[EDITORS' TABLE.]
'Siste 'Viator!'—But a little while ago, we published in these pages a brief tribute to the memory of a gifted and distinguished female contributor to the poetical department of this Magazine; and it now becomes our painful duty to record the recent demise of another child of song, with whom our readers have not unfrequently held pleasant communion. We gather from a letter before us, from an attentive literary friend, now in Massachusetts, that J. Huntington Bright, Esq. died recently at Manchester, (Miss.,) at the early age of thirty-three. He was the only son of Jonathan Bright, Esq., of Salem, (Mass.) Early in life he came to this city, where he resided until the death of his parents, when he removed to Albany, and subsequently to Norfolk, (Va.,) where he married. Last autumn he sailed for New-Orleans; and, soon after his arrival, was induced to ascend the Mississippi, to take part in an important mercantile interest at Manchester, a new town, hewn but recently from the forest. Here, undue exposure to the night air brought on the fever of the country; and in this cheerless frontier region, away from his kindred and friends, after an illness of a few hours, he yielded up his gentle spirit. There is an irrepressible melancholy in the thought, that one so open to all the tender influences of affection, should breathe his last far from the endearments of home, and lay his bones among strangers. Yet, to adopt a stanza of a charming fragment written by him for the Knickerbocker:
'Yet it matters not much, when the bloom is fled,
And the light is gone from the lustrous eye,
And the sensitive heart is cold and dead,
Where the mouldering ashes are left to lie:
It matters not much, if the soaring mind,
Like the flower's perfume, is exhaled to heaven,
That its earthly shroud should be cast behind,
To decay, wherever a place is given.'
Mr. Bright, under the signature of 'Viator,' has contributed many gems of pure feeling, imbued with the true spirit of poetry, to the fugitive literature of the day. The 'Albany Argus' gave to the world many of his choicest effusions, previous to his appearance before our readers. Of his later efforts, it is unnecessary to speak. They will recommend themselves to every affectionate and sympathetic heart, not less by the graces of composition, than the spirit which pervades them. When the depressing influences which have so seriously affected the book-market shall cease to be operative, we hope to see a volume of poetry collated from the literary remains of Mr. Bright; and we cannot doubt that it will be well received by the public at large, as it will certainly be most acceptable to his numerous friends and admirers.
We are confident that Mr. Bright was capable of even higher and more sustained flights than characterize any of the fine productions which he has given to the public. There was promise of varied endowments, too, of which we had scarcely deemed him possessed. Parts of the 'Vision of Death,' published in these pages, would have done no discredit to our best poets. The reader will recall its wild, German-like air, from the opening stanzas:
'The moon rode high in the Autumn sky,
The stars waned cold and dim,
While hoarsely the mighty Oregon
Pealed his eternal hymn;
And the prairie-grass bent its seedy heads
Far over the river's brim.
'An impulse I might not defy,
Constrained my footsteps there;
When through the gloom a red eye burned
With a fixed and steady glare,
And a huge misshapen form of mist
Loom'd in the midnight air.'
Upon what tender filaments the fabric of existence hangs! Death, an unseen spectre, walked by the far-travelling poet's side; and when he deemed the journey of life but just begun, 'Siste Viator!' rang in his dying ear. Well did Sir Thomas Browne exclaim, 'Our life is indeed but short, a very dream; and while we look about, eternity is at hand!'
Mr. Bright has left an amiable and accomplished wife, with two pledges of an affectionate union. May the blessing of the widow and the fatherless be theirs, in full fruition!—and may consolation in bereavement be found in the reflection, that, to use the beautiful language of the dear departed,