--Charles Sprague is an "American" poet of the last generation, who is almost forgotten, and indeed quite unknown to readers of the present day. He has something of Campbell in his style--Campbell in his calm and serious moods. It may have been desirable to reprint his poems and essays in an attractive volume,[27] with his portrait; but we fear that he belongs to the class of middling writers of prose and verse who were much talked of by our fathers chiefly because they were "American." --One of the best of the many volumes of verse upon our table is the collection of poems by Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt.[28] Mrs. Piatt's muse is often thoughtful, but in all that she has given us, of which much is attractive in form and suggestive in substance, these lines that follow are the most valuable. They refer to the altar which Paul found at Athens "To the Unknown God": Because my life was hollow with a pain As old as death: because my eyes were dry As the fierce tropics after months of rain, Because my restless voice said, "Why?" and "Why?" Wounded and worn, I knelt within the night As blind as darkness--Praying? And to Whom?-- When yond' _cold crescent cut my folded sight_, And showed a phantom Altar in my room. It was the Altar Paul at Athens saw. The Greek bowed there, but not the Greek alone! The ghosts of nations gathered, wan with awe, And laid their offerings on that shadowy stone. The Egyptian worshipped there the crocodile; There they of Nineveh the bull with wings; The Persian there with swart, sun-lifted smile Felt in his soul the writhing fire's bright stings. There the weird Druid held his mistletoe; There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright, The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low; And there the Western savage paid his rite. "Allah," the Moslem darkly muttered there; "Brahma," the jewelled Indies of the East Sighed through their spices with a languid prayer; "Christ?" faintly questioned many a paler priest. And still the Athenian Altar's glimmering Doubt On all religions--evermore the same. What tears shall wash its sad inscription out? What hand shall write thereon His other name? The last five lines of Mrs. Piatt's poem express finely the feeling as to God and religion which now fills countless numbers of the truest hearts and brightest minds.