erable length and descriptive interest, was published in. 1848. In the same year appeared Voices of Freedom, a collection of some forty poems, written during the preceding fifteen years, and upon themes suggested by Slavery. In these poems may be felt the intensest heart-throbbings of Whittier's freedom- and right-loving nature./

These 'Voices of Freedom' are no bad reading at the present day. They are themselves battles, and stir the blood like the blast of a trumpet. What a beat in them of fiery pulses! What a heat, as of molten metal, or coalmines burning underground! What anger! What desire! And yet we have in vain searched these poems to find one trace of base wrath, or of any degenerate or selfish passion. He is angry, and sins not. All the fires of his heart burn for justice and mercy, for God and humanity; and they who are most scathed by them owe him no hatred in return, whether they pay him any or not."*

The subjoined Lines, written on the passage of a "Bill for excluding papers written or printed, touching the subje of Slavery, from the U. S. Post-office," will fully sustain the above criticism.

MEN of the North-land! where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit

Their names alone?

Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us,
Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us
To silence now?

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,

In God's name, let us speak while there is time!
Now, when the padlocks for our lips are forging,
Silence is crime!

What! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors
Rights all our own? In madness shall we barter,
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us,
God and our charter?

* D. A. Wasson, in Atlantic Monthly, March, '64.

Here snall the statesman forge his human fetters,
Here the false jurist human rights deny,

And, in the church, their proud and skilled abettors
Make truth a lie?

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood?
And, in Oppression's hateful service, libel

Both man and God?

Shall our New England stand erect no longer,
But stoop in chains upon her downward way,
Thicker to gather on her limbs and stronger
Day after day?

Oh, no; methinks from all her wild, green mountains—
From valleys where her slumbering fathers lie-
From her blue rivers and her welling fountains,
And clear, cold sky-

From her rough coast, and isles, which hungry Ocean
Gnaws with his surges-from the fisher's skiff,
With white sail swaying to the billow's motion

Round rock and cliff

From the free fire-side of her unbought farmer—
From her free laborer at his loom and wheel-
From the brown smith-shop, where, beneath the hammer
Rings the red steel-

From each and all, if God hath not forsaken

Our land, and left us to an evil choice,

Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall waken

A People's voice.

Startling and stern! the Northern winds shall bear it

Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave;

And buried Freedom shall awake to hear it

Within her grave.

Oh, let that voice go forth! The bondman sighing
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's cane,

Shall feel the hope, within his bosom dying,

Revive again.

Let it go forth! The millions who are gazing
Sadly upon us from afar, shall smile,

And unto God devout thanksgiving raising,

Bless us the while.

8

Oh, for your ancient freedom, pure and holy,
For the deliverance of a groaning earth,

For the wronged captive, bleeding, crushed, and lowly,
Let it go forth!

Sons of the best of fathers! will ye falter
With all they left ye perilled and at stake?
Ho! once again on Freedom's holy altar
The fire awake!

Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come together,
Put on the harness for the moral fight,
And, with the blessing of your Heavenly Father,
MAINTAIN THE RIGHT!

Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, a series of prose essays, written in an antique style, and descriptive of the habits and customs of 1678, appeared in 1849. This volume was, the next year, succeeded by Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, which consisted of prose essays on Bunyan, Bax ter, Ellwood, Nayler, Andrew Marvill, the Quaker John Roberts, for the Ancients, and the Americans, Leggett, Rogers, and Dinsmore, for the Moderns.

In the same year with the last-named publication was also issued a volume of poems, under the name, Songs of Labor, and other Poems. These "Songs" are six in number, and are severally ascribed to The Ship-builders, The Shoemakers, The Drovers, The Fishermen, The Huskers, and The Lumbermen. They abound in accurate pencillings of the industrial spheres they commemorate, and in devout and poetic expressions.

THE LUMBERMEN.

WILDLY round our woodland quarters,
Sad-voiced Autumn grieves;

Thickly down these swelling waters
Float his fallen leaves.

Through the tall and naked timber,
Column-like and old,

Gleam the sunsets of November,

From their skies of gold.

O'er us, to the South-land heading,
Screams the gray wild-goose;

On the night-frost sounds the treading.
Of the brindled moose.

Noiseless creeping, while we're sleeping,
Frost his task-work plies;

Soon, his icy bridges heaping,

Shall our log-piles rise.

When, with sounds of smothered thunder,

On some night of rain,

Lake and river break asunder

Winter's weakened chain,

Down the wild March flood shall bear them To the saw-mill's wheel,

Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them With his teeth of steel.

Be it starlight, be it moonlight,
In these vales below,

When the earliest beams of sunlight
Streak the mountain's snow,
Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early,
To our hurrying feet,

And the forest echoes clearly

All our blows repeat.

Where the crystal Ambijejis

Stretches broad and clear,

And Millnoket's pine-black ridges

Hide the browsing deer:

Where, through lakes and wide morasses,

Or through rocky walls,

Swift and strong, Penobscot passes

White with foamy falls;

Where, through clouds, are glimpses given

Of Katahdin's sides,

Rock and forest piled to heaven,
Torn and ploughed by slides!

Far below, the Indian trapping,
In the sunshine warm;

Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping
Half the peak in storm!

Where are mossy carpets better
Than the Persian weaves,

And than Eastern perfumes sweeter
Seem the fading leaves;

And a music wild and solemn,
From the pine-tree's height,
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume
On the wind of night;

Make we here our camp of winter;
And, through sleet and snow,
Pitchy knot and beechen splinter
On our hearth shall glow.
Here, with mirth to lighten duty,
We shall lack alone

Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty,
Childhood's lisping tone.

But their hearth is brighter burning
For our toil to-day;

And the welcome of returning
Shall our loss repay,

When, like seamen from the waters,
From the woods we come,

Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters,
Angels of our home!

Not for us the measured ringing
From the village spire,

Not for us the Sabbath singing
Of the sweet-voiced choir:

Ours the old, majestic temple,

Where God's brightness shines Down the dome so grand and ample, Propped by lofty pines!

Through each branch-enwoven skylight, Speaks He in the breeze,

As of old beneath the twilight

Of lost Eden's trees!