of Saalfeld, who in his youth accompanied the army of the emperor into the Netherlands as chaplain, and because he refused to baptize a cannon ball, was thrust by the licentious soldiers into a mortar, in order to be shot into the air, a fate which he escaped only because the powder would not kindle. A second time he was in danger of his life, and a reward of five thousand florins offered for his head, because the emperor was enraged against him for contemptuously tearing the Interim in his pulpit. Catherine allowed him, at the request of the people of Saalfeld, to conceal himself in her castle, where she supported him for many months with the greatest kindness, until he could appear abroad without danger. She died universally honored and lamented, in the fifty-eighth year of her life, and the twenty-ninth of her government. Her remains lie in the church of Rudolstadt. * ORIGINAL POETRY. THE BUTTERFLY. FROM THE FRENCH OF DE LA MARTINE. BORN with the Spring, and with the roses dying, How like desire, to which no rest is given, Which still uneasy, rifling every treasure, Returns at last above to seek for purer pleasure. S. * An order by which the emperor suspended some privileges granted to the Protestant states of Germany. THE POOR SCHOLAR. I saw him starting in his new career; The hue of health was on his cheek-his eye Cast its dark cloud o'er his aspirings high. And he did seem like one who lightly deemed Like a young eagle on the mountain height, Again I saw him—then his cheek was pale, And bent his form, and dimmed his lightning eye, His strength had gone, as the tree fades when fail The freshening streams, and blighting winds go by; Gone, too, the generous pride, the fixt intent, With which to the world's cirque like gallant steed he bent. But, though he struggled on against the tide, The goal of promise still did fleet away, And still did mock him, till his last hope died. None cried, "God bless him," on his weary way, Looked kind, or stretched a timely hand to save; What marvel then,-the green turf decks his grave. Yea, death fell on him, for his ills were sore; As a light billow on the level shore, Or lamp expiring in the ardent noon, He died unheeded, save by one, and she Had been the mother of his infancy. E. P.. TO THE MISSISSIPPI. RIVER of current rapid, wide, and deep! Of the Pacific. Why not bidden roll Thy waves through vales more cheerful! I would see The cultured glebe, the nectarine-loaded tree, The temple set for sacred use apart, All these my fettered wish would plant; but, no, God doomed thy banks to wrath,-flow, mighty river, flow. J. CHANGES. AFTER a troubled life, I trace again The woodland mazes, in whose secret paths That wandered from your dim and quiet haunts A weary and heart-broken man. His hope! "T was broken in the distant battle-field His gladness hath given place to bitter tears. 1 Methinks that many years have wrought a change Whose bounding hoofs flew down yon darkened glade Alas! the green tree at my cabin door, The cottage door is broken! its thatched roof My brethren come not at my call; the song VIVIAN. VOL. II. 39 CRITICAL NOTICES. The Prairie, a Tale. By the Author of "The Pioneers" and "The Last of the Mohicans." In Two Volumes. Philadelphia. Carey, Lea, & Carey. 1827. 12mo. pp. 528. THIS book either has been or will be so generally read, that no regular analysis of its plot is necessary to the remarks we have to make, and no quotations from its pages are needed to illustrate them. The author has not allowed himself a very large abundance of materials out of which to construct his narrative. The action of the piece is religiously confined to the prairie, from which it is named, a vast open country, with an undulating surface, with here and there a few bushes in the hollows, a single heap of rocks, and a river. The events of the story happen to a beehunter and his sweetheart, and a Captain in the United States and his wife. The troubles in which both these couples army are involved are occasioned partly by a family of squatters, consisting of a termagant woman, her gigantic husband and knavish brother, and a troop of overgrown girls and boys; and partly by a tribe of cruel and thievish Indians, the Siouxes, Tetons, or Dahcotahs, for the author calls them indiscriminately by either of these names. On the other hand, these good people have for their friends and helpers in calamity, a stupid, pedantic naturalist, a sagacious old trapper, and a magnanimous and friendly tribe of Indians, the Pawnee Loups. The unlawful detention of the Captain's wife in the squatter family, and her final restoration to her husband, the opposition of this family to the marriage of the beehunter with his sweetheart, their relation; these incidents, diversified with a brief captivity among the Siouxes, and a battle between this tribe and the Pawnees, form the thread of the story. This is not very promising matter, but it is handled by a man of genius, and wrought up, we should think, into all the interest of which it is capable. The author's power of narration and description does not desert him ;-the faculty of setting before the mind of the reader, with a strong distinctness, a kind of visibility, the personages of the story and their actions,-a faculty of immense importance to the writer of fictitious narrative, and one on the possession of which a great deal of the popularity of Mr. Cooper is founded. The present work is not so much distinguished as some of his previous writings, for striking and extra |