye to business; that Polygamy is beginning to produce its, natural fruit, in the degradation of woman and the emasculation of man, and that the supernatural revelation assumed to have been granted to the world, through Joseph" Smith and Brigham Young, which actually forms the religious nexus of these denizens of the New Jerusalem, is too monstrous a defiance of common-sense to retain any permanent hold upon the religious instinct. It is our belief that the eloquent comparisons drawn by our author between Mormonism and other religions will ap pear supremely ridiculous fifty years hence.

nomena.

But the tone of exaggeration and the "tall talk" in which the author indulges, when drawing his comparison between Mormonism and Christianity, is to us somewhat offensive. Parasitical growths on Christianity have at various epochs made their appearance; and doubtless, if the means of locomotion and the communication of ideas had been as rapid in the middle ages as they are in the nineteenth century, many of these would have acquired much more con

smallest vindication of the moral quality of the experiments. We are not yet so sunk in utili tarianism as to forget the language of him who said: "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." The volumes throw little if any light on the reconstruction of the American Union after its recent severe struggle, and they are utterly silent on the mighty moral and religious influences that are at work on the national life. A dissection of the warts and pimples on Oliver Cromwell's face might give as accurate an idea of the mighty soul and mightier deeds of the great Protector, as this elaborate and brilliant exposition of the deformities of American life affords of the real destiny and true character of the great Republic. The work is as fascinating, and we may add as one-sided, as any historical romance.

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