Nor, to the vulgar eye, does there seem much poetry in the French Revolution, though it was the mightiest tide of human passion which ever boiled and raved: a great deal, doubtless, in Burke's "Reflections"--but none in the cry of a liberated people, which was heard in heaven--none in the fall of the Bastile--none in Danton's giant figure, nor in Charlotte Corday's homicide--nor in Madame Roland's scaffold speeches, immortal though they be as the stars of heaven--nor in the wild song of the six hundred Marseillese, marching northward "to die." The age of the French Revolution was proved to be a grand and spirit-stirring age by its after results--by bringing forth its genuine poet-children--its Byrons and Shelleys--but needed not this late demonstration of its power and tendencies. Surely our age, too, abounds in the elements of poetical excitement, awaiting; only fit utterance. The harvest is rich and ripe--and nothing now is wanting but laborers to put in the sickle. _Special_ objections might indeed, and have been taken, to the poetical character of our time, which we may briefly dispose of before enumerating the qualities which a new and great poet, aspiring to be the Poet of the Age, must possess, and inquiring how far Mr. S. Yendys exhibits those qualities in this very remarkable first effort, "The Roman." "It is a mechanical age," say some. To use Shakspeare's words, "he is a mechanical salt-butter rogue who says so." Men use more machines than formerly, but are not one whit more machines themselves. Was James Watt an automaton? Has the press become less an object of wonder or terror since it was worked by steam? How sublime was the stoppage of a mail as the index of rebellion. Luther's Bible was printed by a machine. The organ is a machine--and not the roar of a lion in a midnight forest is more sublime, or a fitter reply from earth to the thunder. The railway carriages of this mechanical age are the conductors of the fire of intellect and passion--and its steamboats may be loaded with thunderbolts, as well as with bullocks or yarn. The great American ship is but a machine; and yet how poetical it becomes, as it walks the waters of the summer sea, or wrestles, like a demon of kindred power, with the angry billows. Mechanism, indeed, may be called the short-hand of poetry, concentrating its force and facilitating its operations.