To come back to my text! When the news was first spread That Christ was arisen indeed from the dead, Very great was the joy of the angels in heaven; And as great the dispute as to who should carry The tidings thereof to the Virgin Mary, Pierced to the heart with sorrows seven. Old Father Adam was first to propose, As being the author of all our woes; But he was refused, for fear, said they, He would stop to eat apples on the way! Abel came next, but petitioned in vain, Because he might meet with his brother Cain! Noah, too, was refused, lest his weakness for wine Should delay him at every tavern-sign; And John the Baptist could not get a vote, On account of his old-fashioned, camel’s-hair coat; And the Penitent Thief, who died on the cross, Was reminded that all his bones were broken! Till at last, when each in turn had spoken, The company being still at a loss, The Angel, who rolled away the stone, Was sent to the sepulchre, all alone, And filled with glory that gloomy prison, And said to the Virgin, “The Lord has arisen!” We think we have sufficiently quoted from this delightful volume to give our readers an idea of its poetical merit. But no analysis or quotation can do justice to the wealth of knowledge it evinces of the middle ages, and to the various scholarship it displays. Longfellow, with a true poetic insight and power of assimilation, has given us here the life and spirit as well as the form of a by-gone age, so that the reader of the poem can obtain more of the substance of knowledge from its pictured page than from history itself. The work is not only one of uncommon poetical excellence, but it is a triumph over difficulties inherent in the subject, and over the subjective limitations of the author’s own mind. It is broader if not higher than any thing he has previously written, promises to be more permanently popular, and has the great merit of increasing in the reader’s estimation with a second or even a third perusal. * * * * * _Miscellanies. By the Rev. James Martineau. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1 vol. 12mo._