“The Children of the Lord’s Supper” is, beyond doubt, a true and most beautiful poem in great part, while, in some particulars, it is too metaphysical to have any pretension to the name. In our last number, we objected, briefly, to its metre—the ordinary Latin or Greek Hexameter—dactyls and spondees at random, with a spondee in conclusion. We maintain that the Hexameter can never be introduced into our language, from the nature of that language itself. This rhythm demands, _for English ears_, a preponderance of natural spondees. Our tongue has few. Not only does the Latin and Greek, with the Swedish, and some others, abound in them; but the Greek and Roman ear had become reconciled (why or how is unknown) to the reception of artificial spondees—that is to say, spondaic words formed partly of one word and partly of another, or from an excised part of one word. In short the ancients were content to read _as they scanned_, or nearly so. It may be safely prophesied that we shall never do this; and thus we shall never admit English Hexameters. The attempt to introduce them, after the repeated failures of Sir Philip Sidney, and others, is, perhaps, somewhat discreditable to the scholarship of Professor Longfellow. The “Democratic Review,” in saying that he has triumphed over difficulties in this rhythm, has been deceived, it is evident, by the facility with which some of these verses may be read. In glancing over the poem, we do not observe a single verse which can be read, _to English ears, as a Greek Hexameter_. There are many, however, which can be well read as mere English dactylic verses; such, for example, as the well known lines of Byron, commencing Know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle. These lines (although full of irregularities) are, in their perfection, formed of three dactyls and a cæsura—just as if we should cut short the initial verse of the Bucolics thus— Tityre | tu patu | læ recu | bans— The “myrtle,” at the close of Byron’s line, is a double rhyme, and must be understood as one syllable. Now a great number of Professor Longfellow’s Hexameters are merely these dactylic lines, _continued for two feet_. For example— Whispered the | race of the | flowers and | merry on | balancing | branches. In this example, also, “branches,” which is a double ending, must be regarded as the cæsura, or one syllable, of which alone it has the force. As we have already alluded, in one or two regards, to a notice of these poems which appeared in the “Democratic Review,” we may as well here proceed with some few further comments upon the article in question—with whose general tenor we are happy to agree. The Review speaks of “Maidenhood” as a poem, “not to be understood but at the expense of more time and trouble than a song can justly claim.” We are scarcely less surprised at this opinion from Mr. Langtree than we were at the condemnation of “The Luck of Edenhall.”