them to the world. There are many things in Holmes' humorous pieces which bear strong resemblance to the similar productions of our English satirists, Swift, Pope, and Thomas Hood. He possesses Swift's quaintness and motley merriment, .

, Pope's polish and graceful point, and the solemn pathos and allied excruciating mirth of Hood. In addition to these he has a certain originality of his own, which would be difficult to define, but which would seem to consist in freedom and facility, engrafted on the broad, hearty nature of Brother Jonathan. No matter how earnestly the mock philanthropist may deprecate his irony, or how gravely the sanctimonious sophist may censure his lighit-hearted and innocuous mirth, Holmes may reasonably console himself with the reflection, that his objects have been for the promotion of good, and that the results of his labors have been duly and generously appreciated by his countrymen at home, and by all his benevolent readers in the mother country.

Poetry contains many fine passages : taking a retrospective glance, the author alludes to the universality of the object of his panegyric; he points out how all human beings are either more or less embued with poetic feelings :

There breathes no being but has some The hot-cheeked reveller, tossing down the pretence

wine, To that tine instinct called poctic sense ; To join the chorus pealing “Auld lang The rudest savage roaming through the wild, syne;" The simplest rustic, bending o er his child, The gentle maid, whose'azure eye grows dim, The infant listening to the warbling bird, While Heaven is listening to her evening The mother smiling at its half-formed hymn ; word;

The jewelled beauty, when her steps draw The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at near large,

The circling dance and dazzling chandelier ; The girl, turned matron to her babe-like E'en trembling age, when Spring's renewing charge;

air The freeman, casting with unpurchased Waves the thin ringlets of his silvered

hand The vote that shakes the turrets of the land; All, all are glowing with the inward flame, The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted Whose wider halo wreaths the poet's name, chain,

While, unembalmed, the silent dreamer dies, Dreams of the palm trees on his burning His menory passing with his smiles and plain;

sighs !

hair ;

The poem contains two excellent lyrics, a fine eulogium on Shakspere, and a scathing denunciation of the poetry of Despair. The poet most beautifully shews us how all things afford us subjects for poetry. The warrior is incited to battle by song, and the sweets of peace are chaunted by the muse. He evidently cherishes the theory regarding homer and the old poets, namely, that they have conceived all the poctical ideas which it was possible for man to originate, and concludes by shewing that although States rise and fall, temples are upreared, and topple to their bases, au earthquake may render useless a "century's toil," Poetry can make a name reverberate through the world during its existence. Terpsichore, contains much wit, humour, and sound judgment. It is written in a strictly

, classical spirit. A Rhymed Lesson, commences in a humorous vein, and goes on to show that God brought us into the world, not that he might tyrannize over us, but that we might possess the world for our enjoyment, having evinced our gratitude to him by our obedience to his laws, thus giving us an opportunity of working out our welfare.

The poem is especially intended for the uneducated poor, whom it instructs in those essential moral principles, and social virtues, with which, from their utter ignorance, they are necessarily unacquainted; it points out the necessity of holding our passions in check, inculcates christian toleration, and recommends dispassionate judgment: it winds up with a patriotic eulogium on America, well adapted to the poor and uneducated youth. The instruction is given in a vein, semi serious and semi comic, and is consequently most likely to be generally read.

How beautifully Holmes can indite a ballad, may be judged from,

But what if the stormy cloud should come,

And ruffle the silver sea?
Would he turn his eye from the distant sky,

Ts smile on a thing like thee?
O no, fair Lily, he will not send

One ray from his far-off throne;
The winds shall blow and the waves shall

flow,
And thou wilt be left alone.

THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY. The sun stepped down from his golden

throne, And lay in the silent sea, And the Lily had folded her satin leaves,

For a sleepy thing was she;
What is the Lily dreaming of ?

Why crisp the waters blue?
See, see, she is lifting her varnished lid !

Her white leaves are glistening through !
The Rose is cooling his burning chcek

In the lap of the breathless tide;-
The Lily hath sisters fresh and fair,

That would lie by the Rose's side;
He would love her better than all the rest,

And he would be fond and true;-
But the lily unfolded her weary lids,

And looked at the sky so blue. Remember, remember, thou silly one,

How fast will thy summer glide, And wilt thou wither a virgin pale,

Or flourish a blooming bride? " Oh the Rose is old, and thorny, and cold,

And he lives on earth," said she; "But the Star is fair and he lives in the air,

And he shall my bridegroom be."

There is not a leaf on the mountain top,

Nor a drop of evening dew,
Nor a golden sand on the sparkling shore,

Nor a pearl in the waters blue,
That he has not cheered with his fickle sinile

And warned with his faithless beam,
And will he be true to a pallid tlower,

That floats on the quiet stream?

Alas for the Lily! she would not heed,

But turned to the skies afar,
And bared her breast to the trembling ray

That shot from the rising Star;
The cloud came over the darkened sky,

And over the waters wide:
She looked in vain through the beating rain,

And sank in the stormy tide.

The Last Leaf, is decidedly the oddest of his productions,

and the one perhaps which is most calculated to display his
idiosyncrasies : we here insert it :-
THE LAST LEAF.

My grandmamma has said, -
I saw him once before,

Poor old lady, slie is dead

Long ago,-
As he passed by the door,
And again

That he had a Roman nose,
The pavement stones resound,

And his cheek was like a rose

In the snow.
As lie totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

But now his nose is thin,
They say that in his prime,

And it rests upon his chin
Ere the pruning knife of Time

Like a staff,
Cut him down,

And a crook is in his back,
Not a better man was found

And a melancholy crack
By the crier on his round

In his laugh.
Through the town.

I know it is a sin
But now he walks the streets,

For me to sit and grin
Aud he looks at all he meets

At him here:
Sad and wan,

But the old three-cornered hat,
And he shakes his feeble head,

And the breeches, and all that
That it seems as if he said

Are so queer!
“They are gone."
The mossy marbles rest

And if I should live to be
On the lips that he had pressed

The last leaf upon the trec
In their bloom,

In the spring, -
And the names he loved to hear

Let them smile, as I do now,
Have been carved for many a year

At the old forsaken bough
On the tomb.

Where I cling.
Exquisite satire, and marvellous fidelity, are evidenced in
the following: -
MY AUNT.

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;
My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown ;

They laced her up, they starved her down,

To make her light and small;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone;

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, I know it hurts her,--though she looks

They screwed it up with pins; As cheerful as she can;

O never mortal suffered more ller waist is ampler than her life,

In penance for her sins. For life is but a span.

So, when my precious aunt was done, My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!

My grandsire brought her back; Her hair is alınost grey ;

(By daylight, lest some rabid youth Why will she train that winter curl

Might follow on the track ;) In such a spring-like way?

"Ah !" said my grandsire, as he shook Ilow can she lay her glasses down,

Some powiler in his pan, And say she reads as well,

" What could this lovely creature do When through a double convex lens,

Against a desperate man !"
She just makes out to spell?
Her father ;-grandpapa ! forgive

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
This erring lip its smiles,--

Nor bandit cavalcade,
Vowed she should make the finest girl Tore from the trembling father's arms,
Within a hundred miles;

Ilis all accomplished maid.
He sent her to a stylish school;

For her bow happy had it been ! "Twas in her thirteenth June;

And Heaven had spared to me And with her, as the rules required,

To see one sad, ungathered rose “ Two towels and a spoon."

On my ancestral tree. In the next quotation, we are furnished with a most extraordinary instance of appropriate imagery : we are astonished at the happy manner in which every line bears reference to the Tailor's calling, and by the wonderful facility with which all external objects, be they great or sinall, are compared to the humble technicalities which characterize his profession.

The following is in Holmes' best style :

The bruit de rape and the bruit de scie He shook his head ;-there's grave discase,

And the bruit de diable all are combined ; I greatly fear you all must die; How happy Bouilland would be,

A slight post-mortem, if you please,
If he a case like this could find !

Surviving friends would gratify.
Now, when the neighbouring doctors found
A case so rare had been descried,

The six young damsels wept alond,
They every day her ribs did pound

Which so prevailed on six young men, In squads of twenty; so she died.

That each his honest love avowed,
Then six young damsels, slight and frail,

Whereat they all got well again.
Received this kind young Doctor's cares ;
They all were getting slim and pale, This poor young man was all aghast;
And short of breath on mounting stairs.

The price of Stethoscopes came down!

And so he was reduced at last They all made rhymes with sighs" and

To practise in a country town. "skies, And loathed their puddings and buttered The Doctors being very sore, rolls,

A Stethoscope they did devise, And dieted, much to their friends' surprise, That had a rammer to clear the bore, On pickles, and pencils, and chalk, and With a knob at the end to kill the flies.

coals. So fast their little hearts did bound,

Now use your ears, all you that can, The frightened insects buzzed the more; But don't forget to mind your eyes, So over all their chests he found

Or you may be cheated like this young man, The rale sifflant, and rale sunure.

By a couple of silly abnormal flies. We close this first paper on American Poets, and our second, and concluding, portion, shall be devoted to a review of the works of Dana, Willis, Lowell, Poe, Whittier, and Read. We have not in this, our present division of the subject, written critically of the poets specially noticed, or of the probable effects which their productions may have upon the literature of America ; we consider that such a disquisition belongs to the concluding section of our paper.