Before sailing he had found time to visit Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Mount Vernon, and make a “Pencilling” of them for the “Mirror.” Another letter gave his impressions of New York, now become his American address. He had also put to press the poem delivered before the “Society of United Brothers,” at Brown University, on September 6th, the day before Commencement, together with a few other pieces written since 1829. The dedication was “To one of whom, in this moment of departure for a foreign land, I think sadly and only--to my mother.” The name-poem was one of those conventional performances with which unlucky recipients of invitations to “speak a piece” before Phi Beta Kappas, United Brothers, or other such academic bodies, are wont to dazzle the young alumni. It was in blank verse, of course, and dealt with the usual commonplaces about ambition, content, the beauty of human love, and the folly of skepticism and contempt. It showed more maturity than the poem delivered before his own Alma Mater four years before, but it was much the same sort of thing. Of the remaining contents of the book two were Scripture sketches and four were of a more ambitious description than Willis had previously attempted. These were “Parrhasius,” “The Dying Alchemist,” “The Scholar of Thebet Ben Chorat,” and “The Wife’s Appeal” to her husband to “awake to fame.” The theme of all these and the central thought of this whole volume is the vanity of an inordinate thirst for knowledge, power, or fame. “Parrhasius,” the story of an old Olynthian captive who was tortured to death by the Athenian painter that he might catch the expression of his last agony for his picture of Prometheus, comes the nearest to success. Willis had read the tale in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” “The Scholar of Thebet Ben Chorat” was the story of a young Bedouin who grew mad and died from too close application to astrology, on which science Willis seems to have crammed up for the nonce, if one may judge from the profusion of his foot-notes. But in truth these poems were little better than wax-work. The sweet and natural lines, “To a City Pigeon,” were worth all the rest of the book. CHAPTER IV. 1831-1834. LIFE ABROAD.