SPRAGUE THE POET.

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Atlas, but he is more urbane than the world-bearer. He keeps a muscle unstrained for a smile. A more courte. ous gentleman stands not by Mammon's altar-no, nor by the lip of Helicon-yet this is somehow stern. In what character, if you please, Mr. Harding? Sat Plutus, or Apollo, astride your optic nerve when you drew that picture? It may be a look he has, but, fine head as it stands on paper, they who form from it an idea of the man, would be agreeably disappointed in meeting him. And this, which is a merit in most pictures, is a fault in one which posterity is to look at.

Sprague has the reputation of being a most able financier. Yet he is not a rich man. Best evidence in the world that he puts his genius into his calculations, for it is the nature of uncommon gifts to do good to all but their possessor. That he is a poet, and a true and high one, has been not so much acknowledged by criticism, as felt in the republic. The great army of editors, who paragraph upon one name, as an entry of college-boys will play upon one flute, till the neighborhood would rather listen to a voluntary upon shovel and tongs, have not made his name diurnal and hebdomadal; but his poetry is diffused by more unjostled avenues, to the understandings and hearts of his countrymen. I, for one, think he is a better banker for his genius, as with the same power he would have made a better soldier, statesman, farmer, what you will. I have seen excellent poetry from the hand of Plutus-(Biddle, I should have said, but I never scratch out, to you)—yet he has but ruffled the muse, while Sprague has courted her. Our

Theodore,* bien-aimé, at the court of Berlin, writes a better despatch, I warrant you, than a fellow born of red tape, and fed on sealing-wax at the department. I am afraid the genius of poor John Quincy Adams is more limited. He is only the best President we have had since Washington-not a poet, though he has a volume in press. Briareus is not the father of all who will have a niche. Shelley would have made an unsafe banker, for he was prodigal of stuff. Pope, Rogers, Crabbe, Sprague, Halleck, waste no gold, even in poetry. Every idea gets his due of those poets, and no more; and Pope and Crabbe, by the same token, would have made as good bankers as Sprague and Rogers. We are under some mistake about genius, my dear Doctor. I'll just step indoors, and find a definition of it in the library.

Really, the sun is hot enough, as Sancho says, to fry the brains in a man's skull.

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Genius," says the best philosophical book I know of, "wherever it is found, and to whatever purpose directed, is mental power. It distinguishes the man of fine phrensy, as Shakspeare expresses it, from the man of mere phrensy. It is a sort of instantaneous insight, that gives us knowledge without going to school for it. Sometimes it is directed to one subject, sometimes to another; but under whatever form it exhibits itself, it enables the individual who possesses it, to make a wonderful, and almost miraculous progress, in the line of his pursuit."

Si non é vero, é ben trovato. If philosophy were more

Theodore Fay, secretary of the American embassy to Prussia.

popular, we should have Irving for President, Halleck for governor of Iowa, and Bryant envoy to Texas. But genius, to the multitude, is a phantom without mouth, pockets, or hands-incapable of work, unaccustomed to food, ignorant of the uses of coin, and unfit candidate, consequently, for any manner of loaves and fishes. A few more Spragues would leaven this lump of narrow prejudice.

I wish you would kill off your patients, dear Doctor, and contrive to be with us at the agricultural show. I flatter myself I shall take the prize for turnips. By the way, to answer your question while I think of it, that is the reason why I am not at Niagara, " taking a look at the viceroy." I must watch my turnip-ling. I met Lord Durham once or twice when in London, and once at dinner at Lady Blessington's. I was excessively interested, on that occasion, by the tactics of D'Israeli, who had just then chipped his political shell, and was anxious to make an impression on Lord Durham, whose glory, still to come, was confidently foretold in that bright circle. I rather fancy the dinner was made to give Vivian Grey the chance; for her ladyship, benevolent to every one, has helped D'Israeli to “imp his wing," with a devoted friendship, of which he should embody in his maturest work the delicacy and fervor. Women are glo. rious friends to stead ambition; but, effective as they all can be, few have the tact, and fewer the varied means, of the lady in question. The guests dropped in, announced but unseen, in the dim twilight; and, when Lord Durham came, I could only see that he was of

middle stature, and of a naturally cold address. Bulwer spoke to him, but he was introduced to no one-a departure from the custom of that maison sans-gêne, which was either a tribute to his lordship's reserve, or a ruse on the part of Lady Blessington, to secure to D'Israeli the advantage of having his acquaintance sought-successful, if so; for Lord Durham, after dinner, requested a formal introduction to him. But for D'Orsay, who sparkles, as he does every thing else, out of rule, and in splendid defiance of others' dulness, the soup and first half hour of dinner would have passed off, with the usual English fashion of earnest silence. I looked over my spoon at the future premier, a dark, saturnine man, with very black hair, combed very smooth, and wondered how a heart, with the turbulent ambitions, and disciplined energies which were stirring, I knew, in his, could be concealed under that polished and marble tranquillity of mien and manner. He spoke to Lady Blessington in an under-tone, replying with a placid serenity that never reached a smile, to so much of D'Orsay's champagne wit as threw its sparkle in his way, and Bulwer and D'Israeli were silent altogether. I should have foreboded a dull dinner if, in the open brow, the clear sunny eye, and unembarrassed repose of the beautiful and expressive mouth of Lady Blessington, I had not read the promise of a change. It came presently. With a tact, of which the subtle ease and grace can in no way be conveyed into description, she gathered up the cobweb threads of conversation going on at different parts of the table, and, by the most apparent accident, flung them

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into D'Israeli's fingers, like the ribands of a four-in-hand. And, if so coarse a figure can illustrate it, he took the whip-hand like a master. It was an appeal to his opinion on a subject he well understood, and he burst at once, without preface, into that fiery vein of eloquence which, hearing many times after, and always with new delight, have stamped D'Israeli on my mind, as the most wonderful talker I have ever had the fortune to meet. any thing but a declaimer. You would never think him on stilts. If he catches himself in a rhetorical sentence, he mocks at it in the next breath. He is satirical, contemptuous, pathetic, humorous, every thing in a moment; and his conversation on any subject whatever, embraces the omnibus rebus, et quibusdam aliis. Add to this, that D'Israeli's is the most intellectual face in England-pale, regular, and overshadowed with the most luxuriant masses of raven-black hair; and you will scarce wonder that, meeting him for the first time, Lord Durham was (as he was expected to be by the Aspasia of that London Academe) impressed. He was not carried away as we were. That would have been unlike Lord Durham. He gave his whole mind to the brilliant meteor blazing before him; but the telescope of judgment was in his hand-to withdraw at pleasure. He has evidently, native to his blood, that great quality of a statesman-retenu. D'Israeli and he formed at the moment a finely-contrasted picture. Understanding his game perfectly, the author deferred, constantly and adroitly, to the opinion of his noble listener, shaped his argument by his suggestions, allowed him to say nothing