Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim
The father was of Tuscan song.’
Inversion should be naturally suggested, not forced. ••• It is to be inferred, we fear, that the late ‘principal editor’ of the ‘Brother Jonathan’ does not take it in good part that the new proprietors of that now popular journal saw fit to arrest its rapid decadence, by a removal of the inevitable cause of such a consummation. Lo! how from his distant down-east ambush, with characteristic phrase, he denounces them as ‘cowards’ and ‘puppies!’ Whereupon, in a response appropriately brief, the ‘brave few’ of the ‘principal editor’s’ old readers who have ‘endured unto the end,’ are informed by the new incumbent, that the tabooed ci-devant functionary ‘seems disturbed because he was not suffered to kill the ‘Brother Jonathan’ as he had killed every journal in which he was permitted to pour out his vapid balderdash. He is a perfect Bluebeard among newspapers. He no sooner slaughters one, than he manages to get hold of another, and butcher that with the same remorseless indifference.’ The editor adds: ‘He once enjoyed the honor of some connection with the ‘New World,’ and would have consigned that well-known sheet to the tomb of the Capulets, had not the publishers foreseen the danger, and escaped in season.’ We merely note these facts, as corroborative of a remark or two of our own, in our last issue. ••• ‘An Incident in Normandy’, we shrewdly suspect, is not ‘from the French;’ if it be, all that we have to say is, that such pseudo-rhapsodists as the writer could never by any possibility love nature. The thing is altogether over-done. A Frenchman’s opinion, however, Cowell tells us, should never be taken where the beauties of nature are concerned, unless they can be cooked. There is another grave objection to the article; which consists in the undue frequency of Italian and French words and phrases, foisted into the narrative. We have a strong attachment to plain, perspicuous English. Ours is a noble language, a beautiful language; and we hold fully with Southey, who somewhere remarks that he can tolerate a Germanism, for family sake; but he adds: ‘He who uses a Latin or a French phrase where a pure old English word does as well, ought to be hung, drawn and quartered, for high treason against his mother-tongue.’ ••• ‘The Song of the New Year, by Mrs. Nichols, in a late number,’ writes a Boston correspondent, ‘is an excellent production, and a fair specimen of the improved style of our occasional American verse. Suppose a book-worm should light on poetry of equal merit among Flatman’s, Falconer’s, Prior’s, or Parsell’s collections? Would it not shine forth, think you? Indeed our lady-writers are wresting the plume from our male pen mongers unco fast.’ ‘That’s a fact.’ Mrs. Nichols has a sister-poet at Louisville, Kentucky, who has a very charming style and a delicious fancy. A late verse of hers in some ‘Lines to a Rainbow,’ signed ‘Amelia,’ which we encountered at a reading-room the other day, have haunted our memory ever since:
‘There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives
Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves;
When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose,
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose.’
Moore never conceived a more beautiful simile than this. ••• Number Two of the ‘Reminiscences of a Dartmoor Prisoner’ will appear in our next issue. We have received from the writer a very interesting and amusing manuscript-volume, filled with patriotic poetry, containing vivid pictures of scenes and events in the daily routine of the prison, as well as sketches of Melville Island Prison, and reminiscences of striking events in the lives of sundry of the prisoners, in the progress of the American war. We shall refer more particularly to this entertaining collection in an ensuing number. ••• The Lines on ‘Niagara Falls at Night’ are entirely too terrific for our pages. They are almost as ‘love-lily dreadful’ as the great scene itself. ‘M.’ must ‘try again,’ that is quite certain; and we are afraid, more than once. ••• Tu Doces! Doubtless many of our young readers, especially in the country, have often pondered over the zig-zag hieroglyphics which covered the tea-chests at the village-store, and marvelled what ‘Howqua,’ which was inseparable from these inscriptions, could mean. It was the name of the great Hong merchant, ‘the friend of Americans,’ who died recently at Canton, at an advanced age, leaving his vast wealth to two sons. Here is an elegy written upon his death by his brother-merchant Tingqua, which is now being sung about Canton to a dolorous air, accompanied by the yeih-pa and the tchung, a curious sort of guitar and harp in common use. The elegy comprises a little outline, together with hints and allusions, prettily conveyed, of the principal biographical events of Howqua’s career, and is entitled