To suppose the Susquehannah roaming through the _breast_ of any thing--even of a valley--is an incongruity: and to say that such false images are common, is to say very little in their defence. But when the noble river is bedizzened out in _robes of silver_, and made to wash with its bright waters nothing better than _curtains of velvet_, we feel a very sensible and a very righteous indignation. We might have expected such language from an upholsterer, or a _marchande des modes_, but it is utterly out of place upon the lips of Mrs. Sigourney. To liken the glorious objects of natural loveliness to the trappings and tinsel of artificiality, is one of the lowest, and at the same time, one of the most ordinary {114} exemplifications of the _bathos_. At page 21, these verses occur: No word was spoke, As when the friends of desolated Job, _Finding the line of language all too short_ _To fathom woe like his_, sublimely paid That highest homage at the throne of grief, Deep silence. The image here italicized is striking, but faulty. It is deduced not from any analogy between actual existences--between woe on the one hand, and the sea on the other--but from the _identity of epithet_ (deep) frequently applied to both. We say the "deep sea," and the expression "deep woe" is certainly familiar. But in the first case the sea is actually deep; in the second, woe is but metaphorically so. Sound, therefore--not sense, is the basis of the analogy, and the image is consequently incorrect. Some faults of a minor kind we may also discover in Zinzendorff. We dislike the use made by the poetess of antique modes of expression--here most unequivocally out of place. For example. _Where_ the red council-fire Disturbed the trance of midnight, long they sate. _What time_, with hatred fierce and unsubdued, The woad-stained Briton, in his wattled boat, Quailed 'neath the glance of Rome. The versification of Zinzendorff is particularly good--always sweet--occasionally energetic. We are enabled to point out only one defective line in the poem, and in this the defect has arisen from an attempt to contract _enthusiasm_ into a word of three syllables. He who found _This blest enthusiasm nerve his weary heart_. There are, however, some errors of accentuation--for example: So strong in that mis_an_thrope's bosom wrought A frenzied malice. Again-- He would have made himself A green o_a_sis mid the strife of tongues. We observe too that Mrs. Sigourney places the accent in _Wyoming_ on the second syllable. 'Twas summer in Wy_o_ming. Through the breast, &c. ------And the lore Of sad Wy_o_ming's chivalry, a part Of classic song. But we have no right to quarrel with her for this. The word is so pronounced by those who should know best. Campbell, however, places the accent on the first syllable.