I think on many a once loved friend, As nothing to me now; And what can mark the lapse of time As does an altered brow? Thus thinking of the meeting years, The coming and the past; I needs must ask the future one— Wilt thou be like the last?“ * * * * * THE LIGHT OF LIFE. [SEE ENGRAVING.] In times of joy, when pleasure’s glow Sends through the heart a rapturous thrill; In hours of care and mournful wo, When all is anguish, pain and ill: From the blest volume of God’s word. The _light of life_ shines bright and clear, Awaking praise for good conferred, And bidding grief find comfort there. CLARA. * * * * * [Illustration: DRAWN BY JOHN W. WRIGHT. THE LIGHT OF LIFE. ENGRAVED BY T. B. WELCH EXPRESSLY FOR GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.] * * * * * ABOUT CRITICS AND CRITICISM. BY THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. Our most analytic, if not altogether our best critic, (Mr. Whipple, perhaps, excepted,) is Mr. _William A. Jones_, author of “The Analyst.” How he would write elaborate criticisms I cannot say; but his summary judgments of authors are, in general, discriminative and profound. In fact, his papers on _Emerson_ and on _Macaulay_, published in “Arcturus,” are better than merely “profound,” if we take the word in its now desecrated sense; for they are at once pointed, lucid, and just:—as summaries, leaving nothing to be desired. Mr. Whipple has less analysis, and far less candor, as his depreciation of “Jane Eyre” will show; but he excels Mr. Jones in sensibility to Beauty, and is thus the better critic of Poetry. I have read nothing finer in its way than his eulogy on Tennyson. I say “eulogy”—for the essay in question is unhappily little more:—and Mr Whipple’s paper on Miss Barrett, was _nothing_ more. He has less discrimination than Mr. Jones, and a more obtuse sense of the critical office. In fact, he has been infected with that unmeaning and transparent heresy—the cant of critical Boswellism, by dint of which we are to shut our eyes tightly to all autorial blemishes, and open them, like owls, to all autorial merits. Papers thus composed may be good in their way, just as an impertinent _cicerone_ is good in _his_ way; and the way, in either case, may still be a small one. Boccalini, in his “Advertisements from Parnassus,” tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo with a very caustic review of a very admirable poem. The god asked to be shown the beauties of the work; but the critic replied that he troubled himself only about the errors. Hereupon Apollo gave him a sack of unwinnowed wheat—bidding him pick out all the chaff for his pains.