The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1837
Various
Periodicals
and engraving reflect credit upon the artists, CHAPMAN and SMILLIE.
'MARTHA WASHINGTON,' engraved by CHENEY and KELLOGG, is a good
engraving of a far more beautiful female than we have been accustomed
to consider the original, from the portraits we have hitherto
seen. She is here depicted in her young and rosy years,'plump as
a partridge,' and most delectable to look upon. Thus much for the
plates; and now a few words touching the literary contents.
'The Wonders of the Deep,' by PIERPONT, well deserves the place of
honor which it occupies. It is a poem, without the form of verse;
and its poetry is of a high order. We ask attention to the annexed
paragraphs:
"What a wonder is the sea itself! How wide does it stretch out
its arms, clasping islands and continents in its embrace! How
mysterious are its depths!--still more mysterious its hoarded
and hidden treasures! With what weight do its watery masses
roll onward to the shore, when not a breath of wind is moving
over its surface! How wonderfully fearful is it, when its
waves, in mid ocean, are foaming and tossing their heads in
anger under the lash of the tempest! How wonderfully beautiful,
when, like a melted and ever-moving mirror, it reflects the
setting sun, or the crimson clouds, or the saffron heavens
after the sun has set; or when its 'watery floor' breaks into
myriads of fragments the image of the quiet moon that falls
upon it from the skies!
"Wonderful, too, are those hills of ice that break off, in
thunder, from the frozen barriers of the pole, and float
toward the sun, their bristling pinnacles glistening in his
beams, and slowly wasting away under his power, an object at
once of wonder and of dread to the mariner, till they are lost
in the embrace of more genial deeps. And that current is a
wonder, which moves for ever onward from the southern seas,
to the colder latitudes, bearing in its waters the influence
of a tropical sun, and saying to the icebergs from the pole,
'Hitherto may ye come, but no farther.' And, if possible,
still more wonderful are those springs of fresh water which,
among the Indian Isles, gush up from the depths of a salt
ocean, a source of refreshment and life to the seaman who is
parching with thirst 'beneath a burning sky.' And is it not
as wonderful, when, not a spring of fresh water, but a column
of volcanic fire shoots up from 'the dark unfathomed caves
of ocean,' and throws its red glare far over the astonished
waves, that heave and tremble with the heaving and trembling
earth below them! wonderful, when that pillar of fire vanishes,
leaving a smoking volcano in its place! and wonderful, when
that volcano, in its turn, sinks back, and is lost in the
depths whence it rose!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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