Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with mere rapture moves the vocal air, To testify its hidden residence. How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of Silence, through the empty-vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled. Comus. The Life of the North is to us a fresh revelation; and, by a striking coincidence, one after another of its phases have come upon our transatlantic vision, in rapid succession. To many Americans Thorwaldsen was the only name associated with art, but a few years since; and to those who had visited Rome, the benign and venerable man was a vivid and pleasing reminiscence, appropriate to the idea of his grand apostolic figures, and the affectionate honor in which his native Denmark held their noble sculptor. But with Ole Bull fairly commenced our knowledge of the genius of Northern Europe. The play of the wind through her forests of pines, the glint of her frozen streams, the tenderness of her households, and the solemnity of her faith, seemed to breathe in the wizard tones of his violin; while her integrity was written in the form, the manners, and the very smile of the musician. Then the spirit of her literature began slowly to win its gentle but impressive way to the American heart. Longfellow’s translation of Bishof’s Tegnér’s Children of the Lord’s Supper, with the graphic introduction descriptive of moral life in Sweden, touched the same chord in New England breasts, that had vibrated to the religious pathos of Bryant, Dana, and Hawthorne; while not a few readers became simultaneously aware of a brave Danish poet recently followed to the tomb by the people of Copenhagen, with every token of national grief. The dramas of Œhlenschläger, from their union of familiar expression with the richest feeling, though but partially known in this country, awakened both curiosity and interest. Then, too, came to us the domestic novels of Miss Bremer, portraying so heartily the life of home in Sweden, and appealing to the most universal sympathies of our people. Finally, Hans Andersen’s delicious story-books veiling such fine imaginative powers under the guise of the utmost simplicity, raised up for him scores of juvenile admirers, while children of a larger growth enjoyed the originality of his fictions with equal zest, as the offspring of rare human sympathy and original invention. The pictures wafted to our shores by the late revolutionary exigencies of the Continent, have often yielded glimpses of northern scenery. Norwegian forests, skies and mountains, attracted the eye at the Dusseldorf gallery; and thus through both art and literature, the simple, earnest, and poetic features of life in the north, were brought within the range of our consciousness. It developed unimagined affinities with our own; and now, as it were, to complete and consecrate