In the "Essex Register" of July 18, 1833, may be found the following notice of two well-known American authors:—
Discourse on Genius. The Richmond Compiler speaks in terms of great praise of a discourse delivered recently in Richmond, before a Young Men's Society, by Joseph Hulbert Nicholas. A number of extracts are also given in the Compiler, as specimens of the performance, from which we take the following notices of two of our fellow-townsmen.—Boston Courier.
Of Charles Sprague, of Massachusetts, no language can be spoken but that of unqualified praise. Forsaking the modern school of writing, he is contented with being simple and natural. Sublimity, tenderness, wit, elegance, and beneficial satire characterise his muse.—The only complaint I have ever heard made of him is that he does not write more.
Of Nathaniel Parker Willis, a native of Massachusetts, and a fellow-student with myself at Yale College, I come now to speak. Of him I shall speak familiarly, as of an intimate friend; and impartially and justly, as one who wishes him well. Willis, I venture to pronounce the most remarkable genius our country has yet produced. I do not call him remarkable merely for his unusual precocity of song, but remarkable for the possession of that rare genius, which by any man, young or old, in our land, I do not think has ever been displayed. Nature has done wonderful things for him; but alas! he has thus far done but little for himself. The great pieces he has sometimes given us have cost him but little effort, and he has thrown out his productions, in prose as well as poetry, with a profusion and a variety that seem miraculous; and yet, of all our bards, he has met with the most severe and merciless censures. In some measure he has deserved the treatment. In College he would not condescend to study, and charity only for his high genius enabled him to gain a degree. Besides, he gained his first and best reputation by pieces founded upon scriptural subjects, and he stood committed to the world as a religious man. Many who had never seen aught of him but his productions, and had formed the loftiest estimate of his personal character from the pure tendency of his effusions, were astonished and grieved when introduced to the author.—His head made giddy by the praises of young and old, he forgot himself, and possessing most shrewd good sense, he would talk the reverse. He became fantastic in apparel, as he did likewise in his style of writing; made himself too common, and almost broke a pious father's heart by deserting the altar of that divine Jesus upon whose Bible he had founded the fairest fabric of his fame. My friend, of whom I so sternly speak, is now in Italy; and should these remarks, per chance, ever meet his eye, I beseech him by our past friendship, by our walks "by moon or glittering star-light," through the Eden groves and avenues of New-Haven, by the love he bears to his parents, and above all, by the love he bears that Saviour, upon whose image and the scenes of whose mortal pilgrimage he is rapturously gazing, in the matchless pictures of the Italian masters, I beseech him, when he returns to his native land, to wear no longer a ridiculous mask, but to appear in his own native strength, dignity, and surpassing loveliness.
In the "Salem Observer," March 8, 1834, are to be found the following references to well-known young ladies of the day. Miss Silsbee is supposed to be the daughter of the Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, of Salem, Massachusetts senator in Congress. She afterwards married Jared Sparks, the well-known historian, president of Harvard College, etc.
High Life at Washington. The Washington Correspondent of the Boston Morning Post, in describing Gov. Cass's soiree, thus notices some of the young ladies who were present:—
Miss Keyser of Baltimore, uniting youth and beauty, possesses an eye as dark as the absence of all light, beaming with a lustre that eclipses all. I never saw a countenance betoken such perfect happiness; it was like a star-lit lake, curling its lips into ripples in some dream of delight, as the west wind salutes them with its balmy breath and disturbs their placid slumber. I never before realised Byron's idea of
"Music breathing o'er the face;"
till Miss Keyser's brought it home to the business and bosom.