pitality of a friendly roof; and as I rested in an ample arm-chair from the fatigues of my journey, which, in my debilitated state, had nearly exhausted my strength, I felt that here "I could take mine ease." The reader will perceive, that in the journey from Havana to Guines and thence to this place, I met with not a single accident; that the means of travelling were easy, and the difficulties of the route only nominal. I moreover was not compelled to speak one word of Spanish; for whenever I left a place, full directions were given to the postlion where to carry me, and as to the dangers of the road, I have learned to disbelieve nine tenths of the tales of robbery I hear, and seldom carry pistols, unless when rambling through unfrequented woods, where the only danger is from the cimarones. These, being often but a few months from the wilds of Africa, retain much of their native ferocity, but are easily kept off by fire arms. The courtesy of the Spaniard is well known, and there is no country through which a stranger can pass more easily than Cuba, if he will but obey the laws regarding passports, etc., and refrain from an insolent bearing towards those with whom he comes in contact. El desterrado, which against the neck of his intelligent steed suf- |I could not but rejoice heartily in the change from ficed to guide him. We crossed rather a barren the cold civilities of an hotel, to the unstinted hoscountry for a couple of leagues, when my postilion turning to the left through a newly made road, I parted company with the other volantes, and entered a succession of deep woods. I now met few persons, but a solitary traveller could occasionally be seen riding rapidly along, his valise buckled to the back of his saddle, and his holsters fixed to the crupper. My postilion, who seemed impatient to arrive at the end of his journey, kept the horses in a continued trot, galloping up all the hills, and we soon reached the Canimar river, which, seen from the high grounds we were descending, presented a picturesque landscape. From its margin, high cliffs rose abruptly, covered with air plants, vines and shrubbery, having their summits crowned by large timber; while the stream silently glided out of one gorge in the mountains to enter another, and was soon lost to the view. On the opposite shore was the Caserio, the embarcadero at which all the produce of the surrounding country is shipped by launches to Matanzas, its wharehouses reaching to the very edge of the water; while a road was seen leading up the steep hill behind it, with several ox-carts slowly descending into the village. On the banks I met two pretty girls with their horses, afraid to enter the swollen stream; they gazed wistfully at my volante, and I was more than half tempted to offer a passage; but my postilion driving suddenly into the water, which rose nearly to the top of the seat, I lost all thought of them in a desire to protect myself. After floundering about a while, we reached the other shore; and driving through the crowded streets of the Caseric, or small village, where hides, boxes of sugar, pack horses, oxen, carts and harrieros seemed all mingled in one mass, we moved rapidly over the stony road that led to my future residence. It was but two leagues distant, and I soon saw its lime hedge and coffee shrubs, and its numerous orange trees ladened with their golden fruit. A few more cracks of the whip, and I entered its avenue of low trimmed orange, and was set down at the door of the house, receiving the warm welcome of my kind friend. As I had passed the larger part of the two preceeding winters on this estate, I was known to all the slaves, who, as they passed, greeted me by low salaams, the must graceful of all bows; the arms being crossed on the chest, the head bent, and the body half bending, half sinking, and retiring slightly. The young creoles, who were gamboling on the secaderos, naked black imps, sent up a shout of "el medico, el medico," not unmindful of the dulces I had often thrown among them on a Sunday afternoon; and the large bloodhound, the frequent and close companion of many of my former rambles about the estate, suddenly recognizing me, expressed his joy by whining and rubbing all the red clay dust from his rough coat on my clothes. As Mercy's pledge from Him who knew no guile. TO MY MOTHER. BY MRS. MARIA G. BUCHANAN. Low breathe its tones around. Upon a woman's neck its arms are wound, And Mother is the sound That echo answers from her mystic cells. As wave on wave mounts high, From the crushed penitent; When 'tween him and his God frowns sin's dark wall, Which seems as if 'twere sent Oh! mother, fast between thy child and thee But still thy speaking smile's dear witchery Thro' sleep's dim realms by mortal sound unstired. Where love and peace are met. Thee do I ne'er forget, Thee will I love 'till life's last scene shall close. Tho' on thy lofty brow sad age has placed Though lines by time and sorrow deeply traced Beauty's best sunshine still illumes thy face. Is yet scarce faded, and love's spirit bright, Thou sangst 'till sleep flung round me her soft wile. Source of its melody, With whom are linked the brightest shapes that throng Unworthy far of thee Thee in whose breast all virtues have their birth. My Mother, when of thee I think, or speak, The energy of language is too weak, Its wondrous height and depth to fully prove, Words fail as dies the taper in the blast; "Tis known to Him above, ," "The Zucca," and particularly "The Question," "The Woodman and the Nightingale," with a few THAT ISLAND IN THE OCEAN OF THE WORLD. A more perfect truth was never uttered than the following, which may be found in his " REVOLT OF ISLAM"-"TO THE PURE ALL THINGS ARE PURE. What, but a generous nature, could have given birth to such a divine sentiment as this? "LET SCORN BE NOT REPAID WITH SCORN. He was the most purely ideal being that ever existed. He possessed the intellectuality of Plato, with the ideality of Æschylus, and the pathos of Sophocles. His divine conceptions are all embalmed in the sacred tenderness of melting pathos. He possessed the artistical skill of Moore, without his mannerism. One of his peculiar characteristics is the giving to inanimate objects the attributes of animation. His description of the manner in which the rock overhangs the gulf in "THE CENCI," is an instance of it, where he says it has, "From unimmaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and WITH THE AGONY WITH WHICH IT CLINGS SEEMS SLOWLY COMING DOWN,"- With whom we hope to live when death's dark gulf is passed. of Beatrice setting itself into a resolve: SHELLEY. (Extract from a Lecture on the " Genius of Shelley.") BY T. H. CHIVRES, M. D. "All mortal things must hasten thus To their dark end. LET US GO DOWN." "THE CENCI" is far superior to any thing written in modern times. The following lines are not to be surpassed by any thing that Shakspeare ever wrote: "They say that sleep, THAT HEALING DEW OF HEAVEN, "How rose in melody that child of Love!"-Young. STEEPS NOT IN BALM THE FOLDINGS OF THE BRAIN," &c. Shelley was a poet of the highest order. He His delineation of the character of Beatrice is was the heavenly nightingale of Albion, whose gol- true to the original. It is the most effectingly den eloquence rent the heart of the rose bud of beautiful that can be conceived. From the divine Love. There is an unstudied, natural elegance fountains of her infinite affections the warm tide of expression about his poems which makes them of her female nature gushes forth in unfathomable truly enchanting. There is a subtle delicacy of fullness. There are no leprous stains of selfishexpression, an indication of the wisdom-loving ness spotting the saintly purity of that divine form divinity within-which enervates while it capti- which stands before us in all its naked majesty. vates the admiring soul. He was the swiftest- Her unflinching determination is dignified by its winged bee that ever gathered the golden honey of sincerity. I firmly believe that any being who poetry from the Hybla of this world. He was, could thus be induced to vindicate and revenge her among the Poets, in delineating natural objects, injured honor, contains, in her very nature, the what Claude was among the painters in delineating essence of all that is noble and good. It is the the landscape. All his minor poems, and more * See note at end. wretchedness by which we are surrounded, which of his divine genius, he could transmute the most makes us what we are. There is a dignified com- earthly things into the most heavenly idealities. posure in her resignation to death, which nothing In his own beautiful language on the "DEATH OF bat an inward goodness could impart. Her pas- KEATS," sions were inspired by a lively respect for the sacredness of her honor, although they were the inaudible prophets of her own destiny. Her love, rising into "He is made one with Nature; there is heard devotion, is consecrated by her sorrows. There He is the "PRINCE ATHANASE" of his own beauti is a mournful sweetness in her death, and we em- ful creation. balm her virtues in our memory, while we weep over her misfortunes! "He had a gentle, yet aspiring mind; His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate Shelley has invested the most ideal thoughts in the most beautiful language. His poems are the most perfect idealisms of the subtelty of his divine gemus. His spirit was like a Sybil, who saw from the "heaven-kissing hill" of truth the vision of the coming centuries. The seeds of divine liberty, which he has sown in the hearts of England's slaves, will spring up, like immortal Amaranths, in The difference between Byron's poetry and Shelthe glorious Summer of To-come. Soon will the ley's consists in this, that the breathings of the Spring of Liberty, which he so much desired, burst former are the melancholy outbreaks of a spirit at forth, in all its splendor, on the enraptured souls war, from disappointment, with the world; those of of men. Then will her barren nakedness be the latter are the pathetic expressions of a soul covered with the green verdure of perpetual happi- which panted after an ideal of intellectual perfecness. Then will the winter of her slavery be clad tion. Shelley carolled for the listening ears of an in the rich garments of the Summer of Liberty. enraptured world, while Byron sang its requiem. Then will she appear like a BLESSED ISLAND rising Byron was like the sun in eclipse. Shelley was out of an ocean of divine tranquility, greened with like " Hesperus, the leader of the starry host of the freshness of an immortal SPRING, heaven." His poems are the elms of the soul, where there Moore is as different from both, as they are from are many palm trees, and much running water. each other. His poetry is the heart-sustaining Hope was the Evening and Morning Star of his expressions of the phases of his own uninterrupted life. The mother of his Hope was FAITH; her pleasures. Though widely different from Byron's, daughter, PATIENCE; and her husband, Love. Life in many respects, yet it has the same object in was to him precisely what Jean Paul Richter said view in regard to the perfection of man. They of it, “ Man has but two minutes and a half to live were no reformers-they appealed immediately to one to smile-one to sigh—and a half to love-for the affections and the passions of men. They the middle of this minute he dies!" He was wrote for the Present and the Future, when it annointed by the hands of Liberty as the Prophet should become Present, without any determinate of humanity. Some of his Elysian scenes are as object in view, save that of conferring on mankind, sadly pleasing as the first sight of the green pas- in general, the same kind of delight which they tures of our native land, from which we have been experienced themselves in their own compositions. absent a long time. We are, while perusing his Shelley was a reformer he had a more lofty object poems, like a Pilgrim in the LAND OF OLIVES, who in view. His poetry is the liquid expressions of sees the mournful aspect of the country around, that undying self-sacrificing desire within, to perwhile tasting of its delicious fruit. He treated the fect the nature of MAN-to establish some princimost of his enemies like the King of Aragon did ple, through the deathless yearnings of the divinity his. When some one railed out against him, he within him, for his regeneration. The poetry of sent him a purse of gold. Being asked the reason Byron and Moore will satisfy the intellectual wants for so doing, he replied, "When dogs bark, their of a Nation, far inferior to what Shelley conceived months must be stopped by some morsel." He was as his ideal of human greatness. The poetry of that divine harmonist whose seraphic breathings Byron and Moore is the studied expression of the were the requiem-carols of his soul panting after inspiration of the divinity within. Shelley's poetry perfection. There was in his patient spirit some- is the artless expression of the perfection of Art. thing of the tender sorrow which dictated the Book It proceeded from the burning fountains of his soul, OF JOB, mixed with the spirit-stiring felicities in the unpremeditated exercise of his prolific gewhich filled the heart of Solomon. He embalmed nius, with as much unstudied sweetness, for the his most tender expressions in the fountain of his gratification of the intellectual wants of perfectly heart's best tears, which were the outgushings of mature man, as did the crystalline waters from the the joy of his sorrow. By the astonishing alchemy Rock oF HOREB, when stricken by the rod of VOL. X-14 Moses, to quench the parching thirst of the Israelites in the valley of Rephidim. THE CRUSADER'S RETURN. BY D. H. ROBINSON. entitled, we think, "the Faith of Woman," published in the This poem is a counterpart to one by the same author, late Magnolia. This was also intended for that popular Magazine; but on its suspension, its accomplished Editor kindly sent it to the Messenger.-Ed. Mess. TO ISABELLA. DEAREST, will you accept this little poem as some slight atonement for the slander against your gentle sex contained in the rhymes you wot of?—The Author. Where should this music be? i' the air or the earth? "I hate inconstancy-I loathe, detest, It was the Venus Urania-the intellectual lovewhich is the handmaid of the heavenly Uranian Muse-which inspired the poetry of Shelley. She was the virgin which kept the fires of love upon the altar of his heart forever bright. It was the Venus Pandemos which inspired the poetry of Byron and Moore-as it appeals more directly to the passions of man. The poetry of Shelley was presided over by the elder Venus, the daughter of Uranus, who had no mother, but was co-eternal with the divine Berazhith. The poetry of Byron Weeping and Moore, and all the poets of passion, is the in-It crept by me upon the waters Allaying both their fury and my passion spiration of the younger Venus, the daughter of With its sweet air!"-The Tempest. Jupiter and Dione, who is called the Pandemian. Those who gaze upon the divine countenance of the Venus Urania, are ever afterwards impressed with the god-like grandeur of the immortal mind. She is the aspiration of the love of the intellectual. Those who gaze upon the less radiant countenance of the Venus Pandemos are inspired with a pasIsion to adore the form-not the soul. The former is the companion of the spiritual-the latter of the corporeal. The Venus Urania lives in the poetry of Shelley as the perfume does in the flower-she is the soul of the body of his verse. The intellectual love is the divine redolence of the rosebuds of thought, which adorn the enchanting garden of his soul. He has arrayed the spotless body of his divine love in the snow-white linen garments of the purest poetry. He stands in the TEMPLE OF FAME like a BAS RELIEF cut in the solid wall-you can never move him without pulling it down. *Note to p. 104. Shelley was probably indebted for this beautiful sentiment to the Bible, in which the following pas sage occurs."Unto the pure all things are pure; but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." Epis. to Tit. I., 15. Though he denied its truth, his mind could not but have appreciated the poetical and moral beauties of the Bible. Ed. Mess. GOODNESS. There is a grace in Goodness that outshines Kneel at its shrine, and Wisdom who hath plough'd Of fancy in her developements, and borne J. S. R. New Haven, Conn., 1813. I. With golden gladness came the Sun Who rideth o'er the plain- To his dear home again! Of Morning in his native France. And well may joy, like sunrise, now Byron. Break brightly o'er the young knight's brow: With every gorgeous color sheen Upon the mountains bathing high Their foreheads in the cold clear sky Upon the fields of waving grain, That flash the sunlight back again Upon the carpet of the grass Where fairy feet alone should pass Upon the sparkling of the rill, A sweet and tributary song To man each stream of pain and woe With every bitter wavelet blends The rolling of some pleasure-flow;The sky that frowns with night awhile, Will brighten with a moonlight smile ;The rosy Spring trips o'er a sod Where Winter's icy feet have trod ;And when, with bosom wildly beating, A lover from his lady parts, How joyful ah! shall be the meeting Between those severed faithful hearts! And our young knight, when first he roved To battle with the Paynim's power, Had parted in a woeful hour With a bright lady whom he loved: And now to meet her once again He deemeth soon shall be his fate; And over hill and dale and plain Well may the young knight ride elate! Alas for hope! Oh who could deem Who hath not witnessed scenes like this, He cannot pause from his shadowy flight II. It is the mournful vesper bell That calls the sainted ones to prayer— From gloomy nook and cloistered cell The nuns are sadly gathering there;They come-they come,-a lengthened train They pass through each dark recess, "Tis o'er --The sounds have died away Upon the earth so faintly falls Victorious o'er the Day-God's beam! And one of them had beauty rare- And now with accents sweet though trembling, And dying flute notes all resembling, She hath commenced her painful task. "There's nothing in my simple tale Needs but a moment's glance; I scarce can call to mind my sire, I lack the language to express "A change with my young cousin came. I felt that life was not the same : The earth more bright and rosy grew, "But summoned by the trump of fame My lover left my side: Yet ere he went, in words of flame, |