His fellow dust ;—he who alive had oft Encrimson'd earth, and moved like dark simoom Upon his native land, when death had doff'd His bloody diadem, found there a tomb,

Forgot his pomp-his name, and undeplored his doom.

"Would less than pyramid our chieftain serve?

Less than was reared for Egypt's worthless king? Less for the valor, never known to swerve, Than rose in honor of so mean a thing?— And whence would such gigantic structures spring? Not from the labor of the happy free!

Myriads of harness'd slaves were lashed to bring That useless pile unto the height we see,

And kiss'd the hand which smote, and bent the servile knee.

"Oh no-we'll have no monument but one,
Whose base is on the universal heart;
Its shaft, the plaudits of a world be won,
Its capital, the nation's good, the chart
By which to point ambition to its part-
Dread Time, who blasts with his sepulchral breath,
And soils, with touch defiled, the works of art,
Reluctant, leaves untorn a single wreath,

Which bleeding sire to son's safe keeping' did bequeath."

So thought and reason'd that impassioned wight,
When up the dark blue vista sudden gleam'd
The Western Rome, just rising into sight-
Our hill Capitoline far distant beam'd;

O'er its high halls star-spangled banners stream'd,
How fair proportion'd and how chastely white,
Thy temple, Freedom! to his vision seem'd,
In bold relief, on that commanding height,

So pure and beautiful! so grand, and yet so light!

"Can crime e'er lurk," thought Dan, "in aught so fair?

Its virgin purity would answer, no;

Can men of blood presume to enter there?

With hue of shame their guilty cheeks should glow:

From yonder portals let them turn and go-
Their footsteps would pollute that tasteful mound
Where rare trees blossom and the wild flowers blow:
Illustrious patriots there are pictured round;
The monuments of dauntless spirits fill that ground.

A marble cenotaph there meets the eye,
Symbolic, rising from a mimic sea,
Inscribed with those who died at Tripoli,

Men deem'd dishonor'd, if they lived not free;
Decatur, Somers, Israel, Wadsworth, ye
Would shame the wretch who trod that paradise;
Let none, with curse of Cain, in Eden be;
Oh hold it sacred to the great and wise,

Whose glorious deeds on earth are passports to the skies."

Now full in view the scatter'd city rose-
Her sister city flashes on the skies—
Midway, the palace in the sunlight glows,

That fatal cynosure of thousand eyes!-
Ah! thither many a thoughtless footstep hies,
Crowds to that shrine, like Mecca's pilgrims, flow;
Beneath that hateful Upas, virtue dies;
Self-styled Republicans there gaping go,

To ape the fulsome scenes of Europe's courtly show.

With thoughts like these Dan's visage darker grows ;—
Meanwhile the gallant steamer nears the shore;
Swift o'er her sides the rattling cordage goes,
And fast the vessel to the wharf they moor.
Forth from her ample womb the crowds now pour;
Men, women, baggage, barrows, all the gangway fill;
The shouts of hackmen rise in loud uproar-
Dan deem'd that demons were let loose from hell,
So wild-unearthly-seem'd that loud commingled yell.

But we must leave him 'midst this tempest whirl'd,
To mark his musings at some future time;
He hath but touch'd the threshhold of a world,
Where food abundant may be found for rhyme,

Unless perchance this would-be flight sublime Shall melt the waxen pinions at my side,

And hurl me headlong, with my feeble chime, Like him of old, to deep Ægean tide,

When on Dedalian wings, through air he dared to glide.

Castellanus, or the Castle-Builder turned Farmer.

MR. EDITOR,—It is a long time since I threw my mite into the treasury of your book; Nugator's occupation's gone! was my ejaculation when last I wrote to you. The same devouring element which has recently plunged New York in misery and gloom, had just then triumphed over much of my earthly possessions, but over none more foolishly prized than sundry small wares which were intended for your market. As there was no prospect of getting Congress to extend the time of the payment of my bonds, to which one would think I was as justly entitled as the rich merchant, I had to set to work as best I might, to repair the ravages of fire. In the midst of saws and hammers, of bricks and mortar, my ideas have been so vulgarized, that you must not expect to see a Phoenix rise from my ashes. From me you must never expect any thing but trifles, as my signature portends; yet when I reflect that this world is made up of small things as well as great, and that the former are as essential to constitute a whole as the latter, and that your book ought, no more than the world, to consist altogether of the grand, but should sometimes admit the trifling, I am encouraged to begin again, although already scorched by more fires than one, having encountered the fire of some of your critics. As the mouse sets off to greater advantage the bulk of the mammoth, the critics should rather be pleased than otherwise, to see my wretched skeleton in contrast with the vast proportions of some of your contributors,--but enough.

Romances and novels made my neighbor Castellanus a castle-builder; nothing can be more dissimilar than the world he inhabits and that ideal one in which he always lived; like certain persons who shall be nameless, he has been literally in the world and out of it at the same time, and his experience therefore might justify a seeming paradox. I think it was Godwin, in his Fleetwood, who drew so beautiful a contrast between our night dreams and day dreams. Castellanus never could bear the former, attended by hag and night mare, where we are forever struggling to attain some goal, which we can never reach; he did not like to start affrighted out of sleep; to sink through chasms yawning beneath his feet;

"Nor toss on shatter'd plank far out upon some deep."

No, I have heard him exclaim, "Give me the dreams of day; let me recline upon some bank in summer's shade, supine, where fancy fits her wings for pleasant flight, and quickly ushers me into her radiant halls. No hope defeated can there make me grieve; no cup untasted from my lips be dashed; no light, receding ever, there can shine,but whatsoever there be of joy or love to mortals known, is seized at once and easily made my own." There are few persons, perhaps, who do not at some period of life, construct these gay castles, yclept in air, and well indeed is the appellation bestowed, for though more splendid far than the works of old; more passing rare than all of which we read ;-Balbec's! Palmyra's!-none could excel them,-yet in a moment they will topple down, nor leave one marble column spared as if to point to the scene of desolation, and to mourn for its brethren, broken, ruined, and overthrown. Such monuments are sometimes seen standing amid that decay produced by Goths and Vandals; and Goths and Vandals still in modern times will break, irruptive, on the castle-builder's chosen spot-misfortunes! griefs! pale care! tormenting debt!-Then, Fancy, all thy revelry is forgotten; reluctantly from our sweet couch, we rise and homeward frowning hie to

toil and writhe and fret. But such is the skill of the artist, that he has but to ramble forth where all is still, and wave his wand, when in an instant, like the enchantment of old, his shining palaces will upward climb. It is not so, alas! with those works barbarians overturned; none know how to raise them to such sublime heights, lost are those arts by which they towering rose, and we but gaze on them to sigh and curse the hands which slew them.

This practice of castle-building had been the habit of Castellanus, from his boyhood. It gave him a strange unsocial turn, and made him shun the inmates of his father's house, He fled all company, and the pleasures which others pursue were rarely pleasures to him. One enjoyment he had which never palled. Some lonely seat beside a "wimping burn," or waterfall, where human sounds fell distantly; there with book in hand he drank in the lulling music with which such a place is fraught ; there would he draw forth, unseen, some old romance, with worn and dusky lid, of “haunted priories," with bloody hand, or dark "Udolpho," with its deep mysteries, its gliding ghosts, and secret pannels. Then would fall the curtain on this mortal vale, and all its hateful realities, and his rapt soul would revel in the high wrought tale of fancy. For him these fictions had an unspeakable charm-gallant youths were his companions. He trod with them over Alps and Appenines, where banditti lurked amid the dreary forests, and lights were seen to glance and disappear. Soft maidens, too, were there, whose superhuman charms won every heart; encompassed by ten thousand dangers, he could not leave them, until he saw them safely locked in love's triumphant arms. Though a very ugly fellow, he had deceived himself into the belief that he should one day or other marry one of these delightful creatures, and had even settled that her name should be Julia, and thought he should be one of the happiest fellows upon earth; but, Mr. Editor, who do you think he now is? a clodhopper!! aye a miserable clodhopper! The owner of land and negroes!! In that one sentence, I sum up all of human