We have not space this month to do much more than refer to this beautiful collection of poems, instinct with sentiment and imagination, and with that drapery of beauty over the whole which constitutes the charm equally of Longfellow’s narratives and meditations. The first poem in the volume is “The Building of the Ship,” a worthy counterpart of Schiller’s “Song of the Bell,” and a grand example of the union of the common with the beautiful. We doubt if any of the poet’s longer compositions will equal it in popularity. To this succeed a number of pieces relating to the sea, of which “The Light House,” and “The Fire of Drift Wood,” appear to us the best. The poems “by the fireside,” commence with “Resignation,” an elegy warm from the author’s heart and imagination, and whose exquisite pathos has been felt and acknowledged all over the country. “The Open Window,” and “The Sand of the Desert,” belonging to this portion of the volume, are fine specimens of two processes of Longfellow’s mind—its subtle suggestiveness and its clear pictorial power. A long poem of twenty-seven pages, translated from the Gascon of Jasmin, entitled “The Blind Girl of Castèl-Cuillè,” is a tragedy whose power, sweetness, and pathos the dullest reader cannot resist. We wish that Mr. Longfellow would give us more specimens of this charming poet, as worthily “Englished” as the present. We think that none of Mr. Longfellow’s volumes will be received with more favor than this, embodying as it does the best qualities of his muse, and leaving little for even the critic to grumble at but the smallness of its bulk. * * * * * _Old Portraits and Modern Sketches. By John G. Whittier. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 12mo._