THE TIMES.

A FRAGMENT.

Give me truths,

For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew

Only the herbs and simples of the wood,

Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and agrimony,
Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,

Milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint pipes, and sundew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
By sweet affinities to human flesh,
Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,
O that were much, and I could be a part
Of the round day, related to the sun
And planted world, and full executor
Of their imperfect functions.

But these young scholars who invade our hills,

Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,

And travelling often in the cut he makes,

Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,

And all their botany is Latin names.

The old men studied magic in the flowers,

And human fortunes in astronomy,

And an omnipotence in chemistry,

Preferring things to names, for these were men,
Were unitarians of the united world,

And wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes
Are armed, but we are strangers to the stars,

And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine;
The injured elements say, Not in us;

And night and day, ocean and continent,
Fire, plant, and mineral, say, Not in us,
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain,
We devastate them unreligiously,

And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;

But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine consents

Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia are withheld;

And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out

Daily to a more thin and outward rind,

Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term,
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space, is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
With most unhandsome calculation taught,
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts, frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison

Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Letters from New York. By L. M. CHILD.

WE should have expressed our thanks for this volume in the last number of the Dial, had the few days, which intervened between its reception and the first of October, permitted leisure even to read it. Now the press and the public have both been beforehand with us in awarding the due meed of praise and favor. We will not, however, refrain, though late, from expressing a pleasure in its merits. It is, really, a contribution to American literature, recording in a generous spirit, and with lively truth, the pulsations in one great centre of the national existence. It is equally valuable to us and to those on the other side of the world. There is a fine humanity in the sketches of character, among which we would mention with especial pleasure, those of Julia, and Macdonald Clarke. writer never loses sight of the hopes and needs of all men, while she faithfully winnows grain for herself from the chaff of every day, and grows in love and trust, in proportion with her growth in knowledge.

The Present. Nos. 1-6. Edited by W. H. CHANNING.

The

MR. CHANNING's Present is a valiant and vivacious journal, and has no superior in the purity and elevation of its tone, and in the courage of its criticism. It has not yet expressed itself with much distinctness as to the methods by which socialism is to heal the old wounds of the public and private heart; but it breathes the air of heaven, and we wish it a million readers.

President Hopkins's Address before the Society of Alumni of Williams College, August, 1843.

We have read with great pleasure this earnest and manly discourse, which has more heart in it than any literary oration we remember. No person will begin the address, without reading it through, and none will read it, without conceiving an affectionate interest in Williams College.

Deutsche Schnellpost.

THIS paper, published in the German language twice a week in New York, we have read for several months with great advantage, and can warmly recommend it to our readers. It contains, besides its lively feuilletons, a good correspondence from Paris, and, mainly, very well selected paragraphs from all the German newspapers, communicating important news not found in any other American paper, from the interior of the continent of Europe. It is edited with great judgment by Eichthal and Bernhard; and E. P. Peabody, 13 West street, is their agent in Boston.

THE DIAL.

VOL. IV.

APRIL, 1844.

No. IV.

IMMANUEL KANT.

It is a common remark, that the most characteristic feature of modern thought is its subjectiveness. In the natural reaction which followed the dogmatism and formalism,-the ultra objectiveness of the preceding period, the confidence of the mind in all authorities and all affirmatives, was severely shaken; and a contest ensued between Skepticism, on the one hand, and the abiding instinct of Existence in the human mind, on the other, which turned the attention of all philosophers to the foundation and principles of our knowledge.

Modern speculation, therefore, has returned to the fundamental problem of human science; and asks, first of all, "Can we know anything?" To this question, the common man readily answers in the affirmative; and if asked how he knows it is so, refers to the actual knowledge which we have of the outward world. He has a head on his shoulders; the sun is shining; or the like, to which he expects your ready assent.

In this affirmation, as in those systems of metaphysics which, like the Common Sense philosophy, &c., consist of careful statements of the convictions of the vulgar* consciousness, we see the original prejudice of the human mind, that something exists: the unshapen and unsyllabled Fact (including all other facts) of the Consciousness, sometimes lost sight of for a moment, but never permanently shaken off. The universality of this prejudice assures us that it encloses a vital truth, and demands

I use the word vulgar in its strict sense, as signifying the natural as opposed to the philosophical consciousness.

VOL. IV. NO. IV.

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