n, a _work_. We are
reminded of one stage in the history of the nebular hypothesis,
when Sir W. Herschel, seeing a central mass in the midst of a
round burr of light, was almost driven to the conclusion that
it was _something immensely greater than what we call a
star_--a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men
call 'Festus.' Our gifted young friend Yendys is more likely
than any, if he live and avoid certain tendencies to diffusion
and over-subtlety, to write a solid and undying POEM.

"It were easy to extend the induction to our lady authors, and
to show that Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Browning, and Joanna Baillie,
Mrs. Shelley, &c., have abounded rather in effusions or
efforts, or tentative experiments, than in calm, complete, and
perennial works."

The critic appears never to have heard of our Bryant, Dana, Halleck,
Poe, Longfellow, or Maria Brooks, any one of whom is certainly superior
to some of the poets mentioned in the above paragraph; and his doctrine
that a great poem must necessarily be a long one--that poetry, like
butter and cheese, is to be sold by the pound--does not altogether
commend itself to our most favorable judgment.

THE REAL ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF GEORGE BORROW.

Generally, we believe, _Lavengro_, though it has sold well everywhere,
has not been very much praised. It has been conceded that the author of
"the Bible in Spain" must be a Crichton, but his last performance looked
overmuch like trifling with the credulity of his readers. We find in
Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_ for April a sort of vindication of
Borrow, which embraces some curious particulars of his career, and quote
the following passages, which cannot fail to interest his American
readers:

"We have yet to learn where our author was during the years
intervening from the epoch of the dingle to the date of Spanish
travel; that he was neither in mind nor body inactive, ample
testimony may be adduced, not only in the form of writings made
public during that interval, but in the internal evidence
afforded by them of laborious research. In a work published at
St. Petersburgh in 1835, known but to few, entitled "Targum;
or, Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects,
by George Borrow," we find indications of how those intervening
years were spent. He says, in the preface to this work