[377] professional, a trick of the practice, unquestionably, in most cases; but sometimes it is a ‘natural gift,’ like that of the ‘bonesetters,’ and ‘scrofula strokers,’ and ‘cancer curers,’ who carry on a sort of guerilla war with human maladies. Such we know to be the case with Dr. Holmes. He was born for the ‘laughter cure,’ as certainly as Priessnitz was for the ‘water cure,’ and has been quite as successful in his way, while his prescriptions are infinitely more agreeable. The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, Urania, is perhaps the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witness the following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The whole compass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody and beauty.
Down the chill street, which winds in gloomiest shade,
What marks betray yon solitary maid
The cheek's red rose, that speaks of balmier air,
The Celtic blackness of her braided hair;
The gilded missal in her kerchief tied;
Poor Nora, exile from Killarney's side!
Sister in toil, though born of colder skies,
That left their azure in her downcast eyes,
See pallid Margaret, Labor's patient child,
Scarce weaned from home, a nursling of the wild,
Where white Katahdin o'er the horizon shines,
And broad Penobscot dashes through the pines;
