finely-wrought
fancies, "Spring," "Autumn," a "Hymn to the Beautiful," "The Broken
Goblet," and "Triumphant Music," give the reader a clear insight into
his peculiar characteristics, and open a vision of ideal beauty that no
poet has exhibited in such Grecian perfection since the death of Keats.
A poem, on page 115, is one that awakens peculiar emotions; it describes
a state of half consciousness, when the senses are morbidly alive, and
the perceptive faculties are fettered with dreams, or inspired by a
strange memory that bears within it things not of this world, and hints
at a previous and different existence.

"The yellow moon looks slantly down,
Through seaward mists, upon the town;
And like a mist the moonshine falls
Between the dim and shadowy walls.

I see a crowd in every street,
But cannot hear their falling feet;
They float like clouds through shade and light,
And seem a portion of the night.

The ships have lain, for ages fled,
Along the waters, dark and dead;
The dying waters wash no more
The long black line of spectral shore.

There is no life on land or sea,
Save in the quiet moon and me;
Nor ours is true, but only seems,
Within some dead old world of dreams!"

_Stoddard_, _page_ 115.

With this shadowy poem we close, begging our readers not to be terrified
at the boldness with which we claim so high a place for the subjects of
our review. They have that within them which will prove our
commendations just, and establish them in the rank assigned by us, with
a firmness that will need no critic's aid, and can be shaken by no
critic's assault. We but add, let them remember that the fear of the
world is the beginning of mischief. GEORGE H. BOKER.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _A Book of Romances, Lyrics and Songs._ By BAYARD TAYLOR. Boston,
Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 16mo. _Poems._ By RICHARD HENRY STODDARD Same publishers. 16mo.

THE UNDERGROUND TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE MAMMOTH CAVE.]

The extraordinary caverns which underlie various parts of this country
are of a description suitable in extent and magnificence to the general
scale of nature here, in lakes, rivers, cataracts, valleys in which
empires are cradled, prairies of scarcely conceivable vastness, and
mountains whose bases are amid perpetual flowers and where frozen seas
have never intermission of their crashing thunders. In Virginia,