was handled in a manner that astonished those who beheld her. This fearless officer walked backward and forward over his deck, encouraging his men, and directing the fire, apparently unconscious of the balls that smote and crashed around him. His broadsides were so rapid and incessant, that several times the vessel was thought to be on fire. The surrender of the Confiance virtually terminated the contest, which had lasted two hours and a quarter; and as flag after flag struck, the galleys took to their sweeps and escaped. In the midst of this tremendous cannonade, came, at intervals, the explosions on shore.

The first gun in the bay was the signal for Prevost on land, and as the thunder of his heavy batteries mingled in with the incessant broadsides of the contending squadrons, the very shores trembled, and far over the lake, amidst the quiet farm-houses of Vermont, the echoes rolled away, carrying anxiety and fear into hundreds of families. Its shore was lined with men, gazing intently in the direction of Plattsburgh, as though from the smoke that rolled heavenward some tidings might be got of how the battle was going. To the spectators on the commanding heights around Plattsburgh, the scene was indescribably fearful and thrilling. It was as if two volcanoes were raging below-turning that quiet Sabbath morning into a scene wild and awful as the strife of fiends. But when the firing in the bay ceased, and the American flag was still seen flying, and the Union Jack down, there went up a shout that shook the hills. From the water to the shore, and back again, the deafening huzzas echoed and reechoed. The American army took up the shout, and sending it high and clear over the thunder of cannon, spread dismay and astonishment into the heart of the enemy's camp.

The American loss in killed and wounded, was one hundred and ten, of whom all but twenty fell on board the Saratoga and Eagle. That of the English was never fully known, though it was supposed to be nearly double. J. T. HEADLEY.

CCXII-DEATH OF MARMION.

WHEN, doffed his casque, he felt free âir,
Around 'gan Marmion wildly stare:

“Whêre's Harry Blount? Fitz-Eustace where ?

Linger ye here, ye hearts of hare!

Redeem my pennon-charge again!

Cry Marmion to the rescue !'-Vain!

Last of my race, on battle plain

That shout shall ne'er be heard again!

Yet my last thought is England's :-fly;
To Dacre bear my signet-ring;

Tell him his squadrons up to bring.
Fitz-Eustace to Lord Surrey hie:
Tunstall lies dead upon the field;
His life-blood stains the spotless shield:
Edmund is down-my life is reft;
The Admiral alone is left.

Let Stanley charge with spur of fire-
With Chester charge, and Lancashire,
Full upon Scotland's central host,
Or victory and England's lost.
Must I bid twice? Hence, varlets! fly!
Leave Marmion here alone-to die!"

They parted, and alone he lay;
Clare drew her from the sight away,
Till pain wrung forth a lowly moan,
And half he murmured-" Is there none,
Of all my halls have nurst,

Page, squire, or groom, one cup to bring
Of blessed water from the spring,

To slake my dying thirst?"

O, woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!

Scarce were the piteous accents said, When with the baron's casque, the maid

To the nigh streamlet ran:

Forgot were hatred, wrongs, and fears;
The plaintive voice alone she hears,
Sees but the dying man.

She stooped her by the runnel's side,
But in abhorrence backward drew;
For, oozing from the mountain wide,
Where raged the war, a dark red tide
Was curdling in the streamlet blue.
Where shall she turn!-behold her mark
A little fountain-cell,

Where water, clear as diamond spark,
In a stone basin fell.

66

'Speak not to me of shrift or prayer! I must redress her woes.

Short space, few words, are mine to spare;
Forgive and listen, gentle Clare!"

"Alas!" she said, "the while-
Oh think of your immortal weal!
In vain for Constance is your zeal;
She--died at Holy Isle."

Lord Marmion started from the ground,
As light as if he felt no wound;
Though in the action burst the tide,
In torrents from his wounded side.
"Then it was truth!"-he said-"I knew
That the dark presage must be true.
I would the fiend, to whom belongs
The vengeance due to all her wrongs,
Would spare me but a day!
For wasting fire, and dying groan,
And priests slain on the altar stone,
Might bribe him for delay.

It may not be!-this dizzy trance-
Curse on yon base marauder's lance,
And doubly cursed my failing brand!
A sinful heart makes feeble hand."
Then, fainting, down on earth he sunk,
Supported by the trembling monk.

With fruitless labor Clara bound

And strove to staunch the gushing wound;

The monk, with unavailing cares,
Exhausted all the church's prayers;
Ever, he said, that, close and near,
A lady's voice was in his ear,

And that the priest he could not hear,
For that she ever sung,

"In the lost battle, borne down by the flying,
Where mingles war's rattle with groans of the dying!"
So the notes rung;

"Avoid thee, fiend!-with cruel hand,
Shake not the dying sinner's sand!
Oh look, my son, upon yon sign
Of the Redeemer's grace divine;
Oh think on faith and bliss!
By many a death-bed I have been,
And many a sinner's parting seen,
But never aught like this."

The war, that for a space did fail,
Now trebly thundering, swelled the gale,
And-Stanley! was the cry;

A light on Marmion's visage spread,

And fired his glazing eye:

With dying hand above his head,

He shook the fragment of his blade,

And shouted "Victory!

Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!"
Were the last words of Marmion.

SIR W. SCOTT.

CCXIII-A VINDICATION OF POETRY.

POETRY has sometimes, and perhaps justly, been esteemed the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human nature— in other words, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies,

is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bonds of its earthly prison-house, and seeking · relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes further towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what has now been said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those sacred recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigor, and wings herself for her heavenward flight.

In an intellectual nature formed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, powers of original and evergrowing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it makes "all things new" for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms, and according to new affinities; 'breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects, life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and the splendors of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colors which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotiona which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendor, beauty, and happiness for which it was created.

Poetry, then, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness or misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with what is good in our nature, bursts of scorn or indig nation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral