poems and they are encouragingly reviewed. Mr. Thompson furnishes much good matter for the North as well as the South and some very fine essays, whose authors are unknown, except a satirical one by J. B. Dabney. M. F. Maury defends the Dead Sea Expedition, under Lieut. Lynch; Edgar A. Poe reviews the poems of Mrs. S. Anna Lewis and discusses, in two articles, "The Rationale of Verse." Park Benjamin translates valuable matter from Lamartine and there is a review of "Early Voyages to America," prepared for the Virginia Historical Society by Conway Robinson. Mr. Thompson is successfully attentive to his special department and some of the good anonymous writing may have been from his pen. P. H. H., of Charleston, is probably Paul Hayne, just peeping out.
About this time, the Messenger paid a good deal of attention to European matters; Magyar and Croatian, German, Italian and French. There are several letters from the Paris correspondent, W. W. Mann, and Park Benjamin writes some from New York. Phil Cooke still writes stories; and Mr. Thompson copyrights, in his own name, but author not given, "The Chevalier Merlin." He was P. P. Cooke. Sidney Dyer indulges in "The Pleasures of Thought," not as long as those Pleasures on which Campbell, Akenside and Rogers have dilated, but still in thirty-
