The task of the poet is one of less difficulty, than the task of the musician, for he treats of real or imaginary subjects, with the aid of a medium that is universally understood and appreciated, according to the various degrees, and powers of the peruser’s intellect. This medium is language. Words embody and define ideas; a word can express a passion, and other words can describe its rise and progress, and follow it in all its secret channels, and through all its numerous ramifications. The power of language is unbounded. Every thing that is, has a name, which name becomes associated with it in the mind, and inseparable from it, always presenting to the mental vision the object that it represents. The most subtle emotions of the human mind, feelings which lie deep in the recesses of the heart, can be torn from their lair, and displayed before the world by means of this mighty agent. Even nature with her ten thousand hoarded secrets, is over mastered, and bares her bosom to the force of thought, and stands revealed to the world, yea, even to her innermost core, by the power of language. To aid him in the task, the poet hath a million adjuncts. He moves amidst the human world, and gathers from its denizens, unending food for thought and observation,—their joys and their sorrows; their pursuits and their ends; their passions and their vices, their virtues and their charities. The life of a single being in that living mass, would form a subject of varied and startling interest, and leave but little for the imagination to fill up, or to heighten. He looks up into the heavens, and finds a space of boundless immensity, in which his restless speculation may run riot. He looks abroad upon the face of nature, and there are endless stores of bright and beautiful things, to feed his fancy, to stimulate his imagination and refresh his thoughts. How few of these fruitful themes, are available to the musician! The painter in all his beautiful creations, pourtrays his subjects by the means of the actual. From the living loveliness which he daily sees, he hoards up rich stores of beauty, for some happy thought. But to aid him in his labors, he has the actual form and color, light and shade. The forms of beauty that glow and breathe upon the canvass; the quiet landscape, so full of harmony and peacefulness; the rolling ocean, the strife of the elements, the wild commingling of warring men, are but the transcripts of the actual things. The sculptor as he hews from the rough block, some form of exquisite loveliness, whose charms shall throw a spell over men’s souls for ages, does but compress into one fair creation, the beauties of a thousand living models.