is a magnificent day-dream, abounding in luscious imagery, and
unrivalled for its minute descriptions of ideal scenery and its
voluptuous music of versification, by any similar creation since
Spenser's "Bower of Bliss."

To sum up Mr. Stoddard's poetical character, he has more fancy than
imagination, he is rather exquisitely sensitive than profoundly
passionate, and oftener works up his feelings to the act of composition,
than seeks it as an outlet for uncontrollable emotion. He thoroughly,
and at every point, an artist. His genius is never allowed to run riot,
but is always subjected to the laws of a delicate, but most severe
taste. His poems are probably planned with views to their artistic
effects, and are then constructed from his exhaustless wealth of
poetical material, by a nice adaptation of each part to the perfect
whole of his design. If he has less imagination than Mr. Taylor, he has
a richer and more glowing fancy; if his figures are less apt and
striking, they are more elegant and symmetrical; if the harmonious
dignity of his versification is less, its melodious sweetness is more;
if he has less passion, he has more sensibility; if moral and physical
grandeur are not so attractive to him, ideal and natural beauty are the
only elements in which his life is endurable. We might pursue these
contrasts to the end of our magazine; but if we have called the reader's
attention to them, we have done enough.

From "Love and Solitude," by Mr. Taylor, we extract the following
picture, in order to contrast it with the handling of the same subject
by Mr. Stoddard in "The South:"

"Some island, on the purple plain
Of Polynesian main,
Where never yet adventurer's prore
Lay rocking near its coral shore:
A tropic mystery, which the enamored deep
Folds, as a beauty in a charmed sleep.
There lofty palms, of some imperial line,
That never bled their nimble wine,
Crowd all the hills, and out the headlands go
To watch on distant reefs the lazy brine
Turning its fringe of snow.
There, when the sun stands high
Upon the burning summit of the sky,
All shadows wither: Light alone
Is in the world: and pregnant grown
With teeming life, the trembling island earth
And panting sea forebode sweet pains of birth
Which never come;--their love brings never forth
The human Soul they lack alone."

_Taylor_, _page_ 16.

Half-way between the frozen zon