| L | ovely and loved, o’er the unconquered | brave | |
| Y | our charms resistless, matchless girl, shall | reign! | |
| D | ear as the mother holds her infant’s | grave | |
| I | n Love’s own region, warm, romantic | Spain! | |
| A | nd should your Fate to courts your steps | ordain, | |
| K | ings would in vain to regal pomp | appeal, | |
| A | nd lordly bishops kneel to you in | vain, | |
| N | or Valor’s fire, Law’s power, nor Churchman’s | zeal | |
| E | ndure ’gainst Love’s (time up!) untarnished | steel! | |
We need not inform the reader that few of the most facile versifiers could have accomplished the task in hours. Bogart nearly always composed with the same rapidity, and his pieces were marked by the liveliest wit and most apposite illustration. Of how many young Americans who, like him, died as the bud of their promise was unfolding, have we heard! “Whom the gods love, indeed die young.”
The Annuaries.—The Gift may be regarded as a dial by which to learn the progress of the arts in America. The best of our painters and engravers are engaged in its embellishment, and in pictorial beauty as well as literary character every new volume surpasses its predecessor. The Gift for 1843 will be issued in a few days, with pictures from Malbone, Huntington, Inman, Chapman, Sully, and others, and prose and verse by Herbert, Simms, Miss Gould, Mrs. Seba Smith, Mrs. Sigourney, and some half dozen beside. The Token, published for fourteen years in Boston, will not again be issued.
John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest citizen of the United States, has with enlightened liberality devoted three hundred thousand dollars to the establishment of a public library in New York, an elegant and durable edifice is being built in the most pleasant part of the city for its reception, and Doctor Cogswell, a gentleman of taste and sound learning, is engaged in the purchase of books for it. There are a large number of libraries in America, owned by societies and individuals, but none yet for the public, and none that, if they were free like the great libraries of the old world, would be of much use to men of science or letters. To so many of the million as can buy shares in them those of Boston, New York and Philadelphia will afford sufficient means of amusement, but if a man wishes to explore any department of science, moral, political, or historical, and resorts to them, he will soon be compelled to abandon his researches or to go abroad for their prosecution. Indeed, except the library of Congress, which is not half so good as an intelligent bibliopole with the requisite means might make it in six months, there is in this country no collection of books relating to our own history comparable with several collections in England, and for works by American authors, for our national literature, such as it is, the very last place to look is in an American library. Stepping a few days since into an extensive bibliographical establishment in this city, we were shown an order for American books, by catalogue, amounting to several thousand dollars; with great difficulty they had been found among the book-stalls and other out-of-the-way places, and shipped to London, to be added to a collection probably already as large as any existing here, except two or three owned by governments and societies, and a few in the hands of private individuals. We have examined carefully most of the libraries of any consequence in the United States, and know something of their condition. Small as they are, compared with the libraries of Europe, they are made up in a great degree of duplicate copies of worthless books, and are most poorly supplied with works by our countrymen or relating to our history and institutions. They are managed by persons incompetent to discharge their duties; have librarians who cannot comprehend the title pages of half the books mentioned in their catalogues; and add very little indeed to the means of obtaining knowledge which have an independent existence. The Astor library will be different. The large amount of money appropriated by its founder, the ability of his actuary, and the system which has been proposed for its government, give promise that we are to have at length the nucleus, gradually and surely to be enlarged into a really good American library, to which scholars may resort with such hopes of advantage as now prompt them to visit England, Germany, Spain, or France.
Mr. Francis J. Grund, our Consul at Bremen, and author of “Aristocracy in America,” “The Americans in their Moral, Social and Political Condition,” etc., has nearly ready for press a work on the state and prospects of Germany, which will be published in a few weeks by Longman, Reese, Orme, Browne & Longman, of London. It will of course be reprinted in this country.
Doctor Marsh.—We learn with great pleasure that Professor Torrey, of the University of Vermont, is preparing for publication the writings, religious, philosophic and literary, of the late President Marsh, the greatest American who has died in this decade.