PROFESSOR FRISBIE was the son of a respectable clergyman at Ipswich, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard University in 1798, and was graduated in 1802. His father, like most of the clergymen of New England, was a poor man, and unable fully to defray the costs of his son's education; and Mr. FRISBIE, while an under-graduate, provided in part for his support by teaching a school during vacations, and by writing as a clerk. His friend and biographer, Professor ANDREWS NORTON, alludes to this fact as a proof of the falsity of the opinion that wealth constitutes the only aristocracy in our country. Talents, united with correct morals, and good manners, pass unquestioned all the artificial barriers of society, and

their claim to distinction is recognised more willingly than any other.

Soon after leaving the university, Mr. FRISBIE commenced the study of the law; but an affection of the eyes depriving him of their use for the purposes of study, he abandoned his professional pursuits, and accepted the place of Latin tutor in Harvard University. In 1811, he was made Professor of the Latin Language, and in 1817, Professor of Moral Philosophy. The last office he held until he died, on the 19th of July, 1822. He was an excellent scholar, an original thinker, and a pure-minded man. An octavo volume, containing a memoir, some of his philosophical lectures, and a few poems, was published in 1823.

A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

I'LL tell you, friend, what sort of wife,
Whene'er I scan this scene of life,

Inspires my waking schemes,
And when I sleep, with form so light,
Dances before my ravish'd sight,

In sweet aerial dreams.

The rose its blushes need not lend,
Nor yet the lily with them blend,

To captivate my eyes.
Give me a cheek the heart obeys,
And, sweetly mutable, displays
Its feelings as they rise;

Features, where, pensive, more than gay,
Save when a rising smile doth play,
The sober thought you see;
Eyes that all soft and tender seem,
And kind affections round them beam,
But most of all on me;

A form, though not of finest mould,
Where yet a something you behold
Unconsciously doth please;
Manners all graceful without art,
That to each look and word impart

A modesty and ease.

But still her air, her face, each charm
Must speak a heart with feeling warm,
And mind inform the whole;

With mind her mantling cheek must glow,
Her voice, her beaming eye must show
An all-inspiring soul.

Ah! could I such a being find,
And were her fate to mine but join'd
By Hymen's silken tie,

To her myself, my all I'd give, For her alone delighted live,

For her consent to die.

Whene'er by anxious care oppress'd,
On the soft pillow of her breast

My aching head I'd lay;

At her sweet smile each care should cease, Her kiss infuse a balmy peace,

And drive my griefs away.

In turn, I'd soften all her care,

Each thought, each wish, each feeling

share;

Should sickness e'er invade,

My voice should soothe each rising sigh,
My hand the cordial should supply;
I'd watch beside her bed.

Should gathering clouds our sky deform,
My arms should shield her from the storm;
And, were its fury hurl'd,

My bosom to its bolts I'd bare;
In her defence undaunted dare
Defy the opposing world.

Together should our prayers ascend;
Together would we humbly bend,

To praise the Almighty name;
And when I saw her kindling eye
Beam upwards in her native sky,

My soul should catch the flame.

Thus nothing should our hearts divide, But on our years serenely glide,

And all to love be given; And, when life's little scene was o'er, We'd part to meet and part no more, But live and love in heaven.

THE author of the "Airs of Palestine," is a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, and was born on the sixth of April, 1785. His great-grandfather, the Reverend JAMES PIERPONT, was the second minister of New Haven, and one of the founders of Yale College; his grandfather and his father were men of intelligence and integrity; and his mother, whose maiden name was ELIZABETH COLLINS, had a mind thoroughly imbued with the religious sentiment, and was distinguished for her devotion to maternal duties. In the following lines, from one of his recent poems, he acknowledges the influence of her example and teachings on his own character:

"She led me first to God;

Her words and prayers were my young spirit's dew. For, when she used to leave

The fireside, every eve,

I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew.

"That dew, that bless'd my youth,Her holy love, her truth,

Her spirit of devotion, and the tears

That she could not suppress,-
Hath never ceased to bless

My soul, nor will it, through eternal years.

"How often has the thought

Of my mourn'd mother brought

Peace to my troubled spirit, and new power
The tempter to repel!

Mother, thou knowest well

That thou hast blessed me since thy mortal hour!"

Mr. PIERPONT entered Yale College when fifteen years old, and was graduated in the summer of 1804. During a part of 1805, he assisted the Reverend Doctor BACKUS, in an academy of which he was principal previous to his election to the presidency of Hamilton College; and in the autumn of the same year, following the example of many young men of New England, he went to the southern states, and was for nearly four years a private tutor in the family of Colonel WILLIAM ALLSTON, of South Carolina, spending a portion of his time in Charleston, and the remainder on the estate of Colonel ALLSTON, on the Waccamaw, near Georgetown. Here he commenced his legal studies, which he continued after his return to his native state in 1809, in the school of Justices REEVE and GOULD; and in 1812, he was admitted to the bar, in Essex county, Massachusetts. Soon after the commencement of the second war with Great Britain, being appointed to address the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport, his place of residence, he delivered and afterward published "The Portrait," the earliest of the poems in the recent edition of his works.

In consequence of the general prostration of business in New England during the war, and of

his health, which at this time demanded a more active life, he abandoned the profession of law, and became interested in mercantile transactions, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore; but these resulting disastrously, in 1816, he sought a solace in literary pursuits, and in the same year published "The Airs of Palestine." The first edition appeared in an octavo volume, at Baltimore; and two other editions were published in Boston, in the following year.

The "Airs of Palestine" is a poem of about eight hundred lines, in the heroic measure, in which the influence of music is shown by examples, principally from sacred history. The religious sublimity of the sentiments, the beauty of the language, and the finish of the versification, placed it at once, in the judgment of all competent to form an opinion on the subject, before any poem at that time produced in America. As a work of art, it would be nearly faultless, but for the occasional introduction of double rhymes, a violation of the simple dignity of the ten-syllable verse, induced by the intention of the author to recite it in a public assembly. He says in the preface to the third edition, that he was "aware how difficult even a good speaker finds it to rehearse heroic poetry, for any length of time, without perceiving in his hearers the somniferous effects of a regular cadence," and "the double rhyme was, therefore, occasionally thrown in, like a ledge of rocks in a smoothly gliding river, to break the current, which, without it, might appear sluggish, and to vary the melody, which might otherwise become monotonous." The following passage, descriptive of a moonlight scene in Italy, will give the reader an idea of its manner:

"On Arno's bosom, as he calmly flows,
And his cool arms round Vallombrosa throws,
Rolling his crystal tide through classic vales,
Alone, at night,-the Italian boatman sails.
High o'er Mont' Alto walks, in maiden pride,
Night's queen;-he sees her image on that tide,
Now, ride the wave that curls its infant crest
Around his prow, then rippling sinks to rest;
Now, glittering dance around his eddying oar,
Whose every sweep is echo'd from the shore;
Now, far before him, on a liquid bed

Of waveless water, rest her radiant head.
How mild the empire of that virgin queen!
How dark the mountain's shade! how still the scene!
Hush'd by her silver sceptre, zephyrs sleep
On dewy leaves, that overhang the deep,
Nor dare to whisper through the boughs, nor stir
The valley's willow, nor the mountain's fir,
Nor make the pale and breathless aspen quiver,
Nor brush, with ruffling wind, that glassy river.
"Hark! 't is a convent's bell: its midnight chime;
For music measures even the march of time :-
O'er bending trees, that fringe the distant shore,
Gray turrets rise :-the eye can catch no more.
The boatman, listening to the tolling bell,
Suspends his oar :-a low and solemn swell,

From the deep shade, that round the cloister lies,
Rolls through the air, and on the water dies.
What melting song wakes the cold ear of Night?
A funeral dirge, that pale nuns, robed in white,
Chant round a sister's dark and narrow bed,
To charm the parting spirit of the dead.
Triumphant is the spell! with raptured ear,
That uncaged spirit hovering, lingers near ;-
Why should she mount? why pant for brighter bliss ?
A lovelier scene, a sweeter song, than this!"

Soon after the publication of the "Airs of Palestine," Mr. PIERPONT entered seriously upon the study of theology, first by himself, in Baltimore, and afterward as a member of the theological school connected with Harvard College. He left that seminary in October, 1818, and in April, 1819, was ordained as minister of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, in Boston, as successor to the Reverend Doctor HOLLEY, who had recently been elected to the presidency of the Transylvania University, in Kentucky.

In 1835 and 1836, in consequence of impaired health, he spent a year abroad, passing through the principal cities in England, France, and Italy, and extending his tour into the East, visiting Smyrna, the ruins of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and Athens, Corinth, and some of the other cities of Greece; of his travels in which, traces will occasionally be found in some of the short poems which he has written since his

return.

and many of his hymns, odes, and other brief poems, are remarkably spirited and melodious. Several of them, distinguished alike for energy of thought and language, were educed by events connected with the moral and religious enterprises of the time, nearly all of which are indebted to his constant and earnest advocacy for much of their prosperity.

In the preface to the collection of his poems published in 1840, he says, "It gives a true, though an all too feeble expression of the author's feeling and faith,-of his love of right, of freedom, and man, and of his correspondent and most hearty hatred of every thing that is at war with them; and of his faith in the providence and gracious promises of God. Nay, the book is published as an expression of his faith in man; his faith that every line, written to rebuke high-handed or under-handed wrong, or to keep alive the fires of civil and religious liberty,-written for solace in affliction, for support under trial, or as an expression, or for the excitement of Christian patriotism or devotion; or even with no higher aim than to throw a little sunshine into the chamber of the spirit, while it is going through some of the wearisome passages of life's history,-will be received as a proof of the writer's interest in the welfare of his fellowmen, of his desire to serve them, and consequently of his claim upon them for a charitable judgment, at least, if not even for a respectful and grateful

"PASSING AWAY."

Was it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,― Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,
And he, his notes as silvery quite,
While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?-
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,
Are set to words:-as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell,
Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,

Striking the hour, that fill'd my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung;
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a Canary bird swing ;)
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoy'd it, she seem'd to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

O, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo! she had changed:-in a few short hours Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung This way and that, as she, dancing, swung In the fulness of grace and womanly pride, That told me she soon was to be a bride ;Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, In the same sweet voice I heard her say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;
And the light in her eye, and the light on the
wheels,

That marched so calmly round above her, Was a little dimm'd,— ,—as when evening steals Upon noon's hot face:-Yet one couldn't but

THE author of the "Airs of Palestine," is a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, and was born on the sixth of April, 1785. His great-grandfather, the Reverend JAMES PIERPONT, was the second minister of New Haven, and one of the founders of Yale College; his grandfather and his father were men of intelligence and integrity; and his mother, whose maiden name was ELIZABETH COLLINS, had a mind thoroughly imbued with the religious sentiment, and was distinguished for her devotion to maternal duties. In the following lines, from one of his recent poems, he acknowledges the influence of her example and teachings on his own character:

"She led me first to God;

Her words and prayers were my young spirit's dew. For, when she used to leave

The fireside, every eve,

I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew.

"That dew, that bless'd my youth,Her holy love, her truth,

Her spirit of devotion, and the tears

That she could not suppress,-
Hath never ceased to bless

My soul, nor will it, through eternal years.

"How often has the thought

Of my mourn'd mother brought
Peace to my troubled spirit, and new power
The tempter to repel!

Mother, thou knowest well

That thou hast blessed me since thy mortal hour!"

Mr. PIERPONT entered Yale College when fifteen years old, and was graduated in the summer of 1804. During a part of 1805, he assisted the Reverend Doctor BACKUS, in an academy of which he was principal previous to his election to the presidency of Hamilton College; and in the autumn of the same year, following the example of many young men of New England, he went to the southern states, and was for nearly four years a private tutor in the family of Colonel WILLIAM ALLSTON, of South Carolina, spending a portion of his time in Charleston, and the remainder on the estate of Colonel ALLSTON, on the Waccamaw, near Georgetown. Here he commenced his legal studies, which he continued after his return to his native state in 1809, in the school of Justices REEVE and GOULD; and in 1812, he was admitted to the bar, in Essex county, Massachusetts. Soon after the commencement of the second war with Great Britain, being appointed to address the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport, his place of residence, he delivered and afterward published "The Portrait," the earliest of the poems in the recent edition of his works.

In consequence of the general prostration of business in New England during the war, and of

his health, which at this time demanded a more active life, he abandoned the profession of law, and became interested in mercantile transactions, first in Boston, and afterward in Baltimore; but these resulting disastrously, in 1816, he sought a solace in literary pursuits, and in the same year published "The Airs of Palestine.” The first edition appeared in an octavo volume, at Baltimore; and two other editions were published in Boston, in the following year.

The "Airs of Palestine" is a poem of about eight hundred lines, in the heroic measure, in which the influence of music is shown by examples, principally from sacred history. The religious sub- ¦ limity of the sentiments, the beauty of the language, and the finish of the versification, placed it at once, in the judgment of all competent to form an opinion on the subject, before any poem at that time produced in America. As a work of art, it would be nearly faultless, but for the occasional introduction of double rhymes, a violation of the simple dignity of the ten-syllable verse, induced by the intention: of the author to recite it in a public assembly. He says in the preface to the third edition, that he was "aware how difficult even a good speaker finds it to rehearse heroic poetry, for any length of time, without perceiving in his hearers the somniferous effects of a regular cadence," and "the double rhyme was, therefore, occasionally thrown in, like a ledge of rocks in a smoothly gliding river, to break the current, which, without it, might appear sluggish, and to vary the melody, which might otherwise become monotonous." The following passage, descriptive of a moonlight scene in Italy, will give the reader an idea of its manner:

"On Arno's bosom, as he calmly flows,
And his cool arms round Vallombrosa throws,
Rolling his crystal tide through classic vales,
Alone, at night,-the Italian boatman sails.
High o'er Mont' Alto walks, in maiden pride,
Night's queen;-he sees her image on that tide,
Now, ride the wave that curls its infant crest
Around his prow, then rippling sinks to rest;
Now, glittering dance around his eddying oar,
Whose every sweep is echo'd from the shore;
Now, far before him, on a liquid bed

Of waveless water, rest her radiant head.
How mild the empire of that virgin queen!
How dark the mountain's shade! how still the scene!
Hush'd by her silver sceptre, zephyrs sleep
On dewy leaves, that overhang the deep,
Nor dare to whisper through the boughs, nor stir
The valley's willow, nor the mountain's fir,
Nor make the pale and breathless aspen quiver,
Nor brush, with ruffling wind, that glassy river.
"Hark! 't is a convent's bell: its midnight chime;
For music measures even the march of time :-
O'er bending trees, that fringe the distant shore,
Gray turrets rise:-the eye can catch no more.
The boatman, listening to the tolling bell,
Suspends his oar:-a low and solemn swell,

From the deep shade, that round the cloister lies,
Rolls through the air, and on the water dies.
What melting song wakes the cold ear of Night?
A funeral dirge, that pale nuns, robed in white,
Chant round a sister's dark and narrow bed,
To charm the parting spirit of the dead.
Triumphant is the spell! with raptured ear,
That uncaged spirit hovering, lingers near ;-
Why should she mount? why pant for brighter bliss ?
A lovelier scene, a sweeter song, than this!"

Soon after the publication of the "Airs of Palestine," Mr. PIERPONT entered seriously upon the study of theology, first by himself, in Baltimore, and afterward as a member of the theological school connected with Harvard College. He left that seminary in October, 1818, and in April, 1819, was ordained as minister of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, in Boston, as successor to the Reverend Doctor HOLLEY, who had recently been elected to the presidency of the Transylvania University, in Kentucky.

In 1835 and 1836, in consequence of impaired health, he spent a year abroad, passing through the principal cities in England, France, and Italy, and extending his tour into the East, visiting Smyrna, the ruins of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, Constantinople, and Athens, Corinth, and some of the other cities of Greece; of his travels in which, traces will occasionally be found in some of the short poems which he has written since his

return.

and many of his hymns, odes, and other brief poems, are remarkably spirited and melodious. Several of them, distinguished alike for energy of thought and language, were educed by events connected with the moral and religious enterprises of the time, nearly all of which are indebted to his constant and earnest advocacy for much of their prosperity.

In the preface to the collection of his poems published in 1840, he says, "It gives a true, though an all too feeble expression of the author's feeling and faith,—of his love of right, of freedom, and man, and of his correspondent and most hearty hatred of every thing that is at war with them; and of his faith in the providence and gracious promises of God. Nay, the book is published as an expression of his faith in man; his faith that every line, written to rebuke high-handed or under-handed wrong, or to keep alive the fires of civil and religious liberty,-written for solace in affliction, for support under trial, or as an expression, or for the excitement of Christian patriotism or devotion; or even with no higher aim than to throw a little sunshine into the chamber of the spirit, while it is going through some of the wearisome passages of life's history,-will be received as a proof of the writer's interest in the welfare of his fellowmen, of his desire to serve them, and consequently of his claim upon them for a charitable judgment, at least, if not even for a respectful and grateful

"PASSING AWAY."

Was it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell

That he winds on the beach, so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,
And he, his notes as silvery quite,
While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?-
Hark! the notes, on my ear that play,
Are set to words:-as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

But no; it was not a fairy's shell,
Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear;
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell,

Striking the hour, that fill'd my ear,
As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of time.
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung;
(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a Canary bird swing ;)
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And, as she enjoy'd it, she seem'd to say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

O, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow! And the hands, as they swept o'er the dial of gold, Seemed to point to the girl below. And lo! she had changed:-in a few short hours Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung This way and that, as she, dancing, swung In the fulness of grace and womanly pride, That told me she soon was to be a bride ;Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, In the same sweet voice I heard her say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;
And the light in her eye, and the light on the
wheels,

That marched so calmly round above her, Was a little dimm'd,-as when evening steals Upon noon's hot face:-Yet one couldn't but

love her,

For she look'd like a mother, whose first babe lay Rock'd on her breast, as she swung all day;And she seem'd, in the same silver tone to say, "Passing away! passing away!"