nd women wielding the
pen practically and powerfully for the right. It is acknowledged on all
hands in this country, that England has the greatest dead poets, and
America the greatest living ones. The poet and the true Christian have
alike a hidden life. Worship is the vital element of each. Poetry has in
it that kind of utility which good men find in their Bible, rather than
such convenience as bad men often profess to draw from it. It ennobles
the sentiments, enlarges the affections, kindles the imagination, and
gives to us the enjoyment of a life in the past, and in the future, as
well as in the present. Under its light and warmth, we wake from our
torpidity and coldness, to a sense of our capabilities. This impulse
once given, a great object is gained. Schiller has truly said, "Poetry
can be to a man, what love is to a hero. It can neither counsel him nor
smite him, nor perform any labour for him, but it can bring him up to be
a hero, can summon him to deeds, and arm him with strength for all he
ought to be." I have often read with pleasure the sweet poetry of our
own Whitfield of Buffalo, which has appeared from time to time in the
columns of the _North Star_. I have always felt ashamed of the fact that
he should be compelled to wield the razor instead of the pen for a
living. Meaner poets than James M. Whitfield, are now living by their
compositions; and were he a white man he would occupy a different
position.

After remaining a short time, and reading the epitaphs of the departed,
we again returned to "The Knoll." Nothing can be more imposing than the
beauty of English park scenery, and especially in the vicinity of the
lakes. Magnificent lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with
here and there a sprinkling of fine trees, heaping up rich piles of
foliage, and then the forests with the hare, the deer, and the rabbit,
bounding away to the covert, or the pheasant suddenly bursting upon the
wing--the artificial stream, the brook taught to wind in natural
meanderings, or expand into the glassy lake, with the yellow leaf
sleeping upon its bright waters, and occasionally a rustic temple or
sylvan statue grown green and dark with age, give an air of sanctity and
picturesque beauty to English scenery that is unknown in the United
States. The very labourer with his thatched cottage and narrow slip of
ground-plot before the door, the little flower-bed, the woodbine trimmed
against the wall, and hanging its blossom