all terror, single or in bands, that ever was put forth' opposed to that novel, and, save in the Temptation, hitherto untested power, represented by Christ, the author of the theory and master of the example.
"He is not supposed to appear among them 'grasping in his hand ten thousand thunders,' but endued with an equal power, the result and expression of perfect virtue and rightful authority. His triumph is attributed neither to natural, nor to supernatural power; but to moral superiority, evincing itself in His aspect, and exercising its omnipotence upon the soul and conscience. That in the conception of a great Christian poet, His appearance among the rebel angels in Heaven was distinguished by the former attributes, is due, perhaps, to the heroic prejudice of a mind thoroughly imbued with the spirit of pagan writers, and of the Hebrew Scriptures."
The volume opens with this noble invocation, in which there is fit recognition of Dante and Milton, whose lips aforetime for such song had been touched by the divinest fire:
Thou of the darkness and the fire, and fame
Avenged by misery and the Orphic doom,
Bard of the tyrant-lay! whom dreadless wrongs,
Impatient, and pale thirst for justice drove,
A visionary exile, from the earth,
To seek it in its iron reign—O stern!
And not accepting sympathy, accept
A not presumptious offering, that joins
That region with a greater name: And thou,
Of my own native language, O dread bard!
Who, amid heaven's unshadowed light, by thee
Supremely sung, abidest—shouldst thou know
Who on earth with thoughts of thee erects
And purifies his mind, and, but by thee,
Awed by no fame, boldened by thee, and awed—
Not with thy breadth of wing, yet with the power
To breathe the region air—attempts the height
Where never Scio's singing eagle towered,
Nor that high-soaring Theban moulted plume,
Hear thou my song! hear, or be deaf, who may.
And if not rashly, or too soon, I heed
The impulse, but have waited on my heart
With patience, and its utterance stilled with awe
Oh what inspired it, till I felt it beat
True cadence to unconquerable strains;
Oh, then may she first wooed from heaven by prayer
From thy pure lips, and sympathy austere
With suffering, and the sight of solemn age,
And thy gray Homer's head, with darkness bound,
To me descend, more near, as I am far
Beneath thee, and more need her aiding wing.
Oh, not again invoked in vain, descend,
Urania! and eyes with common light
More blinded than were his by Heaven's hand
Imposed to intercept distracting rays,
Bathe in the vision of transcendent day;
And of the human senses (the dark veil
Before the world of spirit drawn) remove
The dim material hindrance, and illume;
That human thought again may dare behold
The shape and port of spirits, and once more
Hear voices in that distant, shadowy world,
To which ourselves, and this, are shadows, they
The substance, immaterial essence pure—
Souls that have freed their slave, and given back
Its force unto the elements, the dread
Manes, or the more dread Archetypes of men:
Like whom in featured reason's shape—like whom
Created in the mould of God—they fell,
And mixed with them in common ruin, made
One vast and many-realmed world, and shared
Their deep abodes—their endless exile, some,—
Some to return to the ethereous light
When one of human form, a Savior-Man
Almighty, not in deity alone,
But mightier than all angels in the might
And guard of human innocence preserved,
Should freely enter their dark empire—these
To loose, o'er those to triumph; this the theme,
The adventure, and the triumph of my song.
The Fine Arts
Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware.—Our readers are aware of the accident by fire which happened some months since to Leutze's nearly-finished picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware, in consequence of which he abandoned it to the underwriters, intending to commence the work anew for the party from which he had received the order to paint it. The underwriters have accordingly paid the insurance, and are now exhibiting the picture in its incomplete state to the public of Cologne, where it meets with high approval. The Kölnische Zeitung says of it: "In this picture the artist has depicted the events of the hour in which the destiny of the Free States of North America was decided for centuries through the boldness of their courageous and prudent leader. The means of continuing the war were almost exhausted; the army threatened in a few days to dissolve itself; the cause of freedom for that continent, with its inestimable consequences for ancient Europe, would have been postponed, no one can tell how long, perhaps for ever. Then the great mind of Washington conceived what the morally debased, reposing enemy thought impossible. He crossed the Delaware with his army in the night, amid masses of floating ice, and, in the twilight of morning, assailed the inactive camp on the other side. The picture reproduces the moment when the great general,—ahead of the mass of the army, which had also just embarked, and part of which are passing off from the shore, and part already struggling with the driving ice,—is steering to the opposite shore in a small boat, surrounded by eleven heroic figures, officers, farmers, soldiers, and boatmen. The tall and majestic form of the man in whose hands at that hour lay the fate of millions, rises from the group, standing slightly bent, forward, with one foot on the bottom of the boat, the other on the forward bench. His mild yet serious and commanding glance seems seeking to pierce the mist of the farther shore and discover the enemy, while intimations of the future grandeur of his country rise upon his mind. Nothing of youthful rashness appears in the expression of this figure, but the thoughtful artist has depicted the 'heart for any fate' of the general and statesman in noble, vigorous, and faithful traits. And what an impulse moves through the group of his companions! Their thought is, 'Forward, invincibly forward, for our country!' This is expressed in their whole bearing, in every movement, in the eyes and features of all. Under the influence of this thought they command the raging elements, so that the masses of ice seem to dissolve before the will and energy of these men. This is a picture by the sight of which, in this weary and exhausted time, one can recover health and strength. Let none miss a draught from such a goblet of nectar. And while we are writing this, it occurs to us that it was at this very hour seventy-four years ago, in the ice-cold night, Washington crossed the Delaware. And amid the ominous concatenation of events which the weak mind calls accident, but which the clear spirit, whose eye rests on the whole world, regards as the movement of nature according to eternal laws, there rises from our soul the ardent prayer that Germany may soon find her Washington! Honor and fame to the artist whose production has power to work upon the hearts and inflame the spirits of all that behold it!"
Messrs.
