Tired of poetical criticism, in which we last month so freely indulged, and turning with satisfaction from the political disquisitions now going through the press for the benefit of our sorely-perplexed countrymen, we feel disposed, cutting both poetry and politics, fairly to fly our shores, and recreate ourselves and readers in some less troubled quarter of the earth. Among the host of new books on our table, redolent of Cossack and Turk, Cross and Crescent, and here and there interspersed with cabalistic-looking titles, which, we are requested to believe, signify the “Doom of Turkey,” or the “Drying up of the Euphrates”—lo, there peeps forth one of a more pacific hue. There, lustrous on its boards, rises the feathery palm-tree of the Desert,—the Arab tent,—the camel; and what an emblem of peace is that cross-legged Oriental, smoking his long pipe, imperturbable as a statue! Sedit æternumque sedebit. We open the book, and, amidst the intricacies of a very long title, catch the piquant words—“Wanderings in the African Sahara.”[[10]] How we feel the breezes of the Desert come around us!—the freedom,—the expanse,—the wild novelty of the scene;—the heaving motion of the camel beneath us,—the flashing spears and pennons of the escort, as they whirl in mimic warfare around. Away into the Desert! with a sea of rigid white sand beneath, and a twin sea of glowing light above! On, over the waste, till the glare of day is done, and the cool breeze comes forth, and all the stars of night,—and we kiss our hand to the moon “walking in brightness,” and say, with Southey,
“How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven;
In full-orbed glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark-blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled by the sky!