SAMUEL GILMAN.

[Born, about 1791.]

"Lectures" of Dr. THOMAS BROWN. About the same time he translated in a very elegant manner several of the satires of BOILEAU, which he also printed in the "North American Review." After his removal to Charleston he completed his version of BOILEAU, and sent the MS. to Mr. MURRAY, of London, for publication, but by some mischance it was lost, and no efforts have since availed for its recovery. In 1829 he gave to the public his "Memoirs of a New England Village Choir," a little book remarkable for quiet and natural humor, presenting a picture, equally truthful and amusing, of village life in New England in the first quarter of this century. He has more recently published elaborate and thoughtful papers in the reviews, on " The Influence of One National Literature upon Another," "The Writings of EDWARD EVERETT," and other subjects, besides literary and theological discourses, biographies, essays, and translations, all executed with taste and scholar

SAMUEL GILMAN, D.D. was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where his father had been successfully engaged in commerce, until the capture of several vessels in which he was interested, by the French, in 1798, reduced him to bankruptcy, with loss of health perhaps, for he died soon after, leaving a widow with four small children. Among these SAMUEL was the only son, and his mother, determining to educate him in the best nanner possible, placed him in the family of the Reverend STEPHEN PEABODY, of Atkinson, New Hampshire, a remarkable character, of whom Dr. GILMAN has given an interesting account in an article in "The Christian Examiner" for 1847, entitled "Reminiscences of a New England Clergyman at the Close of the Last Century." Having been prepared for college by Mr. PEABODY, he entered Harvard in 1807, in the same class with N. L. FROTHINGHAM and EDWARD EVERETT. He was graduated in 1811, and was afterwards, from 1817 to 1819, connected with the college as a tutor; but in thely finish. latter year he was married to Miss CAROLINE HOWARD, who, as Mrs. GILMAN, has been so creditably distinguished in literature, and removed to Charleston, South Carolina, where he has ever since resided, as pastor of the Unitarian church of that city. Of Dr. GILMAN's earlier writings none received more attention than a series of able papers contributed to the "North American Review," while he was a tutor at Cambridge, on the philosophical

Among the original poems of Dr. GILMAN, the most noticeable are the " History of the Ray of Light," which is reprinted in the second volume of Mr. KETTELL'S Specimens of American Poetry." and his "Poem read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society" of Harvard College. Some of his minor pieces have been deservedly popular, and may be found in numerous school-books and choice selections of literature.

THE SILENT GIRL.

SHE seldom spake; yet she imparted
Far more than language could-
So birdlike, bright, and tender-hearted,
So natural and good!

Her air, her look, her rest, her actions,

Were voice enough for her:

Why need a tongue, when those attractions

Our inmost hearts could stir?

She seldom talked, but, uninvited,
Would cheer us with a song;

And oft her hands our ears delighted,
Sweeping the keys along.

And oft when converse round would lan

guish,

Ask'd or unasked, she read

Some tale of gladness or of anguish,

And so our evenings sped.

She seldom spake; but she would listen
With all the signs of soul;

Her cheek would change, her eye would glisten.
The sigh-the smile-upstole.

Who did not understand and love her,
With meaning thus o'erfraught?
Though silent as the sky above her,
Like that, she kindled thought.

Little she spake; but dear attentions
From her would ceaseless rise;

She checked our wants by kind preventions,
She hush'd the children's cries;

And, twining, she would give her mother
A long and loving kiss-

The same to father, sister, brother,

All round-nor would one miss.

She seldom spake-she speaks no longer;
She sleeps beneath yon rose;

'Tis well for us that ties no stronger

Awaken memory's woes.

For oh! our hearts would sure be broken,

Already drained of tears,

If frequent tones, by her outspoken,

Still lingered in our ears.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

[Born, 1791.]

CHARLES SPRAGUE was born in Boston, on the twenty-sixth day of October, in 1791. His father, who still survives, was one of that celebrated band who, in 1773, resisted taxation by pouring the tea on board several British ships into the sea.

Mr. SPRAGUE was educated in the schools of his native city, which he left at an early period to acquire in a mercantile house a practical knowledge of trade. When he was about twenty-one years of age, he commenced the business of a merchant on his own account, and continued in it, I believe, until he was elected cashier of the Globe Bank, one of the first establishments of its kind in Massachusetts. This office he now holds, and he has from the time he accepted it discharged its duties in a faultless manner, notwithstanding the venerable opinion that a poet must be incapable of successfully transacting practical affairs. In this period he has found leisure to study the works of the greatest authors, and particularly those of the masters of English poetry, with which, probably, very few contemporary writers are more familiar; and to write the admirable poems on wh is based his own reputation.

of the most vigorous and beautiful lyrics in the English language. The first poet of the world, the greatness of his genius, the vast variety of his scenes and characters, formed a subject well fitted for the flowing and stately measure chosen by our author, and the universal acquaintance with the writings of the immortal dramatist enables every one to judge of the merits of his composition. Though to some extent but a reproduction of the creations of SHAKSPEARE, it is such a reproduction as none but a man of genius could effect.

The longest of Mr. SPRAGUE's poems is entitled "Curiosity." It was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, in August, 1829. It is in the heroic measure, and its diction is faultless. The subject was happily chosen, and admitted of a great variety of illustrations. The descriptions of the miser, the novel-reader, and the father led by curiosity to visit foreign lands, are among the finest passages in Mr. SPRAGUE'S Writings. "Curiosity" was published in Calcutta a few years ago, as an original work by a British officer, with no other alterations than the omission of a few American names, and the insertion of others in their places, as Scorт for COOPER, and CHALMERS for CHANNING; and in this form it was reprinted in London, where it was much praised in some of the critical gazettes.

The poem delivered at the centennial celebration of the settlement of Boston, contains many

The first productions of Mr. SPRAGUE which attracted much attention, were a series of brilliant prologues, the first of which was written for the Park Theatre, in New York, in 1821. Prize theatrical addresses are proverbially among the most worthless compositions in the poetic form. Their brevity and peculiar character prevents the develop-spirited passages, but it is not equal to "Curiosity' ment in them of original conceptions and striking ideas, and they are usually made up of commonplace thoughts and images, compounded with little skill. Those by Mr. SPRAGUE are certainly among the best of their kind, and some passages in them are conceived in the true spirit of poetry. The following lines are from the one recited at the opening of a theatre in Philadelphia, in 1822.

"To grace the stage, the bard's careering mind
Seeks other worlds, and leaves his own behind;
He lures from air its bright, unprison'd forms,
Breaks through the tomb, and Death's dull region storms,
O'er ruin'd reaims he pours creative day,
And slumbering kings his mighty voice obey.
From its damp shades the long-laid spirit walks,
And round the murderer's bed in vengeance stalks.
Poor, maniac Beauty brings her cypress wreath,~
Her smile a moonbeam on a blasted heath;
Round some cold grave she comes, sweet flowers to strew,
And, lost to Heaven, still to love is true.

Hate shuts his soul when dove-eyed Mercy pleads;
Power lifts his axe, and Truth's bold service bleeds;
Remorse drops anguish from his burning eyes,
Feels bell's eternal worm, and, shuddering, dies;
War's trophied minion, too, forsakes the dust,
Grasps his worn shield, and waves his sword of rust,
Springs to the slaughter at the trumpet's call,
Again to conquer, or again to fall."

The ode recited in the Boston theatre, at a pageant in honour of SHAKSPEARE, in 1823, is one

or "The Shakspeare Ode." Its versification is easy and various, but it is not so carefully finished as most of Mr. SPRAGUE'S productions. "The Winged Worshippers," "Lines on the Death of M. S. C.," "The Family Meeting," "Art," and several other short poems, evidence great skill in the use of language, and show him to be a master of the poetic art. They are all in good taste; they are free from turgidness; and are pervaded by a spirit of good sense, which is unfortunately wanting in much of the verse written in this age.

Mr. SPRAGUE has written, besides his poems, an essay on drunkenness, and an oration, pronounced at Boston on the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of independence; and I believe he contributed some papers to the "New England Magazine," while it was edited by his friend J. T. BUCKINGHAM. The style of his prose is florid and much less carefully finished than that of his poetry.

He mixes but little in society, and, I have been told, was never thirty miles from his native city. His leisure hours are passed among his books; with the few "old friends, the tried, the true," who travelled with him up the steeps of manhood; or in the quiet of his own fireside. His poems show the strength of his domestic and social affections.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.

Does LANGDON preach ?-(I veil his quiet name
Who serves his GOD, and cannot stoop to fame ;)-
No, 'tis some reverend mime, the latest rage,
Who thumps the desk, that should have trod the
stage,

Cant's veriest ranter crams a house, if new,
When PAUL himself, oft heard, would hardly fill
a pew.

Lo, where the stage, the poor, degraded stage,
Holds its warp'd mirror to a gaping age;
There, where, to raise the drama's moral tone,
Fool Harlequin usurps Apollo's throne;
There, where grown children gather round, to praise
The new-vamp'd legends of their nursery days;
Where one loose scene shall turn more souls to
shame,

Then ten of CHANNING'S lectures can reclaim;
There, where in idiot rapture we adore
The herded vagabonds of every shore:
Women unsex'd, who, lost to woman's pride,
The drunkard's stagger ape, the bully's stride;
Pert, lisping girls, who, still in childhood's fetters,
Babble of love, yet barely know their letters;
Neat-jointed mummers, mocking nature's shape,
To prove how nearly man can match an ape;
Vaulters, who, rightly served at home, perchance
Had dangled from the rope on which they dance;
Dwarfs, mimics, jugglers, all that yield content,
Where Sin holds carnival and Wit keeps Lent;
Where, shoals on shoals, the modest million rush,
One sex to laugh, and one to try to blush,
When mincing RAVENOT sports tight pantalettes,
And turns fops' heads while turning pirouettes;
There, at each ribald sally, where we hear
The knowing giggle and the scurrile jeer;
While from the intellectual gallery first
Rolls the base plaudit, loudest at the worst.

Gods! who can grace yon desecrated dome,
When he may turn his SHAKSPEARE o'er at home?
Who there can group the pure ones of his race,
To see and hear what bids him veil his face?
Ask ye who can? why I, and you, and you;
No matter what the nonsense, if 'tis new.
To Doctor Logic's wit our sons give ear;
They have no time for HAMLET, or for LEAR;
Our daughters turn from gentle JULIET'S WO,
To count the twirls of ALMAVIVA's toe.

Not theirs the blame who furnish forth the treat,
But ours, who throng the board and grossly eat;
We laud, indeed, the virtue-kindling stage,
And prate of SHAKSPEARE and his deathless page;
But go, announce his best, on COOPER call,
COOPER, "the noblest Roman of them all;"
Where are the crowds, so wont to choke the door?
"T is an old thing, they 've seen it all before.

Pray Heaven, if yet indeed the stage must stand,
With guiltless mirth it may delight the land;
Far better else each scenic temple fall,
And one approving silence curtain all.
Despots to shame may yield their rising youth,
But Freedom dwells with purity and truth;
Then make the effort, ye who rule the stage-
With novel decency surprise the age;
Even Wit, so long forgot, may play its part,
And Nature yet have power to melt the heart;

Perchance the listeners, to their instinct true,
thing new.
May fancy common sense-'t were surely some-

Turn to the Press-its teeming sheets survey,
Big with the wonders of each passing day;
Births, deaths, and weddings, forgeries, fires, and
wrecks,

Harangues, and hail-storms, brawls, and broken
necks;

Where half-fledged bards, on feeble pinions, seek
An immortality of near a week;

Where cruel eulogists the dead restore,
In maudlin praise, to martyr them once more;
Where ruffian slanderers wreak their coward spite,
And need no venom'd dagger while they write:
There, (with a quill so noisy and so vain,
We almost hear the goose it clothed complain,)
Where each hack scribe, as hate or interest burns,
Toad or toad-eater, stains the page by turns;
Enacts virtu, usurps the critic's chair,
Lauds a mock GUIDO, or a mouthing player;
Viceroys it o'er the realms of prose and rhyme,
Now puffs pert "Pelham," now "The Course of
Time;"

And, though ere Christmas both may be forgot,
Vows this beats MILTON, and that WALTER SCOTT;
With SAMSON's vigour feels his nerves expand,
To overthrow the nobles of the land;
Soils the green garlands that for Oris bloom,
And plants a brier even on CABOT's tomb;
As turn the party coppers, heads or tails,
And now this faction and now that prevails;
Applauds to-day what yesterday he cursed,
Lampoons the wisest, and extols the worst;
While, hard to tell, so coarse a daub he lays,
Which sullies most, the slander or the praise.

Yet, sweet or bitter, hence what fountains burst.
While still the more we drink, the more we thirst
Trade hardly deems the busy day begun,
Till his keen eye along the page has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by,
And reads her schoolmate's marriage with a sigh,
While the grave mother puts her glasses on,
And gives a tear to some old crony gone;
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down,
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life's meanest, mightiest things,
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings;
Naught comes amiss, we take the nauseous stuff,
Verjuice or oil, a libel or a puff.

'Tis this sustains that coarse, licentious tribe
Of tenth-rate type-men, gaping for a bribe;
That reptile race, with all that's good at strife,
Who trail their slime through every walk of life;
Stain the white tablet where a great man's name
Stands proudly chisell'd by the hand of Fame;
Nor round the sacred fireside fear to crawl,
But drop their venom there, and poison all.
'Tis Curiosity-though, in its round,
No one poor dupe the calumny has found,
Still shall it live, and still new slanders breed;
What though we ne'er believe, we buy and read;
Like Scotland's war-cries, thrown from hand to

hand,

To rouse the angry passions of the land.