rtal though they be as the stars of heaven--nor in the wild song of
the six hundred Marseillese, marching northward "to die." The age of the
French Revolution was proved to be a grand and spirit-stirring age by
its after results--by bringing forth its genuine poet-children--its
Byrons and Shelleys--but needed not this late demonstration of its power
and tendencies.

Surely our age, too, abounds in the elements of poetical excitement,
awaiting; only fit utterance. The harvest is rich and ripe--and nothing
now is wanting but laborers to put in the sickle.

_Special_ objections might indeed, and have been taken, to the poetical
character of our time, which we may briefly dispose of before
enumerating the qualities which a new and great poet, aspiring to be the
Poet of the Age, must possess, and inquiring how far Mr. S. Yendys
exhibits those qualities in this very remarkable first effort, "The
Roman."

"It is a mechanical age," say some. To use Shakspeare's words, "he is a
mechanical salt-butter rogue who says so." Men use more machines than
formerly, but are not one whit more machines themselves. Was James Watt
an automaton? Has the press become less an object of wonder or terror
since it was worked by steam? How sublime was the stoppage of a mail as
the index of rebellion. Luther's Bible was printed by a machine. The
organ is a machine--and not the roar of a lion in a midnight forest is
more sublime, or a fitter reply from earth to the thunder. The railway
carriages of this mechanical age are the conductors of the fire of
intellect and passion--and its steamboats may be loaded with
thunderbolts, as well as with bullocks or yarn. The great American ship
is but a machine; and yet how poetical it becomes, as it walks the
waters of the summer sea, or wrestles, like a demon of kindred power,
with the angry billows. Mechanism, indeed, may be called the short-hand
of poetry, concentrating its force and facilitating its operations.

But this is an "age too late." So doubted Milton, while the shadow of
Shakspeare had scarce left the earth, and while he himself was writing
the greatest epic the world ever saw. And so any one may say, provided
he does not mutilate or restrain his genius in consequence. We have
reason to bless Providence that Milton did not act upon his hasty
peradventure. But some will attempt to prove its truth, by saying that
the field of poetry is limited--that the first cultivators will probably
exhaust it,