episodical, although Dante's 'Inferno' contains no pictures more tremendously distinct, yet ideal, than his 'Devil's Dream upon Mount Acksbeck. Tennyson is a greater Calvinist in one sense than either of the Scotch poets we have named--he owes more to the general faith of others in his genius than to any special or strong works of his own; but let us be dumb, he is now Laureate--the crowned grasshopper of a summer day! Bailey of 'Festus' has a vast deal more power than Tennyson, who is only his delicate, consumptive brother; but 'Festus' seems either different from, or greater than, a _work_. We are reminded of one stage in the history of the nebular hypothesis, when Sir W. Herschel, seeing a central mass in the midst of a round burr of light, was almost driven to the conclusion that it was _something immensely greater than what we call a star_--a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men call 'Festus.' Our gifted young friend Yendys is more likely than any, if he live and avoid certain tendencies to diffusion and over-subtlety, to write a solid and undying POEM. "It were easy to extend the induction to our lady authors, and to show that Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Browning, and Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Shelley, &c., have abounded rather in effusions or efforts, or tentative experiments, than in calm, complete, and perennial works." The critic appears never to have heard of our Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Poe, Longfellow, or Maria Brooks, any one of whom is certainly superior to some of the poets mentioned in the above paragraph; and his doctrine that a great poem must necessarily be a long one--that poetry, like butter and cheese, is to be sold by the pound--does not altogether commend itself to our most favorable judgment. THE REAL ADVENTURES AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF GEORGE BORROW. Generally, we believe, _Lavengro_, though it has sold well everywhere, has not been very much praised. It has been conceded that the author of "the Bible in Spain" must be a Crichton, but his last performance looked overmuch like trifling with the credulity of his readers. We find in Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_ for April a sort of vindication of Borrow, which embraces some curious particulars of his career, and quote the following passages, which cannot fail to interest his American readers: