Cut-thwack! sounded through the confused hum at the foot of the tree, marvellously reminding me of the interruptions that occasionally broke in upon the otherwise monotonous hours of my school-days. A sharp cracking finally told me the chopping was done; and looking aloft, I saw the mighty tree balancing in the air. Slowly and majestically, it bowed for the first time towards its mother-earth, gaining velocity as it descended, shivering the trees that interrupted its course, and falling with thundering sound, splintering its gigantic limbs, and burying them deeply in the ground. The sun, for the first time in at least two centuries, broke uninterruptedly through the chasm made in the forest, and shone with splendour upon the magnificent Tom, standing a conqueror among his spoils.' BRYANT-VERPLANCK-LEGGETT-SANDS-NEAL-KENNEDY-WARE JUDD LONGFELLOW-POE-FAY-MITCHELL-MELVILLE-MAYO- WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, whose poems have been reviewed, has distinguished himself as a prose-writer chiefly by his numerous articles in the Evening Post newspaper, which he has edited during more than twenty years. He has written several short works of fiction, including contributions to The Talisman, published in 1827-1829, and some portions of the work entitled Tales of Glauber Spa (1832). In these two miscellanies, Bryant was assisted by his friends VERPLANCK, LEGGETT, and SANDS. His own tales were marked rather by correct style and good taste than by any extraordinary display of invention. Among the contributions of his friends, the tale of Major Egerton, by Verplanck, is one of the best. It is lively and pleasant in its style of narrative and description, though highly improbable and fantastic in its incidents. Verplanck's most important contribution to literature is an edition of Shakspeare, published in 1844-46. JOHN NEAL, already noticed as a writer of verse, wrote a great number of novels, tales, sketches, reviews, and magazine papers. His first novel, oddly entitled Keep Cool, is described by himself as a foolish fiery thing,' and was followed by Logan, which a critic characterises as a sort of rhapsody in two thick volumes.' Seventy-six, a better fiction, was written during odd hours, in less than a month;' and within two or three months after, the author produced another novel in two volumes, Randolph, which attracted notice by its sketches of living public characters. During a visit to England, Neal wrote several articles in Blackwood's Magazine, and resided for some time with Jeremy Bentham, whose Principles of Legislation he translated from the French of Dumont. After his return to his native country, Neal wrote Rachel Dyer, a story of the days of Cotton Mather (1828); Authorship, a tale (1830); The Down-easters (1831), and Ruth Elder; besides numerous papers in his weekly miscellany, The Yankee. The whole of his writings in prose and verse are strongly marked by the faults of extreme haste and carelessness. In attempting fine writing, he seldom avoids the step from the sublime to the ridiculous. JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY (born 1795), author of Swallow Barn, or a Sojourn in the Old Dominion (1832), and other fictions giving sketches of life and manners in Virginia, Carolina, and Maryland, is a politician, whose leisure has been partly devoted to light literature. His tales, marked by considerable skill in portraiture of characters, and containing many pleasant descriptive passages, have been very successful. The first has been characterised as resembling in plan Irving's Bracebridge Hall. The scene is laid in Lower Virginia (the 'Old Dominion'), and the object is to describe the state of society in the ancient commonwealth. The leading character, a wealthy country gentleman, is described with genial humour, and the series of adventures is so arranged as to illustrate the various aspects of life in Virginia. A second novel by Mr Kennedy was entitled Horse-shoe Robinson (1835), and was even more popular than the first. It narrates the adventures of a yeoman who took a prominent part in the civil war. A more carefully written, yet less successful fiction, Rob of the Bowl, appeared in 1838. Its scene was in Maryland, at the time when the quarrels of Protestants and Catholics disturbed the colony. In his first work, Kennedy wrote in the manner of Washington Irving. There may be no proofs of direct imitation in Swallow Barn, but the tone, as well as the plan of the book, reminds us of the Crayon sketches. The portrait drawn in the passage appended as a specimen, bears too close a resemblance to the studies of other country gentlemen in Bracebridge Hall and The Sketch-book. In his later works, Kennedy assumed a more original style. 'Frank Meriwether is now in the meridian of life-somewhere close upon forty-five. Good cheer and a good temper both tell well upon him. The first has given him a comfortable full figure; and L the latter certain easy contemplative habits, that incline him to be lazy and philosophical. He has the substantial planter look that belongs to a gentleman who lives on his estate, and is not much vexed with the crosses of life. I think he prides himself on his personal appearance, for he has a handsome face, with a dark blue eye, and a high forehead that is scantily embellished with some silver-tipped locks that, I observe, he cherishes for their rarity: besides, he is growing manifestly attentive to his dress, and carries himself erect, with some secret consciousness that his person is not bad. It is pleasant to see him when he has ordered his horse for a ride into the neighbourhood, or across to the court-house. On such occasions, he is apt to make his appearance in a coat of blue broadcloth, astonishingly new and glossy, and with a redundant supply of plaited ruffle strutting through the folds of a Marseilles waistcoat: a worshipful finish is given to this costume by a large straw-hat, lined with green silk. There is a magisterial fulness in his garments that betokens condition in the world, and a heavy bunch of seals, suspended by a chain of gold, jingles as he moves, pronouncing him a man of superfluities. It is considered rather extraordinary that he has never set up for Congress; but the truth is, he is an unambitious man, and has a great dislike to currying favour-as he calls it. And, besides, he is thoroughly convinced that there will always be men enough in Virginia willing to serve the people, and therefore does not see why he should trouble his head about it. Some years ago, however, there was really an impression that he meant to come out. By some sudden whim, he took it into his head to visit Washington during the session of Congress, and returned, after a fortnight, very seriously distempered with politics. He told curious anecdotes of certain secret intrigues which had been discovered in the affairs of the capital, gave a pretty clear insight into the views of some deeplaid combinations, and became all at once painfully florid in his discourse, and dogmatical to a degree that made his wife stare. Fortunately, this orgasm soon subsided, and Frank relapsed into an indolent gentleman of the opposition; but it had the effect to give a much more decided cast to his studies, for he forthwith discarded The Whig and took to The Inquirer, like a man who was not to be disturbed by doubts; and as it was morally impossible to believe what was written on both sides, to prevent his mind from being abused, he, from this time forward, gave an implicit assent to all the facts that set against Mr Adams. The consequence of this straightforward and confiding deportment was an unsolicited and complimentary notice of him by the executive of the state. He was put into the commission of the peace; and having thus become a public man against his will, his opinions were observed to undergo some essential changes. He now thinks that a good citizen ought neither to solicit nor decline office; that the magistracy of Virginia is the sturdiest pillar that supports the fabric of the constitution; and that the people, " though in their opinions they may be mistaken, in their sentiments they are never wrong" "-with some other such dogmas, that, a few years ago, he did not hold in very good repute. In this temper, he has of late embarked upon the millpond of county affairs, and notwithstanding his amiable and respectful republicanism, I am told he keeps the peace as if he commanded a garrison, and administers justice like a cadi. He has some claim to supremacy in this last department; for during three years of his life he smoked cigars in a lawyer's office at Richmond; sometimes looked into Blackstone and the Revised Code; was a member of a debating-society that ate oysters once a week during the winter; and wore six cravats and a pair of yellowtopped boots as a blood of the metropolis. Having in this way qualified himself for the pursuits of agriculture, he came to his estate a very model of landed gentlemen. Since that time, his avocations have had a certain literary tincture; for having settled himself down as a married man, and got rid of his superfluous foppery, he rambled with wonderful assiduity through a wilderness of romances, poems, and dissertations, which are now collected in his library, and, with their battered blue covers, present a lively type of an army of continentals at the close of the war, or an hospital of veteran invalids. These have all at last given way to the newspapers—a miscellaneous study very enticing to gentlemen in the country-that have rendered Meriwether a most discomfiting antagonist in the way of dates and names. He has great suavity of manners, and a genuine benevolence of disposition that makes him fond of having his friends about him; and it is particularly gratifying to him to pick up any genteel stranger within the purlieus of Swallow Barn, and put him to the proof of a week's hospitality, if it be only for the pleasure of exercising his rhetoric upon him. He is a kind master, and considerate towards his dependents, for which reason, although he owns many slaves, they hold him in profound reverence, and are very happy under his dominion. All these circumstances make Swallow Barn a very agreeable place, and it is accordingly frequented by an extensive range of his acquaintances. There is one quality in Frank that stands above the rest: he is a thoroughbred Virginian, and consequently does not travel much from home, except to make an excursion to Richmond, which he considers emphatically as the centre of civilisation. Now and then, he has gone beyond the mountain, but the upper country is not much to his taste, and, in his estimation, only to be resorted to when the fever makes it imprudent to remain upon the tide. He thinks lightly of the mercantile interest, and, in fact, undervalues the manners of the cities generally; he believes that their inhabitants are all hollow-hearted and insincere, and altogether wanting in that substantial intelligence and honesty that he affirms to be characteristic of the country. He is a great admirer of the genius of Virginia, and is frequent in his commendation of a toast in which the state is compared to the mother of the Gracchi: indeed, it is a familiar thing with him to speak of the aristocracy of talent as only inferior to that of the landed interest-the idea of a freeholder inferring to his mind a certain constitutional pre-eminence in all the virtues of citizenship, as a matter of course. The solitary elevation of a country gentleman, well to do in the world, begets some magnificent notions. He becomes as infallible as the pope; gradually acquires a habit of making long speeches; is apt to be impatient of contradiction, and is always very touchy on the point of honour. There is nothing more conclusive than a rich man's logic anywhere; but in the country, amongst his dependents, it flows with the smooth and unresisted course of a gentle stream irrigating a verdant meadow, and depositing its mud in fertilising luxuriance. Meriwether's sayings about Swallow Barn import absolute verity; but I have discovered that they are not so current out of his jurisdiction. Indeed, every now and then, we have some obstinate discussions when any of the neighbouring potentates, who stand in the same sphere with Frank, come to the house; for these worthies have opinions of their own, and nothing can be more dogged than the conflict between them. They sometimes fire away at each other with a most amiable and inconvincible hardihood for a whole evening, bandying interjections, and making bows, and saying shrewd things with all the courtesy imaginable : but for unextinguishable pertinacity in argument, and utter impregnability of belief, there is no disputant like your country gentleman who reads the newspapers. When one of these discussions fairly gets under-way, it never comes to an anchor again of its own accord -it is either blown out so far to sea as to be given up for lost, or puts into port in distress for want of documents, or is upset by a call for the boot-jack and slippers-which is something like the previous question in Congress. If my worthy cousin be somewhat over-argumentative as a politician, he restores the equilibrium of his character by a considerate coolness in religious matters. He piques himself upon being a high-churchman, but he is only a rare frequenter of places of worship, and very seldom permits himself to get into a dispute upon points of faith. If Mr Chub, the Presbyterian tutor in the family, ever succeeds in drawing him into this field, as he occasionally has the address to do, Meriwether is sure to fly the course : he gets puzzled with Scripture names, and makes some odd mistakes between Peter and Paul, and then generally turns the parson over to his wife, who, he says, has an astonishing memory. WILLIAM WARE, born 1797, a Unitarian clergyman, and a descendant from one of the earliest settlers of Massachusetts, is the author of two well-known romances founded on ancient history-The Fall of Palmyra (1836), and Probus, or Rome in the Third Century (1838). The first of these works is given in the |