The smile of your heroic cheer may float Above all floods of earthly agonies, Purification being the joy of pain!

of man.

THE VISION OF POETS is the second elaborate poem in the collection. Its design is to show the mystery of the poetical character, by which genius is at war with society, and with itself; by which it pines in sorrow and neglect and suffering, both self-imposed and from without, while the rest of the world apparently lives on in joy and carelessness. Its object is the noblest that can employ the pens of poets, to "vindicate the ways of God to man," to teach reconciliation and submission, to calm rebellion, to create smiles of happiness out of very unhappiness itself in the wounded breast Miss Barrett may take for her shield the poet's motto, " We learn in suffering what we teach in song." In truth, this verse of divinest bards is no child's play of the faculties, no elegant amuse ment of the boudoir penned on satin paper with crowquill for the admiration of taste and fashion, no accidental thing to be picked up by a man as he goes along the world, played with for a while and laid aside. It is the soul's experience, wrung from the very depths of a noble nature, and of the noble nature only ;— and the whole life-childhood, youth with its shadows, manhood with calm day-light-the son, the lover, the father -must form its completeness.

A poet in whom the inward light prevented sleep, goes forth into a wood, like early Chaucer when he saw the wonders of the Flower and Leaf, and there meets with a lady on a snow-white palfrey, who leads him over the moor, where he is bade to drink of three separate pools, which represent the poet's dower, and tastes successively of the world's use, a bitter draught; the world's love bitter too, and of the world's cruelty; upon which he swoons, and being purified by this earthly purgation, is admitted to the vision of poets, held in some vast hall of the imagination in dream-land, where a Hebrew angel, clad in Miltonic strength and splendor, ministers at an altar, surrounded by the great bards of time.

Then first, the poet was aware
Of a chief angel standing there
Before that altar, in the glare.

His eyes were dreadful, for you saw
That they saw God-his lips and jaw,
Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's law.

On the vast background of his wings
Arose his image! and he flings,
From each plumed arc, pale glitterings

And fiery flakes (as beateth more
Or less, the angel-heart!) before,
And round him, upon roof and floor,
Edging with fire the shining fumes,
While at his side, 'twixt light and glooms,
The phantasm of an organ booms.

In a deep pool, nurtured by one of the eddies at the foot of Niagara, and shrouded forever by the clouds of mist, hid in a basin of rock aside from the steps of the careless traveller, a rainbow is literally burnt in with deep metallic dyes, an arc of gold and purple, fixed and immoveable as steel, and surrounded by half-illumined spray, fragile as air. Miss Barrett's Wall of the Poets, with its massiveness and "air-drawn" grandeur, has recalled to us this image, showing that even in the poet's cloud-land Nature has her omniscient prototypes, and that the highest invention cannot get beyond the actual.

Among the portraits hung up in these "chambers of imagery" we see Shakspeare and Dante, Goethe and Schiller, Electric Pindar, quick as fear, With race-dust on his cheeks

***

And Virgil! shade of Mantuan beech
Did help the shade of bay to reach
And curl around his forehead high!-
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.

* * *

And Chaucer, with his infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine-
That mark upon his lip is wine.
Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim!
The shapes of suns and stars did swim
Like clouds from them, and granted him
God for sole vision! Cowley, there,
Drew straws to amber-foul to fair.
Whose active fancy debonnaire

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben-
Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows, when
The world was worthy of such men.

Before these good and great spirits a worldly crowd of those who take upon themselves unworthily the name of poets enter, and plead their cunning, their frivolity, their earthly-mindedness in their disguises

But all the foreheads of those born
And dead true poets flashed with scorn
Betwixt the bay-leaves round them worn-

Ay, jetted such brave fire, that they,
The new-come, shrank and paled away,
Like leaden ashes when the day

Strikes on the hearth.

The last expression is altogether Dan

tean.

To give the reader an idea of the variety of the poetical powers displayed in these volumes, we should have to follow in this way every separate poem, for each, with a fine under-current of the original mind of the authoress, is a new creation. These poems deserve to be studied as we study the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller. With the flexibility of language of the one, they have much of the moral significance of the other. The "Cry of the Children" is in the high lyrical German strain, beyond song-writing. A Rhapsody of Life's Progress recalls to us the philosopher of Weimar. In The Dead Pan, Miss Barrett has written a reply, call it rather a supplement, to Schiller's Gods of Greece. In felicity of language, in historical enthusiasm, in picturesque beauty, it is as certainly equal to Schiller's poem, as in its Christian morality it is superior. In a certain massiveness of thought and expression no woman may equal his manli

From the gloaming of the oak wood,
O ye Dryads, could ye flee?
At the rushing thunderstroke would
No sob tremble through the tree?—
Not a word the Dryads say,
Though the forests wave for aye..
For Pan is dead..

Have ye left the mountain places,
Oreads wild, for other tryst?
Shall we see no sudden faces
Strike a glory through the mist?
Not a sound the silence thrills,
Of the everlasting hills.

Pan, Pan is dead.

O twelve gods of Plato's vision,
Crown'd to starry wanderings,-
With your chariots in procession,
And your silver clash of wings!
Very pale ye seem to rise,
Ghosts of Grecian deities-

Now Pan is dead.

Jove, that right hand is unloaded,
Whence the thunder did prevail :
While in idiocy of godhead
Thou art staring the stars pale!
And thine eagle, blind and old,
Roughs his feather in the cold.
Pan, Pan is dead.

*

Neptune lies beside his trident,
Dull and senseless as a stone:
And old Pluto deaf and silent
Is cast out into the sun.
Ceres smileth stern thereat,-
"We all now are desolate-"
Now Pan is dead.

Aphrodite dead and driven
As thy native foam, thou art,
With the cestus long done heaving
On the white calm of thy heart!
Ai Adonis! At that shriek,

Not a tear runs down her cheek-
Pan, Pan is dead.

And the Loves we used to know from
One another, huddled lie,

Frore as taken in a snow-storm,
Close beside her tenderly,-
As if each had weakly tried
Once to kiss her as he died.
Pan, Pan is dead.

O brave poets, keep back nothing;
Nor mix falsehood with the whole!
Look up Godward! speak the truth in
Worthy song from earnest soul!
Hold, in high poetic duty,

Truest Truth the fairest Beauty!
Pan, Pan is dead.

In the poem on Victoria "Crowned and Wedded," there is a passage worthy of a chant in old Westminster Abbey:

And so the DEAD-who lie in rows beneath the minster floor,

There, verily an awful state maintaining

evermore

The statesman, whose clean palm will kiss no bribe whate'er it be

The courtier, who for no fair queen will rise up to his knee

The court-dame, who for no court-tire will leave her shroud behind

The laureate, who no courtlier rhyme than "dust to dust" can find

The kings and queens who having made that vow and worn that crown, Descended unto lower thrones and darker deep adown!

The Lost Bower is a happy piece of ruralizing, founded upon the recollections from days of childhood of a woodland bower, which is very beautifully and delClaude, vanishing away on the burden of icately painted with the softness of a sweet lines into airy distance. She had seen the bower once, but could not find it again. Time passed on, and many joys of the outer world and from humankind were lost to the poetess, who, reclining on her couch of illness, sees through the fingers which press upon her eyelids this vision of the trees, and grass, and the birds of old. Is it not found again in the verse beyond any concealment or disaster-in verse simple, natural, fluent and affluent?

The Rhyme of the Duchess May is a most musical ballad of the olden song, related by a bell-ringer in a church tower ringing for the dead, with the burden in every verse," Toll slowly!"

But we must pause somewhere. Miss Barrett's book is now before the American reader, and we confidently appeal to the mind of the country, recommending its cordial reception as a book that is pure, genuine, honest, a book of sustained power, well suited no less by its high Christian sentiment, than as an example of genius without artifice, to be profitable to the intellect of the country.

THE struggle for the general encouragement and promotion of American industry, by the establishment and support among us of new departments of productive labor, is of far earlier date and longer continuance than is commonly supposed. It has now been prosecuted for more than a century. While this country remained in a relation of colonial dependence on Great Britain, the American side of it was maintained at great disadvantage, but with indomitable spirit. It was a leading and then openly avowed object of British policy, to confine our people, so far as possible, to the production of colonial staples-to the cutting of timber, digging of ore, raising of grain, curing of pork, beef, &c., for the markets of the mother country, procuring thence our supplies of all descriptions of manufactures. Even Lord Chatham, our friend in the great struggle against arbitrary power, declared that Americans should be allowed to manufacture not even a hob-nail. Accordingly, acts of Parliament were passed from time to time, from the moment a disposition to minister to their own wants was manifested by our people, discouraging and thwarting that disposition. Thus, so early as 1699, only seventy-nine years after the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rockyears in great part devoted to desperate conflicts with savage nature, more savage men, and the wily and powerful civilized foemen on our northern frontierthe jealousy of England had been awakened by the progress of our household manufactures, and Parliament enacted "that no wool, yarn, or woollen manufactures of their American plantations, shall be shipped thence, or even laden in order to be transported, on any pretence whatever."

In 1719 the House of Commons declared "that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tends to lessen their dependence upon Great Britain."

Complaints continued to be made to Parliament of the setting up of new trades and manufactures in the colonies, to the detriment of the trade of the mother country. Thereupon the House of Com

VOL. I.-NO. 1.

mons, in 1731, directed the Board of Trade to inquire and report" with respect to laws made, manufactures set up, or trade carried on detrimental to the trade, navigation, or manufactures of Great Britain." The Board of Trade reported in February, 1742, and their report gives the best account now extant of the condition of our infant manufactures at that time. It informs Parliament that the government of Massachusetts Bay had lately passed an act to encourage the manufacture of paper, "which law interferes with the profit made by the British merchant on foreign paper sent thither."

They also reported that in all the colonies north of Delaware, and in Somerset county, Maryland, the people had acquired the habit of making coarse woollen and linen fabrics in their several families for family use. This, it was suggested, could not well be prohibited, as the people devoted to this manufacture that portion of time (the winter) when they could do nothing else. It was further stated, that the higher price of labor in the colonies than in England made the cost of producing cloth fifty per cent. greater in the colonies, and would prevent any serious rivalry with the manufactures of England. Still, the Board urged that something should be done to divert the attention and enterprise of the colonists from manufactures, otherwise they might in time become formidable. To this end, they urged that new encouragement be held out to the production of naval stores. "However, we find (says the Board) that certain trades are carried on, and manufactures set up, which are detrimental to the trade, navigation, and manufactures of Great Britain." Answers from the Royal Governors of the several colonies to queries propounded to them by the Board, were next requested. They generally reported that few or no manufactures were carried on within their several jurisdictions, and these few were of a rude, coarse kind. In New England, however, leather was made, a little poor iron, and a considerable aggregate of cloths for domestic use; but the great part of the 7

clothing of the people was imported from Great Britain. The hatters of London complained that a good many hats were made, especially in New York. In conclusion, the Board sums up :

"From the foregoing statement, it is observable that there are more trades carried on, and manufactures set up in the provinces on the continent of America to the northward of Virginia, prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of Great Britain, particularly in New England, than in any other of the British colonies; which is not to be wondered at, for their soil, climate, and produce being pretty nearly the same with ours, they have no staple commodities of their own growth to exchange for our manufactures, which puts them under greater necessity, as well as under greater temptations for providing for themselves at home; to which may be added, in the charter governments, the little dependence they have on the mother country, and consequently the small restraint they are under in any matters detrimental to her interests." They closed by repeating the recommendation that measures be taken to turn the industry of the colonies into new channels serviceable to Great Britain, particularly the production of naval

stores.

Parliament proceeded to act on these suggestions. That year (1732) an act was passed to prevent the exportation of hats out of any of His Majesty's colonies or plantations in America, and to restrain the number of apprentices taken by the hat-makers in the said colonies, and for the better encouraging the making of hats in Great Britain. By this act not only was the exportation of colonial hats to a foreign port prohibited, but their transportation from one British plantation to another was also prohibited under severe penalties, and no person was allowed to make hats who had not served an apprenticeship for seven years; nor could any hatter in the colonies have more than two apprentices at any one time; and no black or negro was permitted to work at the business of making hats.

The manufactures of iron next came in for a share in the paternal regard of Parliament. In 1750 Parliament permitted pigs and bars of iron to be imported into England from the colonies duty free; but prohibited the erection of any mill or other engine for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating forge to work with a

tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel in the colonies, under the penalty of two hundred pounds. And every such mill, engine, forge, or furnace was declared a common nuisance, and the governor of the colony, on the information of two witnesses on oath, was ordered to cause the same to be abated within thirty days, or to forfeit the sum of five hundred pounds. Such was the spirit, such were the exactions of British legislation while our fathers remained subject to the mother country. [See the foregoing facts more fully cited from the original records in Pitkin's Statistics, edition of 1835, pp. 461-66.]

The consequences of this state of enforced and abject dependence on Great Britain for the great mass of our fabrics are such as have been a thousand times realized in the history of the world. Although allowed a nearer approach to fair trade with the mother country than she has ever vouchsafed us since our independence, the colonies were never able to sell enough raw produce to England to pay for the manufactures with which she was constantly flooding us. Our people had cleared much land, built houses, and provided every thing essential to physical comfort, but the course of buying more than their exports would pay for could not be evaded. In the midst of outward prosperity, the colonies groaned under an increasing load of debts, which were constantly effecting the transfer of property here to owners in Great Britain. It was a standing reproach against our Revolutionary fathers that they flew to arms to evade the payment of their mercantile debts and the importunities of their creditors. And the Congress which assembled in 1765 to remonstrate against the Stamp Act, drew a graphic though sad picture of the calamities which had befallen the people-the inultiplication of debts, the disappearance of money, the impossibility of payment, the stagnation of industry and business, through the excessive influx of foreign fabrics.

The war of the Revolution corrected this tendency, cutting off importation, and largely increasing our own household manufactures. But peace, in the utter absence of all protective legislation on our part, revived the mischief which had been trampled beneath the iron heel of war. The struggle for independence had left all the States embarrassed, trade completely disordered