If it be as truthfully as it has been happily expressed by the prince of dramatic Poets, that
'He who has no music in his soul
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils,'
it should be a paramount duty with every one who loves his species, and cultivates a generous philanthropy, to patronize every effort to diffuse widely through society, Poetry of genuine character, and to cultivate a taste for it as an element of a literary, religious, and moral education. We commend, as a standard of appreciation of the true character of the gifts of the Poetic Muse, the following critique from Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham:
''Tis not a flash of fancy, which sometimes,
Dazzling our minds, sets off the slightest rhymes,
Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done;
True wit is everlasting, like the sun,
Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retired,
Breaks out again, and is by all admired.
Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound
Which not the nicest ear with harshness wound,
Are necessary, yet but vulgar arts;
And all in rain these superficial parts
Contribute to the structure of the whole,
Without a genius too—for that's the soul;
A spirit which inspires the work throughout,
As that of Nature moves the world about;
A flame that glows amidst conceptions fit;
E'en something of divine, and more than wit;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it shown,
Describing all men, but described by none.'
We neither intend nor desire to institute any invidious comparisons between Old Britain and Young America. We are one people—one in blood, one literature, one faith, one religion, in fact or in profession. Our language girdles the whole earth. Our science and our religion more or less enlighten every land, as our sails whiten every sea, and our commerce, in some degree, enriches every people. There is a magnanimity, a benevolence, a philanthropy, in English Poetry, whether the Muse be English, Scotch, Irish, or American, that thrills the social nerve and warms the kindred hearts of all who think, or speak, or dream in our vernacular. The pen of the gifted Bard is more puissant than the cannon's thundering roar or the warrior's glittering sword; and the soft, sweet melodies of English Poetry, gushing from a Christian Muse, are Heaven's sovereign specifics for a wounded spirit and an aching heart!
PATRIA SPES ULTIMA MUNDI.
FLAG OF OUR UNION.
National Song.
By Hon. Robert J. Walker