: In the volume which contains the City of the Plague, we meet with two poems which are deserving of especial remark, as being strikingly characteristic of the genius of their author; we allude to "The Convict," a dramatic fragment, in which, from a combination of natural touches, the catastrophe is wrought to the highest possible pathos and "The Scholar's Funeral," a sketch, justly celebrated for the lofty, reposing, serene, and beautiful train of imagery and sentiment which pervade it. The story of the former poem is that of an innocent man, who has been tried, and convicted, upon strong circumstantial evidence, of a murder of which he is wholly innocent. The first scene is laid in his cottage, where his wife and a friend are waiting, in momentary expectation of hearing the result of his trial. The alternations of hope and despair are most pathetically described. The clergyman, who has passed the preceding night in prayer with the supposed criminal, visits the wretched woman, for the purpose of preparing her mind for the message, which arrives soon afterwards, announcing her husband's condemnation. Scene the second, is the Condemned Cell, a few days previous to that appointed for the execution. The first scene of the second part of the poem is the same cell, on the morning of the execution; the clergyman praying by the doomed man, and endeavoring to inspire him with fortitude to endure the horrors that await him. The second scene changes again to the prisoner's cottage, where his wife is sitting with her friend, surrounded by her little ones. The third scene is a field, in which several laborers are reposing. The following powerful description of the appalling spectacle is put into the mouth of one of the bystanders : Master. Methinks I see the hill-side all With silent faces gazing steadfastly One human face among the many thousands there His fears when apprehended--and the falsehoods Which first he utter'd-all perplex my mind! And then they say the murder'd body bled, Foon as he touch'd it--Let us to our work, Poor people oft must work with heavy hearts. -Oh! doth that sunshine smile as cheerfully Upon Lea-side as o'er my happy fields! [The Scene changes to a little Field commanding a view of the place of Execution. Two YOUNG MEN looking towards it.] 1st Man. I dare to look no longer.-What dost thou see? 2d Man. There is a stirring over all the crowd. the most touching and powerful of all Mr. Wilson's productions. Among the minor poems, which in the new edition of Mr. Wilson's poetical works Occupy the second volume, our prime favorites are→ the Scholar's Funeral-Address to a Wild Deer-To a Sleeping Child -Trout-beck Chapel-the Hearth -Peace and Solitude, and the Children's Dance. The pieces which are the, most intrinsically characteristic of the writer's genius are-a Lay of Fairy Land-Edith and Nora-the Desolate Villagethe Ass in a Storm Shower-Picture of a Blind Man-My Cottage -and Church-yard Dreams. We are compelled to curtail the followpoem, in order to adapt it to our narrow limits: [He turns away.] 2d Man. He is standing on the scaffolding he looks round, But does not speak-some one goes up to him Let us away And know what happens. Hark! another shout That rends the silent sky. See, hats are waved! And every face is bright-deliverance ́s in that peal of joy-he shall not die. He is reprieved at this very crial juncture; and the real murrconfesses his guilt, and delivers himself up to justice. disposed to consider this fragment We are Are spread in a garment of glory o'er thee. Up! up to yon cliff! like a king to his throne! O'er the black silent forest piled lofty and lone A throne which the eagle is glad to resign Unto footsteps so fleet and so fearless as thine. There the bright heather springs up in love of thy breast Lo! the clouds in the depth of the sky are at rest; And the race of the wild winds is o'er on the hill! In the hush of the mountains, ye antlers lie still!- Where the creature at rest can his image behold, Looking up through the radiance, as bright and as bold. Yes! fierce looks thy nature, ev'n hush'd in repose- In the depths of thy desart regardless of foes. Thy bold antlers call on the hunter afar, With a haughty defiance to come to the war. No outrage is war to a creature like thee; The bugle horn fills thy wild spirit with glee, As thou bearest thy neck on the wings of the wind, And the laggardly gaze-hound is toiling be hind. In the beams of thy forehead, that glitter with death, In feet that draw power from the touch of the heath, In the wide-raging torrent that lends thee its roar, In the cliff that once trod must be trodden no more, Thy trust-mid the dangers that threaten thy reign: But what if the stag on the mountain be slain? On the brink of the rock-lo! he standeth at bay, Like a victor that falls at the close of the dayWhile the hunter and hound in their terror retreat From the death that is spurn'd from his furious feet : And his last cry of anger comes back from the skies, As Nature's fierce son in the wilderness dies. We quote also a part of the Address to a Sleeping Child: Art thou a thing of mortal birth, May bless an infant's sleeping eye? In these, and other poems which our limits will not admit of our extracting, it would be difficult to decide which we are most called upon to admire-the delicacy of sentiment, or the splendor of imagination, which pervade them. The faults of the less successful pieces in these volumes are, as we have already hinted, faults of exuberance and not of poverty; and so keen an eye does Mr. Wilson direct to the external world, that his imagination seems as it were oppressed with the crowd of imagery that is forever rushing upon it; so that in fact, the distinctness of his pictures is sometimes marred by the profusion of metaphors by which he attempts to illustrate them. With all these stirring and active propensities, however, Mr. Wilson seems to revel much more in the calm and secluded, than in the noisier and more bustling elements of our nature. He prefers pity and love, to war, remorse and discord; the beauty of luxuriant summer, to winter's naked and howling desolation; and what is genial, gentle, and kind, to that which is stern, stormy and repugnant. With all this, it can scarcely be affirmed that Mr. Wilson's pictures of human life are perfectly correct. He gives us human life to be sure-all of human life;—but he adds something of his own imagining, which is far better. In his pages, earth is the garden of Eden-man but a grade lower than the angels-and human language poetry. His finer delineations of character have an unapproachable excellence; they are invested with all that is bright or beautiful in human nature and his pictures of moral degradation possess always many redeeming touches of pity and pathos, which give their dramalis persona a claim upon our esteeem, instead of provoking our hatred; and excite our commiseration, instead of calling for our reprehension or disgust. The truth is, that Mr. Wilson's genius is of too fine and ethereal a character for the grosser realities of earth; and he cannot submit to the delineation of the deformed and untoward, without brightening them over with the color of his own rich fancy. Hence he has taken peculiar delight in reveling over the high and superstitious feelings which once held such paramount sway over the minds of his countrymen of the olden time -more especially, as was to have been expected, with whatever concerns that most beautiful and interesting part of the Gothic mythology, the Fairies. It is, perhaps, from what Mr. Wilson has written concerning these tiny phantoms of northern superstition, that his greatest claims to originality, as a poet, will hereafter rest. But we must now bring this notice to a conclusion. As a moral poet, Mr. Wilson must ever rank very high. In his voluminous poetical works, there is not a single passage that conveys a sentiment even of doubtful application; at least, we have never been so unfortunate as to meet with one, and our perusals have neither been few nor inattentive. Following the Greek dramatists, and Wordsworth, between whom a more striking affinity exists than has generally been suspected, Mr. Wilson has chosen simple, unadorned nature as his model, in preference to the artificial states of life; and, like his great prototypes, has amply succeeded in proving that the elements of poetry are spread everywhere around us, alike in the varied beauty of external nature, and the simplest workings of human passion. A WEEK AT CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1829. BY A NAVAL OFFICER. "Plus on voyage, plus on est content de son pays!" BIDDING adieu to our friends at Smyrna, we sailed at daybreak on the morning of the, and after encountering a tramontana and strong adverse current, we came to anchor on the evening of the third day of our departure off Tenedos, with the far-famed Trojan plain abreast of us. With but too many, classical enthusiasm in a sailor is regarded as sheer affectation; but in a scene of unrivaled beauty like this, with the Trojan plain commanded by the lofty range of Ida before us; behind, the distant Mount Athos rearing its lofty head above the low lands of Lemnos and Tenedos; on our right the ruins of Alexandria of Troas, and Lemnos; on our left the entrance of the Hellespont, and the high lands of Imbras and Samothrace-add to the crowd of recollections which rush on the mind while gazing on this splendid panorama the magical effect of an oriental sunset, and in this spot the indulgence of a schoolboy recollection will, perhaps, escape the imputation of both pedantry and affectation. We weighed anchor early the following morning, and passed the castles at the mouth of the Hellespont with a light breeze from the southward, With every stitch of canvass set, it was with difficulty that we made way against the strong adverse current. Among the crowd of souvenirs which rush on the mind in passing these celebrated straits, we dwell with peculiar delight on the story of Leander, associated as it is with the name of our own Byron, who, it may be recollected, swam across it with an officer of the Salsette frigate. This feat of his lordship has been much blazoned, though without reason, for he did not attempt the most difficult part, which was to swim back again. Independent of the formidable castles which defend the entrance of the Hellespont, the guns of which are "à fleur d'eau," there is an extensive system of batteries and redoubts on the heights near Sigeum and the opposite point of the Thracian Chersonnesus. As we reconnoitred with our glasses these formidable defences, we felt that, once in possession of the Russians, they would laugh to scorn the attempts of all Europe to dislodge them: even in the hands of the Turks, our squadron in 1807 found their position before them untenable. In the evening we passed the town of Gallipoli, and held on our course through the night across the Sea of Marmora; the wind freshening from the southward. At an early hour in the morning, we came in sight of the village of San Stefano and the beautiful summer palace of the Sultan. We could now descry from deck the graceful minarets and swelling cupolas of the capital. By eleven we rounded the Golden Horn opposite Galata. Then it was that a panorama of unrivaled loveliness burst upon our enraptured vision, of which no description, however florid and accurate, can convey an adequate idea. In the course of a long naval career, it has been my lot to visit at different periods most of the beautiful spots on the surface of the globe-the Bays of Genoa and Naples, the romantic Cintra, Rio de Janeiro, and the more distant Sydney; but, beautiful as they certainly are, they must yield the palm of loveliness to Constantinople. On the Asiatic side, a succession of beautiful country houses, surrounded by vines and beautiful gardens; on the left an arm of the sea stretching far up into Europe, in the middle of which stands the |