t be shocked at all at the impropriety of the
following epitaph on a tomb-stone:

'Here lies Jonathan Auricular,
Who walked in the ways of God perpendicular.'

Mr. GRISWOLD gives us a specimen of the versification of the 137th psalm,
in the Bible; one of the sweetest lyrics ever written, beginning 'By the
rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion;
we hanged our harps upon the willows,' etc. This psalm, whose exquisite
beauties are so well preserved in our common English version, was put into
verse with the rest of the psalms, by our pious forefathers. To their
credit we can say, however, that the authors of the first version declare
that they 'have attended to conscience rather than to elegance' in
completing their work. We cannot excuse President DUNSTER of Harvard
College, so easily, who revised the edition and sent it forth with the
advertisement that they had in it a 'special eye both to the gravity of
the phrase of sacred writ, and to the sweetness of the verse;' especially
when we find this same sweet psalm completely murdered by him. After
stumbling along through two stanzas, he thus paraphrases. 'They that led
us into captivity,' he says:

Required of us a song, and thus
Askt mirth us waste who laid,
Sing us among, a Zion's song,
Unto us then they said.

The LORD'S song sing can we, being
In stranger's land?--then let
Lose her skill my right hand if I
Jerusalem forget.

Let cleave my tongue my palate on
If mind thee doe not I,
If chief joys o'er I prize not more,
Jerusalem my joy,' etc., etc.

Such wretched stuff as this our good forefathers sung with the profoundest
gravity; and those who thus murdered the king's English and the Hebrew's
poem were called 'poets!' Yet this same age could produce such poets as
Mrs. ANN BRADSTREET, of whom her great panegyrist, JOHN NORTON, in a
poetical description of her says:

'Her heart was a brave palace, _broad street_,
Where all heroic simple thoughts did meet,
Where nature such a tenement had ta'en,
That other souls to hers dwelt in a lane.'

The _pun_ here is good, but the comparison might have been dropped sooner
without damage. The poem of Mrs. BRADSTREET, entitled 'Contemplations,'
possesses a great deal of merit, and proves her to be worthy of the
extravagant praise of her extravagant admirer. The extracts from the
poetry of Governor WOLCOTT are very favorable to the poetic