The merrier up its roaring draughtughed. poem is laid, for several successive

What matter how the night behaved?

What matter how the north wind raved? Blow high, blow low, not all its snow Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow."

generations.

And any one much. conversant with the old style of building farmhouses in the Bay State and the land

of

"steady habits," could easily imagine what kind of an edifice it was, independent of the frontispiece,

or the miniature view of the scene of

the "snow-bound" family. We can see the old building, with a bold twostory front, and sliding down behind with a long roof, making, not what we would denominate "a shed-room,"

About almost any transaction that comes before us, we, and every body, as well as the people "down-east," like to ask some questions: such as, who was the author and the persons most interested and concerned in it? And as it is said very truly that "geography and chronology are the two eyes of history," we want to but a "lean-to, "the profile resemblook through both these at any mat- ling a man who has a thick head of ter of history; and we naturally ask hair cut short on his forehead, and where did an event occur, and when hanging long behind, like a lady's did it happen? and then, further, "waterfall." It is said that in very whether any important consequence followed it? and perhaps, too in the other direction, we inquire into the antecedent causes; for we like to

trace effects back to causes.

early times, when the mothers cut their children's hair, they cut in two a pumpkin, and fitting one half of it on the head, clipped the hair by the edge of that. This style of building is according to that pattern.

The writer, John Greenleaf Whittier, as appears from an engraving In the centre is the huge chimney, prefixed to the volume, and from built of rock, probably filling more other sources, is a man about sixty space than any room in the house. years old; of a good personal appear- All the fireplaces are in this, and ance, one of nature's favorites, with the rooms ranged around it. The a large, broad forehead, indicating front entrance before it, the parlor at great capacity of brain; though one end, the dining and sitting-room, somewhat care-worn and weary- all in one, with a great buffet in one one you might know as the one,

"Ingenium cui sit, cui mens divinior, atque os Magna sonaturum-"

"who has genius, (native talent, poeta nascitur,) who has a soul of a diviner cast, and greatness of expression." He is of Quaker origin, "to the manor born," on the banks of the Merrimack, and inheriting from his ancestors if not the peculiar tenets of that sect so much persecuted by the early settlers of New-England, as their extreme dislike to the doctrines of their persecutors, "The Doctor's Mail of Calvin's Creed," "the acid sect;" and naturally he would feel so

corner, not movable, but constructed with the house, for the display of china, delft, and plate, pewter porringers, plates, and platters, brightly scoured; and with wooden trenchers nicely ranged in rows. Behind the chimney is the kitchen, not only occupying its breadth, but extending beyond it on each side sufficiently for doors to enter the parlor on the one hand, and the dining-room on the other. On each end of the kitchen, occupying with it the back or onestory part of the house, is a sleepingroom, with an entrance both from the kitchen and the front apartment. The other sleeping-rooms being above

when his own sect, then so much stairs. In the "so-called" kitchen spoken against, is styled by the is the great fireplace, wide enough great author of the Magnalia, "devil- to put back-logs and fore-sticks about driven heretics." It appears that as long as the wood is ordinarily the family continued to occupy the sledded in winter from the forest, old mansion, where the scene of the with a wide-throated chimney to

We would, if we could, give the ries; and hence not to know of course locality of the poem; from itself we all his antecedents, and the where learn that Salisbury was "nearer and the when of such a poem as the

home," from which we infer that it
was not very remote from a town of
that name. But on recurring to the
Gazetteer, we find a score of places
in the United States and several in
the New-England States of that
name. But where we find one "in
Essex county, Mass.," and this is on
the map near the sea-coast; and we
further read,

- "Nearer home our steps he led
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread,
Mile wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept scythe on scythe their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea."

And we further remember that this
is the natural and appropriate place
for Salisbury, probably befitting this
more than any other place of the
same name in the land, for it is Salt-
town, Salt-burgh.

Snow Bound, without any information from the author, "argues us unknown."

A few years ago some one in Boston discovered that the western part of North-Carolina, where is the umbilicus of this part of the continent, and radiates its pure mountain streams in nearly or quite every direction, is the very centre of ignorance, the focus of darkness, the midnight of mental and moral culture, and we are in the penumbra of that total eclipse, and we expect a "hornet's nest" to be in the backwoods.

The author could not expect that a copy of the Snow Bound, fresh from the press of Ticknor and Fields, one of the "sixteenth thousand," as pure and clean as the new-fallen snow that bound him, should ever

"sweated over," like Horace's rolls, and then sent to Iilerda in Spain, or to Utica in Africa. He would need to enlighten us first by sending

It is said that among the Indians it is regarded as a mark of disrespect find its way into these benighted reto any chief to inquire his name; it gions of "Old Rip Van Winkle;" or is to be presumed that when a man at any rate before it had been has performed exploits, taken scalps, and distinguished himself so muchas to attain the office of chief, his reputation is world-wide; his fame must be heard of everywhere, and not pent up and confined by narrow limits; so that to inquire into any thing pertaining to his mighty deeds, as if he The darkness and the ignorance, had not attained to "the first three," was an impeachment of his claims

"Freedom's young apostles," "Who, following in war's bloody trail," "Scatter before their swift advance

The pride, the lust, the
sloth,
Which nurtured treason's monstrous growth,
Made murder pastime, and the hell
Of prison torture possible."

The growth of plants shows the quality of the soil from which they spring; and this is quite racy. Carlyle says: "The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him." Men would benefit the Greeks in Greece, but neglect the Greeks at their own doors. They will get a telescope to discover objects of philanthropy and benevolence

and a disparagement of him. So one who has stood before the public in New-England as an author since 1828, when he left the Latin school in Boston, and who has published so many poems on various subjects, and "has depicted the intolerant spirit of the early colonists," and has been promoted to be "one of the secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society," and "many of whose best poems relate to slavery," and "whose at a great distance, while those just productions are all distinguished for as great at their feet are overlooked, manly vigor of thought and language or, when they "see them, they pass and breathe the true spirit of liberty," by on the other side." such an one must be known the We see and hear of these "aposworld over; his fame is not confined tles of liberty" in the developments by State lines or by national bounda- made concerning the operations of the Freedmen's Bureau in this and but yet he is bound by probabilities other States, and they are any thing and actual facts, and in his beautiful, but creditable to "freedom's young or old apostles."

But it is time to ask when did this famous Snow Bound occur which is thus immortalized by the pen and muse of the great New-England poet -to live until a greater heat than that of a summer solstice shall melt away all the ice from the Arctic and Antarctic circles and the Alpine glaciers?

or horrid and shocking creations, must use material ready furnished to his hand. He can not get out of the shell that incloses our mundane sphere and crawl around on the backside to see what is there, and how they think and feel that dwell there.

The terrible snow of 1717, when it fell to the depth, or rather rose to the height, of sixteen feet, to the tops of chamber-windows, burying all cattle, sheep, etc., that were unsheltered; covering all fences and small streams, and, excepting in forests, presenting a universal ocean of snow of glittering whiteness; and when a crust was formed upon the surface, men could pass anywhere on the top of it. This made, as we may well suppose, a deep impression upon the minds of the people; and though it occurred a century and a half ago, many traditions are prevalent about it. And this is apparently the model from divine art from which, like Moses copying the pattern God showed to him in the mount when about to build the tabernacle, the poet took his copy, and formed his idea of the Snow Bound, when,

A chronologer informs us that "the winter of 1638 was unusually severe;" but that of 1641 was of the severest kind. Boston Bay was a bridge of ice as far as the eye could see, and the Chesapeake also was frozen. The Indians said such a winter had not occurred in forty years. The fourteenth day of December, 1709, was supposed to be the coldest day then known in America. In February, 1717, fell the greatest snow ever known in this or perhaps in any country. It covered the lower doors of houses, so that some people were obliged to step out of their chamber-windows on snow-shoes. There was also a terrible tempest. There were very severe winters in 1738, 1740, and in that of 1779 all the rivers at the North, and even the Chesapeake Bay, were converted into bridges of ice. This was the most rigorous winter And the inmates of the house were

ever known in America. Long Island Sound was covered with ice, and the Chesapeake was passed with loaded carriages at Annapolis. apolis. Jan. 7, 1800, there was a great snow in Carolina and Georgia. From Dec. 20 to Feb. 1804-5, was a very severe winter.

But some may smile at the idea of a poet's following history-matter of fact-since, as the word means maker, "he is a curious maker known;" and with his weird wizard's wand, almost like him,

"Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect; Who calls for things that are not, and they come!!"

The poet can, at will, make a snowstorm even in summer, and send for his ice, in imagination, like morsels;

"Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament;
No cloud above, no earth below-
A universe of sky and snow!"

completely isolated from the external
world; for,

"Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And in our lonely life had grown
To have an almost human tone."

This maker makes a harder freeze than Thomson in his Winter, where he makes

"A crystal pavement, by the breath of heaven Cemented firm; till, seized from shore to shore,

The whole imprisoned river growls below."

The snow-storm began on a "brief December day," of the coming of which they had a portent in a peculiarly chill state of the air-" a hard, could read the clouds; was weatherdull, bitterness of cold:"

During the progress of the storm, and until it clears away, the poet But the almost beardless pedagives us no clue to the employments gogue made himself very interesting, or amusements of the inmates of the by playing with the cat, at crosshouse. He leaves us to suppose that pins on a hat, singing songs, telling they ate, and drank, and talked, and of college scrapes, of skating by slept, and waked as Christians ought moonlight, of sleigh-rides, of blindto do. But when the third night man's buff, of whirling plates, of came, and