So look'd, at night-fall, oft to me That ruin'd City of the Sea; And, as the gloomy fancy grew Still darker with night's darkening hue, All round me seem'd by Death o'ercast,-- Each footstep in those halls the last; And the dim boats, as slow they pass'd, All burial-barks, with each its load Of livid corpses, feebly row'd By fading hands, to find a bed In waters less choked up with dead.--_Metropolitan_. * * * * * ON THE DEATH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. _By the Author of "Eugene Aram."_ The blow is struck--the lyre is shattered--the music is hushed at length. The greatest--the most various--the most commanding genius of modern times has left us to seek for that successor to his renown which, in all probability, a remote generation alone will furnish forth. It is true that we have been long prepared for the event--it does not fall upon us suddenly--leaf after leaf was stripped from that noble tree before it was felled to the earth at last;--our sympathy in his decay has softened us to the sorrow for his death. It is not now our intention to trace the character or to enumerate the works of the great man whose career is run;--to every eye that reads--every ear that hears--every heart that remembers, this much at least, of his character is already known,--that he had all the exuberance of genius and none of its excesses; that he was at once equitable and generous--that his heart was ever open to charity--that his life has probably been shortened by his scrupulous regard for justice. His career was one splendid refutation of the popular fallacy, that genius has of necessity vices--that its light must be meteoric--and its courses wayward and uncontrolled. He has left mankind two great lessons,--we scarcely know which is the most valuable. He has taught us how much delight one human being can confer upon the world; he has taught us also that the imagination may aspire to the wildest flights without wandering into error. Of whom else among our great list of names--the heir-looms of our nation--can we say that he has left us everything to admire, and nothing to forgive?