that it was a good state from which to emigrate. His native town was the Queen of the Piscataqua, Portsmouth, the charming and only seaport of the state. His father was a sea-captain, and, like many of this noble, but continually exposed class of men, died when James, his eldest son, was about four years of age. The admirable public schools of the town afforded young Fields a good preliminary training; and at the age of thirteen he graduated from the high school, having taken several prizes, during his course, for his Greek and Latin compositions. An English poem in blank verse, written at the age of twelve, attracted the attention of the late Chief Justice Woodbury, then Governor of New-Hampshire, and resident of Portsmouth. He advised the young poet to prosecute his studies further, and to enter Harvard University. For reasons, however, that seemed at the time sufficiently weighty, he decided to go at once into business; and coming to Boston, he entered as the youngest clerk in the same book establishment over which he now presides as one of the partners.

Mr. Fields has enjoyed the valuable

the first he passed several months in England, Scotland, France, and Germany, visiting the principal places of interest, and forming delightful and profitable intimacies with the most distinguished littérateurs of the day. He was a frequent guest at the world-known "breakfasts" of the great banker-poet of "The Pleasures of Memory" and of "Italy," and listened or added his own contribution to the exuberant riches of the hour, when such visitors as Talfourd, Dickens, Moore, and Landor were the talkers. Our handsome poet seems to have made a very lively impression upon that charming invalid-the late Mary Mitford. He was for some time her guest at her cottage in the country; and in her "Reminiscences," published some years since by Bentley, she has referred in the most flattering terms to this acquaintance. She says:

"One fine summer afternoon, shortly after I had made this acquisition, (referring to a copy of Motherwell's Poems,) two young Americans made their appearance with letters of introduction from some honored friends. There was no mention made of profession or calling; but I soon found that they were not only men of intelligence and education, but of literary taste

and knowledge; one especially had the look, the air, the conversation of a poet. We talked on many subjects, and got at last to the delicate question of American reprints of English authors, on which, much to their delight, and a little to their surprise, there was no disagreement; I, for my poor part, pleading guilty to the taking pleasure in such a diffusion of my humble works. 'Besides,' continued I, 'you send us better things-things otherwise unattainable. I could only procure the fine poems of Motherwell in this Boston edition. My two

་

visitors smiled at each other. This is a most singular coincidence,' cried the one whom I knew, by instinct, to be a poet; 'I am a younger partner in this Boston house, and at my pressing instance this book was reprinted.' Fields's visit was necessarily brief; but that short interview has laid the foundation of a friendship which will, I think, last as long as my frail life, and of which the benefit is all on

Mr.

my side. He sends me charming letters, verses which are fast ripening into true poetry, excellent books, and this autumn he brought back himself, and came to pay me a second visit; and he must come again, for of all the kindnesses with which he loaded me, I like his company best."

At Rydal Mount he paid his devoirs to the grand presiding genius of the place, Wordsworth, and was affectionately welcomed to its penetralia. This interview with the author of the "Excursion Mr. Fields has thus gracefully commemorated :

"The grass hung wet on Rydal's banks,

The golden day with pearls adorning, When side by side with him we walked To meet midway the summer morning.

"The west wind took a softer breath,

The sun himself seemed brighter shining, As through the porch the minstrel stepped, His eye sweet nature's look enshrining.

"He pass'd along the dewy sward,

The blue-bird sang aloft, Good morrow!'
He pluck'd a bud; the flower awoke,
And smiled without one pang of sorrow.

"He spoke of all that graced the scene,

In tones that fell like music round us; We felt the charm descend, nor strove

To break the rapturous spell that bound us.

"We listen'd with mysterious awe,

Strange feelings mingling with our pleasure; And heard that day prophetic words

High thoughts the heart must always treasure.

"Great nature's priest! thy calm career

With that sweet morn on earth has ended; But who shall say thy mission died When, wing'd for heaven, thy soul ascended?"

On his return passage from the first tour, Mr. Fields came near anticipating the fate of poor Read of Philadelphia, in the Arctic. The vessel in which he sailed struck on the coast of Newfoundland, while running in a fog. The leak caused by this disaster was so severe that it was with great difficulty the ship was kept afloat and carried into port. His sea voyages, with their attendant perils, have afforded Mr. Fields some fine subjects for his shorter poems and for pathetic ballads. The two special veins in which his genius produces its richest ores are the playful and the pathetic-not the broad comic or the sharply witty, but the quiet and genial humored-happily vailed in smooth lines, and affording continually mirthful surprises. The other vein is the pathetic, and many of his shorter poems are fine illustrations of his well-subdued power to touch the minor chords of the heart. In the ballad which was suggested to our memory by the sea peril to which our author was subjected this characteristic appears, accompanied with a rapidity of movement and deep solemnity of tone peculiarly adapted to give proper expression to the scene it

describes:

"We were crowded in the cabin, Not a soul would dare to sleepIt was midnight on the waters,

And a storm was on the deep.

""Tis a fearful thing in winter
To be shatter'd in the blast,
And to hear the rattling trumpet
Thunder, 'Cut away the mast!'

"Many a long, long year ago,
Nantucket skippers had a plan
of finding out, though lying low,'
How near New-York their schooners ran.

"They greased the lead before it fell,

And then, by sounding through the night,

Knowing the soil that stuck so well,

They always guess'd their reckoning right.”

An old skipper, it seems, "whose eyes were dim," professed to tell by "tasting" just their position on the coast:

"Snug in his berth, at eight o'clock,

This ancient skipper might be found; No matter how his craft would rock,

He slept for skippers' naps are sound. "The watch on deck would now and then

Run down and wake him, with the lead: He'd up, and taste, and tell the men

How many miles they went ahead.

"And so he took the well-greased lead, And rubbed it o'er a box of earth

That stood on deck-a parsnip bed

And then he sought the skipper's berth. "Where are we now, sir? Please to taste.' The skipper yawn'd, put out his tongue, Then ope'd his eyes in wondrous haste, And then upon the floor he sprung!

"The skipper storm'd, and tore his hair, Thrust on his boots, and roared to Marden. 'Nantucket's sunk, and here we are Right over old Marm Hackett's garden.'"

Mr. Fields, upon his second visit to Europe, in 1851, was in Paris during the latest French revolution, and witnessed the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon-the bloody encounter between the troops and the populace upon the Boulevards in December of that year. A cannon ball shattered the house two doors from where he stood among the crowd. He spent a winter in Italy, devoting the principal portion of the time to Rome, where he enjoyed the high culture arising from an appreciative study of the great works of art. He remained a number of months in England, three of which he gave to London and its literary circles. Several clubs invited him to a membership, and opened to him all their social privileges. At a corporation dinner of the city he was honored with a toast, and brought down the house, in the form of nine rousing cheers, by a successful and spirited address. In Edinburgh he renewed the grateful acquaintance, which he had formed upon his previous visit, with Professor Wilson, and commenced that intimate and confidential intercourse

with De Quincy which is even to this day productive of valuable results to the literary world. The "Opium-Eater," whose writings, in eighteen volumes, Mr. Fields has edited and published in a truly elegant series, in America, welcomed him to his house, and accompanied him upon several excursions in Scotland. One day they walked fourteen miles together on a trip to Roslin Castle, De Quincy beguiling the time, and cheating the miles of their weariness, with anecdotes of his earlier days, when Coleridge, Southey, and Charles Lamb were his companions among the hills of Westmoreland.

There is a touching and characteristic vein of melancholy running through the highly-complimentary letter prefacing the American edition of his autobiographic sketches. To Mr. Fields he says :—

"These papers I am anxious to put into your hands, and, so far as regards the United States, of your house exclusively; not with any view to future emoluments, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you have already rendered me: namely, first, in having brought together so widely scattered a collection-a difficulty which in my own hands, by too painful an experience, I had found, from nervous depression, to be absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in the pecuniary profit of the American edition without solicitation, or the shadow of any expectation on my part; without any legal claim VOL. VII.-32

that I could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage-solely and merely upon your own spontaneous motion."

Upon Mr. Fields's return to America he was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem before the society at Harvard University, and during the same season was elected to fill the same office at Dartmouth. He delivered about this time a very successful lecture before the Mercantile Library upon "Preparations for Travel," which, while it was replete with humor, was full of sensible and valuable suggestions. Various colleges, lyceums, &c., have since kept Mr. Fields from the temptation of placing his light under a bushel. His unpublished poem upon "Eloquence" has already been publicly read more than twenty times, and the demand is still unsupplied.

If our merchant-poet lives, (and may a good Providence grant this!) he has not yet written his best verse. He has but stepped out upon the threshold of manhood, and the dew is still upon his lips. The poems that will bear up his name and memory when other generations walk our streets, and we slumber under old tombstones, are still receiving their vital warmth, and quickening in his imagination, and waiting the hour of resurrection. Little of the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known. emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, save from well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been cheered to the echo, and it is impossible for so

Of the

genial a fellow to fail of an ample and approving audience for whatever may fall from his lip or pen. The spur of necessity, which is the almost indispensa ble goad to great endeavors, is of course wanting; and the temptation of our Apollo, with his golden harp, is to be satisfied with the success which has been, and can be so readily purchased, and not to attempt, by painful self-discipline, to write himself excelsior! Willis says of Mr. Fields's poems:

"They are scholar-like in their structure, musical, genial-toned in feeling, effortless, and pure-thoughted. He has a playful and delicate fancy, which he uses skillfully in his poems of sentiment, and a strongly perceptive observation,

Of his personal appearance here is a characteristic profile, cut by the same slashing hand

"Mr. Fields is a young man of twenty-five, (a few years older now,) and the most absolute specimen of rosy and juvenescent health that would be met with by the takers of the census. His glowing cheek and white teeth, full frame and curling beard, clear eyes and ready smile, are, to tell the truth, most unsymptomatic of, the poet-not even very common in publishers."

To add that he is of about medium height and well-proportioned, would bring our merchant-poet before the mind's eye as visibly, perhaps, as pen-painting is capable of doing.

A CHAPTER ON BELLS.

PLEASANT

and venerable are the associations connected with bells. They are the special poets of man's life; the unconscious assistants of his deeds; the ministering servants of his religion. At his birth, they rejoice; at his marriage, theirs are the merriest voices; at his death, alas! they are too often his only mourners. They swell the clamorous alarms of revolt -they herald in the triumph-they peal | sweetly and holily over meadow and valley, calling the prayerful to the old gray church on the Sabbath morning. No other object of common manufacture and general use is hallowed by memories so various; no other tongue tells a story so touching to the ear of universal humanity.

The use of bells is so ancient as to be lost in the gloom of remotest antiquity. Setting aside that bell which, as we are told by an Eastern writer, was manufactured by Tubal Cain, and used by Noah to summon his ship-carpenters to their daily labors, we may content ourselves with the earliest authentic mention of them as it occurs in the Book of Exodus, where we find that the high-priest was ordained to wear golden bells, alternating with golden pomegranates, on the blue vestment in which he was robed during the performance of religious ceremonies. It is remarkable that the same fashion was observed in the decorations of the regal costume of the ancient Persians.

The Romans had bells and knockers at their doors, and porters to answer the inquiries of visitors, as we have in this

each a bell, to give the alarm in case of accident or danger. They hung bells, also, to the necks of criminals on their way to execution, that persons might be warned from their path, as it was deemed a bad omen to meet those sacrifices devoted to the dii manes; and Phædrus mentions that bells were commonly attached to the necks of animals. To remove them was theft, according to the civil laws of Rome; and if the animals were lost, the person who had stolen the bells remained answerable for their value. That the ancient Jews were in the habit of suspending bells round the necks of animals, we ascertain by these words of the prophet Zechariah: "In that day there shall be upon the bells of horses, Holiness unto the Lord."

The Greeks hung bells, with whips, to the chariots of victorious generals, by way of reminding them that, notwithstanding their services and valor, they were still within the pale of law and justice. Those soldiers who went the rounds of their garrisons and camps by night, carried small bells, which it was their duty to ring at each sentry-box. In funeral processions, a bell-man walked before the body; and at Athens, a priest of Proserpine, called Hierophantus, rang a bell to summon the citizens to sacrifice. All Greek and Roman market-places, temples, camps, and frontier towns, were furnished with them; and in the vast public baths of Rome, notice was given of the hours of opening by the ringing of a bell.

It is an agreeable instance of the generous chivalry practiced by the ancient Florentines, that so far from seeking to obtain any advantage over their enemies by means of a surprise, they gave them a month's warning before they drew their army into the field, by the continued tolling of a bell, named by them Mortinella.

The earliest mention of bells, as applied to the purposes of religious worship, is by Polydore Virgil, who states that Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, a city of Campania, in Italy, first adapted them to his church in the year 400; hence the word campanile, belfry, still used in Italian. They were not adopted in the churches of Britain till near the end of the seventh century, but they were in use in Caledonia as early as the sixth; and in the year 610, we read that the army of the French monarch, Clothaire II., was terrified from the siege