And now he remembers the song, sung so often in the olden time by ONE now departed, which told of this same country, the far away country, the beautiful country over the sea.

The traveller resolves that he will set forth in search of it.

"The morning comes.

And a little cloud sails out upon the sky, and goes on slowly toward the west.

The traveller leaves his home, and where the little cloud stood poised over an upland range, he says to that land his last good-by.

And at mid-day reaches a high mountain pass.

And looking down on the country which he had left, behold the little cloud was not there, but was poised as before overhead.

It was wonderful; for there was no breath of air in the sky, and no other cloud.

"The traveller doubts whether it be a cloud or a vision only.

And with a prophesy which proves true, he guesseth that the cloud may be going with him on his journey.

And it was even so.

"Then the traveller buildeth an altar between the mountains, and rests for the day.

But at nightfall he continues his journey, when, behold a bright path opens before him, where are the prints of innumerable feet-the feet, as he imagines, of those who have gone before, no doubt, in search of the same country.

The traveller discourseth upon the way which is given to all, the path in which we must walk, and that life and death are matters of choice to all beings, death consisting chiefly in being left to one's self, abandoned of God, in whom all things that live have life.

In the course of his long journey, the traveller pauses one morning before day-break, and looks abroad upon a wide range of sea and land.

And he discourseth with the earth.

"The earth replies, but vaguely.

Then looking forward to the time when the earth must pass away, the traveller declares that God will build another home for him, where will begin the life immortal.

Then comes the morning, and praying that he may be made pure, like the light, the traveller and the bright morning travel on together.

IV,

AND now many years have gone since that bright morning, but still he travels on, not doubting of the country to which he journeys.

For the little cloud is with him always.

And often he has visions of that land which the old man told to him-the 'far away country, the beautiful country, where is no night on land or sea.'

Some say that he is mad; some say that he is a dreamer; but whom some angel guards from all

harm.

But he travels on; saying to all, that we shall meet again, and then will appear who are the mad men and who the dreamers.

'It is now the morning watch, and the traveller having concluded the story of his life and journey asks the stranger to look forth again, and see if there be any sign of morning, for a sudden darkness surrounds him, and he surmiseth that his hour of departure is at hand.

The stranger replies that the night is still moving on grandly as ever, and nowhere is any gleam of morning.

The traveller cheereth and comforteth the stranger, that the morning, the beautiful morning, will surely come: it will not fail.

But whether, as by the coming of death, or by the solemn stillness of the night, and the strange history of this strange man, the stranger is appalled and overpowered with the awfulness of the scene. But now an angel taketh the traveller away to his early home, and there, in vision, be seeth again the mountains and the sea, and the beautiful home underneath the hills.

And he heareth voices which call to him, and which say, 'The night is past, cometh the day'-far away, far away, they call to him, The night is past, cometh the day.'

The day! the day! Ah, without doubt, the long, long journey is now nearly over: one step more, and now the traveller is entering this wonderful country, the beautiful country, the far away country, where is no night on land or sea!

Will the traveller return? shall we see him again?

'At some distant day he may return, but now we need not stay-it is irrevocable: he is gone. But in that country where he now dwells we may see the traveller again. Oh, be strong, be strong: fear not!

Having thus given the 'Outline' of the author, we proceed to present a few extracts, which sufficiently vindicate his claims to a distinguished position among American poets. His poem is informed with a deep spirit of devotion, and in some of its features is not unlike the 'Pilgrim's Progress' of BUNYAN. We alluded some months ago, in another department of this Magazine, to parts of the poem which we had been permitted to peruse in the manuscript; and we quoted on that occasion the fine opening of the first 'Part,' commencing

'In silence and sadness cometh the night;"

together with the noble passage concerning Nineveh, and the lesson taught by her

glory and her destruction. These extracts will be well remembered by our readers, for they were very striking and beautiful, and one of them in particular was copied widely at the time in contemporary publications. We commence our present extracts with a passage descriptive of a mother praying for her child:

That mother often sings to her boy a legend, handed on from a distant generation, of a bright, a far-away country, over the seas and mountains, where it is always day :

In the following weird and original passage, the traveller, in a vision by the seaside, 'seeth a strange world, which, although it sailed among others that were very fair and beautiful, was itself, and of its own choice, as it were, an outcast among them.' It was 'a world lying in wickedness:'

Here is an aspiration worthy of a christian and a patriot; and it is expressed with unmistakeable feeling:

Solemn and awe-full are these reflections upon life, death, and a judgment to

The 'dead years, rolling backward,' leave the traveller, in his vision, with his mother, at the threshold of his early home, from which she departs and returns not again :

Do not these lines strike you, reminiscential reader, as extremely touching?

Here is a glance at the procession ever moving on to the 'pale realms of shade,' journeying to the 'life to come:'

Albeit this article has already reached an unusual length, we cannot resist the inclination to present two more extracts. In the following apostrophe to the Earth rolling in space, and in its reply thereto, we think will be found the elements of true sublimity:

And I take no thought of the time to come,

And in whose lowest depths hovers and sinks But ever and aye, with new delight,

'But listen,' saith the traveller, in a tone replete with the spirit of the solemn

As with the strains of solemn cathedral music yet swelling on the ear, shipper leaves the sacred place, so do we leave with our readers the lessons of 'The Morning Watch.'

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.—A new work by the late SYDNEY SMITH has recently appeared in England, entitled' Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy.' It consists of a series of lectures, more or less complete, delivered at the Royal Institution, in the years 1804-5-6. The volume has elicited the highest praise from the best critical journals in England. We subjoin a few extracts, commencing, with the following upon ' Puns :'

"I HAVE mentioned puns. They are, I believe, what I have denominated them the wit of words. They are exactly the same to words that wit is to ideas, and consist in the sudden discovery of relations in language. A pun, to be perfection in its kind, should contain two distinct meanings; the one common and obvious; the other, more remote; and in the notice which the mind takes of the relation between these two sets of words, and in the surprise which that relation excites, the pleasure of a pun consists. Miss HAMILTON, in her book on Education, mentions the instance of a boy so very neglectful, that he could never be brought to read the word patriarchs; but whenever he met with it he pronounced it partridges. A friend of the writer observed to her, that it could hardly be considered a mere piece of negligence, for it appeared to him that the boy, in calling them partridges, was making game of the patriarchs. Now here are two distinct meanings contained in the same phrase: for to make game of the patriarchs is to laugh at them; or to make game of them is, by a very extravagant and laughable sort of ignorance of words, to rank them among pheasants, partridges, and other such delicacies, which the law takes under its protection and calls game; and the whole pleasure derived from this pun consists in the sudden discovery that two such different meanings are referrable to one form of expression. I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they ought to be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them; it is a radically bad race of wit. By unremitting persecution it has been at last got under, and driven into cloisters—from whence it must never again be suffered to emerge into the light of the world.

The following upon 'Bulls and Charades,' especially the close, is very felicitous, or SMITH-like, which is quite the same thing:

'A BULL—which must by no means be passed over in this recapitulation of the family of wit and humor- a bull is exactly the counterpart of a witticism; for as wit discovers real relations that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. The pleasure arising from bulls proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been suspected. The same doctrine will apply to wit and bulls in action. Practical wit discovers connection or relation between actions, in which duller understandings discover none; and practical bulls originate from an apparent relation between two actions which more correct understandings immediately perceive to have none at all. In the late rebellion in Ireland, the rebels, who had conceived a high degree of indignation against some great banker, passed a resolution that they would burn his notes; which they accordingly did, with great assiduity, forgetting that in burning his notes they were destroying his debts, and that for every note which went into the flames a correspondent value went into the banker's pocket. A gentleman, in speaking of a nobleman's wife, of great rank and fortune, lamented very much that she had no children. A medical gentleman who was present observed, that to have no children was a great misfortune, but he thought he had remarked it was hereditary in some families. Take any instance of this branch of the ridicu lous, and you will always find an apparent relation of ideas leading to a complete inconsistency.

I shall say nothing of charades, and such sort of unpardonable trumpery. If charades are made at all, they should be made without benefit of clergy; the offender should instantly be hurried off to execution, and be cut off in the middle of his dulness, without being allowed to explain to the executioner why his first is like his second, or what is the resemblance between his fourth and his ninth.'

In some remarks upon 'Wit and Professed Wits,' Mr. SMITH takes the same ground and uses the same arguments touching this theme, which we have frequently taken and urged in this Magazine. There is no greater bore 'in the infinite region of boredom' than a 'professed,' or as SYDNEY SMITH terms it, 'a mere wit,' a 'dramatic performer,' whose intellectual 'bent' is all one way, and who throws into the back-ground those serious qualities which should intermingle with every well-balanced mind. The best wits or humorists whom we know, as we have before urged in these pages, (there is a great difference, by-the-by, between a wit and a humorist,) are business or professional men, of sound common sense, and great acumen; and SMITH himself, and DICKENS, are illustrations that the highest order of humor is not incompatible with a higher order of intellectual qualities. Mr. SMITH observes:

'I doubt if they are sufficiently indulgent to this faculty where it exists in a lesser degree, and as