'And when the lamp of life upon a verge
Unseated as a vision, sinks at last;
And when the spirit launches on the surge
Of that dark, drear, unfathomable vast

We call eternity, its latest dirge

Bemoans not pangs, still pressing, not o'erpast,
But that all natural things, forms, stars, and skies,
And the more loved than all, are fading from its eyes.

"Thus still beloved, though all relentless fair,

I part from thee and perish. Never more
Shall I win sweetness from the desolate air,
Or find a fragrant freshness in the shore;
The sea that images my deep despair

Hath still a kindred language in its roar,
And in the clouds that gather on our lee
A mournful likeness to my soul I see.

"The sense of life grows dim; the glories pass,
Like those of melting rainbows from my sight;
Dark aspects rise as in the wizard's glass,
Reflect my inner soul, and tell of night;
Glooms gather on my vision, in a mass,

And all my thoughts, beheld in their dread light,
Rise like unbidden spectres; rise to rave

Above the heart, which soon may be their grave.'

The purpose of the author to preserve this youthful effort of his muse from oblivion, by giving it in a printed form to the public, will not, we may believe, be subserved; for although portions of it are undeniably clever, yet as a whole it lacks the elements of life; a fact, indeed, of which the writer himself seems sufficiently aware, if we interpret aright the long introduction with which he has deemed it necessary to preface a short poem. The little volume, which is very neatly executed, is dedicated to one who is himself well qualified to appreciate, and on occasion to produce, good poetry― JAMES LAWSON, Esq., of this city.

CHANGE FOR THE AMERICAN NOTES: in Letters from London to New-York. By an American Lady. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

'WHO jeers the Tartar, must beware of his dirk!' is a lesson which this well-tempered book will teach certain of our neighbors on the other side of the great water; for it contains stabs at national abuses and local follies, which 'pierce to the hilt;' and we are not sorry that at this moment, throughout the Union, this exposition of them as well as of the time-honored game of 'tit-for-tat,' has been as widely perused as the work which prompted it - the 'American Notes' of Mr. DICKENS. This fact, we need not add, will prevent us from entering upon a detailed review of a work already so current, at the low price of one shilling. We shall only ask such of our readers as are at all sensitive in relation to the slurs upon our country and its institutions which may from time to time reach us from abroad, to bear in mind the ignorance in which they have their origin. 'One ought to have,' says our countrywoman, 'a temper as imperturbable as FRANKLIN'S, to hear patiently the absurd remarks made in England upon the United States. Here are hundreds of thousands, with ample means and leisure, whose reading is confined to certain portions of certain newspapers; yet one of this class will deliver his judgment upon America in a manner which shows his belief that what he says is decisive. There is, there should be, no appeal. He has spoken. Englishmen have a vague notion about America, and Indians, and General WASHINGTON, and there being neither king nor lords, and the storming of Quebec, and the burning of the Caroline, and the loss of the President! But as to the vast resources of our country; the nature of her laws and institutions; of her cities rising amid primeval forests; of the capabilities of her rivers and bays; of the love of freedom in her children, which love, men say, is the parent of all the best virtues that can adorn a state; of these things they know

nothing. Talk to one of these persons about the cotton grown in the Southern States, and he will immediately speak of Manchester, where he has a cousin, a manufacturer, worth a hundred thousand pounds; mention one of those matchless prairies in the Far West (a noble sight, though Boz was disappointed,) and my gentleman, as soon as he is made to understand what a prairie is, turns the conversation to Salisbury Plain, or the moors of Scotland! These gentry generally are, or have been, connected with commercial pursuits, and plume themselves upon being, not reading, but practical men. I admit they are impartial in their ignorance, knowing as little of the past history of their own country as of the present state of ours.' 'The English view America in such

a petty spirit! They judge of it in the spirit that prompts their judgment in their own small matters; their clubs, or parishes, or corporations. They cannot conceive a nation without a titled and privileged aristocracy. What is not subserviency they consider anarchy; and then a country without a regular standing army! How can justice be administered by wigless judges? What but barbarism can exist, where poor men object to wear liveries! Then comes a summing up of American enormities: they sit in a manner the English do not; consequently the American way must be wrong. Vast distance, different customs and institutions, have caused a diversity of language, therefore the American language must be low; the Americans grow and use tobacco, and the necessary consequences are attributed to them as a national dishonor! How comes it that the French and other travellers do not dwell upon these things, but pass them over as matters of little moment? Is it jealousy, or ignorance, or littleness, on the part of the British?' It is all three; but America will be looked upon with far different eyes by and by; and in the meantime she is living down the slurs, slanders, and satires of her traducers, (which this little volume will teach us still more to disregard) every day. We have but one fault to find with the Change for the American Notes.' There is too much foreign coin in it. One who can write so well as our author, does not need to force French and Italian into English sentences, to show that she can do it, nor to eke out her pages with scraps of verse. Think of a hundred and fifteen little bits of poetry, from a single line upward, in a prose volume of eighty-eight pages!' 'Tis 'too much poetry for a shilling!'

HARP OF THE VALE: A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY PAYNE KENYON KILBOURNE. Hartford: CASE, TIFFANY AND BURNHAM.

THIS little volume comes to us recommended by the same neatness of mechanical execution which was displayed in the last edition of the poetical remains of the lamented BRAINARD, published in the same city. We are glad to see in it indications that the native State of that fine genius can still inspire poetic aspirations, and produce poetic minds. The young author of these fugitive pages deserves consideration; in a degree for what he has done, more for what his gifts promise. There are many passages and several entire poems of very considerable merit in the volume. The Skeptic,' with which it commences, being of the greatest length and importance, is perhaps also the best. None of the thoughts, however, can claim to be very original; yet they are evidently natural to the writer, and are set forth in flowing and well-measured verse. The opening lines are vigorous, and afford a good indication of the merit of the piece:

'No GOD! O impious sophist! then are we
Cast pilotless upon an unknown sea;
Gazing all wildly on the void profound,
Unknowing whence we came or whither bound:
The forms around us are not what they seem,
Men are but shadows, life is but a dream;
And the bright worlds that run their glorious race
Mere bubbles floating in the realms of space;
Self-poised they roll, and self-illumed they shine,
Rise without cause, and sink without design!

Launched on the flood, we trim our fated bark,
Beneath a sky low, desolate, and dark;
No north-star hangs with fixed and steady ray,
To light the lonely voyager on his way;
Homeless and friendless on the billowy tides,
Tossed by the hurricanes which no one guides,
Now fired with Hope, now grappling with Despair,
He sees afar some beacon's transient glare;
Pursues it till it fades, then turns in gloom
To meet his last irrevocable doom.

What though the solace of his lot may be
The meteor-dream of Immortality?

That spark expired with the expiring breath

No morn shall break the iron sleep of DEATH!'

'The Maniac Maid' has some effective stanzas. One especially is picturesque and beautiful. The poor girl is represented as lingering around the sea-shore, watching for her lost sailor-lover:

AT eve, when nought is heard
But the roar of the dashing wave,
And the voice of the lone sea-bird
That sings from her coral cave,

She wanders forth all lonely

The rocks and sedge among,
And to the cold sea only

Pours forth her plaintive song.'

'The Seminoles' is a very creditable production. Some fine lines also touching our native country and that ancient race, are found in 'Thoughts of Home: '

'STERN region, I love thee! Thy woodlands and waters

Are linked with old legends of battle and love:

There the wild warriors fought, and the forest's dark daughters
Told their vows and adored the Great Spirit above.

'Bright home of my dreams! may I greet thee again!

In city and country I've mingled with men,
But they part and they meet with as little emotion
As the icbergs that float on the desolate ocean.'

The last couplet here is very original and striking. Dying Well,' 'The Lost that Come not Back,' and others which arrested our attention, will be read with pleasure; especially 'Beauty and Fame,' which we regret we have not space to present entire. It will be seen, however, by what we have quoted, that Mr. KILBOURNE has a good share of poetic feeling and capability of expression. He has not lived in the world in vain; but with an eye, and an ear, and most of all, a heart. Yet several things are wanting, before our young bard can become an effective poet, which doubtless he must needs desire to be. He has more sensibility than taste; the consequence of which is, that the best passages in his best pieces are marred by the proximity of such as are weak and infelicitous. Then again there is a want throughout the volume of condensation and energy. Mr. KILBOURNE must gird himself to greater terseness and strength; he must chisel and refine with a severer taste and more assiduity, before he can reach the place where doubtless bright anticipations have at times placed him. We beg him, in all due kindness, to remember, that it is easier to jump in thought to such a conclusion than actually to attain it. We conclude with the expression of our hope and trust that his day-dreams in this regard, in common with those of other gifted and rising spirits among us, may not have been altogether idle.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

JEFFREY AND GIFFORD versus SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. An acute and comprehensive mind, an intelligence superior to 'prejudice, and an undeviating conscientious spirit of rectitude, are among the necessary endowments of true criticism. But how rare has been this combination, even in the examples of those who have been admitted to be the most distinguished critics of their time! Let the whole history of literature furnish the answer; while we direct the reader to an amusing commentary upon this general theme, which we find in the last number of FRAZER'S Magazine, under the title of 'JEFFREY and GIFFORD versus SHAKSPEARE and MILTON.' 'We have often amused ourselves,' says the writer, 'by imagining how SHAKSPEARE and MILTON would have fared at the hands of these illustrious reviewers had the paramount pair of immortals and the two clever party writers been contemporaries. Let us follow out this curious speculation. To make our suppositions quite plain, we will imagine that the Edinburgh Review existed at the time of SHAKSPEARE; that the disgust which is expressed for the tribunes, or the opposition, and the ministerial contempt of the people, shown forth in 'Coriolanus,' were disagreeable to the Whig party of that day; that SHAKSPEARE'S high Tory principles; the admiration which he appears to have felt for kings and princes, and the favor in which he may be fairly supposed to have stood at court; were unpalatable to the Liberals of the day. In such case we may be pretty sure he would have been given over for critical dissection to Mr. JEFFREY, who would probably have chosen the 'Tempest' as the subject of his subacid jocularity. Let us now suppose that the Quarterly Review was established at the Restoration; that MILTON'S 'Paradise Lost' had just been published by any bookseller but the MURRAY of those days; that MILTON had been placed, a short time previous (as in fact he was) in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms; that his pamphlets for the liberty of the press, and against the prelates, had enraged the opponents of liberal principles and lovers of highchurch politics; and it is easy to conclude that these persons would have infallibly consigned him to the secular arm of Mr. GIFFORD. Both of the worthy gentlemen we have named would, no doubt, have performed their functions to the entire satisfaction of their respective parties; Mr. JEFFREY with the lightness and liveliness which distinguish all he writes; Mr. GIFFORD with his usual strength and acuteness, mingled with his customary allusions to the personal history of the author whom he is reviewing. But the malice prepense - the intention to murder-would be equally appparent in both cases, though each would have his peculiar method of destroying.' The former editor of the Quarterly would be, like Tristan l'Hermite,' flinging his coarse and scurrilous jests upon the unfortunate person about whose neck he was fastening the rope, while his northern rival would rather resemble those eastern mutes who despatch you, with every appearance of respect for your person, with a silken cord.

With this preamble, Mr. JEFFREY is introduced to the reader, in a critique upon 'The Tempest, by WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE: 4to. London: 1612. After the dissertation upon matters and things in general' with which it is customary to open the labored papers of quarterly journals, the reviewer reaches at length the work which he is to criticise, and upon which he pounces in manner following, to wit:'

THE present play forms a sort of connecting link between the ancient mysteries and the modern drama, and, disregarding equally with these venerable monstrosities all rules of probability and taste, merely changes the abstractions into persons as shadowy, and their miracles into marvels altogether as amazing and edifying. In other respects, we are rather inclined to think that Mr. SHAKSPEARE has outdone the native absurdity of the originals.

The play opens with a conversation among some sailors in a ship sinking at sea, which is quite in the taste of these refined persons; others come in wet, which is at least as new on the stage as a ship foundering; then a confused noise is heard within:

We split! we split' farewell my wife and children!
Brother, farewell! we split! we split! we split!'

'The author has here most happily expressed confusion, by not indicating to whom these separate speeches are to be given.

The next scene is on an enchanted island, where a young lady called Miranda is entreating her father, Prospero, to allay the storm, of which she gives this splendid description:

The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to the welkin's cheek,
Dashes the fire out'

Prospero replies:

Be collected:

No more amazement: tell your piteous heart
There's no harm done.'

To this consolatory piece of intelligence Miranda most singularly answers, O wo the day!! and Prospero rejoins, No harm; wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.' From all which it would appear that Miranda was crying because nobody had been drowned. Prospero then bids her obey, and be attentive.' He relates that, just twelve years before, he was the Duke of Milan, but that his brother had usurped his dignity; and that himself and his daughter, having been put into a 'rotten carcass of a boat,' arrived safely at the island. But this interesting story is by no means so briefly told in the play, and is, moreover, perpetually interrupted in its course, after this fashion:

PROSPERO. My brother, and thy uncle, called Antonio :

I pray thee mark me- thy false uncle

Dost thou attend me?

MIRANDA. Sir. most heedfully.

PROS. Thou attend'st not.

But, all this having nothing to do with the storm, Miranda very properly puts the question:

And now I pray you, Sir,

(For still 't is beating in my mind,) your reason

For raising this sea-storm.'

To which Prospero returns the following very clear and intelligible answer:

Know thus far forth.

By accident most strange, bounteous fortune,
Now, my dear lady, hath mine enemies
Brought to this shore: and by my prescience

I know my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star, whose induence,

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.'

He seems well convinced, however, of the natural effect of this kind of poetry, for he adds:

Here cease more questions.

Thou art inclined to sleep. Tis a good heaviness,
And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.'

In which opinion all Mr. SHAKSPEARE's readers will readily concur.

We could wish that we had space for the equally interesting and refreshing satire upon a spirit called ARIEL,' the dialogue between whom and PROSPERO is turned into ridicule. We must pass on, however, to the assassination of the character of CALIBAN, that wonderful creation of the great bard. Does the reader remember any thing more