reeled. It was but a momentary weakness. He moved on, pass ing those who surrounded him as if they had been shadows. While he followed the slow hearse, there was a vacancy in his eye, as it rested on the coffin, which showed him hardly conscious of what was before him. His spirit was with his mother's. As he reached the grave, he shrunk back, and turned pale; but, dropping his head upon his breast, and covering his face, he stood motionless as a statue till the service was over.

It was a gloomy and chilly evening when he returned home. As he entered the house from which his mother had gone forever, a sense of dreary emptiness oppressed him, as if his abode had been deserted by every living thing. He walked into his mother's chamber. The naked bedstead, and the chair in which she used to sit, were all that were left in the room. As he threw himself back into the chair, he groaned in the bitterness of his spirit. A feeling of forlornness came over him, which was not to be relieved by tears. She, whom he watched over in her dying hour, and whom he had talked to as she lay before him in death, as if she could hear and answer him, had gone from him. Nothing was left for the senses to fasten fondly on, and time had not yet taught him to think of her only as a spirit. But time and holy endeavors brought this consolation; and the little of life that a wasting disease left him was passed by him, when alone, in thoughtful tranquillity; and among his friends he appeared with that gentle cheerfulness which, before his mother's death, had been a part of his nature.

RICHARD HENRY WILDE, 1789-1847.

THIS accomplished scholar and poet was born in Dublin, Ireland, on the 24th of September, 1789. When he was seven years old, his father, who had been a hardware-merchant, came to Baltimore to better his fortunes. By the mismanagement of a partner in Dublin, he lost nearly all the property he left behind, and died poor in 1802. The following year the widowed mother removed to Augusta, Georgia, and there opened a small shop to gain her living, her son Richard aiding her during the day, and pursuing his studies at night. He early directed his attention to the law, and, in 1809, was admitted to the bar. He rose rapidly in his profession, and was soon elected Attorney-General of the State.

In 1815, when just past the legal age, he was chosen representative to Congress, and served but one term. He was again a member of that body from 1828 to 1835. He then went to Europe, passing most of his time, when abroad, in Italy, in the pursuit of his favorite study, Italian literature. On his return home, he published, in 1842, Conjectures and Researches concerning the Love,

Madness, and Imprisonment of Torquato Tasso, in two volumes. In 1844. he removed to New Orleans, and here acquired the highest rank as a civilian. In the spring of 1847, he was appointed Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of Louisiana. His lectures had been partially prepared, but were never delivered, his useful career being cut short by death on the 10th of September, 1847. His son, William Cummings Wilde, Esq., of New Orleans, is soon to publish the life and works of his father, in which will be his longest poem, Hesperia, which he left in manuscript.

JOHN RANDOLPH AND DANIEL WEBSTER.

Among the legislators of that day, but not of them, in the fearful and solitary sublimity of genius, stood a gentleman from Virginia, whom it was superfluous to designate. Whose speeches were universally read? Whose satire was universally feared? Upon whose accents did this habitually listless and unlistening house hang, so frequently, with rapt attention? Whose fame was identified with that body for so long a period? Who was a more dexterous debater, a riper scholar, better versed in the politics of our own country, or deeper read in the history of others? Above all, who was more thoroughly imbued with the idiom of the English language-more completely master of its strength, and beauty, and delicacy, or more capable of breathing thoughts of flame in words of magic and tones of silver?

Nor may I pass over in silence a representative from New Hampshire, who has almost obliterated all memory of that distinction by the superior fame he has attained as a Senator from Massachusetts. Though then but in the bud of his political life, and hardly conscious, perhaps, of his own extraordinary powers, he gave promise of the greatness he has achieved. The same vigor of thought; the same force of expression; the short sentences; the calm, cold, collected manner; the air of solemn dignity; the deep, sepulchral, unimpassioned voice; all have been developed only, not changed, even to the intense bitterness of his frigid irony. The piercing coldness of his sarcasms was indeed peculiar to him; they seemed to be emanations from the spirit

1"Wilde's theory about Tasso is, that Tasso was devotedly attached to the Princess Leonora of Ferrara, who seems to have requited his affection, but that the difference in their rank made it necessary for him, by feigning madness, to conceal their attachment; that it was most ignominiously betrayed by a heartless friend, who possessed himself of the secret by means of false keys; and that the subequent severity of the Duke Alphonso had its origin in his knowledge of the love of the princess. The volume does equal honor to the genius, the learning, and the impartiality of the author. How we could wish that more of our countrymen, whom circumstances enable to reside abroad, would devote their time and wealth to such honorable labors as have engaged the leisure of Mr. Wilde !"— Democratic Review, February, 1842.

of the icy ocean. Nothing could be at once so novel and so powerful; it was frozen mercury becoming as caustic as redhot iron.

MY LIFE IS LIKE THE SUMMER ROSE.

My life is like the summer rose

That opens to the morning sky,
But, ere the shades of evening close,
Is scatter'd on the ground to die.
Yet on that rose's humble bed
The softest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept such waste to see-
But none shall drop a tear for me.

My life is like the autumn leaf

That trembles in the moon's pale ray;
Its hold is frail-its state is brief-

Restless, and soon to pass away:
But when that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree-
But none shall breathe a sigh for me.

My life is like the print which feet

Have left on Tampa's desert strand;

Soon as the rising tide shall beat,

Their track will vanish from the sand:

Yet, as if grieving to efface

All vestige of the human race,

On that lone shore loud moans the sea

But none shall thus lament for me.

TO THE MOCKING-BIRD.

Wing'd mimic of the woods! thou motley fool!
Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe?
Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule

Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe.
Wit, sophist, songster, YORICK of thy tribe,
Thou untaught satirist of Nature's school;

To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe,

Arch-mocker and mad Abbot of Misrule!
For such thou art by day; but all night long

Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain,
As if thou didst in this thy moonlight song
Like to the melancholy JACQUES complain,
Musing on falsehood, folly, vice, and wrong,
And sighing for thy motley coat again.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, 1789-1851.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, the celebrated American novelist, was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in the year 1789. His father, William Cooper, an English emigrant, who had settled there many years before, had purchased a large quantity of land on the borders of Lake Otsego, New York, and thither Cooper was removed in his infancy, and there passed his childhood,-in a region that was then an almost unbroken wilderness. At the age of thirteen, he entered Yale College, bat left it in three years, and became a midshipman in the United States Navy, in which he continued for six years, making himself, unconsciously, master of that knowledge and imagery which he afterwards employed to so much advantage in his romances of the sea. In 1811, having resigned his post as midshjpman, he married Miss Delancey, sister of Rev. Dr. Delancey, with whom, after a brief residence in Westchester County, the scene of one of his finest fictions, he removed to Cooperstown, where, with the exception of his occasional absences in Europe, he passed the greater part of his life, and where he died on the 14th of September, 1851.

Before his removal to Cooperstown, he had written and published a novel of English life, called Precaution, which met with but little favor. But The Spy, which followed in 1821, at once established his fame, and was soon republished in England and on the Continent. It had its faults, indeed,-defects in plot, and occasional blemishes in the composition; but it was a work of original genius, and was widely read and admired. The Pioneers, which appeared in 1823, not only sustained but advanced his reputation; and each succeeding volume of the Leather-Stocking Tales, The Prairie, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer, was read with increasing interest. Shortly after the success of The Pioneers had made Mr. Cooper the first novelist of the country, he achieved a triumph on the sea as signal as that he had already won upon the land. His romance of The Pilot, followed at intervals by The Red Rover, The Water- Witch, The Two Admirals, Wing and Wing, &c., placed him at the head of nautical novelists, where he still stands, perhaps, without a rival.'

In the year 1826, Mr. Cooper went to Europe, where his fame had preceded him, and where, while advancing his own reputation by new fictions, he defended

Read articles on his writings in "North American Review," xxiii. 150, xxvii. 139, xlix. 432; "American Quarterly," Ivii. 407. In the "Bibliotheca Americana," by O. A. Roorbach, is a list of all his works, amounting to forty volumes.

The following, I believe, is a complete list of his novels, with the dates of their publication:

that of his country by pamphlets and letters. These again brought upon him a shower of rejoinders, and much of the time when he was abroad was spent in controversial writings. In 1833, he returned home.

Besides his novels, Mr. Cooper was the author of a History of the United States Nary, Gleanings in Europe, Sketches of Switzerland, and several smaller works, which have run through many editions. His mind was always fertile and active, and his mode of treating his subjects full of animation and freshness. He was one of those frank and decided characters who make strong enemies and warm friends,-who repel by the positiveness of their convictions, while they attract by the richness of their culture and the amiability of their lives. He was nicely exact in all his business relations, but generous and noble in the management of his means. His beautiful residence on the Otsego was ever the home of a large and liberal hospitality; and those who knew him best were those who loved him most, and who deplored his loss with the keenest feelings.

THE CAPTURE OF A WHALE.

Tom," cried Barnstable, starting, "there is the blow of a whale."

"Ay, ay, sir," returned the cockswain, with undisturbed composure; "here is his spout, not half a mile to seaward; the easterly gale has driven the creater to leeward, and he begins to find himself in shoal water. He's been sleeping, while he should have been working to windward!"

"The fellow takes it coolly, too! he's in no hurry to get an offing."

"I rather conclude, sir," said the cockswain, rolling over his tobacco in his mouth very composedly, while his little sunken eyes began to twinkle with pleasure at the sight, "the gentleman has lost his reckoning, and don't know which way to head, to take himself back into blue water."

"Tis a fin back!" exclaimed the lieutenant; "he will soon make headway, and be off."

"No, sir; 'tis a right whale," answered Tom; "I saw his

1" Mr. Cooper's character was peculiar and decided, creating strong attachments and equally strong dislikes. There was no neutral ground in his nature. He had fixed opinions, and was bold and uncompromising in expressing them. He was exact in his dealings and generous in his disposition. His integrity and uprightness no one ever called in question. He had less fear of public opinion, and more self-reliance, than are common in our country; and his courage and truthfulness were worthy of all praise. He was an ardent patriot, and as ready to defend his country when in the right, as to rebuke her when he deemed her in the wrong. He was affectionate in his domestic relations, and his home was the seat of a cordial and generous hospitality."-G. S. HILLARD.

"Mr. Cooper dined with me. He was in person solid, robust, athletic; in voice, manly; in manner, earnest, emphatic, almost dictatorial,-with something of selfassertion bordering on egotism. The first effect was unpleasant, indeed repulsive; but there shone through all this a frankness which excited confidence, respect, and at last affection."-Goodrich's Recollections.