'The Wonders of the Deep,' by Pierpont, well deserves the place of honor which it occupies. It is a poem, without the form of verse; and its poetry is of a high order. We ask attention to the annexed paragraphs:
"What a wonder is the sea itself! How wide does it stretch out its arms, clasping islands and continents in its embrace! How mysterious are its depths!—still more mysterious its hoarded and hidden treasures! With what weight do its watery masses roll onward to the shore, when not a breath of wind is moving over its surface! How wonderfully fearful is it, when its waves, in mid ocean, are foaming and tossing their heads in anger under the lash of the tempest! How wonderfully beautiful, when, like a melted and ever-moving mirror, it reflects the setting sun, or the crimson clouds, or the saffron heavens after the sun has set; or when its 'watery floor' breaks into myriads of fragments the image of the quiet moon that falls upon it from the skies!
"Wonderful, too, are those hills of ice that break off, in thunder, from the frozen barriers of the pole, and float toward the sun, their bristling pinnacles glistening in his beams, and slowly wasting away under his power, an object at once of wonder and of dread to the mariner, till they are lost in the embrace of more genial deeps. And that current is a wonder, which moves for ever onward from the southern seas, to the colder latitudes, bearing in its waters the influence of a tropical sun, and saying to the icebergs from the pole, 'Hitherto may ye come, but no farther.' And, if possible, still more wonderful are those springs of fresh water which, among the Indian Isles, gush up from the depths of a salt ocean, a source of refreshment and life to the seaman who is parching with thirst 'beneath a burning sky.' And is it not as wonderful, when, not a spring of fresh water, but a column of volcanic fire shoots up from 'the dark unfathomed caves of ocean,' and throws its red glare far over the astonished waves, that heave and tremble with the heaving and trembling earth below them! wonderful, when that pillar of fire vanishes, leaving a smoking volcano in its place! and wonderful, when that volcano, in its turn, sinks back, and is lost in the depths whence it rose!
"Then there are other wonders in the living creatures of the deep, from the animalcule, that 'no eye can see,' and that scarcely 'glass can reach,' up to 'that Leviathan which God hath made to play therein.' In 'this great and wide sea are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.' Yet He, who hath made them all, even there openeth his hand and satisfieth the desires of all. Wonderful is it, that, of these 'creatures innumerable,' each one finds its food in some other, and in its turn, serves some other for food; and that this great work of destruction and reproduction goes on in an unbroken circle from age to age, in the deep silence of those still deeper waters where the power of man is neither felt nor feared!
"What a wonder, too, is that line of phosphoric light, which, in the darkest night, streams along 'the way of a ship in the midst of the sea!' What is it that gives out this fire, which, like that of love, 'many waters cannot quench, neither can the floods drown it?' Theorists may speculate, naturalists may examine, chemists may analyze; but none of them can explain; and all agree in this, that it is a wonder, a mystery, a marvel. A light that only motion kindles! a fire that burns nothing! a fire, too, seen, not in a bush on Horeb, which is not burned, but in the deep waters of the ocean that cannot be! Is not this a wonder?
"And, if that path of light is a wonder, which streams back from the rudder of a ship, is not that ship itself a wonder? That a fabric so gigantic as a first rate ship, of traffic or of war, framed of ponderous timbers, compacted with bolts and bands of still more ponderous iron, holding in its bosom masses of merchandise, under whose weight strong cars have groaned, and paved streets trembled, or bearing on its decks hosts of armed men, with the thundering armament of a nation—that a fabric thus framed and thus freighted, should float in a fluid, into which, if a man fall, he sinks and is lost, is in itself a wonder. But that such a fabric should traverse oceans, struggling on amid the strife of seas and storms, that it should hold on its way like 'a thing of life,' nay, like a thing of intellect, a being endued with courage, and stimulated by a high purpose, a traveller that has seen the end of his voyage from the beginning, that goes forth upon it without fear, and completes it as with the feeling of a triumph, is, as it seems to me, a greater wonder still. Let me ask you to stand, as you perhaps have stood, upon the deck of such a ship,
'In the dead waist and middle of the night,'
now in the strong light of the moon, as it looks down upon you between the swelling sails, or now in the deep shadow that the sails throw over you. Hear the majestic thing that bears you, breasting and breaking through the waves that oppose themselves to her march! She is moving on alone, on the top of the world, and through the dread solitude of the sea. Nothing is heard, save, perhaps, the falling back of a wave, that has been showing its white crest to the moon, or, as your ship is plowing her way, the rushing of the water along her sides. Yet she seems to care for all that she contains, and to watch, while they sleep as sweetly in her bosom as in their own beds at home: and, though she sees no convoy to guard her, and no torch-bearer to guide her, she seems as conscious that she is safe, as she is confident that she is going right. Is not all this a wonder?"
'Peter Goldthwait's Treasure' is from the pen, and in the peculiar vein, of the author of 'Twice-Told Tales,' whose writings are well known, in every sense, to our readers. We think we are not in error in attributing the spirited sketch, 'Endicott and the Red Cross,' to the same source. 'The Shaker Bridal,' may be traced to a kindred paternity not less unerringly by the table of contents, than by a certain style, which, although sui generis, partakes nevertheless of many of the simple graces of the fine old English prose writers. Of the merits of 'Our Village Post-Office,' by Miss Sedgwick, our readers are enabled to judge; and our opinion of it is expressed 'where they may turn the leaf to read it.' There are pleasant love-stories for the ladies, and young lovers of both sexes, as 'The Love Marriage,' by Mrs. Hale, 'Sylph Etherege,' 'Xeri, or A Day in Batavia,' translated from the German, by Nathaniel Greene, Esq., 'Jaques De Laid,' etc. We could almost forgive the author of 'A Tale of Humble Life' for drawing so revolting, and we must add unnatural a portrait, as that of George Cavendish, in consideration of the following graphic description of the advent of a New-England festival:
"It was the night before Thanksgiving; that season whose very name speaks of happiness; when the prosperous are called upon to remember whence their blessings come, and the wretched to observe that there is no such thing as unmitigated misery; the most forlorn having something in their lot for which they may thank God. Abundance walked with her cornucopia through the land, leaving no virtuous poor, starving amid unrewarded toils; the ties of kindred brought merry groups round many a blazing hearth, and friendship or hospitality threw open the domestic sanctuary, and admitted into the kindly circle those whom the chances of life had separated from their own homes and kindred.
"The lover of Jane had been compelled, by the death of his father in Vermont, to take a long journey at the approach of this festival; and business was to detain him yet a few days longer. It was not for him therefore that she sat listening in the corner of the roaring chimney, turning her head eagerly as the merry sleighs dashed jingling by. Half a dozen noisy youngsters about her threatened demolition to the old flag-bottomed chairs in a game of blind-man's buff, while one rosy urchin sat in her lap, struggling against sleep, and whining in reply to her whispered admonitions, 'I don't want to go to bed till cousin George comes.' At last a sleigh stopped at the door; the blindfold hero of the game tore the bandage from his eyes, the drowsy boy in the corner jumped up wide awake, and clapped his hands, and a young man, muffled in a cloak and seal-skin cap, sprung into the room, as one sure of a welcome. In an instant, the arms of Jane were round her only brother, and the redoubled clamors of the children brought the matron from the pantry, redolent of fresh-baked pies, and the old man from the cellar, laden with a basket of apples worthy of the Hesperides. All was noise and confusion, and the young stranger was loudest and gayest of the throng."
'Night Sketches beneath an Umbrella,' and 'Martha Washington,' the latter by Mrs. Sigourney, are the only prose articles which we have not named, and they are in all respects worthy the excellent company they keep.
The poetry is rather above than below the general 'annual' standard. Among the contributors to this department, are Miss H. F. Gould, O. W. Holmes, Grenville Mellen, H. Hastings Weld, Rev. J. H. Clinch, and others not unknown to fame; but our space obliges us to confine ourselves to these brief comments, and to forego extracts. And we must here conclude, by recommending the 'Token' to American readers, as a work every way worthy of general patronage.
Confessions of a Roman Catholic Priest. Edited by Samuel F. B. Morse, A. M. New-York: John S. Taylor.
This work is from the pen of a French gentleman, now in this country, and but lately a Roman Catholic priest. Portions of it, in the view of the editor, afford strong if not conclusive proofs of a systematic design in Europe to create a strong Popish party in this country. The personal narrative of the writer is replete with the interest of romance, especially those parts of it which describe the love-passages and trials of the priest, and his fair penitents of the confessional. The editor affirms that the author is known to be what he professes himself to be, and that his book is strictly true.