Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/54

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42
The Southern

don publication. It is condemned as a useless trespasser upon the Anastasius of Mr. Hope. Judge Longstreet became a zealous Methodist preacher and no doubt a good many of his hearers, like ourselves, could not help, whilst listening to him, thinking of his "Georgia Scenes," of which Mr. Poe said: "If these Scenes have produced such effects upon our cachinnatory nerves—upon us who are not 'of the merry mood', and, moreover, have not been unused to the perusal of somewhat similar things—we are at no loss to imagine what a hubbub they would occasion in the uninitiated regions of Cockaigne. What would Christopher North say to them?" etc., etc.

April opens with an unpublished lecture, on "The Providence of God in the Government of the World," by Benjamin Franklin, and some letters of his, which had appeared in print. Mr. Poe furnishes "Some Ancient Greek Authors, Chronologically Arranged;" "A Tale of Jerusalem;" the explanation of Maelze's "Chess-player;" and fourteen and a half pages of critical notices, of which ten and a half are devoted to the poems of Jos. Rodman Drake and Fitz Greene Halleck.

This is a remarkable paper and eminently characteristic of the editor. He first defends himself against the strictures of Willis Gaylord Clark, Col. Stone and the New York Mirror: Col-