Why perch ye here,

Where mortals to their Maker bend?

Can your pure spirits fear

The God ye never could offend?

'Ye never knew

The crimes for which we come to weep;
Penance is not for you,

Bless'd wanderers of the upper deep.'

Mr Sprague is best known by his Poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, in August, 1829. The poet, on this occasion, labors under some disadvantages. He succeeds an orator, who has already engaged the attention of the audience with some high intellectual subject, for a time limited only by his own discretion; and who, whether dull or able, may be supposed to leave his hearers little disposed to listen to any other. Beside, by an absurd and unexplained arrangement, those, who would secure places for these performances, are compelled to endure an hour or two of previous declamation, of the unmeaning kind in vogue in our public institutions. All these things are certainly against him; and it is not easy to select a subject which will afford sufficient interest for the variety of hearers. Sprague, however, not only added to the high reputation which he put at stake, but made himself known as the author of a poem, the high classical merit of which has established his poetical character.

Mr

His subject is Curiosity, and we think it happily chosen ; if the subject is a matter of importance to one, who can give interest to any by rich and various illustration. The beginning of the poem is well imagined to awaken curiosity; but it was a bold experiment to hold the minds of his hearers so long in suspense, and but for the excellence of what succeeds, would hardly have been forgiven.

The effect of this principle, in childhood, is thus beautifully described.

'In the pleased infant see its power expand,
When first the coral fills his little hand;
Throned in his mother's lap, it dries each tear,
As her sweet legend falls upon his ear;
Next it assails him in his top's strange hum,
Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum;
Each gilded toy, that doting love bestows,
He longs to break and every spring expose.

Placed by your hearth, with what delight he pores
O'er the bright pages of his pictured stores;
How oft he steals upon your graver task,
Of this to tell you and of that to ask;
And, when the waning hour to-bedward bids,
Though gentle sleep sit waiting on his lids,
How winningly he pleads to gain you o'er,

That he may read one little story more.' p. 5.

Mr Sprague has taken advantage of this occasion, to lash many of the vices and follies of the times. His censure on the press is timely and powerful. We may endure to hear the prints of half the country praising The Course of Time,' but their eulogies of the licentious and disgusting Pelham,' deserve his severest sarcasm. The fierce and brutal violence of this mighty element, for a few years past, is enough to fill a thoughtful mind with dismay, when we reflect, that millions are daily drinking from these poisonous and polluted streams; and we are glad that Mr Sprague has given us a bright side to this dark and hopeless picture, colored with his usual power.

All are not such? O no, there are, thank Heaven,
A nobler troop to whom this trust is given;
Who, all unbribed, on freedom's ramparts stand,
Faithful and firm, bright warders of the land.
By them still lifts the Press its arm abroad,
To guide all-curious man along life's road;
To cheer young genius, pity's tear to start,

In truth's bold cause to rouse each fearless heart;
O'er male and female quacks to shake the rod,

And scourge the unsexed thing that scorns her God.'

p. 12. We give next the character of the miser, which reminds ust of the characters of Pope. It would be well if such portraits were oftener held up to detestation in this country, where the power of gain being universal as the passion, and balanced by no other restraints than conscience and religion, which have but little influence with the worshippers of Mammon, we are in some danger of mistaking avarice for a virtue, and the miser for a benefactor of mankind.

'Go, seek him out on yon dear Gotham's walk,
Where traffic's venturers meet to trade and talk;
Where Mammon's votaries bend, of each degree,
The hard-eyed lender, and the pale lendee;

Where rogues insolvent strut in whitewashed pride,
And shove the dupes who trusted them aside.
How through the buzzing crowd he threads his way,
To catch the flying rumors of the day;

To learn of changing stocks, of bargains crossed,
Of breaking merchants, and of cargoes lost;
The thousand ills that traffic's walks invade,

And give the heart-ach to the sons of trade.
How cold he hearkens to some bankrupt's wo,
Nods his wise head, and cries," I told you so ;
The thriftless fellow lived beyond his means,
He must buy brants,—I make my folks eat beans;"
What cares he for the knave, the knave's sad wife,
The blighted prospects of an anxious life?
The kindly throbs that other men control,
Ne'er melt the iron of the miser's soul;

Through life's dark road his sordid way he wends,
An incarnation of fat dividends;

But when to death he sinks, ungrieved, unsung,
Buoyed by the blessing of no mortal tongue;
No worth rewarded and no want redressed,
To scatter fragrance round his place of rest,
What shall that hallowed epitaph supply-
The universal wo when good men die?
Cold Curiosity shall linger there,

To guess the wealth he leaves his tearless heir;
Perchance to wonder what must be his doom,
In the far land that lies beyond the tomb; -
Alas! for him, if, in its awful plan,

Heaven deal with him as he hath dealt with man.'

pp. 17, 18.

There is one of the finest pictures we remember ever to have seen, of a family, the father of which is led by 'curiosity' to visit foreign lands. The gloom of his mansion, the regrets of his wife and children, and the thoughtfulness with which he leans over the cradle, with his purpose almost shaken, are described with truth and feeling; and powerfully wound up with a view of him, lying in the cabin of the homeward vessel, with the seal of death on his brow, till the short preparation is made for that most forlorn of all services, the funeral at sea. We have only room for the close. 'Cold in his cabin now,

Death's finger-mark is on his pallid brow;
No wife stood by, her patient watch to keep,
To smile on him, then turn away to weep;

Kind woman's place rough mariners supplied,
And shared the wanderer's blessing when he died.
Wrapped in the raiment that it long must wear,
His body to the deck they slowly bear;
Even there the spirit that I sing is true,

The crew look on with sad, but curious view;
The setting sun flings round his farewell rays,
O'er the broad ocean not a ripple plays;
How eloquent, how awful in its power,

The silent lecture of death's sabbath hour;
One voice that silence breaks,-the prayer is said,
And the last rite man pays to man is paid;
The plashing waters mark his resting-place,
And fold him round in one long, cold embrace;
Bright bubbles for a moment sparkle o'er,
Then break, to be, like him, beheld no more;
Down, countless fathoms down, he sinks to sleep,
With all the nameless shapes that haunt the deep.'

pp. 24, 25. Mr Sprague's language is simple and nervous, and his imagery brilliant and striking. There is a spirit of pervading good sense in this poem, which shows that he gives poetry its right place in his mind. Above all there is a lofty tone of thought, which indicates superiority to the affectations of the day. Notwithstanding the intimations conveyed in the close of this work, that the duties of his life are of no poetical character, we venture to hope, that some moral subject will again inspire him, and hazard nothing in predicting, that, in such an event, he will do honor to himself and the country.

5.8. Sewall

ART. III.-Suggestions respecting Improvements in Education, presented to the Trustees of the Hartford Female Seminary, and published at their Request. By CATHARINE E. BEECHER. Hartford. Packard & Butler. 8vo. pp. 84.

MUCH of the existing evil in the world may be removed or lessened by human agency. What now is, and always has been, regarded as the most powerful means for improving the condition of our race, is education. This being so well understood, it is sometimes asked, Why, then, are the hopes of

careful and conscientious parents so often defeated in the future character of their offspring? Why is it, that the wealth lavished on education, and the unremitted labors of friends and teachers, so often yield but miserable and unsatisfactory returns; that where the good seed is sown, the harvest is nothing but weeds? We do not now inquire, as to the causes of crime and wretchedness among individuals who are borne down by poverty and ignorance; or of the low and sensual morality of nations on which the light of Christianity has not yet shone; or of those which have been for ages oppressed under absurd political systems. But why is it, that, in a country like our own, whose political institutions are wise, in which education is made an object of chief importance, it should so often prove unsuccessful in its influence on the character even of those who are most fortunately situated?

It is not our intention, at present, to enter very deeply into the discussion of these questions. It is evident, that the imperfect success of education, compared with the means used, does not arise from any want of interest in the subject. On the contrary, the whole community of our country seems to be fully aware of its importance, and is striving earnestly to increase the present means, and improve the present modes of education. Every year is adding new states to the number of those which provide free schools for the instruction of all classes. Legislatures and individuals have showered their bounty on our seminaries of learning. Every day brings forth new treatises for the use of schools and colleges, and new volumes for the instruction and amusement of youth, which, compared with those in use twenty years ago, exhibit great and manifest improvement. We behold, on every side, proofs of the earnest and constant efforts which are making to promote the welfare of the rising generation. We daily hear of new schools on improved plans, and of new systems of instruction introduced into the old. Sunday schools, too, which are now so common, are an instrument to act on the moral nature of the people, the power of which is great, and as yet, perhaps, not fully appreciated. The societies for the diffusion of knowledge, the Lyceums, and Mechanics' Institutions, the popular scientific lectures, also afford means of advancing the intellectual, and, at the same time, the moral condition of the great mass of the community, to which former ages present no parallel. And not only are the respectable