The Sun.
London, England, 1845-12-03 00:00:00

LITERA TURE.

POEMS. By Oliver Wendell no!ines. 1 Vol.
This volume of Poems has much disappointed us. Dr.
Holmes is an American, and we Lave repeatedly been
told that he was " a secdnd Tom Hood." We have read
this volume of his poems, collected by a London pub-
lisher, and find that although it contains many humour-
ous poems, by far the best are those gravely written
upon serious subjec!s. We looked for a mere humourist,
—a man who could be funny, and play upon words—a
writer who carried on a Pun-ic war against gravity,
and, 10l we find that, though he does all this (and does
it well, too), be does far better thing's. In fact, with th,.
exception of Bryant, Longfellow, and Mrs. Sigourney, we
find that America has not a better poet than thi
Oliver Wendell Holmes. He has much uisappointed
—very agreeebiy.
We have done very little more, as yet, than glane,
through the book. Poetry, to be fully enjoyed, must. b,
read again and again, to bring out the hidden meaning,
to show the music of the rhythm, to develope the balance,:
adaptation of the words to the expression of the thought.
The first perusal of fine poetry, such as fills the velum,
before us, is unsatisfying: it fills us with pleasure, but
disarms criticism. Nor when we have drank in tto
beataies when the heart expands with the nobi,
thoughts which Genius has poured out upon the page—
can we coolly sit down to weigh the charm in the nicely -
adjusted balances oF Criticism ; but, even if wet did sub
feet these poems to such a trial, few faults could be
de!ected. Dr. Holmes is a writer of whom America has
every reason to be ?road.
The first and longest piece, entitled " Poetry," was
written, we bdieve, before its author had reached the
age of three-and-twenty. Thus, in that piece, does Dr.
Holmes tell us how general is the power which he at
once possesses and illustrates:—
" There breathes no being but has some pretence
To that tine instinct called poetic sense :
The rudest savage, roaming through the wild;
The simplest rustic, bending o'er his child;
The infant, list'ning to the warbling bird,
The mother, smiling at its half-formed word;
The boy uncaged, who tracks the fields at large;
The girl, turned matron to her babe-like charge;
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land;
'The slave, who, slumbering on his rusted chain,
Dreams of the palm-trees, on his burning plain ;
The hot -checked reveller, tossing down the wine,
To join the chorus pealing Auld lang syne ;'
The gentle maid, whose azure eye grows dim,
While
.Heaven is listening to her evening hymn;
'The jewell'd beauty, when her steps draw near
'The circling dance and dazzling chandelier;
E'en trembling age, when spring's renewing air
Waves the thin ringlets of his silver'd hair ;
All, all are glowing with the inward flame,
Whose wider halo wreathes the poet's name,
While, unembalmed, the silent dreamer dies,
His memory passing with his smiles and sighs.
If glorious visions, born for all mankind,
The bright auroras of our twilight mind;
If fancies, varying as the shapes that lie
Stained on the windows of the sunset sky;
If hopes, that beckon with delusive gleams,
Till the eye dances in the void of dreams;
If passions, following with the winds that urge
Earth's wildest wanderer to her farthest verge;
If these on all some transient hours bestow
Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow,
Then all are poets; and if earth had rolled
Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told,
Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave,
Would wail its requiem o'er a poet's grave!

" If to embody in a breathing word
Tones that the spirit trembled when it heard;
To fix the image ali unveiled and warm,
And carvo in language its ethereal form,
So pure, so perfect, that the lines express
No meagre shrinking, no unlaced excess ;
To feel that Art, in living truth, has taught
Ourselves, reflected in the sculptur'd thought ;
If this alone bestows the right to claim
The deathless garland and the sacred name,
Then none are poets, save the saints on high,
Whose harps can murmur all that words deny."
If this be not poetry, and of a high order, we know
nothing of our art, and can only wonder where, how, and
by whom it can easily be surpassed.

THE CURRENCY.
Amid the multitudinous din of Corn-law repeal',
railway and potato privies, and other agitations which
prevail, we hear the clear and steady voices of scnta
thinking men raised to direct public attention to our
national system of currency as an evil of far greater'
magnitude, and requiring more immediate reform than
any other subject of public administration. More
numerous and more frequent do these voices become
every day. In almost every one of the numerous
papers which have sprung up in support of the railway
interest do we find able disquisitions on the subject of
currency, in which the recent panic or sudden check
which has been given to all enterprise, and the conse-
quent indiscriminate depreciation of railway property,
are clearly traced to the mischievous operation of our
money laws, and to the designs of selfish and interested
parties, who profit and enrich themselves thereby at tho
expense of the general body of the community. Severer
of tee provincial journals follow in the same strain. In
assemblies of commercial men accidentally brought to-
gether the subject is often mooted ; and in societies
where public debates are held (fir instance, in the
Coger's Hall, in St. Bride's-lane, in this City), it is a
theme of disetnsion which excites equal, if not
greater interest, than the repeal of the corn-laws. In-
deed in this Hall it is felt that the two subjects of corn
and currency are co•relative, and that no legislation
should take place respecting the one without the other
being included. On this point the editor of the
Barkers' Circular, of the 28th ult., says, "Firm in our
own faith—rendered additionally firm and conclusively
fixed by the circumstances and events of this period of
time, we have a thorough conviction that a short ex-
perience of fete trade, under our existing monetary ,ys.
t.m, would cause all the manufacturing districts to pay
for a deliverance from the effects of free trade." And(
if we r.:4:y judge ftoin the resuscitation, during the iass
toe days, of Sir James Graham's celebrated pamphlet on
'`Corn and Currency," by the Times, and the comments
e)f the
pi
ni,on editor‘sit ii the flasher.,' c
ca jiotUri
sn journal
ncoincides u lit.
pesed that the Tines is the organ of the bullionise
party. But we cannot suppose it is ready wholly to 'ere
entice the landed interest of the kingdom ; and, there-
fore, if the corn-laws be doomed, we infer that it
would become the advocate of an amended cur-
rency talapeed to such an altered state of things.
Under this view, its recent articles, which it premi,es
to continue, may be regarded as a prelusory to a future
decided advocacy of an amended money law whenever
the proper time arrives. It is not only in the daily and
weekly journals we find these indications of a growin
pinion that our present system of money is un-
sound, but in those more deliberate emanations of the
press, the monthly and quarterly periodicals, in one or
ether of which there is always one or more articles eon-
denznatary of Sir Robert Peel's monetary legislation—
never any in favour of it.
All this is beginning to have its effect. There can be
to question—indeed, we know-- that many members of
the League are convinced of the pernicious influence of
Peel's money laws, but refrain from diverting the weir-
tion of that powerful body from the single object they
have in view, and which they have have so strenuously -
end undeviatingly pursued.
But what is of considerable importance is, that in the
Conservative Clubs at the West-end the subject hail
been introduced ; and in the agricultural protection
societies there are many of the most intelligent of these,
bodies who are now thoroughly satisfied that the policy-
of the agriculturists clearly is, that in the event of Sir
Robert Peel attempting to remove, or even in any degree
further to lessen, protection, they should insist contem-
poraneously for a reform of the currency.
To the persevering efforts of Mr. Thomas AttwoocE
and the Birmingham economists to awaken public at-
tention to the enormous wrong inflicted on the people by
Peel's restriction of the currency—to the enlightened
and philosophical writings of Mr. John Taylor, by far
the most learned and luminous writer of the day on the
subject—and to the disinterested and patriotic proceed-
ings of the Society for the Emancipation of Industry,.
established for the purpose of diffusing knowledge of his
principles, and bringing them to a practical bearing, are
we indebted for the progress which has been made in the
public mind in arriving at clear notions on the subject,
and for those symptoms which betoken the adoption, era
long, of a totally different system of money from what is
at present established.-

The discussion brought on at the close of last session
of Parliament by Mr. Spooner and Mr. Newdegate, is tkit
be renewed early in the ensuing session ; and we anti-
cipate not merely the adhesion of a numerous body of
Members to their views, but a very great excitement out
of doors on the subject, for every day a knowledge of it
is spreading not only in the middle classes, but amongst
working men, by means of those journals which are po-
pular with them, and in which the "fatal" effects
of our present currency on the industry of the country
are illustrated in a very talented and lucid manner, cif -
noting a the?ough knowledge of the whole subject on
the part of the conductors of these journals.
It will be recollected that, in the course of the debate
referred to, Sir Robert Peel took occasion to raise a
laugh among his supporters by sneering at the work of
Mr. Allison, the learned historian of Europe, entitled,
England in 1815 and in 1845; or, a Sufficient awl
Contracted Currency Compared." Mr. Allison has
recently published a " Postscript " along with a seeond
edition, in which he notices the observations with which
the Premier was pleased to honour his work. A corn-

pleter refutation, a more thorough exposure of ignorance
and quackery than Mr. Allison's reply to the Premier,
we do not recollect of any public man ever being visitud.
with ; and we predict that, on the next occasion, Sir
Robert will exhibit a little more modesty thau be did
when he ventured to sneer at Mr. Allison.

But this is not all. Not only are men wishing a re-
form of the national currency—not only are all reflective
men engaged in business convinced of the necessity of
something being done to protect them against those,
periodical convulsions by which their property is sacri-
ficed, in order to uphold the credit of an exclusive corpo-
ration. whose capital does not exceed 14,000,000 L, and
to enable a few Jew jobbers to profit by the ope-
ration, and which can only be done by breaking:
asunder the golden bands with which Peel's legis-
lation has bound them but they are beginning
to have glimpses of A mighty power which
has been hitherto allowed to lie dormant, and which
power consists in an extensive mercantile association, mid
enlightened organisation of mutual credit, independent
altogether of the Legislature, whose sanction is not
necessary for its successful working ; for although it is
the prerogative of Government to fix and determine the.

Icgal tender money of the country as the common mea-
sure of value, yet with commercial-obligations to pay
any amount in that money, Government has no right
whatever to interfere. Interfere it may arbitrarily, but
constitutionally, on principle, it dare 'hot interfere.
The numerous exchange companies lately established in.
Scotland, in defiance of, and to set at naught, Peel's
banking monopoly, created in 1844, and the railway-
banks which have been projected, are illustrative of ass
consciousness of this power. Only let a proper ma-
chinery for its working, be devised, and we are
satisfied as wonderful a power will have been
evoked in the moral world for the distribution of
the products of industry, and the comfort, happiness,
and enjoyment of tle great body of the people, as the
application of steam, through the inventive genius uf
Watt, was in the material world, with all its appliances,
minute and gigantic, and which only require the "com-
plement" of a scientific currency or effective distributive
agent to make these appliances subservient to the uses
and enjoyments of all the people instead of the instru-
ments for enriching a few, and erecting a manufacturing
and commercial oligarchy more grinding and oppressive
to the people then the worst system of feudal vassalage.
that ever existed.

UNIVERSIT Y INTELLIGENCE.
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.
BACHELORS OF MEDICINE-1845.
EXAMINATION FOR HONOURS.
PHYSIOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY.
Baines, Matthew (Schol. and Gold Medal)—King's Coll.
Brown, Fred. James (Gold Medal)—University College_
Radcliffe, Charles Bland—Leeds School of Medicine.
Whittle, Ewing—Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
Wayte, Charles Matthew—Guy's Hospital.
Hensley, Frederick John—King's College.