The farmers of Virginia are scarcely as far advanced in the application of science as the more active-minded Yankees, and among the ancient customs which still obtain among them is that of treading out grain with cattle. At Swallow Barn the operation is described:
"Within the farm-yard a party of negroes were engaged in treading out grain. About a dozen horses were kept at full trot around a circle of some ten or fifteen paces diameter, which was strewed with wheat in the sheaf. These were managed by some five or six little blacks, who rode like monkey caricaturists of the games of the circus, and who mingled with the labors of the place that comic air of deviltry which communicated to the whole employment something of the complexion of a pastime."
We hope this edition of Swallow Barn will be so well received that the author will give us all his other works in the same attractive style. Horse-shoe Robinson, Rob of the Bowl, Quodlibet, and all the rest, except the Life of Wirt, are now out of print, and all have been greeted on their first appearance with an approval that should satisfy a more ambitious writer than Mr. Kennedy.
GEORGE H. BOKER.
Mr. Boker is one of the youngest of American authors. He is a native of Philadelphia, and was born, we believe, in the year 1824. After the usual preparatory studies in the city of his birth, he entered the college at Princeton, New Jersey, of which he is a graduate. In addition to the collegiate course, however, he devoted much time to the study of Anglo-Saxon, and to the perusal of the early masters of English literature, whose influence is discernible in all his earlier poems. Soon after leaving college he made a visit to France and England, but was obliged to return after having been but a short time abroad, owing to the critical state of his health. He was at that time suffering under a pulmonary disease which threatened to be fatal, but all symptoms of which, fortunately, have since disappeared. On his return he took up his residence in Philadelphia, which continues to be his home. Three or four years since he was married to an accomplished lady of that city.
Mr. Boker first appeared as an author at the commencement of the year 1848, when a volume of his poems, under the title of The Lesson of Life, was published in Philadelphia. The publication of a volume was no light ordeal to a young poet whose name was unknown, and who, we believe, had never before seen himself in print. The lack of self-observation and self-criticism, which can only be acquired when the author's thoughts have taken the matter-of-fact garb of type, would of itself be sufficient to obscure much real promise. In spite of these disadvantages, the book contained much that gave the reader the impression of a mind of genuine and original power. We remember being puzzled at its seeming incongruity, the bold, mature, and masculine character of its thought being so strikingly at variance with its frequent crudities of expression. It seemed to us the work of a man in the prime of life, whose poetic feeling had taken a sudden growth, and moved somewhat unskilfully in the unaccustomed trammels of words, rather than the first essay of a brain glowing with the fresh inspiration of youth.