【正文】 yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere size, abstractly considered there can be nothing in bulk, so far as a volume is concerned, which had so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical magnitude which it conveys, does impress us with a sense of the sublime but no man is impressed after this fashion by material grandeur of even “The Columbiad.” Even the Quarterlies have not instructed us to be so impressed by it. As yet, they have not insisted on our estimating Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollok by the pound but what else are we to infer from their continual prating about “sustained effort?” If, by “sustained effort,” any little gentlemen has acplished an epic, let us frankly mend him for the effort if this indeed be a thing mendable but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort?s account. It is to be hoped that mon sense, in the time to e, will prefer deciding upon a work of art, rather by the impression it makes, by the amount of “sustained effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing, and genius quite anther nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By –andby, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as selfevident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths. On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spiritstirring。 but, in general, they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into aloft only to be whistled down the wind. A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem in keeping it out of the popular view is afforded by the following exquisite little Serenade: I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet of night When the winds are breathing low And the stars are shining bright I arise from dreams of thee And a spirit in my feet Hath led mewho knows how To thy chamberwindow sweet! The wandering airs, they faint On the dark, the silent stream The champak odors fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream。 The nightingale?s plaint, It dies upon her heart, As I must die on thine, O, beloved as thou art! O, lift me from the grass! I die, I faint, I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast: Oh! Press it close to thine again, Where it will break at last! Very few, perhaps, are familiar with these lines yet no less a poet than Shelly is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night. One of the finest poems by Willis the very best, in my opinion, which he has ever w