Morning journal and courier., 1880-07-09
OFFICE 400 STATE STREET.
Price Four Cents.

still keeps consistently sailing OCT life's sol emn main? The brother must have had very
 sharp eyes If he could see footprints on the
 sands from his raft for his ship is supposed
 70 nave been wrecked long ago. Perhaps
 MT: LongfelIow was thinking of the footstep
 winch Robinson Crusoe found on the sand of
 ms desert island. But Robinson was mt salnng when he detected that isolated phe- nomenon; nor, when he saw it, did he take neart agaln; =. =. =. And the poet tells us in the bivouac of life not to be dumb. driven cattle, but to be shero.' What m alternative, either to be cattle in the plural cattle in bivouac ?"
 We do not wish to suggest anything dis. courteous to the dignifed Saturday Review.
 but we fear 1t does not clearly apprehend the drift of MT. Longfellow's little poem Espe- clally does it misapprehend the drift of the sh1pwrecked mariner of the main; and in the maln we must concede that it is almost as
 badly at sea as the forlorn brother before he saw the footprints in the sands We should allow something, doubtless, to the English writer's distance from the scene of the poem the sea In which the forIorn brother is wrecked-and to his apparent lack of famil- lar1ty with matters of navigation and ship wreck, as well as with the customs of the country. Had Mr. Longfellow supposed his Psalm would ever attract the attention of English and other foreigners. and that it would be regarded by them as of the narra- tive or epic order, he would undoubtedly have printed it with full explanatory notes for their benefit, as in the case of E'Hiawa tha." In the absence of these we know he will thank us If we explain to the Saturday Review that 1t has generally been understood on this side of the water that the mariners on the main left their footprints on the sands not while they were at sea, as the English critic enormously supposes, but while tenn porarlly ashore, on leave of absence, or hunt Ing clans upon the banks and shoals of time and that the forlorn brother happened to see the footprints in the sands because he was as the poem states, and blown ashore, and that he took heart again because 1t seemed good to him to touch dry land once more. In the matter of plural cattle and sin gular heroes, we doubt whether the dreadful alternative suggested by the Review would be any less dreadful if one were compelled to choose between being a cattle and hero as the Review evidently thinks would be the case; and it's subsequent question about blvouacs, and what business cattle have there, tends to dlscredit anythingit might say about cattle anyhow. There is not an ex-soldier or a cowboy" in this country who doesn't know why the cattle were there; they were
 driven" there as the poem states in order of course, to have them handy of course for breakfast the next morning. The criticism,
 as whole, reveals the true British insight into American affairs andAmerican literature and is worthy of the powerful and influential British journal which is serene in the belief that Carl Schurz is a member of the 'Ameri- can Senate, 'Sthat Kalloch is the Governor of California, and that Walt Whitman is the only great poet this country has yet produced.