ch for its
own ripe excellence, as for its appearing a happy token of something else.
In the major part of the annual soarings into _Cloud-land_ which alarm the
world, we seem to see the sum total of the aspirant's power. We feel that
he has shown us _all_, and done his best; that the force of his cleverness
could go no farther; and we are willing to give him his penny of praise,
and thereby purchase a pleasant oblivion of him and his forevermore. In
this attempt of Mr. LOWELL'S it was impossible not to see that there lay
more beyond. We felt that however boldly he might have dived, he did not
yet 'bring up the bottom,' as the swimmer's phrase goes. The faults of his
poems were perceptible enough, yet even these were the blemishes of latent
strength, and the book was every where welcomed with a hope. We have now
to notice the appearance of a second proof of Mr. LOWELL'S activity of
faculty, in another and larger volume. It confirms the faith of those who
read the former one. There is, throughout, the manifestation of growth; of
a continuous advance toward a more decided character. Yet it is not
without incompleteness of expression; it smacks of immaturity still; but
it is the immaturity which presages a man.

The longest, and although not the most pleasing, yet perhaps the best poem
in the volume is the 'Legend of Brittany,' a romantic story, fringed with
rhyme. It contains but one bad line, and that one the first in the book:
'Fair as a summer dream was MARGARET.' It is not only vague, but
common-place: there is no particular reason that we know of why a summer
dream should be fairer than a winter dream; and we cannot think that the
poet meant to make use of that figure of speech called _amphibology_,
although the line will bear a double interpretation. The legend is of the
guilty amour of MORDRED, a Knight Templar, with a fair innocent who, upon
the point of becoming a mother, is slain by her lover at evening, in the
wood. Hereupon---- But let the poet speak:

His crime complete, scarce knowing what he did,
(So goes the tale,) beneath the altar there
In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid,
And then, to 'scape that suffocating air,
Like a scared ghoule out of the porch he slid;
But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere,
And ghastly faces thrust themselves between
His soul and hopes of peace with blasting mien.

It should be observed that Mordred, bound as a Templar by the strict