JOHN R. THOMPSON was born in Richmond, Virginia, on the twenty-third of October, 1823. He was graduated at the University of Virginia, near Charlottesville; studied law in the office of Mr. JAMES A. SEDDON; returned to the University law school, and took the degree of bachelor of laws under Judge HENRY St. GEORGE TUCKER; and in 1845 came to the bar. A strong predilection for literature induced him near the close of the year 1847 to take charge of "The Southern Lite

EXTRACT FROM THE GREEK SLAVE."

....

IT is not that the sculptor's patient toil Gives sweet expression to the poet's dream It is not that the cold and rigid stone Is taught to mock the human face divineThat silently we stand before her form And feel as in a holy presence there. But in those fair, calm lineaments of hers, A pure and passionless, we catch the glow The bright intelligence of soul nfused, And tender memories of gentle things, And sorrowing innocence and hopeful trust. In some secluded vale of Arcady, In playful gambols o'er its sunny slopes, Had nature led her childish feet to stray; Or she had watched the blue Egean wave Dash on the sands of "sea-born Salamis;" Or, in her infant sports, had sank to sleep, Beneath the wasting shadow of that porch, Whose sculptured gods, upon its crumbling front, Reveal the glories of a bygone age. There, watered by affection's richest dews This lovely floweret, day by day grew up In beauty and in fragrance.

....

Now, a slave, Fettered and friendless in the market-place Of that imperial city of the east, Whose thousand minarets at eve resound With the muezzin's sunset call to prayer, She stands exposed to the unhallowed gaze And the rude jests of every passer-by. There in her loveliness, disrobed, for sale, Girt with no vesture save her purity, A ray of placid resignation beams In every line of her sweet countenance, And on the lip a half-disdainful curl Proclaims the helpless victim in her chains Victorious in a maiden's modesty! There does the poor dejected slave display A mien the fabled goddess could not wear, A look and gesture that might well beseem Some seraph from that bright meridian shore, Whers walk the angels of the Christian's creed..

rary Messenger" magazine, which he has since conducted, in a manner eminently creditable to his abilities, taste, and temper. Besides his large and various contributions to this periodical, he has made frequent public addresses at colleges, delivered several ingenious and highly finished lectures, and written occasional papers for the literary journals of the north and south. He is one of the most accomplished and most useful writers of the southern states.

Sweet visions cheer'd the sculptor's lonely hours, And glorious images of heavenly mould Came trooping at his call, as blow by blow, The marble yielded to his constant toil, And when he gave his last informing touch And raised the chisel from that radiant brow, And gazed upon the work of his own hands, So cunningly struck out from shapeless stone, His eye dilated with a conscious joy, That patient effort with enduring life Had clothed his beauteous and majestic child. Such are thy triumphs, genius! such rewards As far outweigh all perishable gifts, Ingots of silver and barbaric gold And all the trophies of tiaraed pride.

TO MISS AMELIE LOUISE RIVES,

ON HER DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE.

LADY! that bark will be more richly freighted, That bears thee proudly on to foreign shores, Than argosies of which old poets prated,

With Colchian fleece or with Peruvian ores; And should the prayers of friendship prove availing. That trusting hearts now offer up for thee, "T will ride the crested wave with braver sailing Than ever pinnace on the Pontic sea. The sunny land thou seekest o'er the billow May boast indeed the honors of thy birth, And they may keep a vigil round thy pillow

Whom thou dost love most dearly upon earth Yet, shall there not remain with thee a visionSome lingering thought of happy faces hereFonder and fairer than the dreams elysian

Wherein thy future's radiant hues appear? The high and great shall render thee obeisance, In halls bedecked with tapestries of gold, And mansions shall be brighter for thy presence Where swept the stately MEDICIS of old; Still amid the pomp of all this courtly lustre I cannot think that thou wilt all forget The pleasing fantasies that thickly cluster Around the walls of the old homestead yet!

THE author of "Meister KARL's Sketch Book" was born in Philadelphia on the fifteenth of August, 1824. He is descended, according to the Genæological Register," from the same family as the English antiquary, JOHN LELAND, who lived in the time of the eighth HENRY, and his first American ancestor was HENRY LELAND, who died in Sherburne, Massachusetts, in 1580. He was graduated at Princeton College, in 1816, and soon after went to Europe, and studied some time at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Paris, devoting special attention to modern languages, esthetics, history, and philosophy, under GERVINUS, THIERSCH, SCHLOSSER, and other teachers.

Mr. LELAND in 1845 became a contributor to the Knickerbocker" magazine, in which he has since published a great number of articles; and he has written much for other periodicals, chiefly on subjects of foreign literature and art. His "Sketch Book of Me Meister KARL," first given to the public through the pages of the "Knickerbocker," is an extraordinary production, full of natural sentiment, wit, amiable humor, incidents of foreign travel, description, moralizing, original poetry, odd extracts, and curious learning, all combined so as to display effectively the author's information, vivacity, and independence, and to illustrate the life of a student of the most catholic temper and ambition, who thinks it worth his while occasionally to indulge in studies from nature as well as from

THELEME.*

I SAT one night on a palace step,
Wrapped up in a mantle thin;

And I gazed with a smile on the world without,
With a growl at my world within,

Till I heard the merry voices ring

Of a lordly companie,

And straight to myself I began to sing

"It is there that I ought to be."

And long I gazed through a lattice raised

Which smiled from the old gray wall,

And my glance went in, with the evening breeze,
And ran o'er the revellers all;
[mirth,
And I said, "If they saw me, 't would cool their
Far more than this wild breeze free,
But a merrier party was ne'er on earth,
And among them I fain would be."

"If you think,' said the monk, that I have done you any service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own fancy. The notion pleased GARGANTUA very well, who thereupon offeret him all the country of Thelemé."-RABELAIS, Book I. c. lvii.

books, and enjoys a life of action quite as well as one of speculation.

His Poetry and mystery of Dreams" is the only work in English in which are collected the displays of feeling and opinion that the ingenious and learned in various ages have made respecting the activity of the mind during sleep. In its preparation he carefully examined the writings of ARTEMIDORUS, ASTRAMPSYCHIUS, NICEPHORUS of Constantinople, and ACHMET, the Arabian, as well as the authors of modern Europe who have treated systematically or incidentally of oneirology or the related mental phenomena. His last book, Pictures of Travel," translated from the German of HENRY HEINE, is an admirable rendering of that great wit's "Reisebilder," in which the spirit of the original is given with a point and elegance rarely equalled in English versions of German poetry, while the whole is singularly literal and exact.

Mr. LELAND'S poems are for the most part in a peculiar vein of satirical humor. He has an invincible d'alike of the sickly extravagances of small sentimentalists, and the absurd assumptions of small philanthropists. He is not altogether incredulous of progress, but does not look for it from that boastful independence, characterizing the new generation, which rejects the authority and derides the wisdom of the past. He is of that healthy in tellectual constitution which promises in every department the best fruits to his industry.

And oh! but they all were beautiful,
Fairer than fairy-dreams,

And their words were sweet as the wind harp's tone
When it rings o'er summer streams;
And they pledged each other with noble mien,
"True heart with my life to thee!"
"Alack!" quoth I, "but my soul is dry,
And among them I fain would be!"
And the gentlemen were noble souls,
Good fellows both sain and sound,

I had not deemed that a band like this
Could over the world be found;

And they spoke of brave and beautiful things,
Of all that was dear to me;

And I thought, "Perhaps they would like me well
If among them I once might be!"
And lovely were the ladies too,

Who sat in the light-bright hall,
And one there was, oh, dream of life!
The loveliest 'mid them all;
She sat alone by an empty chair,
The queen of the feast was she,
And I said to myself, "By that lady fair
I certainly ought to be."

And aloud she spoke, "We have waited long
For one who in fear and doubt
Looks wistfully into our hall of song

As he sits on the steps without;

I have sung to him long in silent dreams,
I have led him o'er land and sea,
Co welcome him in as his rank beseems,
And give him a place by me!"

They opened the door, yet I shrunk with shame,
As I sat in my mantle thin,

But they haled me out with a joyous shout,

And merrily led me in—

And gave me a place by my bright-haired love,
As she wept with joy and glee,

And I said to myself, By the stars above.
I am just where I ought to be!"
Farewell to thee, life of joy and grief!

Farewell to ye, care, and pain!
Farewell, thou vulgar and selfish world!
For I never will know thee again.

I live in a land where good fellows abound,
In Thelemé, by the sea;

They may long for a "happier life" that will,-
I am just where I ought to be!

A DREAM OF LOVE.

I DREAMED I lay beside the dark blue Rhine,
In that old tower where once Sir ROLAND dwelt;
Methought his gentle lady-love was mine,

And she was dead-yet grieved I not therefore, For now in Heaven she knew the love I felt, Death could not kill affection, nor destroy

The holy peace wherein I long had dwelt. Oh, gentle lady! this was but a dream! And in a dream I bore all this for thee. If thus in sleep love's pangs assail my soul, Think, lady, what my waking hours must bo

MANES.

THERE's a time to be jolly, a time to repent,
A season for folly, a season for Lent.
The first as the worst we too often regard,
The rest as the best, but our judgment is hard.
There are snows in December and roses in June,
There's darkness at midnight and sunshine at noon:
But were there no sorrow, no storm-cloud or rain,
Who'd care for the morrow with beauty again?
The world is a picture both gloomy and bright,
And grief is the shadow, and pleasure the light,
And neither should smother the general tone;
For where were the other if either were gone!

The valley is lovely, the mountain is drear,
Its summit is hidden in mist all the year;
But gaze from the heaven, high over all weather,
And mountain and valley are lovely together.

I have learned to love LUCY, though faded she be,
If my next love be lovely, the better for me;

E'en to that minstrel age-the olden time, When ROLAND's lady bid him woo no more, And he, aweary, sought the eastern clime. Methought that I, like him, had wandered long, In those strange lands of which old legends tell; Then home I turned to my own glancing Rhine, And found my lady in a convent cell; And I, like him, had watched through weary years, And dwelt unseen hard by her convent's bound, In that old tower, which yet stands pitying

The cloister-isle, enclosed by water round. I long had watched-for in the early morn, To ope her lattice, came that lady oft; And earnestly I gazed, yet naught I saw, [soft. Save one small hand and arm, white, fair, and And when, at eve, the long, dark shadows fell

O'er rock and valley, vineyard, town, and tower, Again she came-again that small white hand

Would close her lattice for the vesper hour.

I lingered still, e'en when the silent night
Had cast its sable mantle o'er the shrine,
To see her lonely taper's softened light

[fall,

Gleam, far reflected, o'er the quiet Rhine; But most I loved to see her form, at times, Obscure those beams-for then her shade would And I beheld it, evenly portrayed

A living profile, on that window small. And thus I lived in love-though not in hopeAnd thus I watched that maiden many a year, When, lo! I saw, one morn, a funeral trainAlas! they bore my lady to her bier!

It was best, after all, to have flirted with both.
In London or Munich, Vienna, or Rome,
The sage is contented, and finds him a home,
He learns all that is bad, and does all that is good,
And will bite at the apple, by field or by flood.