The following is from a poet of no ordinary talent, whose main fault is indolence. He gave it me for my collection, where I believe it has slumbered until now, since its conception. I think it a very pretty song, and hope it will be a favorite with your readers, to whom I lend it for May. J. F. O. TO ---- ----. Come, fill the bowl,--'twill win a smile To glad once more your drooping brow, Nor scorn the spell that can beguile One thought from all that wrings you now! For who, in worlds so sad as this, Would lose e'en momentary bliss? Come,--touch the harp,--its notes will bring At least a wreck of happier years,-- The songs our childhood, used to sing,-- Its artless joys,--its simple tears. How blessed, if weeping could restore Those bright glad days that come no more! Then touch the harp! and free and fast The tears I fain would weep shall flow: And fill the bowl! the last, the last! Then back to Life's deceitful show! And waste no more a single tear On Life, whose joys are sold so dear! GEORGE LUNT. GERMAN LITERATURE. _A Lecture on German Literature, being a Sketch of its history from its origin to the present day, delivered by request, before the Athenæum Society of Baltimore, on the 11th of February 1836, by GEORGE H. CALVERT, Translator of Schiller's Don Carlos: now first published._ A nation's literature is the embodied expression of its mind. That in a people, there be impulse, depth, individuality enough to give clear utterance to its thoughts, passions, and aspirations, and that these have the distinctness and consistency necessary to mould them into definite forms, denotes a degree of mental endowment and cultivation traceable in but few of the nations of whose history we have record. But few have attained to the creation and enjoyment of a literature. Regions of the globe there are, whole continents indeed of its surface, hitherto inhabited by races of men, who, like the cotemporaneous generations of brute animals, have only lived and died, leaving behind them nought but a tradition of their existence,--communities, in which the essentially human was too feebly developed to erect the brain-built structures, which, while they preserve and refine the spirit whence they arise, from it derive the indestructible character that perpetuates them, as honorable monuments of the past, and for the present ever-open temples whither the wise resort for worship and inspiration.