Of the pieces which constitute the present volume, there are not more than one or two thoroughly fulfilling the idea above proposed; although the volume as a whole is by no means so chargeable with didacticism as Mr. Longfellow’s previous book. We would mention as poems _nearly true_, “The Village Blacksmith;” “The Wreck of the Hesperus” and especially “The Skeleton in Armor.” In the first-mentioned we have the _beauty_ of simple-mindedness as a genuine thesis; and this thesis is inimitably handled until the concluding stanza, where the spirit of legitimate poesy is aggrieved in the pointed antithetical deduction of a _moral_ from what has gone before. In “The Wreck of the Hesperus” we have the _beauty_ of child-like confidence and innocence, with that of the father’s stern courage and affection. But, with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed are not poetic subjects. Their thrilling _horror_ belongs to prose, in which it could be far more effectively discussed, as Professor Longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. There are points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest poetical themes—points in which pure beauty is found, or, better still, beauty heightened into the sublime, by terror. But when we read, among other similar things, that The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes, we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the inappropriate. In the “Skeleton in Armor” we find a pure and perfect thesis artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold courage and self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless adventure, and finally of life-contemning grief. Combined with all this we have numerous _points_ of beauty apparently insulated, but all aiding the main effect or impression. The heart is stirred, and the mind does not lament its mal-instruction. The metre is simple, sonorous, well-balanced and fully adapted to the subject. Upon the whole, there are fewer truer poems than this. It has but one defection—an important one. The prose remarks prefacing the narrative are really _necessary_. But every work of art should contain within itself all that is requisite for its own comprehension. And this remark is especially true of the ballad. In poems of magnitude the mind of the reader is not, at all times, enabled to include, in one comprehensive survey, the proportions and proper adjustment of the whole. He is pleased, if at all, with particular passages; and the sum of his pleasure is compounded of the sums of the pleasurable sentiments inspired by these individual passages in the progress of perusal. But, in pieces of less extent, the pleasure is _unique_, in the proper acceptation of this term—the understanding is employed, without difficulty, in the contemplation of the picture _as a_ _whole_; and thus its effect will depend, in great measure, upon the perfection of its finish, upon the nice adaptation of its constituent