EDITOR’S TABLE.

Miss Barrett.—In this number will be found a series of sonnets by Miss Elizabeth B. Barrett, among the first of her contributions to any American periodical. They were originally intended for “Arcturus,” to which magazine they were sent; but arriving after the discontinuance of that periodical, its editors placed them at our disposal, “thinking the good company into which they would be introduced in ‘Graham,’ would be every way agreeable to the fair authoress.”

Miss Barrett’s productions are unique in this age of lady authors. They have the “touch of nature” in common with the best; they have, too, sentiment, passion and fancy in the highest degree, without reminding us of Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Norton, or L. E. L. Her excellence is her own; her mind is colored by what it feeds on; the fine tissue of her flowing style comes to us from the loom of Grecian thought. She is the learned poetess of the day, familiar with Homer and Æschylus and Sophocles, and to the musings of Tempe she has added the inspiration of Christianity, “above all Greek, all Roman fame.” She has translated the Prometheus to the delight of scholars, and has lately contributed a series of very remarkable prose papers to the London Athenæum. Her reading Greek recalls to us Roger Ascham’s anecdote of Lady Jane Grey; but Lady Jane Grey has left us no such verses.

A striking characteristic of Miss Barrett’s prose, is its prevailing seriousness, approaching to solemnity—a garb borrowed from the “sceptred pale” of her favorite Greek drama of fate. She loses much with the general reader by a dim mysticism; but many of her later poems are free from any such defect. The great writers whom she loves will teach her the plain, simple, universal language of poetry.

Her dreams and abstractions, though “caviare to the generale,” have their admirers, who will ever find in pure and elevated philosophy expressed in the words of enthusiasm the living presence of poetry. On Parnassus there are many groves: far from the dust of the highway, embosomed in twilight woods that seem to symbol Reverence and Faith trusting on the unseen, we may hear in the whispering of the trees, the wavering breath of insect life, the accompaniment of our poet’s strain. Despise not dreams and reveries. With Cowley, Miss Barrett vindicates herself. “The father of poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God.”

We cannot here do justice to Miss Barrett’s volume of the Seraphim, or to her other poems. We cannot here illustrate as we would the lofty tone of her conceptions, which in grandeur and human interest belong to the highest and most enduring of lyrical strains. She has thrown aside sentimentality, the fluency without thought, the cheap eloquence that marks a certain school of lady poets, for the genuine language of emotion, the fire-new currency of speech forged in the secret chambers of the heart. From two volumes of her poetry before us, (unfamiliar as yet to American readers—they cannot be so long,) we quote one poem, perhaps not the most brilliant of all, but inferior to none of the rest in the pathos, the tenderness, the deep Christian sympathy with human life, which dwell in the soul of this rare poetess.

THE SLEEP.

“He giveth His beloved sleep.”—Psalm cxxvii. 2.

Of all the thoughts of God that are

Borne inward unto souls afar,

Along the Psalmist’s music deep⁠—

Now tell me if that any is,

For gift or grace surpassing this⁠—

“He giveth his beloved sleep?”

What would we give to our beloved?

The hero’s heart, to be unmoved⁠—

The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep⁠—

The senate’s shout to patriot vows—

The monarch’s crown, to light the brows?—

“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

What do we give to our beloved?

A little faith, all undisproved⁠—

A little dust, to overweep⁠—

And bitter memories, to make

The whole earth blasted for our sake!

“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

“Sleep soft, beloved!” we sometimes say,

But have no tune to charm away

Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep:

But never doleful dream again

Shall break the happy slumber, when

“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

O earth, so full of dreary noises!

O men, with wailing in your voices!

O delved gold, the wailers heap!

O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!

God makes a silence through you all,

And “giveth His beloved sleep!”

His dew drops mutely on the hill;

His cloud above it saileth still,

Though on its slope men toil and reap!

More softly than the dew is shed,

Or cloud is floated overhead,

“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

Ha! men may wonder while they scan

A living, thinking, feeling man,

In such a rest his heart to keep;

But angels say—and through the word

I ween their blessed smile is heard⁠—

“He giveth His beloved sleep!”

For me my heart that erst did go,

Most like a tired child at a show,

That sees through tears the juggler’s leap,⁠—

Would now its wearied vision close,

Would childlike on His love repose,

Who “giveth His beloved sleep!”

And friends!—dear friends!—when it shall be

That this low breath is gone from me,

And round my bier ye come to weep⁠—

Let me, most loving of you all,

Say, not a tear must o’er her fall⁠—

“He giveth His beloved sleep!”

Stars that Have Set in MDCCCXLII.—Among the dead of the year now drawing to a close, America laments her Marsh and Channing, and Europe, Sismondi and some less brilliant luminaries.

The Rev. James Marsh, D.D. was, at the time of his death, the third day of July, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont. He was a calm, chaste scholar, an earnest and profound thinker, and a powerful and eloquent advocate of the highest principles of religion and philosophy, with the perfect simplicity and grandeur of whose life were blended the rarest virtues that adorn humanity. His principal published writings, excepting a few articles in the leading reviews, and some translations from the German, are devoted to those high and spiritual principles of philosophy, of which Coleridge and Kant were the most celebrated European exponents. We are pleased to learn that Professor Torrey, one of the dearest friends of the departed, is now superintending the publication of a complete edition of his works.

The name of William Ellery Channing has been long familiar to the readers of America and Great Britain. He was equally popular in both countries, and in both was regarded as one of the greatest authors of the age. The first edition of his collected writings we believe was published some five or six years since in Glasgow, and the last, in six octavo volumes, in Boston, in the winter of 1840. We presume his later productions, unprinted sermons, etc.—sufficient to fill several additional volumes—will soon be published, with his memoirs. Doctor Channing was for a long period the leading divine of the Unitarian belief, and though an ardent controvertist, was regarded by all men with love and reverence. The purity of his life, his high aims, his candor, and the dignity and beauty of his diction, won for him a reputation that will endure when most of the names now prominent in the world of letters are forgotten. He died in Bennington, in Vermont, on his return way from an excursion among the Green Mountains in search of health, on the second day of October.

John Charles Leonard de Sismondi was one of the most celebrated historical, political and æsthetical writers of the time. He died near Geneva, on the twenty-fifth of June, in his sixty-ninth year. He was the author of New Principles of Political Economy, A History of the Italian Republics, A History of the Literature of Southern Europe, A History of France, Julia Severn, a romance, and several other works, making in the aggregate about one hundred and fifty volumes, in the French editions. As a historian he has rarely been surpassed, and in every department of letters he exercised a powerful influence for nearly half a century.

Mr. James Grahame, author of the excellent History of the United Slates which bears his name; Sir Robert Kerr Porter, the traveler; Theodore E. Hook, the novelist, biographer, and dramatic writer; and Robert Mudie, author of several works on natural history, etc. were better known in this country than any of the other literary characters who have died in Europe during the present year.

New Books.—We received several new works too late to be noticed properly in our present number, of which we have space to mention particularly only Mr. Norman’s “Rambles in Yucatan,” and Mr. Lester’s observations on “The Condition and Fate of England,” both from the press of Messrs. Langley, of New York. The first is an exceedingly interesting work, and the last quite as good as the same author’s “Glory and Shame of England.” We shall endeavor to do them full justice in our Magazine for January.

The End of the Year.—With the present number we bring to a close another year of the publication of Graham’s Magazine. The many improvements which since our last anniversary have been effected in the work, and the extraordinary accessions to our subscription list—between twenty and thirty thousand in twelve months!—impart to us a satisfaction which we trust is shared in some degree by our million readers.

Since the commencement of the present year, Rufus W. Griswold has become associated with the proprietor in the editorship of the Magazine; and to our corps of contributors have been added William C. Bryant and Richard H. Dana, the first American poets, and the equals of any now living in the world; James Fenimore Cooper, the greatest of living novelists; Charles F. Hoffman, one of the most admired poets and prose writers of our country; Elizabeth B. Barrett, the truest female poet who has written in the English language; J. H. Mancur, the author of “Henri Quatre;” George H. Colton, the author of “Tecumseh;” H. T. Tuckerman, the author of “Isabelle, or Sicily,” etc.; the author of “A New Home” and “Forest Life,” who, under the name of “Mary Clavers,” has won a reputation second to that of none of the writers of her sex in America; Mrs. E. F. Ellet, the well known author of “The Characters of Schiller,” etc.; Mrs. Seba Smith, whose elegant and truthful compositions are as universally admired as they are read; and several others, whom we have not now space to mention. All these, with our favorite old writers, Professor Longfellow, George Hill, Edgar A. Poe, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Stephens, and others, we shall retain for our succeeding volumes.

We shall likewise receive regular contributions during the ensuing year, from N. P. Willis, whose many admirable qualities as a writer have made his name familiar wherever English literature is read; T. C. Grattan, the popular author of “Highways and Byways,” “The Heiress of Bruges,” etc.; “Maria del Occidente,” the author of “Zophiel,” and many others, whose names will from month to month grace our pages.

Let our Past speak for our Future. The improvements made in Graham’s Magazine, in 1842, will be surpassed by those that we shall introduce in 1843. In all the departments of our work we shall remain in advance of every other candidate for the public favor.

The Author of the Sketch Book.—In a notice of the Miscellanies of Sir Walter Scott, in the number of this Magazine for September, we made allusion to reviews of various publications of Mr. Washington Irving, which we had good reason for believing were written by that gentleman himself. We learn with pleasure, from one who speaks on the subject by authority, that Mr. Irving is guiltless of the imputed self laudation. He did indeed write the article in the London Quarterly on his “Chronicles of Grenada,” and received for it the sum we mentioned; but, like so many of the modern “reviews,” it had very little relation to the work which gave it a title, or to its author.

H. Hastings Weld.—We notice that this talented and agreeable writer, formerly editor of the Brother Jonathan, has taken the editorial charge of the United States Saturday Post, a family newspaper of the largest class and circulation. We feel assured that the humor and vivacity of Mr. Weld’s pen will tend to make the paper still more popular, and to add greatly to the already enormous subscription list. This paper already circulates more copies weekly than any other family newspaper in the Union.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note.

In the story Malina Gray, this concluding installment had two parts titled Chapter III. The second Chapter III has been corrected to Chapter IV.

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 6, December 1842, George R. Graham, Editor]