{"character_count": 2383, "word_count": 423, "ccnet_language_score": [0.9735999703407288], "ccnet_perplexity": [843.7000122070312], "fasttext_language": ["en"]}
on edge by the least natural sour If he had
been consulted, the back bone of the earth would
have been made, not of granite, but OF Bristol
| spar. a modern author would have died IN in
fancy IN ruder age. But the poet is something
more than scald, "a smoother and polisher Of
language" he is Cincinnatus in literature, and
occupies no west end OF the world but, like the
sun, indlfferently selects his rhymes, and with a
liberal taste weaves into his verse the planet and
the stubbe.


In these old books the stucco has long since
crumbled away, and we read what was scup-
tured III the granite. They are rude and massive
IN their proportions, rather than smooth and deli
cate in their finish. The workers in stone polish
only their chimney ornaments, but their pyramids
are roughly done. There is a soberness in a
rough aspect, as of unhewn granite, which ad-
dresses depth in us, but polished surface hits
only the ball Of the eye. The true finish is the
work of time and the use to which thing is put.
The elements are still polishing the pyramids.
Art may varnish and gid, but it can do no more.
4 work of genius is rough-hewn from the first.
because it anticipates the lapse Of time, and has
an ingraned polish, which still appears when
fragments are broken off, an essential quality OF
its substance. Its beauty is at the same time its
strength, and it breaks with Iustre. The great
poem must have the stamp of greatness as well
as its essence. The reader easily goes within
the shallowest contemporary poetry, and informs
it with all the life and promise OF the day, as the
pilgrim goes within the temple, and hears the
taintest strains of the worshipers; but it will
have to speak to posterity raversing these deserts
through the ruins of its outmost walls, By the
grandeur and beauty of its proportions.


Gould il be imagined that an original Ameri-
can work, costing but SO per year, filed with
papers of which the above is but fair specimen,
has been published four years in the midst Of our
hundred thousand literally educated men, ten
thousand prolessed scholars, and over one hun
dred colleges and universities, without winning
more than three hundred subscribers? We are
forgetting, however, that this is the age of 70
pular Literature, in which the enraptured public
are gloating over Ainsworth's and 1ngraham's
historical romances and Paul de Rocks delicate
novels