WE regard Mr. WHITTIER as one among the very first of our poets. With one or two eminent exceptions, no one of our best writers excels him in the melody of his verse, and the appositeness and beauty of his imagery. There is, moreover, a depth of feeling, an earnestness and ardor, visible in his later writings, which sufficiently distinguish him from the herd who write verse as they would write an advertisement; stimulated, too often it may be, by the same impulse in the one case as in the other. Mr. WHITTIER never sits down with a pen in his hand and a sheet of foolscap before him, to 'pump up a feeling' touching some pliable theme or another, as to the precise nature of which he is either entirely ignorant or quite undecided. How many of our rhymists, miscalled poets, differ from our friend in this! Sitting down with a desperate determination to get up an _afflatus_; to write, and to rhyme, at all events; to secure the requisite number of feet and the required number of necessary lines; is a process of composition which can never result in the production of poetry. A goodly proportion, and the best parts (evidently so deemed by the writer, who has given them the place of honor) of the volume before us appeared originally in the KNICKERBOCKER. Much of the remainder, although not now first published, will be new to many of our readers, to all of whom we cordially commend Friend WHITTIER's neat and tastefully-executed volume. EDITOR'S TABLE EARLY WRITINGS OF THE LATE R. C. SANDS: THIRD NOTICE.--Through the continued kindness of the co-member of the 'Literary Confederacy,' of which the lamented SANDS was so bright an ornament, we are enabled to set before our readers another Salmagundi from that gifted writer's facile pen. We have lately touched in these pages upon the character and proceedings of the early Puritans; and as a pleasant illustration of their peculiar views, manners, and customs, we shall venture to select a few passages from '_Salem Witchcraft, an Eastern Tale_,' in which SANDS's love of the ludicrous and the burlesque is forcibly exhibited. The era of the story is that _annus mirabilis_, 1692; the scene the town of Salem, (Mass.,) into which a stranger, mounted on a charger, descended from John of Gaunt's ploughing team, enters at a devout gait. This is FAITHFUL HANDY, an ordained teacher of the Word, who has 'a recommend' from a reverend brother to DELIVERANCE HOBBES; which 'recommend' in some degree superseded the formalities of courtship in those primitive days. Miss HOBBES was no Hebe, if we may judge from this sketch of her person and features, taken as she turned round, while drawing water at a well, to reconnoitre the new comer: 'SHE squinted in the peculiar mode described by the poet, 'when one eye looked up, the other looked down;' and was terribly deformed in her person. Nature, in elaborating this rare article, seemed to have been trying an optical experiment; as if to show, by adapting her crooked figure