and the next year a celebration, in verse, of the French Revolution of 1830, The Tricolor, or Three Days of Blood in Paris.

Shortly after this date, in 1832, Mr. Simms visited New York, where his imaginative poem, Atalantis, a Story of the Sea, published by the Harpers in that year, introduced him to the literary circles of the city, in which he was warmly welcomed. Atalantis was a successful poem with the publishers, a rarity at any time, and more noticeable in this case as the work of an unheralded, unknown author. It is written with easy elegance, in smooth blank verse, interspersed with frequent lyrics. Atalantis, a beautiful and virtuous princess of the Nereids, is alternately flattered and threatened by a monster into whose power she has fallen, by straying on the ocean beyond her domain, and becoming subject to his magi cal spells. She recovers her freedom by the aid of a shipwrecked Spanish knight, whose earthly nature enables him to pen

etrate the gross atmosphere of the island which the demon extemporized for her habitation. The prison disappears, and the happy pair descend to the caves of the ocean.

The next year the Harpers published Mr. Simms's first tale, Martin Faber, the Story of a Criminal, written in the intense passionate style. It secured at once public attention.

The author had now fairly entered upon the active literary life which he has since pursued without interruption; and so uniform has been his career, that a few words will sum up the incidents of his history. A second marriage to the daughter of Mr. Roach, a wealthy planter of the Barnwell district, his first wife having died soon after their union before his visit to New York; a seat in the state legislature, and the reception of Doctorate of Laws from the University of Alabama: his summer residence at Charleston and his home winter life on the plantation Woodlands at Midway, with fre

South Carolina regiments in the Mexican war in 1848; a new edition of Atalantis the same year at Philadelphia, with a collection, The Eye and the Wing; Poems Chiefly Imaginative; The Cassique of Accabee, a Tale of Ashley River, with other pieces, New York, 1849; The City of the Silent, a poem delivered at the Consecration of Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, in 1850.

In 1853, two volumes of poems were published by Redfield, comprising a selection, with revisions and additions, from the preceding. In dramatic literature, Mr. Simms has written Norman Maurice, or the Man of the People, in which the action is laid in the present day, and the author grapples resolutely in blank verse with the original every-day materials of familiar life. The scene opens in Philadelphia. Maurice is the suitor for the hand of Clarice, whom he marries, to the discomfiture of an intriguing aunt, Mrs. Jervas (whose name and character recall her prototype in Pamela,) and a worthless Robert Warren, kinsman and enemy-who retains a forged paper which Maurice had playfully executed as a boyish freak of penmanship, which had been made negotiable, and which Maurice had taken up," receiving from his cunning relative a copy of the paper in place of the original, the latter being kept to ruin him as time might serve. In the second act, we have Maurice pursuing his career in the west, in Missouri, as the Man of the People. In a lawsuit which he conducts for a widow, he confronts in her oppressor the fire-eating bully of the region, with whom he fights a duel, and is talked of for senator. The scoundrel Warren follows him, and seeks to gain control over his wife by threatening to produce the forged paper at a critical moment for his political reputation. She meets the villain to receive the paper, and stabs him. The widow's cause is gained; all plots, personal and political, discomfited; and Missouri, at the close, enjoys the very best prospect of securing an honest senator. Though this play is a bold attempt, with much new ground to be broken, it is managed with such skill, in poetical blank verse, and

with so consistent, manly a sentiment, that we pay little attention to its difficul ties. Michael Bonham, or the Fall of the Alamo, is a romantic drama founded upon an event in Texas history. Both of these have been acted with success. Mr. Simms has also adapted for stage purposes Shakespeare's play of Timon, with numerous additions of his own. This drama has been purchased by Mr. Forrest, and is in preparation for the stage.

Of Mr. Simms's Revolutionary Romances, The Partisan, published in 1835, was the earliest, the first of a trilogy completed by the publication of Mellichampe and Katharine Walton, or the Rebel of Dorchester, which contains a delineation of social life at Charleston in the Revolutionary period. The action of these picces covers the whole period of active warfare of the Revolution in South Carolina, and presents every variety of military and patriotic movement of the regular and partisan encounter of the swamp and forest country. They include the career of Marion, Sumpter, Pickens, Moultrie, Hayne, and others, on the constant battle-field of the state, South Carolina being the scene of the most severe conflicts of the Revolution. These works have been succeeded at long intervals by The Scout, originally called The Kinsmen, or the Black Riders of the Congaree, and Woodcraft, or Hawks about the Dovecot, originally published as The Sword and the Distaff. Eutaw, which includes the great action known by this name, is the latest of the author's compositions in this field. Guy Rivers, a Tale of Georgia, the first regularly constructed novel of Mr. Simms, belongs to a class of border tales, with which may be classed Richard Hurdis, or the Avenger of Blood, a Tale of Alabama; Border Beagles, a Tale of Mississippi; Beauchampe, a Tale of Kentucky, founded upon a story of crime in the state, which has employed the pens of several American writers; Helen Halsey, or the Swamp State of Conelachita; The Golden Christmas, a Chronicle of St. John's, Berkeley.

The Historical Romances include The Yemassee, a Romance of Carolina, an Indian story, founded upon the general con

spiracy of that Colony to massacre the whites in 1715—the portraiture of the Indian in this work, based by Mr. Simms upon personal knowledge of many of the tribes, correcting numerous popular misconceptions of the character; Pelayo, a Story of the Goth, and its sequel, Count Julian, both founded on the invasion of Spain by the Saracens, the fate of Roderick, and the apostacy of the traitor from whom the second work is named; The Damsel of Darien, the hero of which is the celebrated Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific; The Lily and the Totem, or the Huguenots in Florida, a historical romance, of one of the most finely marked and characteristic episodes in the colonial annals of the country, bringing into view the three rival nations of Spain, France, and the Red Men of the Continent, at the very opening of the great American drama before the appearance of the English; Vasconcelos, the scene of which includes the career of De Soto in Florida and the Havannah. In the last work Mr. Simms introduces the degradation of a knight by striking off his spurs, under the most imposing scenes of chivalry-one of the most delicate and elaborate of his many sketches. This was first published under the nom de plume of Frank Cooper."

Another class of Mr. Simms's novels may be generally ranked as the moral and the imaginative, and are both of a domestic and romantic interest. This was the author's earliest vein, the series opening with Martin Faber, published in 1833, followed at intervals by Carl Werner, Confession of the Blind Heart, The Wigwam and The Cabin, a collection of tales, including several in which an interest of the imagination is sustained with striking effect; and Castle Dismal, or the Bachelor's Christmas, a domestic legend, in 1844, a South Carolina Ghost Story; Marie de Berniere, a Tale of the Crescent City, with other short romances.

In History, Mr. Simms has produced a History of South Carolina, and South

Carolina in the Revolution, a critical and augmentative work, suggestive of certain clues overlooked by historians. A Geography of South Carolina may be ranked under this head, and reference should be made to the numerous elaborate review and magazine articles, of which a protracted discussion of the Civil Warfare of the South in the Southern Literary Messenger, the American Loyalists of the Revolutionary Period in the Southern Quarterly Review, and frequent papers illustrating the social and political history of the South, are the most noticeable. Mr. Simm's contributions to Biography embrace a Life of Francis Marion, embodying a minute and comprehensive view of the partisan warfare in which he was engaged; The Life of John Smith, which affords opportunity for the author's best narrative talent and display of the picturesque; a kindred subject, The Life of the Chevalier Bayard, handled con amore, and The Life of General Greene, of the Revolution. These are all works of considerable extent, and are elaborated with care.

In Criticism, Mr. Simms's pen has traversed the wide field of the literature of his day, both foreign and at home. He has edited the imputed plays of Shakespeare, with notes and preliminary essays.* 8.*

To Periodical literature he has always been a liberal contributor, and has himself founded and conducted several reviews and magazines. Among these may be mentioned The Southern Literary Gazette, a monthly magazine, which reached two volumes in 1825; The Cosmopolitan, An Occasional; The Magnolia, or Southern Apalachian, a literary magazine and monthly review, published at Charleston in 1842-3; The Southern and Western Monthly Magazine and Review, published in two volumes in 1845, which he edited; while he has frequently contributed to the Knickerbocker, Orion, Southern Literary Messenger, Graham's, Godey's and other magazines. A review of Mrs.

Trollope, in the American Quarterly for 1832, attracted considerable attention at the time. In 1849, Mr. Simms became editor of the Southern Quarterly Review, to which he had previously contributed, and which was revived by his writings and personal influence. Several Miscellaneous productions may be introduced in this connexion. The Book of my Lady, a melange, in 1833; Views and Reviews of American History, Literature and Art, including several lectures, critical papers and biographical sketches; Father Abbot, or the Home Tourist, a Medley, embracing sketches of scenery, manners, and customs of the South; Egeria, or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside, a collection of aphorisms, and brief essays in prose and verse; Southward Ho! a species of Decameron, in which a group of travellers interchanging opinion and criticism, discuss the scenery and circumstances of the South,

with frequent introduction of song and story; The Morals of Slavery, first published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and since included in the volume entitled The Pro-Slavery Argument.

In addition to these numerous literary productions, Mr. Simms is the author of several orations on public occasions,The Social Principle, the True secret of National Permanence, delivered in 1842 before the literary societies of the University of Alabama; The True Sources of American Independence, in 1844, before the town council and citizens of Aiken, S. C.; Self-Development, in 1847, before the literary societies of Oglethorpe University, Georgia; The Battle of Fort Moultrie, an anniversary discourse on Sullivan's Island; two courses of lectures, of three each, On Poetry and the Practical, and The Moral Character of Hamlet.

The numerous writings of Mr. Simms