In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a Pix of sculpture rare,
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.
Here, when Art was still Religion, with a simple reverent heart,
Lived and laboured Albert Durer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed, for the Artist never dies.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement—that he once has breathed its air!
Through those streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the Master-singers, chanting rude poetic strains.
From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,
Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.

As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he to the mystic rhyme,
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime;
Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom
In the forge's dust and cinders-in the tissues of the loom.

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.
But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,

And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;
Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Paschman's song,

As the old man grey and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.
And at night the swarth mechanic comes to drown his cank and care,
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards in the master's antique chair.
Vanished is the ancient splendour, and before my dreamy eye
Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.
Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard;
But thy painter, Albert Durer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler bard.
Thus, oh, Nuremberg! a wanderer from a region far away,

As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay;
Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a flow'ret of the soil,

The nobility of labour, the long pedigree of toil.

This image of the thought gathered like a flower from the crevice of the pavement, is truly natural and poetical.

Here is another image which came into the mind of the writer as he looked at the subject of his verse, and which pleases accor

dingly. It is from one of the new poems, addressed to Driving

Cloud, "chief of the mighty Omahaws."

Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket I see thee stalk through the city's

Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers

Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their foot-prints.
What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the foot-prints?

Here is another very graceful and natural simile:

Another

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles rain.

I will forget her! All dear recollections,

Pressed in my heart like flowers within a book,

Shall be torn out and scattered to the winds.

The drama from which this is taken is an elegant exercise of the pen, after the fashion of the best models. Plans, figures, all are academical. It is a faint reflex of the actions and passions of men, tame in the conduct and lifeless in the characters, but not heavy, and containing good meditative passages.

And now farewell to the handsome book, with its Preciosos and Preciosas, its Vikings and knights, and cavaliers, its flowers of all climes, and wild flowers of none. We have not wished to depreciate these writings below their current value more than truth absolutely demands. We have not forgotten that, if a man cannot himself sit at the feet of the muse, it is much if he prizes those who may; it makes him a teacher to the people. Neither have we forgotten that Mr. Longfellow has a genuine respect for his pen, never writes carelessly, nor when he does not wish to, nor for money alone. Nor are we intolerant to those who prize hot-house bouquets beyond all the free beauty of nature e; that helps the gardener and has its uses. But still let us not forget

Excelsior !!

SWEDENBORGIANISM.

NOBLE'S APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THE VIEWS HELD BY THE NEW (or Swedenborgian) CHURCH. Second edition, 1845. Boston: T. H. Carter & Co.-Otis Clapp.

ESSAYS BY THEOPHILUS PARSONS. Boston: Otis Clapp, School-st. 1845. THE CORNER STONE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM, by B. F. BARRETT. New York: Bartlett and Wellford, Astor House; John Allen, 139 Nassau-street, 1845.

THE claim to be the New Church, or peculiarly the founders of a New Jerusalem, is like exclusive claims to the title of Orthodox. We have no sympathy with it. We believe that all kinds of inspiration and forms of faith have been made by the power that rules the world to cooperate in the development of mental life with a view to the eventual elucidation of truth. That ruling power overrules the vanity of men, or just the contrary would ensue. For men love the letter that killeth better than the spirit that continually refreshes its immortal life. They wish to compress truth into a nut-shell that it may be grasped in the hand. They wish to feel sure that they and theirs hold it all. In vain! More incompressible than light, it flows forth anew, and, while the preacher was finishing the sermon in which he proclaimed that now the last and greatest dispensation had arrived, and that all the truth could henceforward be encased within the walls of a church-it has already sped its way to unnumbered zones, planted in myriad new-born souls the seeds of life, and wakened in myriads more a pulse that cannot be tamed down by dogma or doctrine, but must always throb at each new revelation of the glories of the infinite.

Were there, indeed, a catholic church which should be based on a recognition of universal truths, simple as that proposed by Jesus, Love God with all thy soul and strength, thy neighbour as thyself; such a church would include all sincere motions of the spirit, and sects and opinions would no more war with one another than roses in the garden, but, like them, all contentedly grace a common soil and render their tribute to one heaven.

Then we should hear no more of the church, creed, or teacher, but of a church, creed or teacher. Each man would adopt contentedly what best answered his spiritual wants, lovingly granting the same liberality to others. Then the variety of opinions would produce its natural benefit of testing and animating each mind in its natural tendency, without those bitter accompaniments that make theological systems so repulsive to religious minds.

Religious tolerance will, probably, come last in the progress of civilization, for, in those interests which search deepest, the weeds of prejudice have struck root deepest, too. But it will come; for we see its practicability sometimes proved in the intercourse between friends; and so shall it be between parties and groups of men, when intercourse shall have been placed on the same basis of mutual good-will and respect for one another's rights. Then those ugliest taints of spiritual arrogance and vanity shall begin to be washed out of this world.

As with all other cases, so with this! We believe in no new church par excellence. Swedenborgians are to us those taught of Swedenborg, a great, a learned, a wise, a good man-also one instructed by direct influx from a higher sphere, but one of a constellation, and needing the aid of congenial influences to confirm and illustrate his.

That the body of his followers do not constitute a catholic church would be sufficiently proved to us by the fact, asserted by all who come in contact with them, that they attach an exaggerated importance to the teachings of their master, which

shuts them in a great measure from the benefit of other teachings, and threatens to make them bigots, though of such mild strain as shows them to be the followers of one singularly mild and magnanimous.

For Swedenborg was one who, though entirely open and steadfast in the maintenance of his pretensions, knew how to live with kings, nobles, clergy, and people, without being the object of persecution to any. They viewed with respect, if not with confidence, his conviction that he was "in fellowship with angels.' They knew the deep discipline and wide attainments of his mind. They saw that he forced his convictions on no one, but relied for their diffusion upon spiritual laws. They saw that he made none but an incidental use of his miraculous powers, and that it was not to him a matter of any consequence whether others recognized them or not; for he knew that those whoin truth does not reach by its spiritual efficacy cannot be made to believe by dint of signs and wonders.

Thus his life was, for its steady growth, its soft majesty, and exhibition of a faith never fierce and sparkling, never dim, a happy omen for the age. Thus gently and gradually may new organizations of great principles be effected now! May it prove that, at least in the more advanced part of the world, revolutions may be effected without painful throes! Such a life was in correspondence with his system, which is one of gradation and harmony.

I have used the word system, and yet it is not the right one. The works of Swedenborg contain intimations of a system, but it is one whose full development must be coincident with the perfection of all things. Some great rules he proffers, some ways of thinking opens; we have centre and radii, but the circumference is not closed in.

This is to us the greatness of Swedenborg and the ground of our pleasure in his works, that in them we can expatiate freely; there is room enough. We can take what does us good, and de