according to the tariff of four sworn booksellers, at which books should be sold or lent to scholars; that a fine might be imposed for incorrect copies; that the sellers were bound to fix up in their shops a priced catalogue of their books, besides other regulations of less importance. Books deemed by the university unfit for perusal were sometimes burned by its order.

CERVANTES'S "DON QUIXOTE."

(From "Literature of Europe.")

"DON QUIXOTE" is the only book in the Spanish language which can now be said to possess much of a European reputation. It has, however, enjoyed enough to compensate for the neglect of all the rest. It is to Europe in general what Ariosto is to Italy, and Shakespeare to England: the one book to which the slightest allusion may be made without affectation, but not missed without discredit. Numerous translations and countless editions of it in every language bespeak its adaptation to mankind; no critic has been paradoxical enough to withhold his admiration; no reader has ventured to confess a want of relish for that in which the young and the old in every climate have, age after age, taken delight. They have, doubtless, believed that they understood the author's meaning; and in giving the reins to the gayety that his fertile invention and comic humor inspired, never thought of any deeper meaning than he announced, or delayed their enjoyment for any metaphysical investigation of his plan. A new school of criticism, however, has of late years arisen in Germany, acute, ingenious, and sometimes eminently successful, or, as they denominate it, æsthetic, analysis of works of taste; but gliding too much into refinement and conjectural hypothesis, and with a tendency to mislead men of inferior capacities of this kind of investigation into mere paradox and absurdity. According to these writers, "the primary idea is that of a man of elevated character, excited by heroic and enthusiastic feelings to the extravagant pitch of wishing to restore the age of chivalry; nor is it possible to form a more mistaken notion of this work, than by considering it merely as a satire, intended by the author to ridicule the abused passion for reading old romances."

It has been said by some modern writer-though I cannot remember by whom that there was a prose side in the mind of Cervantes. There was indeed a side of calm, strong sense, which some take for unpoetical. It might naturally occur how absurd

any one must appear who should attempt to realize in actual life the adventures of Amadis. Already a novelist, he perceived the opportunities this idea suggested. It was a necessary consequence that the hero must be represented as literally insane, since his conduct would have been extravagant beyond the probability of fiction on any other hypothesis; and from this very happy conception germinated, in a very prolific mind, the whole history of "Don Quixote." Its simplicity is perfect, no limit could be found save the author's discretion, or sense that he had drawn sufficiently on his imagination. But the death of Don Quixote, which Cervantes has been said to have determined upon lest someone else should a second time presume to continue the story, is in fact the only possible termination that could be given after he had elevated the character to that pitch of mental dignity which we find in the last two volumes.

Few books of moral philosophy display as deep an insight into the mechanism of the mind as "Don Quixote." And when we look also at the fertility of invention, the general probability of events, and the great simplicity of the story, wherein no artifices are practised to create suspense, or complicate the action, we shall think Cervantes fully deserving of the glory that attends this monument of his genius. It is not merely that he is superior to all his predecessors and contemporaries. This, though it might account for the European fame of his romance, would be an inadequate testimony to its desert. Cervantes stands on an eminence below which we must place the best of his successors. We have only to compare him with Le Sage or Fielding to judge of his vast superiority. To Scott, indeed, he must yield in the variety of his power; but in the line of comic romance, we should hardly think Scott his equal.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE, an American poet; born at Guilford, Conn., July 8, 1790; died there, November 19, 1867. After acting as a clerk in his native town, he entered a banking house in New York. About 1832 he became private secretary to John Jacob Astor, retaining that relation until the death of Mr. Astor, in 1848, when Halleck retired to his native village, being also one of the trustees of the Astor Library. Halleck occasionally wrote verses while quite young. In 1819, in conjunction with Joseph Rodman Drake, he produced the "Croaker" papers, a series of poetical satires on public characters of the period, which were published in the "New York Evening Post." His longest poem, "Fanny," a social satire, was written in 1819. In 1822-23 he visited Europe, and wrote "Alnwick Castle," and the lines on Burns. "Young America," his last lines, appeared in the "New York Ledger," in 1865. A complete edition of his Poems, as also a collection of his Letters, with a "Life," edited by James Grant Wilson, appeared in 1869.

ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE

GREEN be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.

Tears fell when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep;
And long, where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.

When hearts whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven,
To tell the world their worth.

And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,

Whose weal and woe were thine;

It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow;
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.

While memory bids me weep,

Nor thoughts nor words are free;
The Grief is fixed too deep

That mourns a man like thee.

A POET'S DAUGHTER.

(Written in the Album of a daughter of the author of "The Old Oaken Bucket.") "A LADY asks the Minstrel's rhyme."

A lady asks? There was a time
When, musical as play-bells' chime
To wearied boy,

That sound would summon dreams sublime

Warrior, or bard, is homage paid;
The bay-tree's, laurel's, myrtle's shade,
Men's thoughts resign;

Heaven placed us here to vote and trade
Twin tasks divine.

""Tis youth, 't is beauty asks; the green
And growing leaves of seventeen

Are round her; and, half hid, half seen,
A violet flower,

Nursed by the virtues she hath been
From childhood's hour."

Youth 't was the charm of her who died

At dawn, and by her coffin's side
A grandsire stands,

Age-strengthened, like the oak storm-tried
Of mountain lands.

Youth's coffin-hush the tale it tells!
Be silent, memory's funeral bells !
Lone in one heart, her home, it dwells
Untold till death,

And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O'er buried faith.

"But what if hers are rank and power,
Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A Kingdom's gold her marriage dower,
Broad seas and lands?

What if from bannered hall and tower
A queen commands?”

A queen? Earth's regal moons have set,
Where perished Marie Antoinette !
Where's Bordeaux's mother? Where the jet-
Black Haytian dame?

And Lusitania's coronet?

And Angoulême ?

Empires to-day are upside down,
The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown,
A brickbat's range;

Give me in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.

"But she who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong

Than these hath brought her

She is your kinswoman in song,
A Poet's daughter."

A Poet's daughter? Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,

Veins of my intellectual frame!

Your blood would glow

Proudly to sing that gentlest name
Of aught below.