The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844

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Title: The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844

Author: Various

Release date: October 14, 2006 [eBook #19542]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KNICKERBOCKER, OR NEW-YORK MONTHLY MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1844 ***

THE KNICKERBOCKER.

VOL. XXIII.

FEBRUARY, 1844.

NO. 2.

SICILIAN SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES.

BY THOMAS COLE.

A FEW months only have elapsed since I travelled over the classic land of Sicily; and the impressions left on my mind by its picturesqueness, fertility, and the grandeur of its architectural remains, are more vivid, and fraught with more sublime associations, than any I received during my late sojourn in Europe. The pleasure of travelling, it seems to me, is chiefly experienced after the journey is over; when we can sit down by our own snug fire-side, free from all the fatigues and annoyances which are its usual concomitants; and, if our untravelled friends are with us, indulge in the comfortable and harmless vanity of describing the wonders and dangers of those distant lands, and like Goldsmith’s old soldier, ‘Shoulder the crutch and show how fields were won.’ I was about to remark, that those who travel only in books travel with much less discomfort, and perhaps enjoy as much, as those who travel in reality; but I fancy there are some of my young readers who would rather test the matter by their own experience, than by the inadequate descriptions which I have to offer them.

Sicily, as is well known, is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. It was anciently called Trinacria, from its triangular shape, and is about six hundred miles in circumference. Each of its extremities is terminated by a promontory, one of which was called by the ancients Lilybeum, and faces Africa; another called Pachynus, faces the Peloponessus of Greece; and the third, Pelorum, now Capo di Boco, faces Italy. The aspect of the country is very mountainous: some of the mountains are lofty; but towering above all, like an enthroned spirit, rises Ætna. His giant form can be seen from elevated grounds in the most remote parts of the island, and the mariner can discern his snowy crown more than a hundred miles. But Sicily abounds in luxuriant plains and charming valleys, and its soil is proverbially rich: it once bore the appellation of the Granary of Rome; and it is now said that if properly tilled it would produce more grain than any country of its size in the world. Its beauty and fertility were often celebrated by ancient bards, who described the sacred flocks and herds of Apollo on its delightful slopes. The plain of Enna, where Proserpine and her nymphs gathered flowers, was famous for delicious honey; and according to an ancient writer, hounds lost their scent when hunting, in consequence of the odoriferous flowers which perfumed the air; and this may be no fable; for in Spring, as I myself have seen, the flowers are abundant and fragrant beyond description; and it seemed to me that the gardens of Europe had been supplied with two-thirds of their choicest treasures from the wild stores of Sicily.

The history of Sicily is as varied and interesting as the features of its surface; but of this I must give only such a brief and hurried sketch as, to those who are not conversant with it, will serve to render the scenes I intend to describe more intelligible and interesting than they otherwise would be. Its early history, then, like that of most nations of antiquity, is wrapped in obscurity. Poets feign that its original inhabitants were Cyclops; after them the Sicani, a people supposed to have been from Spain, were the possessors; then came the Siculi, a people of Italy. The enterprising Phœnicians, those early monarchs of the sea, whose ships had even visited the remote and barbarous shores of Britain, formed some settlements upon it; and in the eighth century before Christ various colonies of Greeks were planted on its shores, and became in time the sole possessors of the island. These Grecian founders of Syracuse, Gela, and Agrigentum, seduced from their own country by the love of enterprise, or driven by necessity or revolution from their homes, brought with them the refinement, religion, and love of the beautiful, that have distinguished their race above all others; and in a short time after their establishment in Sicily, the magnificence of their cities, the grandeur of their temples, equalled if they did not surpass those of their fatherland. About the year 480 before Christ, a fierce enemy landed on the coast of Sicily with two thousand gallies: this was the warlike Carthaginian, whose altars smoked with the sacrifice of human victims. This formidable invader was defeated under the great Gelon of Syracuse, who was called the father of his country; but the Carthaginians, returned again and with better fortune, at length became masters of the island. The Romans next conquered Sicily, and held it for several centuries. The Saracens in the ninth century were in the full tide of successful conquest. They landed first in the bay of Mazara, near Selinuntium, and after various conflicts and fortune, finally subjugated the whole island in the year 878. The crescent continued to glitter over the towers of Sicily for about three centuries, when the Normans, a band of adventurers whom the crusades of the Holy Sepulchre had brought from their northern homes, after a conflict of thirty years under Count Roger, expelled the Saracen in the year 1073, and planted the banner of the cross in every city of the land. Soon after that time it came under Spain and Austria; France and England have severally been its rulers. It is now under the crown of Naples.

Such is a brief outline of the eventful history of Sicily; a land formed by nature in her fairest mould; but which the crimes and ambition of men have desecrated by violence, oppression, and bloodshed; and with the substitution of a word, one might exclaim with the poet:

‘SICILIA! O SICILIA! thou who hast

The fatal gift of beauty, which became

A funeral dower of present woes and past,

On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame,

And annals graved in characters of flame.

Oh GOD! that thou wert in thy nakedness

Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim

Thy right, and awe the robbers back who press

To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress!’

The aspect of Sicily is widely different from that of this country; its beauty is dependent on other forms and associations. Here, we have vast forests that stretch their shady folds in melancholy grandeur; the mountain tops themselves are clad in thick umbrage, which, rejoicing in the glory of the autumnal season, array themselves in rainbow dyes. There, no wide forests shade the land; but mountains more abrupt than ours, and bearing the scars of volcanic fire and earthquake on their brows, are yet clothed with flowers and odoriferous shrubs. The plains and slopes of the mountains are now but partially under cultivation; vineyards and olive-groves generally clothe the latter, while over the gentler undulating country, or the plains, fenceless fields stretch far away, a wilderness of waving grain, through which the traveller may ride for hours nor meet a human being, nor see a habitation, save when he lifts his eyes to some craggy steep or mountain pinnacle, where stands the clustered village. The villages and larger towns are generally set among groves of orange, almond, and pomegranate trees, with here and there a dark Carruba, or Leutisk tree, casting its ample shade. Fields of the broad bean, the chief food of the laboring classes, serves at times to vary with vivid green the monotony of the landscape. The traveller rolls along over no Macadamised road in his comfortable carriage, but mounted on his mule, leaves him to choose his own track among the numerous ones that form what is called the strada-maëstro, or master-road, between city and city. Here and there he will come to a stone fountain, constructed perhaps centuries ago, which still furnishes a delightful beverage for himself and beast. Oftentimes the road leads through a country entirely waste, and covered with tall bunches of grass or the dwarfish palmetto; sometimes in the cultivated districts the road is bounded by the formidable prickly-pear, which grows to the height of twenty feet, or by rows of the stately aloe, and not unfrequently by wild hedges of myrtle, intertwined with innumerable climbing plants, whose flowers the traveller can pick as he rides along. Generally the road-side is perfectly enamelled with flowers of various hue and fragrance. No majestic river, like the Hudson, spreads before him, with all its glittering sails and swift steam-boats; but ever and anon the blue and placid Mediterranean bounds his vision, or indents the shore, with here and there a picturesque and lazy barque reflected in the waves.

I have before said that the towns and villages are generally perched like eagles’ nests in high places. This is particularly the case with those of the interior: many of them are inaccessible to carriages, except the Letiga, a sort of large sedan-chair, gaudily decorated with pictures of saints, and suspended between two mules, one of which trots before and the other behind, to the continual din of numerous bells and the harsh shouts of the muleteers. I never saw one of these vehicles, which are the only travelling carriages of the interior of Sicily, without thinking that there might be a land-sickness even worse than a sea-sickness; for the motion of the letiga in clambering up and down the broken steeps must be far more tempestuous than any thing ever experienced at sea. Between village and village you see no snug villa, farm-house, or cottage by the road-side, or nestling among the trees; but here and there a gloomy castellated building, a lonely ruin or stern Martello tower, whose dilapidated walls crown some steep headland, against whose base washes the ever-murmuring waves. Now the traveller descends to the beach, his only road; the mountains are far inland, or dip their broad bases in the sea-foam, or impend in fearful masses over his head. He ascends again, and journeys over wastes which undoubtedly in the time of the Greek and the Roman were covered with fruits and grain; but which now are treeless and desolate as the deep whose breezes stir the flowers that deck them. At times he must ford streams, which, if swollen with late rains, are perilous in the extreme.

I remember once on my journey descending from one of those treeless wastes upon a spot very different from any thing on this side of the Atlantic. It was called Verdura, from its green and verdant character. A stream which flowed through a plain bounded by lofty mountains here fell into the sea. A large mill, which much resembles an ancient castle, and in all probability had served both purposes in times gone by, stood near. Upon the sandy beach close by, and hauled entirely out of the water, lay several vessels in the style of Homer’s ships; and I have no doubt bore a strong resemblance to ships of ancient time, for they were picturesquely formed, and painted fantastically with figures of fishes and eyes. The wild-looking mariners were lounging lazily about in their shaggy capotes, or engaged in loading their vessels with grain, the product of the neighboring plains. Up the steep we had just descended a letiga was slowly winding; and on a green declivity overlooking the sea, a flock of goats were browsing, and their shepherd reclined near in listless idleness. Open and treeless as was this scene, there was such a peaceful character about it, such an air of primitive simplicity, that it made a strong impression on my mind.

It does not come within the scope of this paper to offer any description of the larger cities of Sicily, Palermo, Messina, etc. Most readers have seen accounts of them more ample and more interesting than I could offer. Of the smaller places I must content myself with giving a very general description, so that I may retain the requisite space, in this division of my article, for some notice of an ascent which I made to the sublime summit of Mount Ætna.

The secondary towns to which I have alluded, such as Calatifini, Sciacca, Caltagerone, etc., are in general picturesquely situated, and are built in a massive and sometimes even in a magnificent style. The churches and houses are all of hewn stone, and exhibit the various styles of architecture of the builders; the Saracenic, the Norman-Gothic, or the later Spanish taste. Sometimes the styles are fantastically intermixed; but the whole, to the architect, is extremely interesting. Flat roofs and projecting stone balconies from the upper windows are perhaps the most characteristic features of the houses. The churches, though large, are seldom beautiful specimens of architecture; and the interior is in general extremely ornate, and decorated with gaudy gilding and pictures, and images of CHRIST and saints, disgustingly painted. The streets, wide or narrow, would appear to us somewhat gloomy and prison-like; and paint is a thing scarcely known on the exterior or perhaps interior of an ordinary house. The air of the interior of the common houses of the Sicilian towns is as gloomy and comfortless as can be imagined. A few wooden benches, a table firmly fixed in the stone pavement, a fire-place composed of a few blocks of stone placed on the floor, the smoke of which is allowed to make its escape as it best can at the window, which is always destitute of glass, and is closed by a rude wooden shutter when required; a bed consisting of a mattress of the same hue as the floor, raised a few feet from it by means of boards on a rude frame; some sheep-skins for blankets, and sheets of coarse stuff whose color serves as an effectual check on the curiosity of him who would pry too closely into its texture; are the chief articles of furniture to be found in the habitations of the Sicilian poor. Beside the human inhabitants of these uninviting abodes, there are innumerable lively creatures, whose names it were almost impolite to mention in polished ears; and I might not have alluded to them had they confined themselves to such places; but they rejoice in the palace as well as in the cottage, and to the traveller’s sorrow inflict themselves without his consent as travelling companions through the whole Sicilian tour.

The houses of the more wealthy are spacious and airy, but not much superior in point of comfort. They are often of commanding exterior, and are called palazzi, or palaces. Of course, there are exceptions to this general character of discomfort; but judging from my own observation, they are few. On approaching a Sicilian village, the eye of the traveller will almost surely be attracted by a capacious and solid building, surmounted by a belfry-tower, and commanding the most charming prospect in the vicinity. It is surrounded with orange groves and cypress-trees, and looks like a place fitted for the enjoyment of a contemplative life. He will not long remain in doubt as to the purpose of the building whose site is so delightfully chosen; for walking slowly along the shady path, or seated in some pleasant nook, singly or in groups, he will perceive the long-robed monks, the reverend masters of the holy place.

Connoisseurs say that a landscape is imperfect without figures; and as that is the case in a picture, it is most probably so in a magazine article; and the reader might complain if I were to neglect giving some slight outlines of the figures of the Sicilian landscape. In travelling from city to city, although they may not be more than twenty miles apart, the wayfarer meets with very few persons on the road; seldom an individual, and only now and then, at an interval of miles, a group of men mounted on mules, each person carrying a gun; or perhaps a convoy of loaded mules and asses with several muleteers, some mounted and some on foot, who urge by uncouth cries and blows the weary beasts over the rocky or swampy ground, or up some steep acclivity or across some torrent’s bed. At times he will see a shepherd or two watching their flocks; these are half-naked, wild looking beings, scarcely raised in the scale of intelligence above their bleating charge. Their dwelling may be hard by, a conical hut of grass or straw, or a ruined tower. On the fertile slopes or plains he will sometimes observe a dozen yokes of oxen ploughing abreast. The laborers probably chose this contiguity for the sake of company across the wide fields. If the grass or grain is to be cut, it is by both men and women armed with a rude sickle only. It is seldom you meet either man or woman on foot upon the roads; men scarcely ever. Donkeys are about as numerous as men, and their ludicrous bray salutes your ear wherever the human animal is to be seen.

The peasant-women through a great part of Sicily wear a semi-circular piece of woollen cloth over their heads; it is always black or white, and hangs in agreeable folds over the neck and shoulders. There is but little beauty among them; and alas! how should there be? They are in general filthy; the hair of both old and young is allowed to fall in uncombed elf-locks about their heads; and the old women are often hideous and disgustful in the extreme. The heart bleeds for the women: they have more than their share of the labors of the field; they have all the toils of the men, added to the pains and cares of womanhood. They dig, they reap, they carry heavy burthens—burthens almost incredible. In the vicinity of Ætna I met a woman walking down the road knitting: on her head was a large mass of lava weighing at least thirty pounds, and on the top of this lay a small hammer. Being puzzled to know why the woman carried such a piece of lava where lava was so abundant, I inquired ‘the wherefore’ of Luigi, our guide. He answered that as she wished to knit, and not having pockets, she had taken that plan to carry the little hammer conveniently. That piece of stone, which would break our necks to carry, was evidently to her no more than a heavy hat would be to us. It may be thought that I draw a sorry picture of these poor Islanders; but I would have it understood that on the side of Messina, and some other parts, there is apparently a little more civilization; but they are an oppressed and degraded peasantry; ignorant, superstitious, filthy, and condemned to live on the coarsest food. They are as the beasts that perish, driven by necessity to sow that which they may not reap. How applicable are the words of ADDISON:

‘HOW has kind Heaven adorn’d the happy land

And scattered blessings with a wasteful hand!

But what avails her unexhausted stores,

Her blooming mountains and her sunny shores,

With all the gifts that heaven and earth impart,

The smiles of nature and the charms of art,

While proud oppression in her valleys reigns,

And tyranny usurps her happy plains?

The poor inhabitant beholds in vain

The reddening orange and the swelling grain:

Joyless he sees the growing oils and wines,

And in the myrtle’s fragrant shade repines:

Starves, in the midst of nature’s bounty curst,

And in the loaded vineyard dies of thirst.’

But the Sicilians are naturally a gay, light-hearted people, like the Greeks, their forefathers; and if the cloud which now rests upon them were removed, and we have reason to think it is lifting, they would be as bright and sunny as their own skies. The women of the better classes wear the black mantilla when they venture into the streets, which they seldom do, except to attend mass or the confessional. This robe is extremely elegant, as it is worn, but it requires an adept to adjust it gracefully. It covers the whole person from head to foot; in parts drawn closely to the form, in others falling in free folds. But for its color, I should admire it much: it seems such an incongruity for a young and beautiful female to be habited in what appear to be mourning robes. I was often reminded of those wicked lines of BYRON’s on the gondola:

‘For sometimes they contain a deal of fun,

Like mourning-coaches when the funeral’s done.’

But let us turn from the animate to the inanimate, and visit the famous Ætna, called by the Sicilians Mongibello. From the silence of Homer on the subject, it is supposed that in his remote age the fires of the mountain were unknown; but geologists have proof that they have a far more ancient date. The Grecian poet Pindar is the first who mentions its eruptions. He died four hundred and thirty-five years before CHRIST; from that time to this, at irregular intervals, it has vomited forth its destructive lavas. It is computed to be eleven thousand feet high. Its base, more than an hundred miles in circumference, is interspersed with numerous conical hills, each of which is an extinct crater, whose sides, now shaded by the vine, the fig tree, and the habitations of man, once glowed with the fiery torrent. Some of them are yet almost destitute of vegetation; mere heaps of scoriæ and ashes; but the more ancient ones are richly clad with verdure. Let the reader imagine a mountain whose base is as broad as the whole range of the Catskills, as seen from Catskill village, rising to nearly three times their height; its lower parts are of gentle ascent, but as it rises it becomes more and more steep, until it terminates in a broken summit. Imagine it divided, as the eye ascends, into three regions or belts: the first and lowest is covered with villages, gardens, vineyards, olive-groves, oranges, and fields of grain and flax, and the date-bearing palm. The second region, which commences about four thousand feet above the sea, is called the Regione Sylvosa, or woody region. Here chestnuts, hexes, and on the north pines of great size flourish. This belt reaches to the elevation of about seven thousand feet, where the Regione Scoperta, or bare region, commences. The lower part of this is intermingled lava, rocks, volcanic sands, and snow; still higher are vast fields of spotless snow, which centuries have seen unwasted, with here and there a ridgy crag of black lava, too steep for the snows to lodge upon; and toward the summit of the cone, dark patches of scoriæ and ashes, which, heated by the slumbering fires, defy the icy blasts of these upper realms of air. It will readily be supposed that, when viewed from a distance, Mount Ætna is an object to make a deep impression on the mind:

BUT for yon filmy smoke, that from thy crest

Continual issues like a morning mist

The sun disperses, there would be no sign

That from thy mighty breast bursts forth at times

The sulphurous storm—the avalanche of fire;

That midnight is made luminous, and day

A ghastly twilight, by thy lurid breath.

By thee tormented, Earth is tossed and riven:

The shuddering mountains reel; temples and towers

The works of man, and man himself, his hopes

His harvests, all a desolation made!

Sublime art thou, O Mount! whether beneath

The moon in silence sleeping with thy woods,

And driving snows, and golden fields of corn;

Or bleat on thy slant breast the gentle flocks,

And shepherds in the mellow glow of eve

Pipe merrily; or when thy scathéd sides

Are laved with fire, answered thine earthquake voice

By screams and clamor of affrighted men.

Sublime thou art!—a resting-place for thought,

Thought reaching far above thy bounds; from thee

To HIM who bade the central fires construct

This wondrous fabric; lifted thy dread brow

To meet the sun while yet the earth is dark,

And ocean, with its ever-murmuring waves.

On the ninth of May, myself and travelling companion commenced the ascent of Mount Ætna; and as the season was not the most favorable, the snows extending farther down the sides of the mountain than in summer, we were equipped, under the direction of our guide, with coarse woollen stockings to be drawn over the pantaloons, thick-soled shoes, and woollen caps. Mounting our mules, we left Catania in the morning. The road was good and of gradual ascent until we reached Nicolosi, about fourteen miles up the mountain. We saw little that was particularly interesting on our route except that the hamlets through which we passed bore fearful evidences of the effects of earthquake. Arrived at Nicolosi, the place where travellers usually procure guides and mules for the mountain, it was our intention to rest for the remainder of the day; but Monte Rosso, an extinguished crater, being in the vicinity, my curiosity got the better of my intention to rest, and I sallied forth to examine it. The road lay through the village, which is built of the lava, and is arid and black, and many of the buildings rent and twisted. Monte Rosso was formed by the eruption of 1669, which threw out a torrent of lava that flowed thirteen miles, destroying a great part of the city of Catania in its resistless course to the sea, where it formed a rugged promontory which at this day appears as black, bare, and herbless as on the day when its fiery course was arrested by the boiling waters. And here I would remark, that the lavas of Ætna are very different from those of Vesuvius. The latter decompose in half a century, and become capable of cultivation; those of Ætna remain unchanged for centuries, as that of Monte Rosso testifies. It has now been exposed to the action of the weather nearly two hundred years, with the exception of the interstices where the dust and sand have collected, it is destitute of vegetation. Broken in cooling into masses of rough but sharp fracture, its aspect is horrid and forbidding, and it is exceedingly difficult to walk over. If two centuries have produced so little change, how many centuries must have served to form the rich soil which covers the greater part of the mountain’s sides and base!

Our purpose was to see the sun rise from the summit of Ætna; and at nine in the evening, our mules and guides being ready, we put on our Sicilian capotes, and sallied forth. We had two guides, a muleteer, and as there was no moon, a man with a lantern to light the mules in their passage over the beds of lava. For several miles the way was uninteresting, it being too dark to see any thing except the horrid lava or sand beneath the feet of the mules. At times the road was so steep that we were ordered by our guides to lean forward on the necks of the mules, to keep them and ourselves from being thrown back. At length we entered the woody region. Here the path was less rocky; and as we wound up the mountain’s side, beneath the shadows of noble trees, I could not but feel the solemn quietness of a night on Ætna, and contrast it with what has been and what will in all probability be again, the intermitting roar of the neighboring volcano, and the dreadful thunder of the earthquake. At midnight we arrived at the Casa delle Neve, or House of Snow. This is a rude building of lava, with bare walls, entirely destitute of furniture. We made a fire on the ground, took some refreshments which we had brought with us, and in about an hour remounted our mules, and proceeded on our journey. We soon left the region of woods; and being now at an elevation of seven thousand feet above the sea, felt somewhat cold, and buttoned our capotes closer about us. From the ridges of lava along which we rode, by the light of the stars which now became brilliant, we could discern the snow stretching in long lines down the ravines on either hand; and as we advanced, approaching nearer and nearer, until at length it spread in broad fields before us. As the mules could go no farther, we dismounted, and taking an iron-pointed staff in our hands, we commenced the journey over the snows. It was now half-past one, and we had seven miles to traverse before reaching the summit. The first part of the ascent was discouraging, for it was steep, and the snow so slippery that we sometimes fell on our faces; but it became rather less steep as we ascended, and though fatiguing, we got along comfortably. As the atmosphere was becoming rare, and the breathing hurried, we sat on the snow for a few minutes now and then. At such times we could not but be struck with the splendor of the stars, far beyond any thing I had ever seen. The milky way seemed suspended in the deep heavens, like a luminous cloud, with clear and definite outline. We next arrived at the Casa degli Inglese; so called, but alas for us! the ridge of the roof and a part of the gable were all that rose above the snow. In the midst of summer, travellers may make use of it; but to us it was unavailing, except the gable, which served in a measure to shield us from the icy wind which now swept over the mountain. We again partook of a little refreshment, by way of preparation for the most arduous part of our undertaking, and were now at the foot of the great cone. The ascent was toilsome in the extreme. Snow, melted beneath in many places by the heat of the mountain; sharp ridges of lava; loose sand, ashes, and cinders, into which last the foot sank at every step, made the ascent difficult as well as dangerous. The atmosphere was so rare that we had to stop every few yards to breathe. At such times we could hear our hearts beat within us like the strokes of a drum. But it was now light, and we reached the summit of the great cone just as the sun rose.

It was a glorious sight which spread before our eyes! We took a hasty glance into the gloomy crater of the volcano and throwing ourselves on the warm ashes, gazed in wonder and astonishment. It would be vain for me to attempt a description of the scene. I scarcely knew the world in which I had lived. The hills and valleys over which we had been travelling for many days, were comprised within the compass of a momentary glance. Sicily lay at our feet, with all its ‘many folded’ mountains, its plains, its promontories, and its bays; and round all, the sea stretched far and wide like a lower sky; the Lipari islands, Stromboli and its volcano, floating upon it like small dusky clouds; and the Calabrian coast visible, I should suppose, for two hundred miles, like a long horizontal bank of vapor! As the sun rose, the great pyramidal shadow of Ætna was cast across the island, and all beneath it rested in twilight-gloom. Turning from this wonderful scene, we looked down into the crater, on whose verge we lay. It was a fearful sight, apparently more than a thousand feet in depth, and a mile in breadth, with precipitous and in some places overhanging sides, which were varied with strange and discordant colors. The steeps were rent into deep chasms and gulfs, from which issued white sulphurous smoke, that rose and hung in fantastic wreaths about the horrid crags; thence springing over the edge of the crater, seemed to dissipate in the clear keen air. I was somewhat surprised to perceive several sheets of snow lying at the very bottom of the crater, a proof that the internal fires were in a deep slumber. The edge of the crater was a mere ridge of scoriæ and ashes, varying in height; and it required some care, in places, to avoid falling down the steep on one hand, or being precipitated into the gulf on the other. The air was keen; but fortunately there was little wind; and after spending about an hour on the summit, we commenced our descent.

We varied our course from the one we took on ascending, and visited an altar erected to Jupiter by the ancients, now called the Torre del Filosofo. Soon after we came upon the verge of a vast crater, the period of whose activity is beyond the earliest records of history. Val di Bove, as it is called, is a tremendous scene. Imagine a basin several miles across, a thousand feet in depth at least, with craggy and perpendicular walls on every side; its bottom broken into deep ravines and chasms, and shattered pinnacles, as though the lava in its molten state had been shaken and tossed by an earthquake, and then suddenly congealed. It is into this ancient crater that the lava of the most recent eruption is descending. It is fortunate that it has taken that direction.

In another and concluding number, the reader’s attention will be directed to the Architectural Antiquities of Sicily, especially those of Grecian structure, which will be described in the order in which they were visited.

LINES TO TIME.

BY MRS. J. WEBB.

OH Time! I’ll weave, to deck thy brow,

A wreath fresh culled from Flora’s treasure:

If thou wilt backward turn thy flight

To youth’s bright morn of joy and pleasure.

‘Joys ill exchanged for riper years;’

The bard, alas! hath truly spoken:

I’ve wept the truth in burning tears

O’er many a fair hope crushed and broken.

In vain my sager, wiser friends

Told of thy speed and wing untiring;

I drank of Pleasure’s honied cup,

Nor marked thy flight, no change desiring;

When all too late I gave thee chase,

But found thou couldst not be o’ertaken:

With heedless wing thou’st onward swept,

Though hopes were crushed and empires shaken.

Thou with the world thy flight began’st;

Compared with thine, what were the knowledge

Of every sage in every clime,

The learning of the school or college?

Thou’st seen, in all the pomp of power,

Athens, the proudest seat of learning;

And thou couldst tell us if thou wouldst,

How Nero looked when Rome was burning.

What direful sights hast thou beheld,

As careless thou hast journied on:

The hemlock-bowl for Athen’s pride;

The gory field of Marathon;

The monarch crowned, the warrior plumed,

With power and with ambition burning;

Yet they must all have seemed to thee

Poor pigmies on a pivot turning.

Their pomp, their power, with thine compared,

How blank and void, how frail and fleeting!

Thou hast not paused e’en o’er their tombs

To give their mighty spirits greeting;

But onward still with untired wing,

Regardless thou ’rt thy flight pursuing,

Unseen, alas! till thou art past,

While o’er our heads thy snows thou ’rt strewing.

Oh! vainly may poor mortals strive

With learned lore of school and college;

Their books may teach us wisdom’s rules,

But thou alone canst teach us knowledge.

Oh! had I earlier known thy worth,

I had not now been left repining,

Nor asked to weave for thee the wreath

That on my youthful brow was shining.

Could but again the race be mine,

In life’s young morn, I’d seek and find thee;

I’d seize thee by thy flowing lock,

And never more be left behind thee!

A NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE.

BY A BUFFALO HUNTER.

WHILE looking over my ‘omnium gatherum;’ the same being a drawer containing scraps of poetry, unfinished letters, half-written editorials, incidents of travel, obsolete briefs, with many other odds and ends that have fallen from my brain during the last three years, but which from want of quality in them or lack of energy in me, have failed to reach the dignity of types and ink; I came across a diary kept while hunting buffalo with the Sac and Fox Indians, some two hundred miles west of the Mississippi, during the summer of 1842. Finding myself interested in recurring to the incidents of that excursion, it occurred to me that matter might be drawn therefrom which would not be without interest to the public. I have therefore ventured to offer the following for publication; it being an account of a night passed at the source of the Checauque, when I did not deem my scalp worth five minute’s purchase, and when I cheerfully would have given ten years of an ordinary life to have been under the humblest roof in the most desolate spot in the ‘land of steady habits.’

I have said that we were in the country of the Sioux. That our situation may be understood, I would remark farther, that between the latter and the confederated tribes of the Sac and Fox Indians, there has been for the last forty years, and still exists, the most inveterate hostility; the two parties never meeting without bloodshed. The Government of the United States, in pursuance of that policy which guides its conduct toward the various Indian tribes, for the preservation of peace between these two nations, have laid out between them a strip of country forty miles in width, denominated the ‘Neutral Ground,’ and on to which neither nation is permitted to extend their hunting excursions.

On the occasion of which I write, the Sacs and Foxes, having been disappointed in finding buffalo within their own limits, and perhaps feeling quite as anxious to fall in with a band of Sioux as to obtain game, had passed the ‘Neutral Ground,’ and were now several days’ journey into the country of their enemies.

For the last two days we had marched with the utmost circumspection; our spies ranged the country for miles in advance and on either flank, while at night we had sought some valley as a place of encampment, where our fires could not be seen from a distance. Each day we had perceived signs which indicated that small parties of Sioux had been quite recently over the very ground we were travelling. The whites in the company, numbering some eleven or twelve, had remonstrated with the Indians, representing to them that they were transgressing the orders of the government, and that should a hostile meeting take place they would certainly incur the displeasure of their ‘great father’ at Washington.

Heedless of our remonstrances they continued to advance until it became evident that the Sioux and not buffalo were their object. The truth was, they felt themselves in an excellent condition to meet their ancient enemy. They numbered, beside old men and the young and untried, three hundred and twenty-five warriors, mounted and armed with rifles, many of them veterans who had seen service on the side of Great Britain in her last war with this country, and most of whom had served with Black Hawk in his brief but desperate contest with the United States. Moreover, they placed some reliance on the whites who accompanied them; all of whom, except my friend B——, of Kentucky, one or two others and myself, were old frontier men, versed in the arts of Indian warfare.

As for myself, I felt far from comfortable in the position in which I found myself placed; hundreds of miles from any white settlement, and expecting hourly to be forced into a conflict where no glory was to be gained, and in which defeat would be certain death, while victory could not fail to bring upon us the censure of our government. The idea of offering up my scalp as a trophy to Sioux valor, and leaving my bones to bleach on the wide prairie, with no prayer over my remains nor stone to mark the spot of my sepulture, was far from comfortable. I thought of the old church-yard amidst the green hills of New-England, where repose the dust of my ancestors, and would much preferred to have been gathered there, full of years, ‘like a shock of corn fully ripe in its season,’ rather than to be cut down in the morning of life by the roving Sioux, and my frame left a dainty morsel for the skulking wolf of the prairie. I communicated my sentiments to B——, and found that his views corresponded with mine. ‘But,’ said he, with the spirit of a genuine Kentuckian, ‘we are in for it, Harry, and we must fight; it will not do to let these Indians see us show the white feather.’

It was under such circumstances, and with these feelings, that we pitched our tents after a hard day’s march, in a valley near the margin of a little stream which uniting with others forms the Checauque, one of the tributaries of the Mississippi. The river flowed in our front. In our rear, and surrounding us on either side, forming a sort of amphitheatre, was a range of low hills crowned with a grove of young hickorys. A branch on our left, running down to the stream, separated our tents from the encampment of our Indian allies. Our camp consisted of three tents pitched some fifteen steps apart. B—— and myself occupied the middle one. We had a companion, a scrub of a fellow, who forced himself upon us as we were on the point of starting, and whom we could not well shake off. To this genius, on account of his many disagreeable qualities, we had given the soubriquet of ‘Common Doings.’ The other whites of the party occupied the other two tents.

We had just finished the usual routine of camp duty for the night, ‘spansered’ our horses, eaten our suppers, laid in a supply of fuel for our fires, and were sitting around them smoking our pipes and listening to the marvellous tales of an old ‘Leatherstocking’ of the party, whose life had been passed between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi, when two of our Indian spies came in, passing in front of our tents and across the branch to the Indian camp. One of our party followed them to hear their report, and soon returned with the information that the spies had seen an encampment of Sioux, and that the Sacs and Foxes were then holding a council as to what measures it was best to pursue. Others of our party, who understood the Indian tongue, went across for farther information. Mean time we remained in great anxiety, canvassing among ourselves the probable truth of the report, and speculating on the course most proper for us to take. Our friends soon returned, having heard the full report of the spies as it was delivered before the chiefs in council. They had proceeded some eight miles beyond the place of our encampment to a hill in the vicinity of Swan Lake; from the hill they had seen a large body of Sioux, numbering as near as they could estimate them, five or six hundred. From the manner in which they were encamped and from other signs, they knew them to be a ‘war party;’ and having made these observations, they withdrew, concealing themselves as much as possible, and as they supposed, without being discovered. The effect of this information upon us may easily be imagined. We were ‘in for it’ sure enough! We had expected for several days that we should meet the enemy, but to find them so near us in such force, so far outnumbering our own, we had not anticipated.

The question now was, what were we to do? Some proposed that we should move our camp across the branch and pitch our tent among our Indian allies; for it was argued with much force that if our spies had been discovered, the Sioux would follow their trail, and as it passed directly by our tents, we should fall the first victims; that if the Sioux, notwithstanding their superiority in numbers, should not think it prudent to attack the main camp, they would not fail to attack, according to their custom, the out-camps, take what scalps they could, and retreat. But there was a strong objection to moving our camp: the Indians frequently during the march had desired us to pitch our tents among them, but we had always declined, preferring to be by ourselves. What would they say if we should now break up our encampment and go among them? ‘White men are cowards! They rejected our request when all was safe, but now at the approach of danger they come skulking among us like dogs for protection.’ No; we could not do this; pride forbade it. We next discussed the expediency of dividing ourselves into a watch, and keeping guard by turns through the night. The more experienced of the party, and particularly Jamison, an old hunter and Indian fighter, said that this would only exhaust us, and would be of no avail; that our Indian allies had spies around the encampment in every direction; that if they failed to perceive the approach of the enemy, we could not discover them; that the first intimation our sentinels would have would be an arrow through the body; that our best plan would be to extinguish our fires, prepare our arms, lie down with them in our hands, rely on the Indian spies for notice of the enemy’s approach, and on the first alarm make our way to the Indian camp, being careful as we approached it to give the pass-word for the night, ‘Wal-las-ki-push-eto.’ We all finally came to this conclusion.

During the discussion, two of the party had not spoken a word; one was our tent-mate ‘Doings,’ who was so completely paralyzed with fright as to be unable to think or speak; the other was old ‘Leatherstocking,’ who listened with the utmost coolness to all that was said, occasionally expressing assent or dissent by a nod or shake of the head. I now observed him quietly examine his rifle, draw the charge and reload; take out the flint and replace it with a new one; he then threw himself down for the night, his bared knife in his left hand, and his right resting on the breech of his rifle, remarking as he composed himself to sleep, ‘We must be ready boys; there’s no telling when the varmints will be upon us.’

B—— and myself prepared our arms: each of us wore a brace of pistols in a belt; these were carefully loaded and buckled on; our rifles were next examined and put in order; our hatchets were placed at hand, and with many misgivings we laid ourselves down. It was some time before I could sleep, and when I did, my repose was disturbed by dreams. How long I slept I am unable to say, perhaps not more than an hour, when I was suddenly awakened. I listened. The noise of the horses, of which there were several hundred grazing in the valley, with the tinkling of the bells on their necks, were the only sounds that at first met my ear; all else was silent. Presently I heard a noise as if made by the stealthy tread of a man; then a voice, or perhaps the cry of some animal. It was repeated. I heard it in the grove, on the hill, then an answering cry on the other side of the stream. I knew that Indians in a night-attack make signals by imitating the cry of some animal; and the sounds I heard, though like those made by wild beasts, seemed to me to be in reality human voices. I drew a pistol from my belt, cocked it, and with a hatchet in my other hand, crept out of the tent, and lying on the ground, looked cautiously around. The cries continued at intervals, and I became more and more satisfied that they were human voices. I felt, I knew that the Sioux were about to attack us. A thousand thoughts flashed across my mind. I thought of the home of my childhood, my far distant kindred; a mother, sisters, brothers. Unskilled as I was in Indian warfare, I expected to be slain. I was alarmed; frightened perhaps, but not paralyzed. I resolved to fight to the last, and if I must die, to fill no coward’s grave.

As my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, I began to distinguish objects; and peering beyond our line of tents, I saw on our right, between me and the grove, three dark objects like human heads projecting out of the grass. While I was observing them, two of them disappeared, and I could discern the grass wave as they made their way toward our encampment. There was no longer room for doubt. I called to B—— in a whisper; he was on his feet and by my side in an instant, a cocked pistol in each hand. I directed his attention to what I saw. He looked steadfastly for a moment, then raising his eyes to the grove, exclaimed in a whisper, ‘The timber is full of Indians! I see them advancing from tree to tree; it is time for action. I shall fall, but you may be saved; if so, let my friends in Kentucky know that I died like a brave man. I will arouse the rest.’

He went to the tent on our left, while I remained watching the approach of the enemy. I could see them distinctly as they moved from tree to tree. I heard B—— call in a whisper, ‘Jamison! Jamison!’ Jamison came out of his tent but without his arms. B—— told him of our danger, and directed his attention to the Indians in the grove. As he spoke Jamison stretched out his arms and gave a yawn, remarking, ‘These Injuns are mighty unsartin critters; there’s no knowing about their motions;’ crawled into his tent again. B—— returned; neither of us spoke. We lay down and drew our blankets over us; at length B—— said:

‘Harry?’

‘What?’

‘Hoaxed! by thunder!’

The whole truth, which had been breaking in upon my mind by degrees, now flashed upon me, and I raised a shout of laughter. At this instant, poor ‘Doings,’ who had been awake from the commencement, but who was so scared that he had rolled himself under the eaves of the tent, and contracted himself into a space scarcely larger than my arm, and who in his terror would have lain still and had his throat cut without wagging a finger in defence; this poor, miserable ‘Doings’ exclaimed ‘Haw! haw! haw! I knew it all the time; I never see fellows so scared!’ This was too bad. However, we had our laugh out, discussed plans for vengeance, went to sleep and had quiet slumbers for the rest of the night.

The next morning we ascertained that the whole story about the Sioux encampment had been fabricated for the purpose of trying our mettle, and that all save B——, myself and ‘Doings,’ were in the secret. The moving objects which I had seen in the grass were Indian dogs prowling around for food, and the Indians in the timber existed only in our excited imaginations.

I may hereafter give an account of the modus operandi of our revenge, and of our mode of hunting the buffalo, in which we met with much success; and of other matters of interest which fell under my observation during the sixty days we spent with this tribe of Indians.

H. T. H.

LIFE’S YOUNG DREAM.

‘There is no Voice in Nature which says ‘Return.’’

THOSE envious threads, what do they here,

Amid thy flowing hair?

It should be many a summer’s day

Ere they were planted there:

Yet many a day ere thou and Care

Had known each other’s form,

Or thou hadst bent thy youthful head

To Sorrow’s whelming storm.

Oh! was it grief that blanched the locks

Thus early on thy brow?

And does the memory cloud thy heart,

And dim thy spirit now?

Or are the words upon thy lip

An echo from thy heart;

And is that gay as are the smiles

With which thy full lips part?

For thou hast lived man’s life of thought,

While careless youth was thine;

Thy boyish lip has passed the jest

And sipped the sparkling wine,

And mingled in the heartless throng

As thoughtlessly as they,

Ere yet the days of early youth

Had glided swift away.

They say that Nature wooeth back

No wanderer to her arms;

Welcomes no prodigal’s return

Who once hath scorned her charms.

And ah! I fear for thee and me,

The feelings of our youth

Have vanished with the things that were,

Amid the wrecks of truth.

Oh! for the early happy days

When hope at least was new!

Ere we had dreamed a thousand dreams,

And found them all untrue;

Ere we had flung our life away

On what might not be ours;

Found bitter drops in every cup,

And thorns on all the flowers.

Ye who have yet youth’s sunny dreams,

Oh guard the treasure well,

That no rude voice from coming years

May break the enchanted spell!

No cloud of doubt come o’er your sky

To dim its sunny ray,

Be careless children, while ye can,

Trust on, while yet ye may.

Albany, January, 1844.A. R.

THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.

HARRY HARSON.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

IN the same room from which Craig and Jones had set out on their ill-fated errand, and at the hour of noon on the following day, the latter was crouching in front of the fire-place, which had been so bright and cheery the night before, but which now contained nothing except ashes, and a few half-burned stumps, charred and blackened, but entirely extinguished. Over these Jones bent, occasionally shivering slightly, and holding his hands to them, apparently unconscious that they emitted no heat, and then dabbling in the ashes, and muttering to himself. But a few hours had elapsed since he had left that room a bold, daring, desperate man; yet in that short time a frightful change had come over him. His eyes were blood-red; his lips swollen and bloody, and the under one deeply gashed, as if he had bitten it through; his cheeks haggard and hollow, his hair dishevelled, his dress torn, and almost dragged from his person. But it was not in the outward man alone that this alteration had taken place. In spirit, as well as in frame, he was crushed. His former iron bearing was gone; no energy, no strength left. He seemed but a wreck, shattered and beaten down—down to the very dust. At times he mumbled to himself, and moaned like one in suffering. Then again he rose and paced the room with long strides, dashing his hand against his forehead, and uttering execrations. The next moment he staggered to his seat, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed like a child.

‘Tim,’ said he, in a low broken voice, ‘poor old Tim; I killed you, I know I did; but blast ye! I loved you, Tim. But it’s of no use, now; you’re dead, and can never know how much poor Bill Jones cared for you. No, no; you never can, Tim. We were boys together, and now I’m alone; no one left—no one, no one!’

In the very phrenzy of grief, that succeeded these words, he flung himself upon the floor, dashing his head and hands against it, and rolling and writhing like one in mortal pain. This outbreak of passion was followed by a kind of stupor; and crawling to his seat, he remained there, like one stunned and bereft of strength. Stolid, scarcely breathing, and but for the twitching of his fingers, motionless as stone; with his eyes fixed on the blank wall, he sat as silent as one dead; but with a heart on fire, burning with a remorse never to be quenched; with a soul hurrying and darting to and fro in its mortal tenement, to escape the lashings of conscience. Struggle on! struggle on! There is no escape, until that strong heart is eaten away by a disease for which there is no cure; until that iron frame, worn down by suffering, has become food for the worm, and that spirit and its persecutor stand before their final judge, in the relations of criminal and accuser.

A heavy step announced that some one was ascending the stairs. Jones moved not. A loud knock at the door followed. Still he did not stir. The door was then flung open, in no very gentle manner, for it struck the wall behind it with a noise that made the room echo: but a cannon might have been fired there, and Jones would not have heard it.

The person however who had thus unceremoniously opened the way to his entrance, seemed perfectly indifferent whether his proceedings were agreeable or otherwise. His first movement on entering the room was to shut the door after him and lock it; his next was to look about it to see whether it contained any other than the person of Jones. Having satisfied himself on that score, he walked rapidly up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

Jones looked listlessly up at him, and then turning away, dabbled in the ashes, without uttering a word.

‘Hello! Bill Jones,’ said the stranger, after waiting a moment or two in evident surprise, ‘what ails you?’

The man made no reply.

‘Are you sulky?’ demanded the other; ‘Well, follow your own humor; but answer me one question: where’s Craig?’

Jones shuddered; and his hand shook violently. Rising up, half tottering, he turned and stood face to face with his visiter.

‘Good day to ye, Mr. Grosket,’ said he, with a ghastly smile, and extending his hand to him. ‘Good day to ye. It’s a bright day, on the heels of such a night as the last was.’

‘Good God! what ails you, man?’ exclaimed Grosket, recoiling before the wild figure which confronted him; and then taking his hand, he said: ‘Your hand is hot as fire, your eyes blood-shot, and your face covered with blood. What have you been at? What ails you?’

Jones passed his hand feebly across his forehead, and then replied: ‘I’m sick at heart!’

He turned from Grosket, and again crouched upon the hearth, mumbling over his last words, ‘Sick at heart! sick at heart!’—nor did he appear to recollect Grosket’s question respecting Craig. If he did, he did not answer it, but with his arms locked over his knees, he rocked to and fro, like one in great pain.

‘Are you ill, man, or are you drunk?’ demanded Grosket, pressing heavily on his shoulder. ‘Speak out, I say: what ails you? If you don’t find your tongue, I’ll find it for you.’

Jones, thus addressed, made an effort to rally, and partially succeeded; for after a moment he suddenly rose up erect, and in a clear, bold voice, replied:

‘I’m not drunk, Mr. Grosket, but I am ill; God knows what’s the matter with me. Look at me!’ he continued, stepping to where the light was strongest; ‘Look at me well. Wouldn’t you think I’d been on my back for months?’

‘You look ill enough;’ was the blunt reply.

‘Well, then, what do you want?’ demanded Jones, in a peevish tone; ‘why do you trouble me? I can’t bear it. Go away; go away.’

‘I will, when you’ve answered my question. Where’s Craig?’

‘I don’t know. He was here last night; but he went out, and hasn’t been here since.’

‘Where did he go?’

Jones shook his head: ‘He didn’t say.’

‘Was he alone?’

‘No,’ replied the other, evidently wincing under these questions; ‘No; there was a man with him, nigh about my size. He went with him. That’s all I know about either of them. There, there; get through with your questions. They turn my head,’ said he, in an irritable tone.

‘Why did he take a stranger?’ demanded Grosket, without paying the least attention to his manner. ‘You forget that I know you and he generally hunt in couples.’

It might have been the cold of the room striking through to his very bones that had so powerful an effect on Jones, but he shook from head to foot, as he answered:

‘Look at me! God! would you have a man out in such a night as that was, when he’s almost ready for his winding-sheet?’

Grosket’s only reply was to ask another question.

‘What was the name of the man who went with him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did they go to do?’

Jones hesitated, as if in doubt what answer to make, and then, as if adopting an open course, he said: ‘I’ve know’d you a good while, Mr. Grosket, and you won’t blab, if I tell you what I suspect, will ye? It’s only guess-work, after all. Promise me that; I know your word is good.’

Grosket paused a moment before he made the promise; and then said: ‘Well, I’ll keep what you tell me to myself. Now then.’

‘It was a house-breaking business,’ said Jones, sinking his voice. ‘They took pistols with them; and I heard Tim tell the other one to take the crow-bar and the glim. That’s all I know. I was too much down to listen. There; go away now. I’ve talked till my head is almost split. Talking drives me mad. Go away.’

Grosket stood perfectly still in deep thought. The story might be true; for the city was ringing with the news of the burglary, and of the death of one of the burglars by the hands of his comrade. It was rumored too, that the dead man had been identified by some of the officers of the police, and that his name was Craig. It was this, taken in connection with the facts that the attempt had been made on Harson’s house; that an effort had been made to carry off a child who lived with him, and of its being known to Grosket that Rust had often employed these two men in matters requiring great energy and few scruples, that had induced him thus early to visit their haunt, to ascertain the truth of his suspicions; and to endeavor, if possible, to ferret out the plans of their employer. The replies of Jones, short and abrupt as they were, convinced him that his suspicions respecting Craig were correct; but who could the other man be?

Engrossed with his own thoughts, he appeared to forget where he was and who was present; for he commenced walking up and down the room; then stopped; folded his arms, and talked to himself in low, broken sentences. Again he walked to the far end of the room and stopped there.

Jones, in the mean time, to avoid farther questioning, seated himself; and leaning his elbows on his knees, hid his face in his hand. He was disturbed, however, by feeling himself shaken roughly by the shoulder. ‘What you’ve just been telling me, is a lie!’ said Grosket, sternly. ‘You should know me well enough not to run the risk of trifling with me. I want the truth and nothing else. Where were you last night?’

Jones looked up at him and then answered in a sullen tone: ‘I’ve told you once; I was here.’

Grosket went to a dark corner of the room and brought back Jones’ great-coat, completely saturated with water. ‘This room scarcely leaks enough to do that,’ said he, throwing it on the floor in front of Jones. ‘Ha! what’s that in the pocket?’

He thrust in his hand and drew out a pistol. The hammer was down, the cap exploded, and the inside of the muzzle blackened by burnt powder.

‘Fired off!’ said he. ‘You told the truth. The man who went with Craig did look like you. I know the rest. Tim Craig is dead, and you shot him.’

An expression of strange meaning crossed the face of the burglar as he returned the steady look of his visiter without making any reply. But Grosket was not yet done with him; for he said in a slow, savage tone: ‘Now mark me well. If you lie in what you tell me, I’ll hang you. Who employed you to do this job?’

Jones eyed him for a moment, and then turned away impatiently and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t worry me. I’m sick and half crazy. Get away, will ye!’

‘This to me! to me!’ exclaimed the other, stepping back, his eyes flashing fire; ‘you forget yourself.’

Jones rose up, his red hair hanging like ropes about his face, and his bloodshot eyes and disfigured features giving him the look rather of a wild beast than of a man. Shaking his finger at Grosket, he said, ‘Keep away from me to day, I say. There’s an evil spell over me. Come to-morrow, but don’t push me to-day, or God knows what you may drive me to do. There, there—go.’

Still Grosket stirred not, but with a curling lip and an eye as bright as his own, and voice so fearfully quiet and yet stern that at another time it might have quelled even the strong spirit of the robber, he said ‘Enoch Grosket never goes until his object is attained.’

‘Then you won’t go?’ demanded Jones.

‘No!’

Jones made a hasty step toward him, with his teeth set and his eyes burning like coals of fire; but whatever may have been his purpose, and from the expression of his face, there was little doubt but that it was a hostile one, he was diverted from it by hearing a hand on the latch of the door and a voice from without demanding admittance.

‘It is Rust,’ exclaimed Grosket, in a sharp whisper. He touched the burglar on the shoulder and said in the same tone, ‘I’m going in there.’ He pointed to a closet in a dark part of the room, nearly concealed by the wainscotting. Let him in, and betray me if you dare!’

‘You seem to know our holes well,’ muttered Jones. ‘You’ve been here afore.’ Grosket made no reply, but hurried across the room and secreted himself in the closet, which evidently had been constructed as a place of concealment, either for the tenants of the room themselves, or for whatever else it might not suit their fancy to have too closely examined.

Jones stared after him, apparently forgetting the applicant for admission, until a renewed and very violent knocking recalled his attention to it. He then went to the door, drew back the bolt, and walked to his seat, without even glancing to see who came in, or whom the person was who followed so closely at his heels. Nor did he look around until he felt his arm roughly grasped, and a sharp stern voice hissing in his ear:

‘So, so! a fine night’s work you’ve made of it. Tim Craig is dead and the whole city is already ringing with the news; and you, you’re a murderer!’

Jones started from his seat with the sudden spasmodic bound of one who has received a mortal thrust. He stared wildly at the sharp thin face which had almost touched his, and then sat down and said:

‘Don’t talk to me so, Mr. Rust; I can’t bear it.’

‘Ho, ho! your conscience is tender, is it? It has a raw spot that won’t bear handling, has it? We’ll see to that. But to business,’ said he, his face becoming white with rage; his black eyes blazing, and his voice losing its smoothness and quivering as he spoke.

‘I’ve come here to fulfil my agreement; you were to get that child for me to-day; I’ve come for her; where is she?’

Jones looked at him with an expression of impatience mingled with contempt, but made him no answer.

‘Tim Craig was to have gone to that house; he was to have carried her off; he was to have her here, here, HERE!’ said he, in the same fierce tone. ‘Why hasn’t he done it?’

‘Because he’s dead,’ said Jones savagely.

‘I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!’ exclaimed Rust. ‘He deserved it. The coward! Let him die.’

‘Tim Craig was no coward,’ replied Jones, in a tone which, had Rust been less excited, would have warned him to desist.

‘Ha!’ exclaimed Rust, scanning him from head to foot, as if surprised at his daring to contradict him, ‘Would you gainsay me?’

Jones returned his look without flinching, his teeth firmly set and grating together. At last he said:

‘I do gainsay you; and I do say, whoever calls Tim Craig a coward lies!’

‘This, and from you!’ exclaimed Rust, shaking his thin finger in his very face; ‘this from you; you, a house-breaker, a thief, and last night the murderer of your comrade. Ho! ho! it makes me laugh! Fool! How many lives have you? One word of mine could hang you.’

‘You’ll never hang me,’ replied Jones, in the same low, savage tone. ‘I wish you had, before that cursed job of yours made me put a bullet in poor Tim. I wish you had; but it is too late. You wont now.’

Words cannot describe the fury of Michael Rust at seeing himself thus bearded by one whom he had been used to see truckle to him, whom he considered the mere tool of Craig, and whom he had never thought it worth while even to consult in their previous interviews.

‘Wont I? wont I? Look to yourself,’ muttered he, shaking his finger at him with a slow, cautioning gesture, ‘Look to yourself.’

‘You’re right, I will; I say I will,’ exclaimed Jones, leaping up and confronting him. ‘I say I will; and now I do!’ He grasped him by the throat and shook him as if he had been a child.

‘I might as well kill him at once,’ muttered he, without heeding the struggles of Rust. ‘It’s him or me; yes, yes, I’ll do it.’

Coming to this fatal conclusion, he flung Rust back on the floor and leaped upon him. At this moment, however, the door of the closet was thrown open, and Grosket, whom he had entirely forgotten, sprang suddenly out:

‘Come, come, this wont do!’ said he; ‘no murder!’

Jones made no effort to resist the jerk at his arm with which Grosket accompanied his words, but quietly rose, and said:

‘Well, he drove me to it. He may thank you for his life, not me.’

Relieved from his antagonist, Rust recovered his feet, and turning to Grosket said, in a sneering tone:

‘Michael Rust thanks Enoch for having used his influence with his friend, to prevent the commission of a crime which might have made both Enoch and his crony familiar with a gallows. A select circle of acquaintance friend Enoch has.’

Grosket, quietly, pointed to the closet and said:

‘You forget that I have been there ever since you came in the room; and have overheard every thing that passed between you and my friend.’

Rust bit his lip.

‘Don’t let it annoy you,’ continued he, ‘for the most of what I heard I knew before. I have had my eye on you from the time we parted. With all your benevolent schemes respecting myself I am perfectly familiar. The debt which you bought up to arrest me on; your attempt to have me indicted on a false charge of felony; the quiet hint dropped in another quarter, that if I should be found with my throat cut, or a bullet in my head, you wouldn’t break your heart; I knew them all; but I did not avail myself of the law. Shall I tell you why, Michael Rust? Because I had a revenge sweeter than the law could give.’

‘Friend Enoch is welcome to it when he gets it,’ replied Rust, in a soft tone. ‘But the day when it will come is far off.’

‘The day is at hand,’ replied Grosket. ‘It is here: it is now. Not for a mine of gold would I forego what I now know; not for any thing that is dear in the world’s eyes, would I spare you one pang that I can now inflict.’

Rust smiled incredulously, but made no reply.

‘Your schemes are frustrated,’ continued Grosket. ‘The children are both found; their parentage known; your name blasted. The brother who fostered you, and loaded you with kindness will have his eyes opened to your true character; and you will be a felon, amenable to the penalty of the law, whenever any man shall think fit to call it down upon your head. But this is nothing to what is in store for you.’

‘Well,’ said Rust, with the same quiet smile; ‘please to enumerate what other little kindnesses you have in store for me.’

‘I will,’ replied Grosket. ‘I was once a happy man. I had a wife and daughter, whom I loved. My wife is dead; what became of my child? I say,’ exclaimed he bitterly, ‘what became of my child?’

‘Young women will forget themselves sometimes,’ said Rust, his thin lip curling. ‘She became a harlot—only a harlot.’

Grosket grew deadly pale, and his voice became less clear, as he answered:

‘You’re right—you’re right! why shrink from the word. It’s a harsh one; but it’s God’s truth; she did—and she died.’

‘That’s frank,’ said Rust, ‘quite frank. I am a straight-forward man, and always speak the truth. I’m glad to see that friend Enoch can bear it like a Christian.’

A loud, taunting laugh broke from Grosket; and then he said:

‘Thus much for me; now for yourself, Michael Rust. You once had a wife.’

Rust’s calm sneer disappeared in an instant, and he seemed absolutely to wither before the keen flashing eye which was fixed steadfastly on his.

‘She lived with you two years; and then she became—shall I tell you what?’

Rust’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. Grosket bent his lips to his ear, and whispered in it. Rust neither moved nor spoke. He seemed paralyzed.

‘But she died,’ continued Grosket, ‘and she left a child—a daughter; mine was a daughter too.’

Rust started from a state of actual torpor; every energy, every faculty, every feeling leaping into life.

‘That daughter is now alive,’ continued Grosket, speaking slowly, that every word might tell with tenfold force. ‘That daughter now is, what you drove my child to be, a harlot.’

‘It’s false as hell!’ shouted Rust, in a tone that made the room ring. ‘It’s false!’

‘It’s true. I can prove it; prove it, clear as the noon-day,’ returned Grosket, with a loud, exulting laugh.

‘Oh! Enoch! oh, Enoch!’ said Rust, in a broken, supplicating tone, ‘tell me that it’s false, and I’ll bless you! Crush me, blight me, do what you will, only tell me that my own loved child is pure from spot or stain! Tell me so, I beseech you; I, Michael Rust, who never begged a boon before—I beseech you.’

He fell on his knees in front of Grosket, and clasping his hands together, raised them toward him.

‘I cannot,’ replied Grosket, coldly, ‘for it’s as true as there is a heaven above us!’

Rust made an effort to speak; his fingers worked convulsively, and he fell prostrate on the floor.

THE SACRIFICE.

‘ONE day during the bloody executions which took place at Lyons, a young girl rushed into the hall where the revolutionary tribunal was held, and throwing herself at the feet of the judges, said: ‘There remain to me of all my family only my brothers! Mother, father, sister—you have butchered all; and now you are going to condemn my brothers. Oh! in mercy ordain that I may ascend the scaffold with them!’ Her prayer was refused, and she threw herself into the Rhone and perished.’

DU BROCA

THE judges have met in the council-hall,

A strange and a motley pageant, all:

What seek they? to win for their land a name

The brightest and best in the lists of fame?

The light of Mercy’s all-hallowed ray

To look with grief on the culprit’s way?

Nay! watch the smile and the flushing brow,

And in that crowd what read ye now?

The daring spirit and purpose high,

The fiery glance of the eagle eye

That marked the Roman’s haughty pride,

In the days of yore by the Tiber’s side?

The stern resolve of the patriot’s breast,

When the warrior’s zeal has sunk to rest?

No! Mercy has fled from the hardened heart,

And Justice and Truth in her steps depart,

And the fires of hell rage fierce and warm

Mid the fitful strife of the spirit’s storm.

But a wail is borne on the troubled air:

What victim comes those frowns to dare?

’Tis woman’s form and woman’s eye,

That Time hath passed full lightly by;

The limner’s art in vain might trace

The glorious beauty and winning grace

Of that fair girl; youth’s sunny day

Flings its radiance over life’s changing way:

Why has she left her princely home,

Why to that hall a suppliant come?

Her heart is sad with a deepening gloom,

For Hope has found in her heart a tomb.

With quiv’ring lip, and eye whose light

Is faint as the moon in a cloudy night,

And with cheek as pale as the crimson glow

That the sunset casts on the spotless snow;

Nerved with the strength of wild despair,

Low at their feet she pours her prayer:

‘My home! my home! is desolate,

For ye have slain them all,

And cast upon the light of Love

Death’s cold and fearful pall.

We knelt in agony to save

My father’s silver hair,

Ye would not mark the bitter tears,

Nor list the frantic prayer!

‘And then ye took my mother too:

Ye must remember now

The words that lingered on her lip,

The grief upon her brow;

My sister wept in bitter wo—

Her dark and earnest eyes

Asked for the mercy ye will seek

In vain in yonder skies!

‘But your hearts were like the flinty rock,

And cold as ocean’s foam;

You tore them from my clasping arms,

And bore them from our home:

And now my brothers ye will slay!

But they are proud and high,

And come with spirits brave and true,

Your tortures to defy.

‘I will not ask from you their lives,

I will not seek to roll

The clouds of midnight from your hearts;

Ye cannot touch the soul!

But grant my prayer, and I will pray

For you in yonder sky;

Oh, GOD! I ask a little thing—

I ask with them to die!’

But the burning words fell cold and lone,

As the sun’s warm rays on a marble stone;

Life was a curse too bitter and wild

For the broken heart of Earth’s weary child;

And the stricken one found a self-sought grave

’Neath the crystal light of the foaming wave.

Shelter-Island.MARY GARDINER.

THE DEATH BED.

A STRAY LEAF FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A ‘COUNTRY DOCTOR.’

BY F. W. SHELTON.

‘BURY me in the valley, beneath the willows where I have watched the rippling waves, among the scenes of beauty which I loved so well, oh! my friend!’ exclaimed the dying youth; and as he grasped my hand his lips moved tremblingly, tears gushed upon his wan cheeks, and an expression of very sadness stole upon him. His looks were lingering; such as one flings back upon some paradise of beauty which he leaves forever; some home which childhood has endeared to him, and affection has filled with the loves and graces. Pity touched my soul as I regarded silently that beaming countenance, alas! so shrunken from the swelling, undulating lines of his hilarious health; a pity such as one feels whose hopes are too inexplicably bound up with another’s, who shares his very being, and who knows by all the sympathies of a brother’s bosom that the other’s heart-strings are snapping. Animæ dimidium meæ!—beautiful expression of the poet, comprehended less while life unites, than when death severs. It is only when gazing on the seal which has been set, we inquire ‘Where is the spirit?’ and struggle in vain to understand that great difference; when the smiles which shed their sunshine have rapidly vanished, and the voice we loved has died away like the music of a harp; when that which was light, joy, wit, eloquence, has departed with the latest breath; when, in short, we are awakened from our revery by the clods falling on the coffin, and the mourners moving away; it is then that the soul, diminished of its essence, flits away with a strange sense to its unjoyous abode, as a bird would return to its lonely nest.

There never existed one who more lived and moved, and had his spiritual being in the affections; a sensitive nature wooed into life by the kindness of the faintest breath, but killingly crushed by the footsteps of the thoughtless or the cruel. For such a one, life is well deserving of the epithet applied to it by the poet Virgil: dulcis vita, sweet life. It is not a vulgar sensuality, a Lethean torpor; the triumph of the grosser nature over the eternal principle within. It is already a separation of the carnal from the spiritual; a refinement of fierce passions; a present divorce from a close and clinging alliance; a foretaste of the waters of life; in short, the very essence and devotion of a pure religion. Would it seem strangely inconsistent that a being of so sweet a character as I shall describe him, my poor young friend declared, with a gush of the bitterest tears, that he could not go into the dark valley, for he loved life with an inconceivable, passionate love? His was the very agony and pathos of the dying Hoffman, when almost with his latest breath, he alluded to ‘the sweet habitude of being.’ But it was only, thanks be to GOD! a short defection, a momentary clouding of that bright faith which was destined soon to see beyond the vale. His tears ceased to flow, glistened a moment, and then passed away as if they had been wiped by some gentle hand.

He leaned upon a soft couch, so very pale and haggard that his hour seemed very near. Costly books strewed his table; pictures and many exquisite things were scattered about with lavish hand; for wealth administered to refined luxury, and affection crowned him with blessings which gold can never buy. A mother hid from him her bitter tears, and spoke the words of cheerfulness; sisters pressed around him with the poignant grief an only brother can inspire; a beautiful betrothed betokened to him in irrepressible tears her depth and purity of love. Letters came to him hurried on the wings of friendship, and impressed on all their seals with sentiments which awakened hope. Youth and beauty hovered around him with their unintermitted care, and Age sent up its fervent prayers to heaven. Oh! who but the ungrateful would not love a life so filled with blandishments and crowned with blessings? Who could see all these receding without a sigh, or feel the pressure of that kiss of love as pure as if it had its origin in Heaven? But with the finest organization of intellectual mind, he had been accustomed to look at all things in the light of poetry. For one so constituted the pleasures which are in store are as inexhaustible as the works or mercies of his God. Not an hour which did not present some new phase of undiscovered beauty. He revelled in the beams of the morning; the rising sun was never a common object, nor its grandeur ever lost upon a soul so conscious of the sublime. For all beauty in nature he found a correspondent passion in the soul; and intoxicated alike with the music of birds or the perfume of flowers, found no weariness in a life whose current was like the living spring, pure, perennial and delightful.

To be so susceptible of pleasure, I would be willing to encounter all the keenness of pangs suffered by such natures. For such, the rational delights of a year are crowded into a day, an hour; and the ignorant reader of their obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a false reckoning. Yet after all, we have been disposed to regard the death of the young as something unnatural; the violent rending asunder of soul and body; the penalty enacted of a life artificial in its modes and repugnant to nature. As Cicero has beautifully expressed it, it is like the sudden quenching of a bright flame; but the death of the virtuous Old is as expected, as free from terror as the sunset; it is the coming of a gentle sleep after a long and weary day.

Travers was in the very gush and spring-tide of his youth; yet crowned as he was with blessings, and every attribute for their most perfect enjoyment, the true secret of his too fond desire to live, was that he loved:

‘He loved but one,

And that loved one, alas! could ne’er be his.’

In her the poetry of his life centred; and as a river is swollen by divers rills, and tributary streams, so all the thoughts and passions of his soul hurried with a pure and rapid tide to mingle and be lost in one. But illness, and the long looking at death, and above all, the Christian’s hope, enable us one by one to break off the dearest ties, and to renounce whatever we most love on earth. And so my young friend in good time emerged from the cloud which obscured his prospects, and saw clearly beyond the vale. It is not long since, being well assured that his fate was inevitable, he expressed a desire, which he carried into execution, to visit once more his well-loved haunts, and take a solemn farewell of them all. As one grasps the hand of a friend at parting, he looked his last at things which were inanimate. He rambled in the deep, dark groves whither he had so often gone in health, to enjoy their Gothic grandeur, to breathe the spirit of the religion they inspire, or to murmur in their deepest shades the accents of his pure and passionate love. He inscribed his name for the last time upon the smooth bark of a tree; then leaving them forever, as he emerged into the gay meadows, he turned to me with tears and said:

‘Ye woods, and wilds, whose melancholy gloom

Accords with my soul’s sadness, and draws forth

The voice of sorrow from my bursting heart!’

He clambered the steep hill-side, and sinking exhausted beneath a smitten tree, enjoyed the picturesqueness of the scene; the meadows, the streams, the pasture-grounds, the dappled herds, the sereneness of the summer skies, cleft by the wing of the musical lark, in all their purity of blue. He sat beside the sea-shore, and watched the big billows breaking and bursting at his feet; and as he looked where the waters and the sky met together in the far horizon, he exclaimed, ‘Now indeed do I long to fly away!’ Then he returned to his pillow, never to go forth again. ‘I shall die,’ he said, ‘when the season is in its prime and glory; when the fields are green and the trees leafy; and the sunlight shall shimmer down through the branches where the birds sing over my grave.’ Then casting a look at his books, where they stood neatly arranged on the well-filled shelves, he lamented that he had not time to garner half the stores of a beautiful literature; to satisfy his perpetual thirst; to drink to the full at the ‘pure wells of English undefiled.’ There were the Greek poets, whom he would have more intimately cherished, (he had been lately absorbed in the sublimity of the ‘Prometheus Vinctus;’) there was the great master and anatomizer of the human heart, who knew how to detail the springs of action common to all ages, the paragon of that deep learning which is not derived from books, but gleaned by his genius from all nature with a rare intuition, and with an incomprehensible power of research. In him what mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books, and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the renewed investiture of all its beauties. There is no glowing thought, no exquisite conception, no sublime and beautiful idea, which is not imperishable as the mind itself, and which shall not be carried on from age to age, or if destroyed or lost upon the written page, revived by some happy coincidence of intellectual being, and perpetuated and enjoyed, here or hereafter, wherever mind exists. A communion like this will be a communion of spirits. A finer organization, expanded faculties shall rapidly consume the past; but oh, the future! what glories are to be crowded into its immensity? How shall knowledge be commensurate with the stars, or wander over the universe? Now bring me the written Revelation, the written word. It clasps within its volume all excellencies, all sublimities of speech; secrets which could not be developed by reason, nor found in the arcana of human wisdom. Henceforth this shall be my only companion, and its promises shall light my passage over the grave.’

I marked the lustrous beaming of his eye, and from that time he looked at all things on the ‘bright side.’ His very love could think upon its object without a tear, and look forward to a pure and eternal re-union. At last the hour of dissolution came. I knew it by its unerring symptoms; yet still I listened to his passionate, poetic converse. It was for the last time; I was in the chamber of death. What observer can mistake it; the darkened windows, the stillness, the grouping, the subdued sobs, the awful watchfulness for the identical moment when a lovely and intellectual spirit breaks its bonds, as if the strained vision could detect the spiritual essence. What a heart-sickness comes over those who love! What a change in the appearance of all things! The very sun-light is disagreeable, the very skies a mockery; the very roses unlovely. We look out of the casement, and see the external face of nature still the same; how heartless, how destitute of sympathy, now appears the whole world without, with the home, that inner world! How can those birds sing so sweetly on the branches; how can the flowers bloom as brightly as ever; how can those children play so gleefully; how can yon group laugh with such unconcern! He is an only son. Though wan, and wasted in all his lineaments, his pure brow, his gentle expression, tell that he was worthy to be loved. Can no human power restore him to the arms of a fond mother? It is in vain! The spirit flutters upon his lips; it has departed. But it has left behind it a token; a clear, bright impress; a smile of undissembled love and purity; an expression beaming with the last unutterable peace; the graces which were so winning upon earth, but which shall attain their perfection in heaven.

FREEDOM’S BEACON.

‘To-day, to-day it speaks to us! Its future auditories will be the generations of men, as they rise up before it and gather round it’

WEBSTER.

‘To-day it speaks to us!’

Of ‘the times that tried men’s souls,’

When hostile ships rode where yon bay

Its deep blue waters rolls:

When the war-cloud dark was lowering

Portentous o’er the land;

When the vassal troops of Britain came

With bayonet, sword and brand.

‘To-day it speaks to us!’

Of brave deeds nobly done,

When patriot hearts beat high with hope,

Ere Freedom’s cause was won:

Of the conflict fierce, where fell

New-England’s valiant men,

Who waved their country’s banner high,

Though warm blood dyed it then!

And will its voice be still

When the thousands of to-day,

Who have come like pilgrim-worshippers,

From earth shall pass away?

Oh no! ‘the potent orator’

To future times shall tell

Where Prescott, Brooks, and Putnam fought,

Where gallant Warren fell.

’Twill speak of these, and others—

Of brave men, born and nurst

In stormy times, on Danger’s lap.

Who dared Oppression’s worst:

Of Vernon’s chief, and he who came

Across the Atlantic flood,

To offer to the patriot’s God

A sacrifice of blood.

Long as the ‘Bay State’ cherishes

One thought of sainted sires,

Long as the day-god greets her cliffs,

Or gilds her domes and spires;

Long as her granite hills remain

Firm fixed, so long shall be

Yon Monument on Bunker’s height

A beacon for the free!

A WINTER TRIP TO TRENTON FALLS.

IN THREE SCENES.

SCENE FIRST.

MORNING; eight on the clock. BILLING’S HOTEL, Trenton. Outside, a clear bright sun glancing down through an atmosphere sparkling with frost, upon as fine a road for a sleigh-ride as ever tempted green-mountain boys and girls for a moonlight flit. Inside, a well-furnished breakfast-table, beef-steak, coffee, toast, etc., etc. On the one side of it your correspondent; serious, as if he considered breakfast a thing to be attended to. He is somewhat, as the lady on the other side of the table says, somewhat in the ‘sear leaf,’ by which name indeed she is pleased to call him; but there is enough of spring in her, to suffice for all deficiencies in him. Like the morning, she is a little icy, but sunshiny, sparkling, exhilarating, thoughtful, youthful—and decided. She takes no marked interest in the breakfast.

‘Sear leaf!’ Madam, say on.

‘I wish to go to the Falls.’

‘To what!’

‘To the Falls—to Trenton Falls.’

He drops his knife and fork. ‘Whew! what! in winter?—in the snow?—on the ice?’

‘Certainly; that is just the season.’

‘Crazy! You were there in the summer——’

‘I know it; every one goes there in summer. I must see them now. There’s no time like it; in their drapery of snow and ice; in the sternness and solitude, the wild grandeur of winter!’

‘How you run on! You’ll miss the cars at Utica.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You’ll be a day later in New-York.’

‘I don’t care. I must see them in their hoary head.’

‘You wish to see if they look as well in gray hairs as I do, perhaps.’

‘Yes.’

‘You really must go?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are a very imperious young lady; and allow me to say, that although some young gentlemen——’

Lady, interrupting him: ‘Shall I ring the bell?’ She rings it. Enter landlord. She orders the horse and cutter.

SCENE SECOND.

Enter landlord: ‘All ready, Sir.’

‘Will you allow me to ask if your feet are warmly clad, Madam?’

‘I am ready for the ascent of Mont Blanc, or a ramble with a hunter upon the shore of Hudson’s Bay.’

‘Very well; now for the cutter.’

‘Landlord, just step round, if you please, and put that buffalo-robe a little more closely about the lady. Hold fast, hostler! That horse likes any thing better than standing still.’

‘Ay, ay, Sir.’

‘Now we are ready. Let go! Away we dash; ‘on for the Falls!’ Gently, my good horse, gently round this corner; now ‘go ahead!’ How do you like my steed, Madam?’

‘A rein-deer could not transact this little business better.’

‘Is not this a glorious morning?’

‘Vivifying to the utmost! How far we fail of becoming acquainted with the face of nature, when we only come to look upon it in summer! It is as if one should only look upon the human face in the hues of youth, and never upon the gray head; on the brow where high thoughts have left their impress; on the face which deeper and sterner knowledge, research, patience, have made eloquent, while stealing away the rose. As for me, though I am but a girl, I like to see sometimes an old man; one who in the trial-hour of life has kept his integrity; and when the snows of age fall on him, he gently bends beneath their weight, like those old cedars yonder by the way-side, beneath their weight of snow. Wherever the eye can pierce their white vesture, all is still deep spring-green beneath; unchanged at heart—strong and true. So I like to look on you, Sere Leaf.’

‘Thank you! You have a gift at compliments.’

‘Summer reminds one of feeling and Lalla Rookh; Winter; of intellect and Paradise Lost.’

‘How your voice rings in this clear air! Do you know what Dean Swift says a sleigh-ride is like? ‘Sitting in the draft of a door with your feet in a pail of cold water!’’

‘Abominable! libellous! Exhilaration and comfort are so blended in me that—— But is not that the house?’

‘Ay; here we are! Smoke from the chimney; some one is there to welcome us, no doubt. Gently, my Bucephalus, through this gate! There comes the landlord. Treat my horse well, if you please; we are going to the Falls.’

SCENE THIRD.

‘Madam, are you ready for the woods?’

‘Quite. How still the air is! Why don’t you thank me for insisting on coming? You have no gratitude. There’s not two inches of snow on the ground. It all seems piled upon these grand old trees. There! see that tuft of it falling and now spreading into a cloud of spangles in the sun-light which streams down by those old pines. Hark! the roar of waters! The sound seems to find new echoes in these snow-laden boughs, and lingers as if loth to depart.’

‘This way, Madam; the trees are bent too low over the path to allow a passage there. We are near the bank which overlooks the first fall. Take my arm; the brink may be icy. Lo! the abyss!’

‘Magnificent! What a rush of waters! How the swollen stream foams and rages!’

‘And see! the pathway under the shelving rock where we passed in summer is completely colonnaded by a row of tall ice pillars; gigantic, symmetrical—fluted, even. What Corinthian shaft ever equalled them! What capital ever rivalled the delicacy or grace of those ice-and-hemlock wreaths about their summits!’

‘And see those pines, rank above rank, higher and higher; stately and still and snow-robed like tall centinels! Perhaps, Sear Leaf, the Old Guard might have stood thus in the Russian snows over NAPOLEON, when he bivouacked on the hill-side, and sought rest while his spirit was as wildly tossed as the waters that dash beneath us.’

‘Yes, Lady; or it may be that these trees in their perpetual green, in their calmness and dignity, may be emblematic of the way in which the angels who watch on earth look down on man. Perfect rest on perfect unrest.’

‘Ah! you grow gloomy.’

‘Took I not my hue from you? On, then, for the higher fall!’

‘These trees seem to have increased in stature since the summer we were here. As we proceed, the snow lies thicker on them, and the branches seem closer locked; the roof overhead more complete. How still the woods are! Our very foot-fall is noiseless.’

Influenced by the scene, they pass on in silence along the path which leads round the foot of the cone-like hill toward the cottage by the higher Falls, whose deep roar now breaks upon the ear, and rolls through the motionless forest. Thus then the Lady to Sear Leaf:

‘Has GOD any other temple like this?’

‘Never a one, reared by any hand save His!’

‘What organ ever rolled so deep a bass through arches so grand! See how the sunlight glances amid the gnarled branches of the roof, and here and there falls through on the floor below; making those low icy forms look like the shrubs of the valley of diamonds in the eastern story. Just so it is that the light of truth struggles through entangled and dark mazes of human error, and here and there illuminate some humble mind with its pure ray; while others, tall and strong and haughty, like those old trees, are left darkened.’

‘You have a noble nature, and should be nobly mated. But here we are upon the brow of the hill which leads to the cottage. The snow is deeper here: gently, now; a slide down this bank might check even your enthusiasm. Take my arm; there—so; safe at the bottom! Let us go forward upon the platform of the cottage over the Falls. No bench? Well, sit upon my cloak.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘You must. There; be pleased to sit and rest. What a gorgeous display of frost-work and flashing light on fantastic forms of ice! How the spray rises and waves and changes its hues in the sun! And the trees, how delicately each sprig of the evergreens is covered with a dress so white and shining ‘as no fuller on earth could whiten them.’’

‘Even so, Sear Leaf; And I love to think that the same one who wove the glorious dress to which you refer, to gladden Peter, made this dazzling drapery, and gave us eyes to look upon it. It recalls to my mind the song of the Seraphim: ‘The whole earth is full of thy glory!’’

‘Did they not, Lady, sing of a moral glory?’

‘No; decidedly no. There was no moral glory in the earth when they sang that song. Even the chosen people of GOD are then and there denounced as having abandoned Him. No; it was the glory of the works of His hands, such as we look upon this day, which elicited their praise.’

‘I believe your exegesis is right. The scene is glorious. Summer in all her loveliness has no dress like this. She has no hues equal to the play of colors on these walls and columns of ice, extending far as the eye can reach down the ravine, and towering in more than colossal grandeur. The water is in treble volume, and force and voice; and as it rolls its white folds of spotless foam down the valley, it reminds one of the great white throne of the Revelations, and this wavy foam the folds of the robe that filled the temple.’

‘It is inexpressibly, oppressively beautiful, Sear Leaf!’

‘Speaking of Revelation, how accurate is the description in Manfred of this scene!’

‘Let me hear it:’

‘IT is not noon; the sun-bow’s rays still arch

The torrent with the many hues of heaven,

And roll the sheeted silver’s waving column

O’er the crags headlong perpendicular,

And fling its lines of foaming light along

And to and fro, like the pale courser’s tail,

The giant steed to be bestrode by Death,

As told in the apocalypse.’

‘Well, Madam, why are you silent? Shall we go?’

‘No. I could stay here till nightfall. I was thinking of the lines succeeding those you have repeated:

——‘No eyes

But mine now drink the sight of loveliness,’’

‘Am I nobody?’

‘We are alone here. How many of the light of heart, in youth and strength and beauty, climbed these rocks, shouted in these old woods, and gathered the summer flowers along these banks—and passed away! Where are they now! Some who wrote their names in the traveller’s book in this cottage, have them now written by others on their tombstone. One I knew well, who, full of health and beauty, passed up this wild ravine, who has faded like the flowers she culled, and is now in her father’s house, to pass in a few more days to heaven. And of all the rest, did we know their history, what a picture would it give of life!’

‘You are thoughtful for one so young.’

‘Are not twenty years enough to make one a moment thoughtful? Tell me now, thou of the gray head, of what art thou thinking?’

‘Of earth’s fairest scene, blent with her fairest daughter.’

‘Bravo! For what fair lady on your native mountains did you frame that compliment twenty years ago?’

‘Madam!’

‘Well?’

‘It is time to return.’

G. P. T.

THE RUINS OF BURNSIDE.

SADLY, amid this once delightful plain,

Stern ruin broods o’er crumbling porch and wall,

And shapeless stones, with moss o’ergrown, remain

To tell, Burnside, the story of thy fall:

These ancient oaks, although decaying, green,

Like weary watchers, guard the solemn scene.

Where cowslip cup and daisy sweetly bloomed,

Hemlock and fern, in rank luxuriance spread;

Where rose and lily once the air perfumed,

Wild dock and nettle sprout, no fragrance shed:

And here no more the throstle’s mellow lay

Awakes with gladsome song the jocund day.

O’er yon church wall the ivy creeps, as fain

To shield it from thy withering touch, Decay;

No pastor ever more shall there explain

The sacred text, nor with his hearers, pray

To the Eternal Throne for grace divine;

Nor sing His praise, nor taste the bread and wine.

And here of yore the parish school-house stood,

Where flaxen-pated boys were taught to read;

At merry noon, in wild unfettered mood,

They rushed with boisterous glee to stream or mead;

The care-worn teacher homeward wends his way,

And freer feels than his free boys at play.

Yon roofless cot, which still the alders shade,

While all around is desolate and sere,

Perchance the dwelling of some village maid,

Who fondly watched her aged parents here;

And with her thrifty needle, or her wheel,

Earned for the lowly three the scanty meal.

Close by yon smithy stood the village inn,

Where farmers clinched each bargain o’er a glass;

And oft, amid mirth’s unrestricted din,

Would Time with softer foot, and swifter pass.

The husband here his noisy revel kept,

While by her lonely hearth the good wife wept.

At lazy twilight, ’neath yon ancient elm,

The village statesmen met in grave debate,

And sagely told, if at their country’s helm,

How bravely they would steer the ship of state

From treacherous quicksands or from leeward shore,

And all they said, betrayed their wondrous lore.

I’ve seen the thoughtless rustic pass thee by;

In thee, perhaps, his ancestors were bred,

And, at my question, point without a sigh,

Where calmly rest thy unremembered dead;

I asked thy fate, and, as he answered, smiled,

‘Thus looked these ruins since I was a child.’

Methinks, Burnside, I see thee in thy prime,

When thou wert blessed with innocent content,

Thy robust dwellers, prodigal of time,

Yet still with cheerful heart to labor went;

Nor envied lordly pomp, with courtly train,

Of empty rank and fruitful acres vain.

Methinks I see a summer evening pass,

When thou wert peopled, and in sinless glee

Methinks the lusty ploughman and his lass

Dance with unmeasured mirth, enraptured, free,

While seated from the joyous throng apart,

The blind musician labors at his art.

Though fancy, wayward as the vagrant wind,

May picture scenes of unambitious taste,

Yet vainly now, we look around to find

Thy early beauty mid this dreary waste;

Unmourned, unmissed, thus in thy fallen state,

Thou art an emblem of the common fate!

Before the stern destroyer all shall bow,

And sweet Burnside, like thine, ’twill be my lot

To lie a ruin, tenantless and low,

By friends unmentioned, and by foes forgot:

As earth’s uncounted millions I shall be—

No mortal think, no record speak of me!

KENNETH ROOKWOOD.

CORONATION OF GEORGE THE FOURTH.

BY THE LATE WILLIAM ABBOTT.

THERE is one great and peculiar characteristic in all the movements of JOHN BULL. A more gullible epitome of the human race does not exist. Let the case be right or wrong, only apply to him an inflammatory preparation, through the medium of a little exaggerated truth, and his frame is prepared to receive the largest dose of monstrous improbabilities that can possibly be administered; and till he has had his ‘full swing’ in the expression of his outraged feelings and boiling indignation, you might as easily attempt to check the mighty torrent of Niagara. John, however, is a free agent, and on the truest principles of freedom will hear but one side of the question as long as his prejudices continue; and after all, I believe it may fairly be put down to an honest impulse in favor of the oppressed, and a determination that no man, however elevated in rank, shall be screened from that equal justice which England delights in according. But the scales of justice, though equally balanced in the courts, get so bruised and bespattered in the minds of the fickle multitude, that time alone will bring them to their proper equilibrium. Let us travel back to the impeachment of the DUKE OF YORK, in the case of the celebrated MRS. CLARK. To attempt to palliate the acts of His Royal Highness was to commit an overt act of treason against the sovereign people; to admit his indiscretions, but deny his guilty participation, or even knowledge of the peculations committed in his name, would expose one to the reputation of being either a fool or a madman. The sage counsellors of the city, those bright constellations immortalized in all ages, not only set the noble example of awarding the freedom of the city to the immortal Colonel Wardle for his wholesale calumnies, but services of plate poured in from all parts; and even a portion of the legislators of Great Britain were offering up their humble adoration at the shrine of an accomplished courtezan. What was the result? Reflection gradually triumphed; all the gross and filthy exaggerations were sifted through the dirty channels which had given rise to them; a sober judgment at length was given; and the Duke, though not freed from the responsibility of having been betrayed into great errors, was honorably and universally acquitted of all intentional wrong. From that moment a more popular prince was not in existence; and with the exception of those human infirmities ‘which flesh is heir to,’ few men descended to the grave more really beloved. The chief of the gang of persecutors, Colonel Wardle, shrunk into miserable retirement, and died ‘unwept, unhonored, and unsung.’

This, however, was nothing when compared with the mighty fever of excitement produced in the public mind by the arrival of QUEEN CAROLINE in England. Here was political diet to satisfy the cravings of all parties; a stepping-stone to popularity in which all ranks participated. The peer, the lawyer, the church-warden, down to the very skimmings of the parish; sober rational people; the class so honorably prized in England, the middle class, also became enthusiasts in the cause of the ‘most virtuous Queen that ever graced these realms.’ The independent voters of Westminster; the illustrious class of donkey-drivers; the retailers of cats’-meat; all, all felt a noble indignation at the treatment of ‘KEVEEN CAROLINE.’ Days that if allotted to labor would have increased the comforts of their homes and families, were freely sacrificed to processions in honor of Her Majesty. Addresses poured in from every parish in the vast metropolis; representatives of virtuous females were hired, all dressed in white—sweet emblem of their purity! Perhaps England was never nearer the brink of engulphing ruin. The high Tory aristocracy almost stood alone at this momentous period. The public sentiment took but one tone at the theatres; and ‘GOD save the QUEEN’ was continually called for. At Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane an occasional struggle was made against the popular cry, but it was speedily drowned in clamor. The trial commenced, and an unfortunate witness appeared on behalf of the crown, who obtained the universal cognomen of ‘Non mi Ricordo.’ This added fuel to the fire; and the irritation of the public mind was roused into phrenzy by the impression that perjured witnesses were suborned from foreign countries to immolate the Queen upon the altar of vengeance. If the Queen’s counsel had been satisfied with allowing the evidence for the prosecution to remain uncontradicted, and suffered the case to stand upon its own merits, Her Majesty must have been acquitted; but ‘by your own lips I will condemn you’ was made too manifest in the defence. The division left so small a majority, that ministers wisely abandoned any farther prosecution of the case. I heard most of the speeches of the defence; and it was curious to observe the different modes of argument adopted. BROUGHAM was an advocate, pleading eagerly a doubtful cause; DENMAN was the enthusiastic defender of a Queen conscious of her innocence, and setting all personal considerations at defiance. The public feeling, no longer fed by an opposing power, calmly settled down, and men began to wonder at the cause of their phrenzy. The innocence of the Queen did not appear so manifest, as the unwise and heartless treatment she experienced. ‘A widowed wife, a childless mother;’ these were powerful enough to excite the deepest sympathy; and certainly a much harder lot could not have befallen the humblest of her sex. Theatres are very commonly the touchstones by which one may discover the bearing of the public mind; and Her Majesty, by way of proving it, visited all the minor theatres, which were densely crowded upon each attendance. A play was then commanded at the two Theatres Royal. The effect produced at Drury-Lane I do not recollect; but it is certain that the announcement at Covent-Garden reduced rather than increased the receipts. The pit was but moderately attended, and the boxes nearly deserted. This was a touchstone from which there was no escaping; and it was really a mortifying scene to witness the utter neglect with which majesty was received. But alas! the bitter cup of mortification was to be drained to the very dregs; and the Queen’s own rashness, or the bad advice of wrong-headed counsellors, hastened the catastrophe.

A short period had elapsed, when the public attention was gradually directed toward THE CORONATION. The court papers teemed with descriptions of the expected magnificence. The length of time that had intervened between the coronation of George III. and the intended pageant of George IV., excited all the feeling of novelty. The known magnificence of the King, his undisputed taste, and his gallant, princely bearing, all kept attention on the qui vive. The unfortunate Queen, who obstinately rejected all compromise, remained in the country; and like an ignis fatuus, disturbed the serenity of men’s minds, and kept alive a feeling of anxiety. Mr. Harris, the manager and one of the proprietors of Covent-Garden, was gifted with a tact always ready to take advantage of scenes of passing interest. He lost no time in reviving the second part of Henry IV., with all the splendor of the coronation. The champion on this occasion excited much more interest than all the beauties of SHAKSPEARE, and the theatre was nightly crowded to suffocation. The whole company of performers paraded in the procession; and though a member of the peerage, I cannot exactly call to mind the title I bore; which, however, with my accustomed good fortune, I exchanged for a real character at the real coronation. Having the honor of being known most particularly to the Earl of Glengall, he with the greatest kindness made me his page upon that memorable occasion. This certainly was a very distinguished mark of his friendship, for only one Esquire was allotted to each peer, and the greatest interest was made to obtain those appointments.

The eventful morning came; and London presented at day-break crowds of carriages of every description, and its floating population pouring in dense masses to every point that possessed the slightest degree of interest. Lord Glengall, in order to avoid the misery of passing through crowded streets, and of being every moment impeded in his course, engaged apartments in Lambeth, at Godfrey and Jule’s, the boat-builders, where he slept the night preceding. His lordship had appointed me to breakfast with him there, at six o’clock on that eventful morning; I was resolved to be in time, and at half past two, A. M., I left my home and fell in with a line of carriages on my way toward Westminster bridge. I found that many of them had been there from twelve the preceding night; peers and peeresses in their robes, gently moving, not hastening, to the desired spot. After waiting some two hours with exemplary patience, and finding my case entirely hopeless, I wisely took the precaution of driving to the water-side at Chelsea, for the purpose of procuring a boat. As it is possible that some of the distinguished artists of the day may wish to convey my appearance to posterity, I will give a description of my dress; and I shall also feel greatly obliged, if at the same time they will select the best-looking portrait of me for the likeness: a scarlet tunic, embroidered with gold-thread; a purple satin sash, with a deep gold fringe; a ruff à la Elizabeth; white satin pantaloons; shoes with crimson rosettes; black velvet hat and feathers. My hair, not naturally curling, had been put in graceful papillote the preceding evening. As I write in the reign of Queen VICTORIA, the reader will readily believe that people are not much in the habit of walking about the streets in such a costume. Imagine therefore my arrival at the watermen’s landing very soon after five o’clock in the morning; a splendid sun pouring, if not absolutely a flood of light, yet its lovely beams upon my person. Crowds of little girls and boys instantly gathered on the spot, receiving me with small voices but loud huzzahs, as I descended from the carriage. A boat was immediately ordered; but as there were several at the landing, all but the one engaged naturally felt the cruelty of not being permitted to come in for their share of extortion on such an occasion.

‘I say, Sir,’ said one of the unwashed, ‘them’s a pretty pair of red ribbands in your shoes; I want just such a pair for my little ’un at home.’

I knew there was only one way of dealing with them; I therefore put on one of my blandest smiles, and gently replied: ‘Well, my good fellow, if you will give me your address, I will send you a pair to-morrow.’ This settled the affair in good humor, and I was suffered to reach the boat without farther annoyance. We had put into the stream but a short distance, when I encountered a boat-full of roysterers; for old father Thames was thickly studded on this occasion with boats of all classes; when one turned to another in the boat and cried out in the most lugubrious accents, which did not fail to excite shouts of laughter:

‘I say, Bill, is that ’ere feller a man or a voman?’

I thought now I had fairly passed my ordeal and might go on in peace; but no; we were obliged to pull in near shore, as we were rowing against tide. Milbank was crowded, and from the midst of the polite assemblage a gentle female voice cried out:

‘My eyes! Tom! if there isn’t one of Astley’s riders!’

I at length arrived at my place of appointment, and had a good hearty laugh at breakfast over my little annoyances. While engaged in that interesting meal, the shouts of the people passed across the water. It was occasioned by the arrival of the Queen, who was refused admittance to the Abbey. Almost all parties blamed her for the attempt, nor did she produce the sensation she had evidently calculated upon. It was like trying to renew a lost game, when all interest had subsided. It was the final blow to all her ambitious aspirations, which speedily ended, where all our vanities must end, in the silent grave. I wish it to be perfectly understood that I have no idea of entering into a rivalry with Hume, in giving another History of England; but as these events of stirring interest passed within my own time, and of which I was a close observer, I trust the introduction will not appear misplaced; taking into consideration that I profess to give my general reminiscences, and not simply to confine them to my profession. Perhaps it would be wise on my part to drop a veil over the gorgeous spectacle; for like a visit to the Falls of Niagara, the most enlarged description a prudent person ought to indulge in, would be simply, ‘I have seen the Falls;’ so if I were to show my prudence, I should say, ‘I saw the Coronation.’ But how is it possible to refrain from giving expression, however slight and sketchy, to scenes of such unexampled magnificence?

We crossed the river at seven o’clock, and had the advantage of passing through the private residence of one of the principal officers of the House of Commons, and marched on to Westminster Hall without impediment. I had a distinct ticket for the Abbey where I had no duty to perform; and indeed throughout the day it was purely nominal. I had therefore all the advantages of passing and repassing at my own will and discretion, and of paying visits to the Palace-Yard to different friends who had secured places to witness the procession. On first entering that most magnificent of halls, it was impossible not to be struck with its gigantic proportions and superb embellishments. Galleries were erected for the peeresses, foreign ambassadors, and the most distinguished visitors. Admirable arrangements were also made for that portion of the public who had been so fortunate as to procure a Lord Chamberlain’s ticket. Costume also was strictly attended to here, no gentleman being admitted save in full court-suit or military uniform; and the ladies of course shone in all the splendor that gave grace to their lovely forms, and added a native lustre to all the artificial aids which gave such light and brilliancy to the glowing scene.

The monotony of the early part of the morning was relieved by the absurd evolutions of the gentlemen from the cinque-ports who had the privilege of carrying the Canopy of the Cloth of Gold over His Majesty. If truth may be told on state occasions, it must be said that they did not perform their movements with much grace. They were not regularly disciplined troops, but fairly occupied the position of the ‘awkward squad.’ It had the effect, however, of exciting a good deal of merriment; indeed I have seldom seen a rehearsal produce such striking effects. The high and imposing ceremonies of the Church, partaking largely of the grand and mystic formula which belonged to our cathedral service before the Reformation, and which again bids fair, at least partially, to occupy its altars, impressed upon the vast and brilliant assemblage gathered beneath the Gothic roof a mingled feeling of royalty and devotion, which was in former days the very essence of chivalry, and which seemed to have taken new growth in this advanced age, from the associating link of ancient costume, which met the eye at every turn. The austere and solemn silence of the place was lost in the mingled feelings which occupied all hearts; and as the lofty chants of the church swelled into divine melody, a half-breathing, a solemn, suppressed emotion, spoke deeply to the heart of other realms above. It is impossible to hear the loud swell of the organ and exquisite melody of the varieties of the human voice harmoniously blended, and bursting forth together in one loud and glorious song of praise, without feeling that our destiny is more than earthly. It should be taken into consideration that there is a vast multitude on the outside, who are really getting impatient for their part of the pageant. It is true, those who have secured places in the different splendid pavilions erected in the immediate vicinity of the platform, are more at their ease, and with the aid of long purses can indulge in all the luxuries so amply provided by liberal caterers; but still ‘fair play’ is our motto; and we will at once throw open the abbey-doors and marshal forth the most brilliant cortége that ever issued from its sacred walls; the herb-woman, Miss Fellows, and her attendants, strewing the path with flowers, blending the red rose and the white together, symbolical of the fact, that ‘no longer division racked the state,’ but that unreserved allegiance was due to the monarch before them. The excitement of the morning with respect to the QUEEN had not entirely subsided; and some few greetings must have caught the KING’S ear, that were not expressive of unbounded loyalty; but these formed a very slight proportion of the people. LORD CASTLEREAGH came in also for his share of these unseemly greetings; but his noble glance and really majestic appearance; his smile, not of disdain, but which marked an unflinching firmness of resolve; speedily converted their anger into applause. THE DUKE OF YORK and PRINCE LEOPOLD excited great interest by their dignified and elegant deportment. The KING, as he passed up the hall, was greeted with the most enthusiastic cheering and the waving of handkerchiefs from the élite of both sexes; but he appeared oppressed and worn down with fatigue, in which doubtless anxiety had its portion. His Majesty then retired to an apartment prepared for his reception, to take some repose during the royal banquet.

The long tables running down the hall on each side were covered with rich damask; triumphal arches and every ingenious device that could by possibility bear upon the pageant, were lavishly placed upon the tables, splendidly ornamented with artificial flowers, rivalling the goddess Flora herself. The entrance to the hall was a grand Gothic archway; but one of the most singular effects produced, was by the numerous chandeliers in ormolu hanging from the lofty roof, sending forth myriads of little twinkling stars, that essayed to dim the light of the sun, who here and there sent in his beams through the narrow loopholes and windows of the hall, to catch a glimpse of the splendid ceremonies. The banquet commenced; and it was not a little amusing to see the city authorities maintain their charter by commencing a most formidable attack upon the turtle and the viands which were so profusely spread over the table. Not a moment was lost. Triumphal arches quickly assumed the appearance of shapeless ruins, and wines from every quarter of the globe paid a heavy duty upon being deposited in the city vats!

At length the martial clangor of the trumpet announced the royal banquet. His Majesty took his seat on the dais, with the imperial crown upon his head amid the deafening shouts of the up-standing noblesse of the land. LORD GLENGALL’S seat was high up in the hall; and next to him, on one side, was the EARL OF BLESSINGTON, whom I had the honor of knowing, and the EARL OF FALMOUTH on the other, both of whom are now gathered to their fathers. They insisted upon my taking a seat with them, to which of course I was nothing loath; and there I fully participated in all the luxuries of the table, instead of waiting like an humble page for the remains of the feast. Lord Blessington requested me to go into the peeresses’ gallery and endeavour to procure refreshments for LADY BLESSINGTON. I had never seen her ladyship; but her famed beauty and talents did not render the task one of great difficulty. Amid a blaze of beauty, I soon discovered the fair lady, to whom I was to enact my part of Esquire. In return for the attentions I had the good fortune to offer, I received most gracious smiles, and the blandest of speeches, and felt myself rise in stature as I again paced the ancient hall. At length one of the most imposing ceremonies commenced; and many a swan-like neck was stretched to catch a glimpse of the unapproachable magnificence of the scene; the entrance of the champion (accompanied by the hero of a thousand battles,) in a full suit of armor and superbly mounted on a white charger with a plume of feathers on its head; the MARQUIS OF ANGLESEA, similarly caparisoned; the LORD HOWARD of Effingham, and others of comparatively less note. It had been whispered that Mr. Horace Seymour (now SIR HORACE,) had been selected by His Majesty for that important character, and his splendid appearance would perhaps under other circumstances have justified the choice. The right, however, was hereditary, and the real representative would indeed have shown craven, and unworthy the high distinction, if he had relinquished so honorable a position. The anecdote which is related at the coronation of George III., of the challenge having been accepted in behalf of PRINCE CHARLES STUART, after the gauntlet was dashed upon the earth, was here omitted; for here, happily, there was an undisputed succession. After the champion had drank to the health of ‘GEORGE THE FOURTH, the rightful monarch of Great Britain,’ in a cup of gold sent by His Majesty, (and which is retained by the champion,) he and the accompanying nobles backed their horses the whole distance down the hall, gracefully bowing to their monarch at distinct intervals, amid the most enthusiastic cheering.

WALTER SCOTT was there, his eye sparkling with delight, and devouring that magnificence of which his pen alone could convey the unlimited splendor. Non nobis Domine was given by a numerous choir most superbly; and the whole of the ceremonies were at length concluded. I left the hall with the loss of my cap and feathers, and in a humble beaver, which I borrowed from a friend in the immediate vicinity, I elbowed my way through the crowd, sated with splendor and fairly exhausted. London was a blaze of light, and Hyde Park, I presume for the first time, was brilliantly illuminated. Fireworks of the most dazzling description shot meteor-like from every open spot in the vast metropolis, and the pyrotechnical art displayed in the parks at the government expense beggared all description. As I have already stated, Covent-Garden Theatre made a golden harvest by anticipating the coronation; but it was left for Drury-Lane to give as near as possible a fac-simile of the one that had so recently taken place. A platform was thrown over the centre of the pit, across which the procession took place. ELLISTON repeated it so often to crowded houses, that at length he fancied himself the KING de jure; and his enthusiasm carried him to such an extent, that on one occasion he stopped suddenly in the centre of the platform, and with a most gracious and benignant smile, extended his arms at full length and gave the audience a regal blessing, in the following pithy sentence: ‘Bless ye, my people!’

I FOLLOW.

‘O! mon roi!

Prends comme moi racine, ou donne-moi des ailes

Comme a toi!’

VICTOR HUGO.

EAGLE! that coursing by on mighty pinion,

Cleaving the cloud with firm and dauntless breast,

Hast deigned to stoop thee from thy proud dominion,

To circle in thy flight my lowly nest.

I mark thee now, all heavenward ascending,

Thy far form cresting the cerulean,

Above earth’s shadows on thy pathway wending,

Thine eye of fire aye fixed upon the sun.

Oh! as I watch thee, all unfettered sweeping

High o’er the rift that weighs my pinion here,

I yearn like thee my plume in ether steeping,

To soar away through yon free atmosphere.

Thine eye was on my spirit’s humble dwelling,

And as I met its all pervading rays,

I felt along each vein new nature swelling,

And my weak heart grow strong beneath thy gaze.

And thus infused with thine unfearing spirit,

My wing, that scarcely might essay yon rack,

Casting the feebleness it did inherit,

Would boldly dare with thee the upward track.

And think not I would sink: no, all unquailing,

I poise me now to follow on thy way;

To mount the tempest-cloud with nerve unfailing,

And thread the path whereon the lightnings play.

Press on! strong plumed! on tireless wing upspringing,

Thy course be ever toward the empyrean;

And at thy side my bonded spirit winging,

Will mount with thee till thy high goal be won!

New-York, December, 1843. MARY E. HEWITT.

REMINISCENCES OF A DARTMOOR PRISONER.

NUMBER ONE.

IT was my fortune to be taken prisoner in India during the war of 1812. I was, with others, confined in Fort William at Calcutta, for several months, until the authorities could find an opportunity to send us to England. At length the Bengal fleet being ready for their return voyage, the prisoners were distributed on board the several vessels which composed it. I was placed with a few others on board the ‘Lord Wellington,’ and being in a destitute condition, I agreed to assist in working the ship to England, at the same rate as the regular hands on board. The fleet rendezvoused in the near vicinity, and consisted of something over thirty sail, most of them of the largest class, and equal in size to a line-of-battle ship. They were well armed, some carrying thirty or forty guns, with a plentiful supply of muskets, pikes, etc. This had been customary for many years, as a protection against the French privateers and men-of-war, which swarmed the Indian ocean; in many instances proving themselves more than a match for their enemies, and sometimes beating off large class frigates.

On going on board, I found between four and five hundred people, including officers, passengers, and crew. The captain was a large heavy-built man, very unwieldy, and remarkable only for having a large, long body placed upon very small legs. He reminded me of an ill-constructed building, ready to fall by its own weight. He appeared never to be happy unless he was ‘in hot water,’ either with the passengers or crew. There were six mates, or more properly lieutenants, for all the officers were in uniform. There were also a dozen or more midshipmen, a boatswain and his two mates, gunners, quarter-masters, armorers, sail-makers, and carpenters in abundance. In short, we were fitted out in complete man-of-war fashion; not forgetting the cat-o’-nine-tails, which was used with great liberality. The crew was made up of all nations, but the majority consisted of broken-down men-of-war’s men, who being unfit for His Majesty’s service had little fear of imprisonment. The others were composed of Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, etc.; and taken altogether, one would have inferred that they must have been drafted from Falstaff’s regiment of taterdamallions.

One fine morning the fleet got under way. Nothing note-worthy or interesting however occurred until we made the island of Ceylon, where we lay a couple of days; during which time the crew got and kept most unaccountably drunk. The officers tried every method to solve the mystery, but without effect. The truth was, the men became suddenly fond of cocoa-nuts, selecting them from the bum-boats in preference to any other fruit. The secret was, that the shell was bored before the nut was quite ripe, the juice poured out, and Arrack substituted in its place. Our next place of stopping was Madras, where we took in more cargo, but no more cocoa-nuts, as no fruit-boats put off to us, the weather being too rough to admit of it.

We had now been at sea several weeks, and had many among our crew and passengers upon the sick-list. Of the former, was a young man on his first voyage. He had been ill more than a week, and there being no physician on board, there was little or nothing done for him. At length he became delirious at intervals; and during the whole of the last night of his existence he made the most piercing and heart-rending cries; calling incessantly for his mother and sister, and lamenting that he should never see them more. Poor fellow! before the next night he was sewed up in his hammock, with a couple of shot at his feet; prayers were read over him, and in the presence of his silent and pensive ship-mates, he was consigned to the ocean, that vast and sublime grave of countless millions of our race. Several weeks after this occurrence, one of the passengers, a Frenchman, died of the consumption, and was buried in the same way; and had not the subject been of too serious a nature, the event would have partaken somewhat of the ludicrous. As usual, the shot was placed at the feet of the dead body, but proved to be insufficient to sink it. The consequence was, that the head and shoulders remained above the surface, bobbing up and down, until we lost sight of it in the distance. The captain’s clerk always officiated as Chaplain at the funerals and divine service; which latter, by the way, was more of a farce than any thing else; for I have known more than one instance where they have been interrupted in the very midst by a squall of wind. Then to see the hubbub; the congregation dispersed; some ordered aloft, with such pious (though sometimes more forcible) ejaculations as: ‘Lay aloft there, you lubbers! D—n your bloods! I’ll see your back-bones! I’ll set the cat at you!’ etc.

We now approached the Cape of Good Hope. The weather became lowering; and as the day advanced, heavy masses of black clouds gradually arose above the horizon, and palled the sky. Night came on suddenly, and with it the threatened storm in all its fury. The darkness was as it were the quintessence of an ink-bottle. Nothing could be seen, save when the lightning gleamed, or when the rockets which were sent up from the Commodore, and broke forth, spreading their lurid, baleful light to give notice to the squadron of their position; then for an instant the whole scene was lit up with a hideous glare, when all would subside again into tenfold darkness. This, accompanied by the whistling of the wind, the roar of thunder, and the booming of a gun at intervals from the Commodore, to give notice for putting about, gave a grandeur and sublimity to the scene, which I have never seen surpassed. Fear gave way to excitement; and the idea of perishing amid this terrible war of the elements was worth years of the monotony of every-day life. I thought too of the Flying Dutchman, but did not fall in with him until some time after, and then it was by day-light, and without the poetry of ‘darkness, and cloud, and storm.’

The tempest gradually subsided, and at the end of two or three days scarcely a breath of wind was to be felt. Angry Nature had changed her frowns for sportive smiles; the face of the great deep was like polished glass; but there was a long swell of the ocean, apparently of miles in length; its bosom heaving and sinking, as if still oppressed with its late troubles. Our ship lay utterly unmanageable, her sails flapping idly against the masts. There was not sufficient wind to make her answer the helm; and there we lay, rolling and plunging, expecting every moment to see our masts go by the board. The lower yards dipped at every roll; and so great was the strain, that it drew the strong iron ring-bolts by which the guns were secured, and the lashings which fastened the large water-butts broke loose. This was at night; and the power and speed with which these heavy articles were driven from side to side was truly terrific. It took all hands the whole night, (and not without great danger) to secure them. The next day, a new and greater danger presented itself in a different form. A large ship, about the size of our own, lay in the same helpless condition; and by reason of a current, or some other cause, approached so near that it became truly alarming. Both vessels were rolling their keels nearly out of the water; and had they come in contact, it would have been certain destruction to both. It was necessary that something should be done immediately; and the crews of both vessels were ordered into their respective boats, with lines attached to the ships; and with several hours’ hard labor at the oars, they were enabled to separate them.

It was about this time that I had a view, not of the Flying Dutchman exactly, but of his ship, while standing on the forecastle early one morning. There had been a fog during the night, and a portion of the vapor still hung over the surface of the water. I had remained in that position but a few moments, when my attention was called by the boatswain’s-mate, who stood near by: ‘Look yonder!’ said he, pointing with his finger. I looked in the direction indicated, and lo! there lay the mystic ‘Phantom Ship.’ She was only a few yards off; perfectly becalmed, with no more motion than if painted on canvass, and apparently not over six feet long, yet perfect in every respect. I was gazing in admiration, with my eyes rivetted upon the object, when there came a light breath of air, so light that I could hardly feel it; presently the mist began gradually to rise and disperse; the ship began to recede; the magic scene was at an end! A breeze had sprung up, and the phantom-ship proved to be one of the fleet; and by a signal from the Commodore, she took her station in line with the other vessels. I never saw any thing like it before nor since. The atmospheric delusion was astonishing; but it was nothing new to the old boatswain’s-mate. All the other vessels were obscured by the fog, and this happened to be the nearest to us. Had the others been in sight they might (or might not) have presented the same appearance. Possibly the position of that particular ship helped to produce the effect. The sight of so large a fleet formed in two lines, extending four or five miles, each convoyed by a man-of-war, like a troop of soldiers led on in single-file by its officers, was ‘beautiful exceedingly;’ especially when the rising or setting sun illuminated their white sails, and a signal-gun from the Commodore changed their course; every ship in that vast fleet, at the cry of ‘About ship!’ moving as by one mind, and gracefully bowing to, and as it were saluting, the breeze! It was a scene never to be forgotten.

The wind gradually increased until it became a smart breeze, and we soon neared the Island of St. Helena. Here we first heard of the downfall of NAPOLEON, the greatest warrior of all ages; one who struck such terror into the souls of combined Europe, that they dared not let him go free, and imposed upon Great Britain the honorable task of becoming his jailor; and her very heart quaked within her bosom while life remained in his; doomed though he was to perpetual and hopeless exile, upon an isolated rock in the midst of the ocean. On seeing the yellow flags, with the motto ‘Orange boven,’ flying at the mast-heads of the shipping, and hearing of the overthrow of the power of France, our old Dutch boatswain’s-mate, (who in his youth had served with the brave Admiral De Winter, and who had braved the ‘battle and the breeze’ for more than half a century,) was touched to the very depths of his stout heart. He was completely melted, and wept like a child over the fallen fortunes of NAPOLEON. ‘Holland,’ said he, ‘has lost her best friend. Who like him will watch over and protect my country!’ He was naturally of a cheerful disposition; but from that time to the close of the voyage, he appeared sad and disheartened, and a smile scarce ever came over his countenance. I may remark in passing, that there were on board of our ship some ten or fifteen Dutch prisoners, who were the remnant of a large force that had formerly been garrisoned at the island of Java. All but these few had been gradually wasted away by pestilence and the poisoned spears and knives of the natives; and Holland, being so much engaged in her wars at home, had no means of aiding so distant a colony. Such was their condition when the island fell into the hands of the English; and they were rescued from destruction by the natives, only by becoming prisoners of war to the English. They were all old men, and some of them could speak a little English: they used to relate to me their former condition, and talk of their future prospects. The tale was a sad one. When young they were ‘kidnapped,’ as they termed it, by the government, as no volunteers could be got to serve in that sickly climate. They were forced from home and their parents at a tender age and sent to that far country, whence they had no prospect of ever returning, or hearing from their friends. Some of them had been absent for forty years, during which time they had seen none of their connexions, and seldom heard from them; for many years all intercourse had been dropped. They felt themselves entire strangers in the world; they were going to Holland to be sure, but not to their home. After the lapse of so many years, where could they seek for their friends? Death and other causes had removed and scattered them; and they almost dreaded the time when they should again set their feet upon the land of their fathers. Having been many months their associate in imprisonment, I took a deep interest in these poor fellows; participated in their feelings, and parted from them with regret. Peace to their memories! They have without doubt long ere this ended their weary pilgrimage of life.

We remained at St. Helena several weeks, waiting for the China fleet, during which time we took in a fresh supply of provisions, water, etc. This now famed island is nothing more nor less than a huge irregular block of granite, rising perpendicularly from the midst of the sea. The town, what there is of it, is built in a gully or chasm in the rock: the inhabitants are composed mostly of the military establishment and those connected with it, with perhaps a few exceptions. The island is only useful as a stopping-place for outward and homeward bound India-men, etc; and the inhabitants would be in a state of starvation, were it not for the supplies of provisions which they obtain from the shipping which put in there. All manner of coins from all manner of countries are in circulation here; and all copper coin goes for a penny, be it twice the size of a dollar, or as small as a five-cent piece. A person that way minded might soon make a large and curious collection here.

The China fleet now made its appearance, and after a few days’ delay we all got under weigh, with a convoy of a frigate, a sloop-of-war, and a transport full of troops, who on their arrival in England were ordered immediately to the United States, where they were sadly cut up at the battle of New-Orleans. We left the island with a stiff breeze, which continued with fine clear weather for several days. The fleet amounted to over seventy sail, and was arranged in two lines; and in fine weather, with all sail set, we composed a beautiful spectacle. During the whole of the voyage the utmost precaution was used to prevent an attack or capture by privateers, or national vessels of the enemy. Lights of every kind were strictly forbidden at night, except through a special order from a superior officer, and a double watch was kept day and night.

‘Land, ho!’ cried the look-out at the mast-head, one day. It proved to be what is termed the Western Islands, which lay directly ahead of us. ‘Sail, ho!’ was the next cry; and all eyes were turned toward the strangers. They were two ‘long, low, black-looking schooners,’ lying-to very quietly, about three miles ahead. ‘See the d——d Yankees!’ shouted all hands, in full chorus, as the American flag was displayed at their gaff. A thrill shot through my nerves; my heart swelled, and my eyes filled with tears, as I beheld the Flag of my Country for the first time for many months. No one can imagine the love he bears his native land, until he tests it as I have done. Many were the speculations as to the probability of capturing the saucy privateersman; for by this time all the sail that the convoy could possibly set was spread in chase of the enemy, who as yet had made no attempt to fly, although apparently but a stone’s throw ahead of us. Our captain was the only one in my hearing who seemed to doubt their being taken: ‘The d——d scamps know too well,’ said he, ‘what their craft can do, to trust themselves so near us.’ We now appeared close on board of them, and the chase well under way, when each fired a gun in defiance or derision, and darted off like birds. It was now nearly dark, and we were not far from land, for which one of the schooners seemed to fly right before the wind, closely pursued by the frigate, under all the canvass she could set. The other put out to sea, close-hauled upon the wind. The brig and transport, the fastest craft in the fleet, crowded all sail, but without nearing the schooner, as she could lie at least two points more to windward than her pursuers. They both escaped! The frigate being disabled, by springing her fore-top-mast, gave up the chase; the others relinquished the pursuit as fruitless, and rejoined the fleet.

The night was extremely dark; and the next morning two large vessels were missing. It seemed that the privateers had returned, and hovering around, watched their opportunity, and captured two of our most richly-freighted ships; but as those seas were swarming with British cruisers, they were shortly re-captured and sent to England, where the whole fleet soon arrived. The West-India fleet came into port about the same time; and the amount of wealth brought into London by the safe arrival of the Bengal, China, and West-India fleets, must have been almost incredible. For myself, I was consigned to a dreary prison, ‘as will more particularly appear’ in an ensuing number.

A VERITABLE SEA STORY.

BY HARRY FRANCO.

‘THE sea, the sea, the o—pen sea, the blue, the fresh;’ but here we halt;

Mr. CORNWALL knew very little about the sea, or he would have written SALT.

‘The whales they whistled, the porpoise rolled,

And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;’

Worse and worse; more blunders than words, and such a jumble!

Whales spout, but never whistle; dolphins’ backs are silver; and porpoises never roll, but tumble.

‘It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,

And like a cradled creature lies,’ and squalls,

He should have added; but to avoid brawls

With the poet’s friends I’ll quote no more; but entre nous,

Those who write correctly about the sea are exceeding few.

Young DANA with us, and MARRYAT over the water, [1]

Are all the writers that I know of, who appear to have brought a

Discerning eye to bear on that peculiar state of existence,

An ocean life, which looks so romantic at a distance.

To succeed where every body else fails, would be an uncommon glory,

While to fail would be no disgrace; so I am resolved to try my hand upon a sea-story.

In naming sea-authors, I omitted COOPER, CHAMIER, SUE, and many others,

Because they appear to have gone to sea without asking leave of their mothers:

For those good ladies never could have consented that their boys should dwell on

An element that Nature never fitted them to excel on.

Their descriptions are so fine, and their tars so exceedingly flowery,

They appear to have gathered their ideas from some naval spectacle at the ‘Bowery;’

And in fact I have serious doubts whether either of them ever saw blue water,

Or ever had the felicity of saluting the ‘gunner’s daughter.’

It was on board of the packet ——, from feelings deferential

To private griefs, I omit all facts that are non-essential:

To Havre we were bound, and passengers there were four of us,

Three men and a lady—not an individual more of us.

The month was July, the weather warm and hazy,

The sea smooth as glass, the winds asleep or lazy.

Dull times of course, for the sea, though favorable to the mind’s expansion,

Yet keeps the body confined to a very few feet of stanchion.

Our employments were nought save eating, drinking and sleeping,

Excepting the lady, who a diary was keeping.

She was a very pleasant person though fat, and a long way past forty,

Which will of course prevent any body from thinking any thing naughty.

A very pleasant person, but such an enormous feeder,

That our captain began to fear she might prove a famine-breeder;

A sort of female Falstaff, fond of jokes and gay society,

Cards, claret, eau-de-vie, and a great hater of sobriety.

Her favorite game at cards she acknowledged was ecarté,

But like Mrs. Battle, she loved whist, and we soon made up a party.

We played from morn till night, and then from night till morning,

Although the captain, who was pious, continually gave us warning.

That time so badly spent would lead to some disaster;

At which Madame G—— would laugh, and only deal the faster.

Breakfast was served at eight, and as soon as it was ended

Round flew the cards; and the game was not suspended

Until seven-bells struck, when we stopped a while for lunch,

To allow Madame time to imbibe her allowance of punch;

This done, at work we went, with heated blood and flushed faces,

Talking of kings, queens, knaves, tricks, clubs and aces.

At six bells (three P. M.,) we threw down our cards and went to dinner,

Where Madame never missed her appetite, whether she had been a loser or a winner;

Then up from the almonds and raisins, and down again to the queens and aces,

We had only to remove from one end of the table to the other to resume our places;

Another pause at six, P. M., for in spite of all our speeches,

Madame’s partner would lay down his cards for the sake of pouchong and brandy peaches;

Being French and polite, of course, she only said ‘Eh bien!’ but no doubt thought him a lubber,

For a cup of washy tea to break in upon her rubber.

At four bells (ten P. M.,) up from the cards and down again at the table,

To drink champaigne and eat cold chicken as long as we were able:

With very slight variations this was the daily life we led,

Breakfast, whist; lunch, whist; dinner, whist; supper, whist; and then to bed.

The sea, for aught we know, was like that which Coleridge’s mariners sailed on;

We never looked at it, nor the sky, nor the stars; and our captain railed on,

But still we played, until one day there was a sudden dismemberment of our party;

We had dined on soup à la tortu, (made of pig’s feet,) of which Madame ate uncommonly hearty;

And had just resumed our game; it was her cut, but she made no motion;

‘Cut, Madame,’ said I; ‘Good Heavens!’ exclaimed her partner, ‘I’ve a notion

That she has cut for good; quick! help her! she’s falling!’

And the next moment on the floor of the cabin she lay sprawling.

Poor Madame! It was in vain that we tried hartshorne, bathing and bleeding;

Her spirit took its flight, tired to death of her high feeding:

For spirits are best content with steady habits and spare diet,

And will remain much longer in a tabernacle where they can enjoy repose and quiet

Than in a body that is continually uneasy with stuffing,

And goes about like an overloaded porter, sweating and puffing.

The next morning at four-bells, the sun was just uprisen,

Glowing with very joy to leave his watery prison;

The bright cerulean waves with golden scales were crested,

Forming the fairest scene on which my eyes had ever rested;

The wind was S. S. W., and when they let go the main-top bowline

To square the after yards, our good ship stopped her rolling.

Madame lay on the quarter-deck sewed up in part of an old spanker,

And for this glorious sight of the ocean we had solely to thank her,

For to have kept her lying in the cabin would have caused some of us to feel qualmish,

And she could not have been kept on deck, as the weather was growing warmish;

Therefore it had been resolved in a kind of council, on the captain’s motion,

At sunrise to commit the old lady to the ocean.

She was placed upon a plank, resting upon the taffrail, (the stern railing,)

One end of which was secured by a bight of the trysail brailing.

The captain read the prayers, somewhat curtailed, but a just proportion,

The plank was raised, ‘Amen!’ the corpse dropped into the ocean.

Down in its deep mysterious caves she sunk to sleep with fishes,

While a few bubbles rose from her and burst as if in mockery of human wishes.

‘Up with your helm; brace round; haul out your bowlines;

Clear up the deck; keep her full; coil down your tow-lines!’

The ship was on her course, and not a word said to remind us

Of the melancholy fact that we had left one of our number behind us.

‘Shocking affair!’ I remarked to Madame’s partner, who looked solemn as a mummy,

‘O! horrid!’ said he; ‘I shall now be compelled to play with a Dummy!’

ON A PASSAGE IN MACBETH.

‘Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.’

MACBETH.

LET us put on one side for a few moments the horrid midnight murder of the gracious Duncan. Let us suppose of the buried majesty of Scotland,

——‘Upward to Heaven he took his flight,

If ever soul ascended!’

Let us for the moment imagine Mrs. Siddons to have been the veritable Lady Macbeth, and acknowledge that never was man more powerfully tempted into evil, nor more deeply punished with his fall from Virtue, than this, the Thane of Glamis and of Cawdor. My concernment in this Essay is neither with his virtue, nor his fall. I neither come to praise, nor bury Cæsar:

‘Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.’

In the reading I desire should be here given to the language of the immortal bard, it will be perceived that the last pronoun is made emphatic. ‘Get thee to bed.’

The household of the castle of Macbeth, excited and disturbed as its members had been throughout the day by the unexpected arrival of the King of Scotland at Inverness, are now subsiding into rest. The King has retired. His suite are provided for in various parts of the quadrangle; and all the tumultuary sounds of preparation and of festive enjoyment have followed the departed day; and Banquo charged with a princely gift to the Lady Macbeth under the title of most kind hostess, from her confiding and now slumbering monarch, has paid his compliments and gone.

Now comes the deeper stillness, and the witching hour of that eventful night; and the noble Thane, having gone the rounds of his hushed castle to place all entrances under both watch and ward, turns to his torch-bearer, the last remaining household servant of the train, and dismisses him with the message I have read. The words excite no surprise in the mind of the attendant. He receives the command and departs upon his errand; to deliver it as had doubtless been his office before, and then retire for the night:

‘Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell.’

Admired Editor, I have now that to say in thine ear that may possibly startle thy preceptions, shock thy wishes, and for the moment interfere with thy store of tragick recollection. I would have thee imagine with me, that Macbeth, stifling all murderous intent, and all disloyal thought, had honestly gone down at the sound of the bell, and, as must have been his wont as is shewn from the manner in which his attendant receives the charge, had soberly partaken of the warm and grateful drink his noble partner had prepared for his refreshing and composing use.

Imagine the illustrious and majestick pair, their household having entirely withdrawn, seated in the deep silence of the night, on either side of a small table as was their happy wont, and gently, calmly, dispassionately, and elegantly sipping that prepared beverage; that ‘drink made ready’ by hands then yet innocent and spotless. Imagine the ingredients of which that dilution must have been composed! Not wine for wine is always ‘ready.’ O call it not by any other W! Let it not be named Glenlivet; think not upon Ferintosh. It was PURE REALITY IN THE LUSTRE OF A MILD GLORIFICATION, mingled with droppings of the dew of morning.

They say that the mind of man is a mere bundle of associations, and that our success in moving it to our purpose depends on our awakening the most powerful, or most agreeable of them. I know not of what associations that of the reader may be composed; but for my own part I think a little warm drink before going to bed upon a night when owls hoot and chimnies are to be blown down, prepared by the small hands that one loves, and that all admire; where a dimple takes place of what in a plebeian hand is a knuckle, and the round fingers taper gently off toward points that are touched with damask and bordered with little rims of ivory; where bright eyes beam with kindness as well as wit; and words fall in silvery tones from a beautifully-formed mouth, like the renewal of life upon the soul of man! I think where one could enjoy all this, it was a monstrous act of folly on the part of Macbeth to fret about the principality of Cumberland, or covet even the whole kingdom of Scotland. For my own part I must say, give me the warm drink and the sweet companionship of that night, and let old Duncan with a hearty welcome sleep up to his heart’s content the whole ‘ravelled sleeve of care!’

Oh Woman! dear, good, kind, blessed, beautiful Woman! chosen of Heaven (and O how well!) for the meet companion of our otherwise forlorn race! is there a moment throughout that whole circle of the Sun which we call Day more sweet to us, than that which follows the well-performed duties of our lot and that gives thee altogether to us at its close, gentle, refined, affectionate, soothing, bland, and unreserved? The hour that precedes retirement for the night, when the early luxury of languor begins to take possession of the senses? When the eyes are not heavy, but threaten to become so, and long silken lashes first make love to each other? When it is time to confine part of that rich hair en papilotte and fold the whole into that pretty cap; to place the feet in small graceful slippers, and let ease put fashion tastefully on one side in the arrangement of the dress?

Doubtless there is a period during the delirium of youthful fancy when the calmer pleasures are unappreciated at their value, but the Andante of existence follows the Allegro of boyhood; its precious strains fall deeper and more touchingly upon the Sense; and the full Soul longs to yield itself to them, and to share its emotions with the beloved one in tones heard only in her ivory ear——how beautiful! Oh pure of heart, how beautiful!——and, when the belle, still delighting to please, has become the friend; and the mistress, still fascinating, the wife; and one interest, one faith, one hope, one joy, one passion, one life, animate both hearts——oh then,

‘Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,

She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.’

JOHN WATERS.

THE SMITHY.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

THERE was a little smithy at the comer of the road,

In the village where, when life glow’d fresh and bright, was my abode;

A little slab-roof’d smithy, of a stain’d and dusky red,

An ox-frame standing by the door, and at one side a shed;

The road was lone and pleasant, with margins grassy-green,

Where browsing cows and nibbling geese from morn till night were seen.

High curl’d the smoke from the humble roof with dawning’s earliest bird,

And the tinkle of the anvil first of the village sounds was heard;

The bellows-puff, the hammer-beat, the whistle and the song,

Told, steadfastly and merrily, Toil roll’d the hours along,

Till darkness fell, and the smithy then with its forge’s clear deep light

Through chimney, window, door, and cleft, poured blushes on the night.

The morning shows its azure breast and scarf of silvery fleece,

The margin-grass is group’d with cows, and spotted with the geese;

On the dew-wet green by the smithy, there’s a circle of crackling fire,

Hurrah! how it blazes and curls around the coal-man’s welded tire!

While o’er it, with tongs, are the smith and his man, to fit it when cherry-red,

To the tilted wheel of the huge grim’d ark in the back-ground of the shed.

There’s a stony field on the ridge to plough, and Brindle must be shod,

And at noon, through the lane from the farm-house, I see him slowly plod;

In the strong frame, chewing his cud, he patiently stands, but see!

The bands have been placed around him—he struggles to be free:

But John and Timothy hammer away, until each hoof is arm’d,

Then loosen’d Brindle looks all round, as if wondering he’s unharm’d.

Joe Matson’s horse wants shoeing, and at even-tide he’s seen,

An old gray sluggish creature, with his master on the green;

Within the little smithy old Dobbin Matson draws,

There John is busily twisting screws, and Timothy filing saws;

The bellows sleeps, the forge is cold, and twilight dims the room,

With anvil, chain, and iron bar, faint glimmering through the gloom.

I stand beside the threshhold and gaze upon the sight,

The doubtful shape of the old gray horse, and the points of glancing light:

But hark! the bellows wakens, out dance the sparks in air,

And now the forge is raked high up, now bursts it to a glare;

How brightly and how cheerily the sudden glow outbreaks,

And what a charming picture of the humble room it makes!

It glints upon the horse-shoes on the ceiling-rafters hung,

On the anvil and the leaning sledge its quivering gleams are flung;

It touches with bronze the smith and his man, and it bathes old dozing gray,

And a blush is fixed on Matson’s face in the broad and steady ray;

One moment more, and the iron is whirl’d with fierce and spattering glow,

And swank! swank! swank! rings the sledge’s smite, tink! tink! the hammer’s blow.

‘Whoa, Dobbin!’ says Tim, as he pares the hoof, ‘whoa! whoa!’ as he fits the shoe,

And the click of the driving nails is heard, till the humble toil is through;

Pleas’d Matson mounts his old gray steed, and I hear the heavy beat

Of the trotting hoofs, up the corner road, till the sounds in the distance fleet:

And I depart with grateful joy to the King of earth and heaven,

That e’en to life in its lowliest phase, such interest should be given.

THE FINE ARTS.

A FEW HINTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIZE IN ITS RELATION TO THE FINE ARTS.

BY GEORGE HARVEY.

IT is a common remark made by most persons who visit the mightiest cataract in the world, that it fails to impress one’s mind with that just idea of its grandeur which truly belongs to its vastness, and which is always formed from attentively reading or listening to a correct verbal or written description of it. Even the most faithful drawings cannot awaken an adequate conception of the majesty, the greatness of NIAGARA. Now the law of optics will serve to convince us that this must ever be so, since the image formed in the dark chamber of the eye is exceedingly small; and as the Falls are always approached gradually from a distance, the surrounding landscape occupies by far the largest portion of the field of vision; hence the descending stream can only sustain a subordinate part in the general view; but when you have approached the very verge of the precipice over which the rolling waters rush with maddening roar; or when, from beneath, you stand upon the piles of broken rocks, and look upward or around, and can only embrace a small portion of the falling waters; then and then only, do the anticipated emotions crowd upon the soul, causing it to stand in trembling awe, vibrating in unison with the fragments of the fallen precipice upon which you tread.

I remember some years since, in looking at an image of the ‘American Falls’ reflected in a camera-obscura which was built on the opposite shore, noticing how extremely insignificant it appeared, notwithstanding the table of vision was five feet in diameter. The descending foam as it was unevenly projected in billowy masses, appeared to move very slowly in its downward course, causing a feeling of impatience at its tardiness: in truth, the whole scene looked very tame and unsatisfactory, and I could not help remarking to a friend who was with me, how utterly impossible it would be for any artist to be thought successful in an attempt to represent them. Nevertheless I made some twenty sketches from as many different points of view; one only of which has procured any commendation, as conveying an idea of the grandeur of the Great Cataract. It is evident therefore that what the eye can take in at one look will never of itself impress the mind with those sublime emotions which we conceive should belong to vastness. Yet there is a physical attribute belonging to subjects having this property of vastness, that will command more attention than the same scene upon a small scale: but the mind must be impressed with the fact, and must draw largely upon it for any emotion of the sublime. It is therefore upon this principle that large portraits will command from the multitude more applause than small miniatures; large oil-paintings than small water-color drawings. The statues on the outside of the Grecian temples were colossal, yet in their position they looked small. Most of the works of Michael Angelo are so; but in consequence of the distance at which they are seen, they lose greatly their power to produce grand ideas, because in all cases the image formed upon the optic nerve varies but little in its actual size; since the distance at which things are viewed is in some degree regulated by the size: thus before a large picture, you must station yourself at a relative distance, so as to embrace the whole, while before the small drawing you must be within arm’s reach; or if a miniature portrait, it must be seen within a few inches, thus making the mirrored picture on the eye vary but little in actual size.

These few hints will readily account for the mortification experienced by many artists who have painted exceedingly impressive pictures when they are seen in the studios where they were executed, but when they are taken into a large gallery or rotunda, seem lost and look insignificant, save to the few of cultivated minds, who may take the trouble to approach within a proper distance, and shut out all objects which interfere or intrude, and which prevent a true appreciation of their merits. The knowing, time-serving artists, who paint exhibition pictures, have long since understood this law; and accordingly they paint up to what is called ‘exhibition-pitch,’ where brilliance and flashiness of color, with an absence of detail, which might interfere with breadth of effect, are of the first importance. Attention is also given to masses of light and shade, that all the forms introduced in the picture may have their due prominence; and a judicious balancing of warm and cool tints, by which harmony is produced, and the eye prevented from being offended by its evident exaggeration of the ‘modesty of nature.’

TURNER may be instanced as the most successful in this style of painting, which he has followed to such an extreme, that his pictures are now attractive only at a great distance, for when they are seen near by, they fail to please, if they do not produce positive disgust. Report represents him as having accumulated upward of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, which he could only have done by adopting this distant, effective style; for if he had continued to finish his pictures in the same manner as he did those of his early works, which procured for him the foundation of his present wide-spread reputation, he would not have realized one eighth of that sum. To paint one of the former, costs but a few hours’ labor, but one of the latter would employ many days if not weeks; yet the momentary effect of pleasure derived from seeing the one is greater than that of the other. Hence those who visit exhibitions, having but a limited time, are gratified; but place one of the chaste productions of CLAUDE LORRAINE, who diligently followed nature with all the tenderness of a modest student, by the side of one of the tinsel class, and observe the ultimate effect. The former will gradually win your admiration, and continue to arouse pleasing reminiscences; the latter will finally lose its charm, and be regarded with something of the feeling with which one looks upon the ornamental paper of a room. We have had many exhibitions of single large pictures, such as DUBUFE’S ‘Don Juan,’ which have produced handsome returns to those who have purchased them for such speculating purposes. The parties have been well aware of the physical effects of size; for had the same subjects been painted upon a small scale, though equally well executed, they would have been less attractive to the multitude; yet the smaller ones would have reflected the same sized images in the camera of the eye; since, as I have already hinted, to see them properly they must be viewed at short distances, as the large pictures must be at greater proportionate ones.

I will here digress for a moment, in the hope that I may be permitted to make mention of my own works, without incurring the charge of undue egotism. Let me, however, by way of apology for calling public attention to the series of forty small Water-Color Drawings, (painted con amore, and with no idea of gain,) which are now before the public, mention the fact, that the commencement of their publication was owing to a suggestion of Gen. CASS, who urged me to undertake the enterprise while I was in Paris. The drawings then consisted of half the present number of landscape views; the localities and subjects of the latter half have been chosen with the purpose of writing appropriate chapters illustrating the progress of civilization and of refinement in the northern part of this continent. The foregoing brief remark applies only to their publication; for their origin dates back to the halcyon days of early life, when I had but just passed my teens; when boyish enthusiasm lends a charm to every dream that finds a home in the fancy or the heart. Then it was that the latent wish was formed of being able, at some future day, to paint the History of the Day; and to carry out this impulsive feeling, I have been brought into sweet communion with divine Nature; and oh! how bounteously has she repaid my studious contemplation with infinite delight! It is not for me to speak of the results. There they are; and every lover of the country may judge of the degree of success I have achieved. I am not so certain that I have equal ability in the use of the pen. The chapters of the first number will speak for themselves; but I must not omit to acknowledge the many obligations I am under to WASHINGTON IRVING, for the friendly revision of my ms. He has given many an elegant turn to a prose sentence, and clothed rude images with graceful drapery. But to resume.

Since then it follows that a small picture, being viewed at its proper focal distance, reflects the same sized image as a larger one at its proper focal distance, I can see no good reason why the physical attribute of largeness should be so eagerly sought for by the public. Surely a gallery of small pictures, provided they be not painfully small, should be preferred to one filled with large ones. We see the principle I am contending for carried out in libraries. The ordinary sized volumes are preferred, for most purposes, to the cumbrous tomes of large folio editions. It is true, a large book will produce in the minds of many persons greater respect than a miniature copy of the same work; but the ideas contained in the one are no better or more impressive than the same contained in that of the other; save the feeling with which the larger one inspires the votary who looks no farther than the outside of the page. The series of forty landscapes alluded to in the above digression, if viewed at the focal distance of eighteen inches, will appear as large as those twice the size, viewed at their proportionate increased distance. An elaborately finished picture, to be seen to advantage, must be examined near by. A coarser work, theatrical scenes for instance, painted for distant effect, must be seen accordingly, if you would secure pleasurable emotions. As a general approximative rule, the focal distance at which the spectator should stand in viewing works of art is to be found by measuring the same length from the picture as its size: Thus, one of ten feet in length is to be viewed at that distance; one of eighteen inches at about twenty inches; a small miniature of six inches, at about eight inches. If the work should have no detail, this rule will not hold good; but if there is a faithful transcript of Nature; and she ever delights in unobtrusive beauties, which are particularly obvious in the fore-ground, for she strews them at your feet; then if you approach the artist’s effort, a work of patient diligence, you can hold converse with her through the medium of his labors.

I do not attempt to deny the importance of size in winning our first regard: it is a law inseparable from the thing itself; but I must protest against the taste of the age being supplied always with mere physical attributes. The purling stream and babbling brook; the small rill falling from on high, till its feathery stream is lost in mist, are and should be as much sought after as the roaring torrent or the thundering cascade. The effect of the one is to produce awe, that of the other tranquil pleasure. The human mind is not always to be upon the stretch; to remain lifted up as it were upon stilts; our common communion is to be found in enjoyments that are quietly exciting. It is a common remark, that the English language has lost some of its truthfulness by our habit of expressing ourselves in the language of superlatives, through a desire to astonish. Thus we leave nothing for the innate love of truth; nothing to work out the necessary sympathy. Is not this parallel with the desire to see large pictures?—and should it not receive some regulation from those who have the requisite influence?

I find the few hints to which in the outset I proposed to confine myself have grown to a greater length than was intended. I will therefore, in closing, simply reiterate the remark, that I see no good reason why the painter of a large picture (or the work itself) should be regarded with more favor than he who paints equally well, but limits the size, unless we consider the white-wash brush a nobler instrument than the camel’s-hair pencil.

LIFE: A SONNET.

WHENCE? whither? where?—a taper-point of light,

My life and world—the infinite around;

A sea, not even highest thought can sound;

A formless void; unchanging, endless night.

In vain the struggling spirit aims its flight

To the empyrean, seen as is a star,

Sole glimmering through the hazy night afar;

In vain it beats its wings with daring might.

What yonder gleams?—what heavenly shapes arise

From out the bodiless waste? Behold the dawn,

Sent from on high! Uncounted ages gone,

Burst full and glorious on my wondering eyes;

Sun-clear the world around, and far away

A boundless future sweeps in golden day.

J. G. PERCIVAL.

TWO PICTURES.

‘THE glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.’—ST. PAUL.

LOVE CELESTIAL.

I SEE his face illumined by a beatific light,

That tells me he is dying fast; the shadows of the night

Are passing from his saintly brow and sunken eye away,

But he looks beyond them and beholds a never-ending day.

Nay, wonder not that I am calm; the fleeting things of earth

Are passing with the flight of time, to their eternal birth:

I feel that death will shed on him a halo like the sun,

And I shall share it with him, when my pilgrimage is done.

How quickly fades the earthly frame, and with it too, how fast

The agony and sorrow of our mortal doom are past;

And when the sight of worldly wo weighs heavy on the breast,

How welcome is the voice from GOD, that speaks to us of rest!

O! painfully the pangs of life his fading frame have worn,

But blessed be our FATHER’S love, that dwells with those who mourn;

And though the grave must rend apart our sweet affection’s bond,

On this side is the night, but all is luminous beyond.

I know that more he loves my soul than its transitory shrine,

And did I prize the vase alone, when all it held was mine?

Let hallowed dust return to dust, give Nature what she gave,

For all that dearest was to me, is victor o’er the grave.

Triumphant will his spirit rise to the Eternal throne,

Triumphant wear a crown of light, by earthly trials won:

And mid the friends who went before, the angel, sin-forgiven,

Shall feel that they can part no more, when once they meet in heaven.

True, I shall look on him no more, but he will gaze on me;

Sweet thought! he from his holy sphere my guiding-star will be,

Till purified; and hallowed from every earthly tie,

I share with him that smile of GOD, which lights the world on high!

LOVE TERRESTRIAL.

THEY tell me he is dying, yet I look upon his brow,

And never seemed it half so fair, so beautiful as now;

A radiance lightens from his eye, too lovely for the tomb,

Too living, for the shadowy realm where all is grief and gloom.

They tell me he will surely die—and so at last must all;

I know that the Destroyer’s blight on all mankind must fall;

Alas! that we of mortal birth thus hurry to decay,

And all we fondly cherish here must fleet so fast away!

But oh, not now! it is indeed a fearful sight to see

The pangs of death their shadows fling on one so dear to me;

Nay, speak not of another world, I only think of this,

I have no heart to nurse the hope that looks to future bliss.

Perhaps ’tis time; he is not formed for length of happy years,

But wherefore darken thus my days with wild distracting fears?

If we must part, oh! let me live in rapture while I may;

Though hope must darken, while it lasts, let nothing cloud its ray.

Oh, bid me cherish brighter thoughts; my loving soul can tell

How sad will be the hour to him that speaks the last farewell;

I know his heart is agonized by the approaching doom,

I know he loves me better than the cold and fearful tomb!

It is in vain they speak to me of bliss beyond the sky;

This saddening thought afflicts my heart, that if indeed he die,

The light that cheered my earthly love will seem obscure and dim,

While he abides in purer realms, and I still live for him.

I know that holier hopes and joys around his soul will weave,

While he among angelic loves, unconscious that I grieve,

Will ne’er look down to see me weep, nor breathe a single sigh;

O, GOD! it is a fearful thought—and this it is to die!

B.

THE HERMIT OF THE PRAIRIE.

BY PETER VON GEIST.

‘TO him who in the love of nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.’

BRYANT.

WEDNESDAY, June twenty-first. How little do people who ride along in their carriages, or rattle over the ground in stage-coaches, or rush over its surface in rail-cars, know of the pleasures of travelling! They roll over the country; they cannot be said to pass through it. They may see new rivers, new mountains, and new faces; but for all the good the last does them, they might as well have stood on the corner of the street in a city half a day, and watched the passers-by. And better too; for hotel-keepers, and waiters, and the whole tribe of public functionaries, have all an artificial, professional look; so that it is difficult to come at their real characters, if indeed they have any. The same is the case, to some extent, with their fellow-passengers. All are so absorbingly interested in their own brilliant thoughts; or they deem it incumbent on them to assume the dignity and authority befitting persons in high stations; (which dignity at home, by the by, is put one side into a dark corner and never thought of,) that it is about as profitable an undertaking to attempt to find out the personal feelings and sentiments of a mask, as theirs.

But here am I, walking stoutly and merrily along, unincumbered with luggage or care; and because I do not care what the next day or hour may bring forth, every thing seems to turn up just as I would have it if I had the ordering of events. I shall not pause to offer any philosophical conjectures as to the reason why we are invariably disappointed in our conclusions, (excepting they are mathematical ones) concerning the future; merely asking the amiable reader whether he ever knew such an anticipation to be exactly realized. I shall not stop to make any such conjectures, because I should only get deeper into the dark, and I am in deep enough for comfort now; and secondly, it is against my principles. I am living out of doors, and make mention only of things out of doors.

But I trudge stoutly forward, whistling as I go; making myself as agreeable as possible to myself and to every body whom I meet; on jocose terms with every thing; decidedly agricultural in my tastes and pursuits, at every farmer’s house where I happen to put up for the night: at one place in search of employment as a day-laborer; at another, an artist; by turns every thing. Is not this the way to travel? My steps wander where they choose; and if I keep on to the end of the earth, what will it matter? I will go to the north; assume the dress, language and manners of those who dwell within the frozen circle; I will become a Greenlander; I will go and preach the religion of Mohammed to the inhabitants of Patagonia; I will brush up the gods of Rome; dust that old mythology; compound and simplify the whole into a good, comfortable, believable system, and proclaim Olympian Jove in the deserts of Amazonia. I will be a Turk, an Indian, a Pirate; I will be any thing. What do I care, and who shall say me nay? This sensation of freedom is too delicious to be interrupted by any companionship. And for my part, I want no better companions than this wind, which free as I am, blows against my cheek, and those clouds, that fly in unending succession over my head. O! ye blue chariots of the Thunderer! whither hurry ye so rapidly? Over hill and valley, and countries and cities of men, ye fly unheeding; and borne forward on the swift pinions of the wind, ye speed on your mission afar! What to you are states, and kingdoms, or land or ocean? Furiously driving in black armies to meet opposing armies, or singly floating in that waveless sea of blue, your existence is above the earth; men look up to you with wonder or terror, but your glance is never downward. Onward ye wander, in your unbounded career, at your own free will. Nothing bounds my career or my will. Fleecy ears! if ye would sustain the form of a mortal, triumphantly would you and I sail over the heads of men! Softly, obedient to the impulse of chance, would we glide over continent and sea, and explore the mysteries of undiscovered islands and climes; calmly would I look down on the strife or toil of human passions, and calmly would we ride on forever, through night and day! But if the clouds are not, the earth is, mine—and I am my own! There are none to molest or make me afraid with the useless importunities or warnings of friendship. My destiny is my own; and it is pleasant not to care what I may be or do. Pleasure is now; sorrow is prospective; and life will be only pleasure, because I let the past and the future go, and crowd as many happy thoughts as possible into the present moment.

What a spacious plain of the world! Dotted with habitations and with men of all colors, and customs, and conditions! Every one thinks he possesses a soul; and in virtue thereof, he considers himself entitled to set up as an independent existence, and endeavors to move in a little path of his own. But in fact, he plods humbly along, and repeats with patient toil the example of labor and unspeculating perseverance that his fathers have set him. A vast multitude, they darken the land! Mighty hopes and aspirations swell each small bosom. Each imagines that his designs are peculiar, and for him in particular was every thing mainly made. An unceasing rush of footsteps and clash of voices! And must I be confounded in the crowd? Let me preserve my individuality in the desert! If I were not an insect, it might be different; but as I am no larger than other men, I will not daily measure myself by their standard; I will forget in solitude the littleness of my stature.

The shades of evening tinge the green of the fields with a darker hue; and the young farmer goes wearily and yet lightly homeward. Lightly, for he leaves behind him labor and trouble, and his fair-haired wife will greet him with her constant and love-lit smile. Cheerily will the small family draw around their board, covered with the simple and satisfying products of their own soil. And when all care is ended, when night is duskily stealing over the earth, he and his bride will sit down alone in their cottage door, in the red light of the western clouds. Over all the dim landscape there are no sights or sounds; and in themselves there are no feelings but those of contentment and love. In his strong palm her soft hand, on his broad breast reclining her head, their hearts are filled and overflow with sweet thoughts and gentle words of present happiness. Fair prospects also of the future rise up before them. Many years crowned with prosperity they see in store for them; and in each one, many an evening like this, of deep confiding love. Hour after hour, into the deepening night, their low tones and slow words murmur on brokenly; and they know of nothing in all the world that is wanting to their blessedness. What if the dream should last all their life? It may; or if this passes away, another will take its place. The question then seems to be, whether it is better to live in a delusion and be happy, or to wake and be miserable? Whether it is profitable for a man to walk joyfully through life, covering and coloring over every defect in human nature that he may love it, and keep within him a contented heart, or industriously spy out its deformities, and hate it and himself for possessing it? If nature is in reality naked and rugged, happy is he whose imagination can throw over her a robe of grace. Most happy he who can see in his fellow-creatures such qualities that he can love them. For me, I will love sterner scenes and sterner thoughts. Human beauty is an illusion; and it does not become the sober wisdom of manhood to be deceived by it. The young farmer and his young wife may be happy; and so may those who find delight in the crowded hall where taste and beauty meet; where are the sounds of clear-ringing, girlish voices, and many glancing feet, and the innumerable light of maiden’s eyes, and heavy folds of auburn hair, and the flush of thought and emotion continually passing over fair faces, with the swell of music that thrills, and the air laden with fragrance that intoxicates. Or in the still twilight, by the side of her whose every note makes his pulse to tremble with the breathing of song, and the incense of flowers, and forgetfulness of the world, to feel the thought stealing over his heart that perhaps he is not uncared for. It is sweet, but vain; sweet and vain as the smiling, blushing slumber of a young girl. Dream on! dream on! for if you can always sleep, what will matter to you the storms and confusion without?

But as for me, I cannot sleep. Every thing my eye rests on is harsh and ungraceful, because, having passed through the seven-times heated furnace, I must look through the covering and see the reality.

MOONLIGHT ON THE RIVER AND PRAIRIE.

WEARILY I mount this steep eminence, and on its bald summit take off my hat, that I may feel the cool breeze. It comes fresh with the dew that it has snatched in its flight from the bosom of Lake Superior. It rolls over the tall grass of the prairie, which bends beneath its weight, sighs by me, and seems to cling to me as it passes, and moves on toward the arid plains of the South. The Ohio sweeps down in calmness and majesty. With its surface of quicksilver, and the little waves dancing up in gladness, and its heavy dull wash, it rolls along its mighty mass of waters, hastening to pour itself into the mightier mass of the Mississippi. Occasionally a giant tree, torn from its place, and cast root and branch into the flood, comes booming down, and glides swiftly past on its long, long race. Pleasantly the ripples break over the prostrate monarch of the forest that is lodged against the beach, and projects, branchless and barkless, into the stream; and mournfully the worn trunk sways up and down, as though tired of this rocking which has continued the same year after year; weary, and desiring to be at rest. Floods come rushing down upon floods with heavy tread, glance successively under the moonlight that is poured into the channel before me, and then are forced forward into the darkness of the future. But every wave seems as full of joy as though for it alone was the moonlight sent, and as though there were not unnumbered millions of waves to succeed it. Every little wave leaps up as it comes under the light, and smiles toward the round-faced orb above, who seems to smile back upon it. Thou small thing, thou art a fool! The queen, in the beam of whose countenance thou disportest thyself, is altogether deceitful and loves thee not. She has smiled as kindly on thousands who have gone before thee, and will upon thousands who shall come after thee. And more than all, she would send down just as bright and loving a glance, if thou and all thy race had never existed. How then canst thou say, ‘I love her,’ or, ‘she loves me?’

But perhaps it is not so. When I look again, each one of the great multitude appears aware of its own insignificance. Jostled, confined, crowded and confused, they go tumbling by, regardless of all above or below, and engrossed with their own fleeting existence. Not remembering whence they came, they take no thought of the present, and are utterly careless of the future. For what would it profit? Their business, and it is business enough, is to dispute and fight with each other for room to move in. All thoughts as to whither they are hastening, must be doubtful, angry and despairing; and care of any thing present, except what concerns the present instant, would be useless. Therefore they resign themselves to be drawn onward and downward unresistingly; and therein are they wise. But whether joyful, or despairing, or not feeling at all, the waters roll by, an unceasing flood; and with their rushing dull roar in my ear, my eye rests on a scene of beauty and quietness. Far away to the northward and westward, and still farther away, stretches an immense plain. Rolling hillocks, like the waves of the sea after a storm, and at long intervals, a few stunted shrubs, alone diversify the prospect. Vast, unmeasured, Nature’s unenclosed meadow, the prairie, is spread out! The tall grass waves gently and rustlingly to the breeze; and down upon it settles the moonlight, in a dim silver-gossamer veil, like that which to the mind’s eye is thrown over the mountains and ruins and castles of the Old World, by the high-born daring and graces of chivalry, the wand of Genius, and the lapse of solemn years. With the same painful feeling of boundlessness, of vastness that will not be grasped by the imagination, that one feels in sailing on the ocean, there is also an air of still, stern desolation brooding upon the plain. It may be that at some former day, the punishment of fire swept over it, consuming its towering offspring, and laying bare and scorching its bosom; and now the proud sufferer, naked and chained, endures the summer’s heat and the winter’s storms, with no sighing herbage or wailing tree to tell to the winds its wo.

A single snow-white cloud slumbers and floats far up in the heavens; the moon is gliding slowly down the western arch; and the vast dome, studded with innumerable brilliants, ‘fretted with golden fires,’ rests its northern and western edge on the plain, its southern on blue mountain-tops, its eastern on the forests, and shuts us, the river, the prairie, the moon and I, together and alone. And here will we dwell together alone! Sweet companions will ye be to me; and standing here on this eminence, I promise to love you. I promise to come here often, and to hold communion with you. I will put away all thoughts of sorrow, all swellings of bitterness, from my mind. Contentedly, calmly, unheedingly, will we let the years pass by; for what will it matter to us? Oh! ye are dear to me! Your voice is not heard, yet comes there constantly to my ear the murmur of your song. You speak to me in music and poetry; and while I listen, my thoughts revert only with shuddering to the vain world I have left behind. Thus let us converse always. This vaulted firmament which shuts down upon us now, let it be immoveable, and enclose us forever; here let the wanderings of the wanderer cease, and here will we live together and alone!

AND we have lived here many years. The lessons of my constant companions have calmed and elevated me to a gentler and better spirit. From them I have learned humility as well as self-reliance; while from the history of the actions and thoughts of men in past ages, I have learned perhaps something of the machinery of human nature. The forms of the noblest of preceding generations, and the shapes of beauty which their imaginations have conceived and made to live, visit me at my bidding. But among all the pictures that daily rise up before my eyes, the brightest, the most beautiful, the most loved, are the sweet faces of the friends of my early years. There are no regrets or repinings when I look back now; it must be that it has all been for the best, that every thing is for the best, and I am at peace. The recollection of madness and folly, of a life useless, of energies wasted, do not disturb the calmness of my soul. The error has been great, but I feel it; and in the next state of existence I shall be wiser and more active. If I have wantonly and recklessly turned away from the offered happiness of society and of the world, it has, in the end, been better for me, for I have found another, a purer and more lasting.

Thus I look cheerfully on, and see the sands of my life run out. They fall faster and faster, as their number is diminished, and time flies by me with constantly accelerating speed. ‘Oh, my days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle!’—the last one I see but a little distance before me; it will soon be here; and I shall step forth with a joyful, courageous heart, into the indistinct, dimly-revealed future!

TRANSLATION FROM CATULLUS.

BY REV. GEORGE W. BETHUNE.

SUFFENUS, whom we both have known so well,

No other man in manners can excel;

Facetious, courteous, affable, urbane.

The world’s approval he is sure to gain.

But, would you think it? he has now essayed

To be a bard, and countless verses made;

Perhaps ten thousand, perhaps ten times more,

For none but he could ever count them o’er;

Not scribbled down on scraps, as one does when

In careless rhymes we only try our pen,

But in a gilt-edged book, all richly bound,

The writing ornate with a care profound,

Rich silken cords to mark each favorite part,

The cover, ev’n, a monument of art.

Yet as you read, Suffenus, who till then

Seemed the most pleasant of all gentlemen,

Becomes offensive as the country boor,

Who milks rank goats beside his cottage door,

Or digs foul ditches: such a change is wrought

By rhymes with neither sense nor music fraught.

So crazed is he with this same wretched rhyme,

That never does he know so blest a time

As when he writes away, and fondly deems

He rivals Homer’s god-enraptured dreams;

And wonders in his pride, himself to see,

The very pattern-pink of poesy.

Alas! Suffenus, while I laugh at thee,

The world, for aught I know, may laugh at me.

It is the madness of each one to pride

Himself on that ’twere better far to hide;

Nor know the faults in that peculiar sack

Which Æsop says is hanging at his back.

THE PAINTED ROCK.

BY CHARLES F. POWELL.

THE tract of country through which meanders the Tennessee river, for wild, sublime and picturesque scenery, is scarcely surpassed by any in the United States. This river was anciently called the Hogohege, and also Cherokee river: it takes its rise in the mountains of Virginia, in the thirty-seventh degree of latitude, and pursues a course of one thousand miles south and south-west nearly to the thirty-fourth degree of latitude, receiving from both sides large tributary streams. It then changes its direction to the north, circuitously winding until it mingles with the waters of the Ohio, sixty miles from its mouth. There is a place near the summit of the Cumberland mountains, which extends from the great Kenhawa to the Tennessee, where there is a very remarkable ledge of rocks, thirty miles in length and nearly two hundred feet high, showing a perpendicular face to the south-east, which for grandeur and magnificence surpass any fortification of art in the known world. It has been the modern hypothesis, that all the upper branches of the Tennessee formerly forced their way through this stupendous pile.

On the Tennessee, about four hundred and fifty miles from its mouth, and nearly two hundred above what is called Muscle-Shoals, there is another ledge of rocks stretching along the shore to the extent of one mile, with a perpendicular front toward the river, of the most perfect regularity. This ledge varies in height from thirty to three hundred feet, being much the highest at the centre, and diminishing at each end into ragged cliffs of rock and broken land. This variegated surface extends for many miles, affording a constant succession of fanciful and romantic views. The whole rocky formation in this vicinity is composed of a light gray lime-stone, indented with broad dark lines formed by the dripping of the water which falls from the scanty covering of soil on the top to the deep channel below. The thin surface of soil sustains a shabby, stinted growth of fir, oak, and other trees, which seldom grow above the height of tall shrubbery. From the crevices of the rock also may occasionally be seen a tree of diminutive dimensions springing out with scarcely a particle of visible sustenance for its roots. The shrubbery upon the peak of this acclivity presents a curious appearance as it hangs over the ascent, not unlike the bushy eye-brows of a sullen and frowning face. With this ledge of rocks terminate the Cumberland mountains, which cross the State of Tennessee to the margin of the river. The stream here flows nearly west, through a beautiful valley of alluvial land, formed by the Cumberland mountains and a continuation of the Blue Ridge of Virginia. Immediately opposite the termination of the Cumberland mountains commences a broken and rocky surface, which extends along the shore of the river for many miles, presenting the most varied and novel scenery in nature; while the other shore is level, fertile, and mostly in a high state of cultivation, abounding in verdant fields of meadow, corn and tobacco.

The middle portion of the ledge proper, which I have described, rises nearly or quite three hundred feet above the level of the river; a vast wall of solid lime-stone, echoing with never-ceasing moans the gurgling current of the river, which at this place is deep and very rapid; and has worn a series of caves and hollows in the base of the rock, which contribute greatly to this ‘language of the waters.’

The summit or peak of this ledge in the centre is called ‘The Painted Rock.’ It is so called from the fact of there being, about sixty feet below the highest peak, letters and characters painted in different colors, and evidently drawn by a tutored hand. What is most remarkable, these paintings are upon the perpendicular face of the rock, probably two hundred feet above the river, and in a place where there is no apparent possibility for mortal man to arrive. They are composed of the initials of two persons, together with characters and drawings, some of which are illegible from the river. The first consists of the letters ‘J. W. H.,’ quite well done in dark blue or green paint. The next is ‘A. L. S.,’ done in red, and also a trefoil leaf of clover in green, beside several rude characters and drawings in blue and red. The traveller passing this interesting spot gazes with wonder and astonishment, but is referred to tradition for a history of the circumstances which led to the name of Painted Rock; for the paintings were drawn and the name given, long before the country was permanently settled by the whites. The story handed down is this:

The original possessors of the soil in this part of the country were the tribes of Cherokee and Chicasaw Indians. The country was explored as early as 1745, by a company who had grants of land from the government, and settlements commenced previous to the French war. Of the first-comers of whites there were not more than sixty families, who were either destroyed or driven off before the end of the following year. Some few families had settled at a place not far distant from the Painted Rock, where lived a Cherokee Sagamore, named Shagewana, whose tribe was considered the most inhuman of any in the nation. The top of the rock is flat, and slopes back from the river, and at the base is a large spring surrounded by bushes. Shagewana occupied the summit of the acclivity as his council-ground; and when danger was apprehended from the whites, or when an innovation was made on his limits, he forthwith called his warriors together for consultation, and set fire to faggots and other combustibles as a signal for his neighbors to advance to his aid. The whites settled near the Painted Rock at this time were mostly composed of traders, who had brought various articles of clothing and ornaments to dispose of to the Indians; and under the assurance of the Chicasaws, who rarely commenced the work of destruction on the whites, that they should be unmolested, built up a cluster of huts, and cleared a small territory for the raising of corn and other vegetables.

Shagewana from some cause became incensed toward them, and resolved to burn the buildings and destroy their inhabitants. He called his people together, and the war-cry was sounded throughout the mountains. Taking advantage of the night, they surrounded the settlement, and applying torches to the dwellings, rushed into the midst with tomahawk in hand, and murdered all save two young men, who fought so bravely that they spared their lives in order to torture them with more prolonged sufferings. The names of these young men it is said were HARRIS and SNELLING. They were bound and taken to the rock, where the savages went through a dance, as was their custom after a victory had been achieved; and as day-light advanced, they prepared a feast. Harris and Snelling were placed under keepers, who amused themselves by tormenting their unhappy prisoners in various ways; such as pricking them with their knives, cutting off small pieces of their ears and fingers, and pulling out clumps of their hair. Before the close of the day, the captives feigning sleep, the Indians left them for a moment and went to the spring for water. Thereupon the young men burst their bands and escaped into the bushes. Crawling upon the other side of the rock, and being hotly pursued, it is supposed that they were forced upon a narrow projection, about twelve inches wide, and four feet below the inscription, where with some paint or coloring substance which they carried about them they traced the characters to which we have referred, and which have given the place the name of ‘THE PAINTED ROCK.’ The fate of the young men is not positively known; but it is believed that they were discovered and hurled down the precipice.

LINES TO J. T. OF IRELAND.

BY THE AUTHOR OF ‘HINTS ON ETIQUETTE.’

A HEARTLESS flirt! with false and wicked eye,

Dost thou not feel thyself a living lie?

Dost thou not hear the ‘still small voice’ upbraid

Thy inmost conscience for the part thou’st played?

How mean the wish to victimize that one

Who ne’er had wooed thee, hadst thou not begun!

Who mark’d with pain thy saddened gaze on him,

Doom’d but to fall a martyr to thy whim;

Whose pallid cheek might win a fiend to spare,

Or soothe the sorrows that had blanched his hair:

Oh, cold-laid plan! drawn on from day to day

To meet the looks thou failed not to display,

Seeking at such a price another’s peace,

To feed the cravings of thy vain caprice;

Led him to think that thou wert all his own,

Then froze his passion with a heart of stone.

Lured by thy wiles, he gave that holiest gift,

A noble soul, before he saw thy drift;

He watched thy bosom heave, he heard thee sigh,

Nor deem’d such looks could cover treachery;

That one so proud could stoop to simulate

The purest feelings of this earthly state.

Yet words were useless, where no sense of blame

Could start a tear, nor tinge thy cheek with shame.

More merciful than thou to him, he prays

No pangs like his may wound thy lingering days;

Implores thy sins to him may be forgiven,

And leaves thee to the clemency of Heaven.

C. W. DAY.

LITERARY NOTICES.

POEMS BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. In one volume. pp. 279. Cambridge: JOHN OWEN. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

TWO years ago Mr. LOWELL presented the public with a volume of poems, which after being read and blamed and praised with a most bewildering variety of opinion, lived through it all, and remained as a permanent specimen of unformed but most promising genius. Modest however as the offering was, it was duly valued by discerning judges, not so much for its own ripe excellence, as for its appearing a happy token of something else. In the major part of the annual soarings into Cloud-land which alarm the world, we seem to see the sum total of the aspirant’s power. We feel that he has shown us all, and done his best; that the force of his cleverness could go no farther; and we are willing to give him his penny of praise, and thereby purchase a pleasant oblivion of him and his forevermore. In this attempt of Mr. LOWELL’S it was impossible not to see that there lay more beyond. We felt that however boldly he might have dived, he did not yet ‘bring up the bottom,’ as the swimmer’s phrase goes. The faults of his poems were perceptible enough, yet even these were the blemishes of latent strength, and the book was every where welcomed with a hope. We have now to notice the appearance of a second proof of Mr. LOWELL’S activity of faculty, in another and larger volume. It confirms the faith of those who read the former one. There is, throughout, the manifestation of growth; of a continuous advance toward a more decided character. Yet it is not without incompleteness of expression; it smacks of immaturity still; but it is the immaturity which presages a man.

The longest, and although not the most pleasing, yet perhaps the best poem in the volume is the ‘Legend of Brittany,’ a romantic story, fringed with rhyme. It contains but one bad line, and that one the first in the book: ‘Fair as a summer dream was MARGARET.’ It is not only vague, but common-place: there is no particular reason that we know of why a summer dream should be fairer than a winter dream; and we cannot think that the poet meant to make use of that figure of speech called amphibology, although the line will bear a double interpretation. The legend is of the guilty amour of MORDRED, a Knight Templar, with a fair innocent who, upon the point of becoming a mother, is slain by her lover at evening, in the wood. Hereupon—— But let the poet speak:

His crime complete, scarce knowing what he did,

(So goes the tale,) beneath the altar there

In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid,

And then, to ’scape that suffocating air,

Like a scared ghoule out of the porch he slid;

But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere,

And ghastly faces thrust themselves between

His soul and hopes of peace with blasting mien.

It should be observed that Mordred, bound as a Templar by the strictest laws of chastity, is aiming at the ‘high grand-mastership,’ and consequently suffers not only the remorse of the murderer, but the dread of that defeat which his ambition must encounter in the discovery of his deed. His character is ably delineated; perhaps too nicely drawn, for so brief a tale, since the interest momentarily awakened in the ‘dark, proud man,’

——‘whose half-blown youth

Had shed its blossoms even in opening,’

is immediately lost in the horror of the catastrophe. But to pursue the outline of the story:

Now, on the second day, there was to be

A festival in church: from far and near

Came flocking in the sun-burnt peasantry,

And knights and dames with stately antique cheer,

Blazing with pomp, as if all faërie

Had emptied her quaint halls, or, as it were,

The illuminated marge of some old book,

While we were gazing, life and motion took.

·····

Then swelled the organ: up through choir and nave

The music trembled with an inward thrill

Of bliss at its own grandeur: wave on wave

Its flood of mellow thunder rose, until

The hushed air shivered with the throb it gave,

Then, poising for a moment, it stood still,

And sank and rose again, to burst in spray

That wandered into silence far away.

The whole of the description of this choir-service is equally beautiful with these stanzas; yet it may be objected that it in some degree impedes the progress of narration; and the tale is of that sort which will scarce brook any delay in the telling. But to continue. During the chanting, a breathless pause comes over the congregation; the music hushes; all eyes are drawn by some strange impulse toward the altar; and while all is mute and watchful, the voice of Margaret is heard from heaven, imploring a baptism for her unborn babe. The author himself cannot feel more sensibly than ourselves the injustice of thus patching together the beauteous fragments of his sorrowful and melodious history in so hugger-mugger a way; but MAGA is peremptory, and hints to us that we cannot command the scope of the ‘Edinburgh Review:’ The voice ceases to thrill the wondering multitude, and the poet thus proceeds:

Then the pale priests, with ceremony due

Baptized the child within its dreadful tomb,

Beneath that mother’s heart, whose instinct true

Star-like had battled down the triple gloom

Of sorrow, love, and death: young maidens, too,

Strewed the pale corpse with many a milk-white bloom,

And parted the bright hair, and on the breast

Crossed the unconscious hands in sign of rest.

It is an indication of Mr. LOWELL’S capabilities for a more extended theme that the second part of this poem is superior to the first. It is not merely that the interest of the story increases, but the verse is more compressed, the expressions are more graphic, and the flow of the stanza is finer and more natural. The opening lines are as vivid and impressive as a passage from Tasso:

‘As one who, from the sunshine and the green,

Enters the solid darkness of a cave,

Nor knows what precipice or pit unseen

May yawn before him with its sudden grave,

And, with hushed breath, doth often forward lean,

Deeming he hears the plashing of a wave

Dimly below, or feels a damper air

From out some dreary chasm, he knows not where;

So from the sunshine and the green of Love,

We enter on our story’s darker part,’ etc.

The faults of the whole production are the necessary ones of all young writers of original power; a too ready faculty of imitation, and a lack of conciseness. The poets whom Mr. LOWELL mostly reminds us of, in his faults, are SHELLY and SHAKSPEARE; the juvenile SHAKSPEARE, we mean—SHAKSPEARE the sonnetteer. Both in the ‘Revolt of Islam’ and ‘Tarquin and Lucrece,’ blemishes resembling his own constantly occur. It will nevertheless be gratifying to his many ardent admirers to perceive that on the whole he has exhibited a more definite approach to what he is capable of accomplishing, and that in proportion as he has grown less vague and ethereal, less fond of personifying sounds and sentiments, so has he advanced toward a more manly and enduring standard of excellence. ‘Prometheus’ is the next longest poem, and it has afforded us great gratification. It might almost be mistaken for the breath of ÆSCHYLUS, except that it contains sparkles of freedom that even the warm soul of the Greek could never have felt. The first two lines glitter with light:

‘One after one the stars have risen and set,

Sparkling upon the hoar-frost on my chain.’

Although, rhyme is no tyrant to our poet, yet he seems to take a fuller swing when free from its influence; and the verse which he employs for the vehicle of his thoughts in this genuine poem is peculiarly adapted to the grandeur and dignity of his subject. This composition will stand the true test of poetry; a test which many immortal verses cannot abide, for it will bear translation into prose without loss of beauty or power: it contains more thoughts than lines, and although abounding in high poetic imaginings, the spirit of true philosophy which it contains is superior to the poetry.

Of Mr. LOWELL’S shorter specimens we may remark, in contradistinction to what has been said of the Legend of Brittany, that so far as they resemble the kind of his former productions, so far in short as they are re-castings of himself, they do him injustice. We now feel that he is capable of stronger and loftier efforts, and are unwilling to overlook in his later compositions the flaws that are wilfully copied from his own volume. The public demand that he should go onward, and not wander back to dally among flowers that have been plucked before, and were then accepted for their freshness. He must devote himself to subjects of wider importance, and give his imaginations a more permanent foothold upon the hearts of men. His love-poems, though many of them would have added grace to his first collection, fail to excite our admiration equally in this. We do not say that he had exhausted panegyric before; far less would we insinuate that passion itself is exhaustible; and yet there is a point where to pause might be more graceful than to go on: ‘Sunt certi denique fines.’ Did any one ever wish that even PETRARCH had written more? Mr. LOWELL then ought to consider this, and begin to build upon a broader foundation than his own territory, beautiful as it may be, of private and personal fancies and affections. Perhaps there is no exception to the law that love should always be the first impulse that leads an ardent soul to poesy. (By poesy we do not mean school-exercises, and prize heroics approved by a committee of literary gentlemen.) On this account, it may be, that a young poet is always anxious to walk upon the ground where he first felt his strength, considering that a minstrel without love were as powerless, to adopt the Rev. SIDNEY SMITH’S jocose but not altogether clerical illustration, as Sampson in a wig. Mr. LOWELL evinces the firmest faith in his passion, which is evidently as sincere as it is well-bestowed. It is from this perhaps that he derives a corresponding faith in his productions, which always seems proportionate to his love of his subject. Let him be assured however that he is not always the strongest when he feels the most so, nor must he mistake the absence of this feeling for a symptom of diminished power. Should he be at any time inclined to such a self-estimate, let him refer his judgment to his ‘Prometheus’ and ‘Rhœcus.’ In his ‘Ode’ also, and his ‘Glance behind the Curtain,’ there is much to embolden him toward the highest endeavors in what he would perhaps disdain to call his Art. Poesy, notwithstanding, is an Art, which even HORACE and DRYDEN did not scorn to consider such; and our poet ought to remember that he is bound not only to utter his own sentiments and fantasies according to his own impulse, but moreover to consult in some degree the ears of the world: the poet’s task is double; to speak FROM himself indeed, but TO the hearing of others. The contempt which a man of genius feels for the mere mechanicism of verse and rhyme may naturally enough lead him to affect an inattention to it; but in this he only benefits the school of smoother artists by allowing them at least one superiority. If he accuses them of being silly, they can retort that he is ugly.

Our author in this second volume has given the small carpers who pick at the ‘eds’ of past participles, and stickle for old-fashioned moon-shine instead of moon-shine, fewer causes of complaint. His diction is well-chosen and befitting his themes; and this is a characteristic which peculiarly marks the true artist, if it does not indicate the true genius. His execution, his ‘style of handling,’ is adapted to his subject; an excellence in which too many artists, whether painters or poets, are sadly deficient. In this respect his performances and those of his friend PAGE may be hung together. From the stately and dignified lines of ‘Prometheus’ to the jetty, dripping verse of ‘The Fountain,’ the step is very wide. How full of sparkling, brilliant effects are these joyous lines?

INTO the sunshine,

Full of the light,

Leaping and flashing

From morn till night!

Into the moonlight,

Whiter than snow,

Waving so flower-like

When the winds blow!

Mr. LOWELL occasionally makes use of somewhat quaint, Spenserian expressions, but generally with peculiar effect. His abundant fancy seems to find its natural garb in the short and expressive phraseology of those old English writers of whom he manifests on all occasions so thorough an appreciation. As a sweet specimen, although a careless one, of his power of combining deep feeling with the most picturesque imagery, we select one of his lightest touches—‘Forgetfulness:’

THERE is a haven of sure rest

From the loud world’s bewildering stress:

As a bird dreaming on her nest,

As dew hid in a rose’s breast,

As Hesper in the glowing West;

So the heart sleeps

In thy calm deeps,

Serene Forgetfulness!

No sorrow in that place may be,

The noise of life grows less and less:

As moss far down within the sea,

As, in white lily caves, a bee,

As life in a hazy reverie;

So the heart’s wave

In thy dim cave,

Hushes, Forgetfulness!

Duty and care fade far away,

What toil may be we cannot guess:

As a ship anchored in a bay,

As a cloud at summer-noon astray,

As water-blooms in a breezeless day;

So, ’neath thine eyes,

The full heart lies,

And dreams, Forgetfulness!

‘The Shepherd of King Admetus’ is exceedingly graceful and delicate, but it is too long to be quoted entire, and too perfect to be disjointed. We must reluctantly skip ‘Fatherland,’ ‘The Inheritance,’ ‘The Moon,’ ‘Rhœcus,’ and other favorites, until we come to ‘L’Envoi,’ where our author once more throws his arms aloft, free from the incumbrance of rhyme. This poem is inscribed to ‘M. W.,’ his heart’s idol. The warm affection which radiates from its lines, it is not to be mistaken, is an out-flowing of pure human love. Among these personal feelings, touching which we have ‘said our say,’ we find the following; which in one respect so forcibly illustrates what we have written within these two weeks to a western correspondent, that we cannot forbear to quote it here:

THOU art not of those niggard souls, who deem

That poesy is but to jingle words,

To string sweet sorrows for apologies

To hide the barrenness of unfurnished hearts,

To prate about the surfaces of things,

And make more thread-bare what was quite worn out:

Our common thoughts are deepest, and to give

Such beauteous tones to these, as needs must take

Men’s hearts their captives to the end of time,

So that who hath not the choice gift of words

Takes these into his soul, as welcome friends,

To make sweet music of his joys and woes,

And be all Beauty’s swift interpreter,

Links of bright gold ’twixt Nature and his heart

This is the errand high of Poesy.

·····

They tell us that our land was made for song,

With its huge rivers and sky-piercing peaks,

Its sea-like lakes and mighty cataracts,

Its forests vast and hoar, and prairies wide,

And mounds that tell of wondrous tribes extinct;

But Poesy springs not from rocks and woods;

Her womb and cradle are the human heart,

And she can find a nobler theme for song

In the most loathsome man that blasts the sight,

Than in the broad expanse of sea and shore

Between the frozen deserts of the poles.

All nations have their message from on high,

Each the messiah of some central thought,

For the fulfilment and delight of Man:

One has to teach that Labor is divine;

Another, Freedom; and another, Mind;

And all, that GOD is open-eyed and just,

The happy centre and calm heart of all.

It is impossible to read such sentiments as these, without feeling our hearts open to him who gives them utterance. Mr. LOWELL is one of those writers who gain admiration for their verses and lovers for themselves. We can pay him no higher compliment.

There is nothing in the title-page or appearance of this elegant volume to indicate that it is not published in Cambridge, England; but unlike the majority of American books of poetry, any page in the work will give out too strong an odor of Bunker-Hill, though we find no allusion to that sacred eminence, to allow the reader to remain long in doubt of its paternity. Although we hold that any writing worthy of being called poetry must be of universal acceptance, and adapted to the longings and necessities of the entire human family, as the same liquid element quenches the thirst of the inhabitants of the tropics and the poles, yet every age and every clime must of necessity tincture its own productions. We do not therefore diminish in the slightest degree the high poetical pretensions of Mr. LOWELL’S poems, when we claim for them a national character, silent though they be upon ‘the stars and stripes,’ and a complexion which no other age of the world than our own could have given. They are not only American poems, but they are poems of the nineteenth century. There is a spirit of freedom, of love for GOD and MAN, that broods over them, which our partiality for our own country makes us too ready perhaps to claim as the natural offspring of our land and laws. The volume is dedicated to WILLIAM PAGE, the painter, in a bit of as sweet and pure language as can be found in English prose. It might be tacked on to one of DRYDEN’S dedications without creating an incongruous feeling. The dedication is as honorable to the poet as to the painter. Had all dedications been occasioned by such feelings as gave birth to this, these graceful and fitting tributes of affection and gratitude would never have dwindled away to the cold and scanty lines, like an epitaph on a charity tomb-stone, in which they appear, when they appear at all, in most modern books.

THIRTY YEARS PASSED AMONG THE PLAYERS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. Interspersed with Anecdotes and Reminiscences of a Variety of Persons connected with the Drama during the Theatrical Life of JOE COWELL, Comedian. Written by himself. In one volume, pp. 103. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

OF all the pages in English memoirs, none are so rich in humor and various observation as those devoted to the players. CARLYLE somewhere says, that the only good biographies are those of actors; and he gives for a reason their want of respectability! Being ‘vagabonds’ by law in England, the truth of their histories he tells us is not varnished over by delicate omissions. The first branch of this assumption is certainly true, whatever cause may be at the bottom of it; and Mr. COWELL, in the very entertaining volume before us, has added another proof of the correctness of Herr TEUFELSDRÖCKH’S flattering conclusions. His narrative is rambling, various, instructive, and amusing. He plunges at once in medias res; and being in himself an epitome of his class; of their successes, excitements, reverses and depressions; he paints as he goes along a most graphic picture of the life of an actor. We shall follow his own desultory method; and proceed without farther prelude to select here and there a ‘bit’ from his well-filled ‘budget of fun.’ Let us open it with this common portrait of a vain querulous, complaining Thespian, who is never appreciated, never rewarded:

‘I WAS seated in the reading-room of the hotel, thinking away the half hour before dinner, when my attention was attracted by a singularly-looking man. He was dressed in a green coat, brass-buttoned close up to the neck, light gray, approaching to blue, elastic pantaloons, white cotton stockings, dress shoes, with more riband employed to fasten them than was either useful or ornamental; a hat, smaller than those usually worn, placed rather on one side of a head of dark curly hair; fine black eyes, and what altogether would have been pronounced a handsome face, but for an overpowering expression of impudence and vulgarity; a sort of footman-out-of-place-looking creature; his hands were thrust into the pockets of his coat behind, and in consequence exposing a portion of his person, as ridiculously, and perhaps as unconsciously, as a turkey-cock does when he intends to make himself very agreeable. He was walking rather fancifully up and down the room, partly singing, partly whistling ‘The Bay of Biscay O,’ and at the long-lived, but most nonsensical chorus, he shook the fag-ends of his divided coat tail, as if in derision of that fatal ‘short sea,’ so well known and despised in that salt-water burial-place. I was pretending to read a paper, when a carrier entered, and placed a play-bill before me on the table. I had taken it up and began perusing it, when he strutted up, and leaning over my shoulder, said:

‘‘I beg pardon, Sir; just a moment.’

‘I put it toward him.

‘‘No matter, Sir, no matter; I’ve seen all I want to see; the same old two-and-sixpence; Hamlet, Mr. Sandford, in large letters; and Laertes, Mr. Vandenhoff! O——!’

‘And with an epithet not in any way alluding to the ‘sweet South,’ he stepped off to the Biscay tune, allegro. I was amused; and perhaps the expression of my face encouraged him to return instantly, and with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, for he said:

‘‘My dear Sir, that’s the way the profession is going to the devil: here, Sir, is the ‘manager’—with a sneer—‘one of the d——dest humbugs that ever trod the stage, must have his name in large letters, of course; and the and Laertes, Mr. Vandenhoff; he’s a favorite of the Grand Mogul, as we call old Sandford, and so he gets all the fat; and d’ye know why he’s shoved down the people’s throats? Because he’s so d——d bad the old man shows to advantage alongside of him. Did you ever see him?’

‘I shook my head.

‘‘Why, Sir, he’s a tall, stooping, lantern-jawed, asthmatic-voiced, spindle-shanked fellow.’ Here he put his foot on the rail of my chair, and slightly scratched the calf of his leg. ‘Hair the color of a cock-canary,’ thrusting his fingers through his own coal-black ringlets; ‘with light blue eyes, Sir, trimmed with pink gymp. He hasn’t been long caught; just from some nunnery in Liverpool, or somewhere, where he was brought up as a Catholic priest; and here he comes, with his Latin and Lancashire dialect, to lick the manager’s great toe, and be hanged to him, and gets all the business; while men of talent, and nerve, and personal appearance,’ shifting his hands from his coat-pockets to those of his tights, ‘who have drudged in the profession for years, are kept in the back-ground; ’tis enough to make a fellow swear!’

‘‘You, then, Sir, are an actor?’ said I, calmly.

‘‘An actor! yes, Sir, I am an actor, and have been ever since I was an infant in arms; played the child that cries in the third act of the comedy of ‘The Chances,’ when it was got up with splendor by Old Gerald, at Sheerness, when I was only nine weeks old; and I recollect, that is, my mother told me, that I cried louder, and more naturally, than any child they’d ever had. That’s me,’ said he, pointing to the play-bill—Horatio, Mr. Howard. ‘I used to make a great part of Horatio once; and I can now send any Hamlet to h-ll in that character, when I give it energy and pathos; but this nine-tailed bashaw of a manager insists upon my keeping my ‘madness in the back-ground,’ as he calls it, and so I just walk through it, speak the words, and make it a poor, spooney, preaching son of a how-came-ye-so, and do no more for it than the author has.’

Mr. COWELL subsequently enlists under the same manager, and is received with great apparent cordiality by the members of his corps dramatique: ‘The loan of ‘properties,’ or any thing I have, is perfectly at your service,’ was iterated by all. Howard said: ‘My boy, by heavens, I’ll lend you my blue tights; oh, you’re perfectly welcome; I don’t wear them till the farce; Banquo’s one of my flesh parts; nothing like the naked truth; I’m h—l for nature. By-the-by, you’ll often have to wear black smalls and stockings; I’ll put you up to something; save your buying silks, darning, stitch-dropping, louse-ladders, and all that; grease your legs and burnt-cork ’em; it looks d——d well ‘from the front.’’ Mr. COWELL, it appears, was an artist of no mean pretensions; and while engaged on one occasion in sketching a picturesque view of Stoke Church, he was interrupted in rather a novel manner by a brother actor named REYMES, somewhat akin, we fancy, to his friend HOWARD, albeit ‘excellent company:’

‘SEVERAL times I was disturbed in my occupation, to look round to inquire the cause of a crash, every now and then, like the breaking of glass; and at length I caught a glimpse of Reymes, slyly jerking a pebble, under his arm, through one of the windows. I recollected twice, in walking home with him, late at night, from the theatre, his quietly taking a brick-bat from out of his coat-pocket and deliberately smashing it through the casement of the Town Hall, and walking on and continuing his conversation as if nothing had happened. Crack! again. I began to suspect an abberration of intellect, and said:

‘‘Reymes, for heaven’s sake what are you doing?’

‘‘Showing my gratitude,’ said he; and crack! went another.

‘‘Showing the devil!’ said I; ‘you’re breaking the church windows.’

‘‘Why, I know it—certainly; what do you stare at?’ said the eccentric. ‘I broke nearly every pane three weeks ago; I couldn’t hit them all. After you have broken a good many, the stones are apt to go through the holes you’ve already made. They only finished mending them the day before yesterday; I came out and asked the men when they were likely to get done;’ and clatter! clatter! went another.

‘‘That’s excellent!’ said he, in great glee. ‘I hit the frame just in the right place; I knocked out two large ones that time.’

‘‘Reymes,’ said I, with temper, ‘if you don’t desist, I must leave off my drawing.’

‘‘Well,’ said he, ‘only this one,’ and crack! it went; ‘there! I’ve done. Since it annoys you, I’ll come by myself to-morrow and finish the job; it’s the only means in my power of proving my gratitude.’

‘‘Proving your folly,’ said I. ‘Why, Reymes, you must be out of your senses.’

‘‘Why, did I never tell you?’ said he. ‘Oh! then I don’t wonder at your surprise. I thought I had told you. I had an uncle, a glazier, who died, and left me twenty pounds, and this mourning-ring; and I therefore have made it a rule to break the windows of all public places ever since. The loss is not worth speaking of to the parish, and puts a nice bit of money in the pocket of some poor dealer in putty, with probably a large family to support. And now I’ve explained, I presume you have no objection to my proceeding in paying what I consider a debt of gratitude due to my dead uncle.’

‘‘Hold! Reymes,’ said I, as he was picking up a pebble. ‘How do you know but the poor fellow with the large family may not undertake to repair the windows by contract, at so much a year or month?’

‘‘Eh! egad, I never thought of that,’ said the whimsical, good-hearted creature. ‘I’ll suspend operations until I’ve made the inquiry, and if I’ve wronged him I’ll make amends.’

Mr. COWELL is a plain-spoken man, and seldom spares age or sex in his exposure of the secrets of the stage, and the appliances and means to boot which are sometimes adopted by theatrical men and women to make an old face or form ‘look maist as weel’s the new.’ The celebrated Mrs. JORDAN, in performing with him, was always very averse to his playing near the foot-lights, greatly preferring to act between the second entrances. The ‘moving why’ is thus explained:

‘THE fact is, she was getting old; dimples turn to crinkles after long use; beside, she wore a wig glued on; and in the heat of acting—for she was always in earnest—I have seen some of the tenacious compound with which it was secured trickle down a wrinkle behind her ear; her person, too, was extremely round and large, though still retaining something of the outline of its former grace:

‘And after all, ’twould puzzle to say where

It would not spoil a charm to pare.’

THERE is no calamity in the catalogue of ills ‘that flesh is heir to’ so horrible as the approach of old age to an actor. Juvenile tragedy, light comedy, and walking gentleman with little pot-bellies, and have-been pretty women, are really to be pitied. Fancy a lady, who has had quires of sonnets made to her eye-brow, being obliged, at last, to black it, play at the back of the stage at night, sit with her back to the window in a shady part of the green-room in the morning, and keep on her bonnet unless she can afford a very natural wig.’

Sad enough! sad enough! certainly, and as true as it is melancholy. But let us get on board the Yankee vessel which brings Mr. COWELL to America, and at his ‘present writing’ is lying off Gravesend. The difficulty he experienced in getting up a conversation with his fellow-passengers is a grievance still loudly complained of by his travelling countrymen:

‘IT was a dark, drizzly, melancholy night; a fair specimen of Gravesend weather and the parts adjacent; no ‘star that’s westward from the pole’ to point my destined path, and furnish food for speculative thought; and, after sliding five or six times up and down some twenty feet of wet deck, I groped my way to the cabin. The captain was not on board, and I found myself a stranger among men. Of all gregarious animals man is the most tardy in getting acquainted: meet them for the first time in a jury-box, a stage-coach, or the cabin of a ship, and they always remind me of a little lot of specimen sheep from different flocks, put together for the first time in the same pen; they walk about and round and round, with all their heads and tails in different directions, and not a baa! escapes them; but in half an hour some crooked-pated bell-wether perhaps, gives a south-down a little dig in the ribs, and this example is followed by a Merino; and before the ending of the fair their heads are all one way, and you’ll find them bleating together in full chorus. Now, in the case of man, a snuff-box instead of the sheep’s horn, is an admirable introduction; for, if he refuses to take a pinch, he’ll generally give you a sufficient reason why he does not, and that’s an excellent chance to form, perhaps, a lasting friendship, but to scrape an acquaintance to a certainty; and if he takes it perhaps he’ll sneeze, and you can come in with your ‘God bless you!’ and so on, to a conversation about the plague in ’66, or the yellow fever on some other occasion, and can ‘bury your friends by dozens,’ and ‘escape yourself by a miracle,’ very pleasantly for half an hour. But in this instance it was a total failure: one said ‘I don’t use it;’ another shook his head, and the third emptied his mouth of half a pint of spittle, and said ‘he thought it bad enough to chaw!’’

When the vessel is fairly at sea, the social ice is gradually broken. It being just after the war, the rationale of the following brief dialogue between Mr. COWELL and the mate will be readily understood:

‘The mate was a weather-beaten, humorous ‘sea-monster;’ upon asking his name, he replied:

‘‘If you’re an Englishman and I once tell you my name, you’ll never forget it.’

‘‘I don’t know that,’ I replied; ‘I’m very unfortunate in remembering names.’

‘‘Oh, never mind!’ said he, with a peculiarly sly, comical look; ‘if you’re an Englishman you’ll never forget mine.’

‘‘Then I certainly am,’ I replied.

‘‘Well, then,’ said he drily, ‘my name’s BUNKER! and I’m d——d if any Englishman will ever forget that name!’’

Mr. COWELL’S arrival, début, and theatrical progress and associations in this and other Atlantic towns, compose a diversified and palatable feast for the stage-loving public. His sketches of actors, male and female, native and foreign, are limned with an artistical hand. His picture of KEAN’S fleeing from ‘the hot pursuit of obloquy’ is exceedingly vivid; and ‘old MATHEWS’ American ‘trip’ is well set forth. We find nothing so good, however, touching that extraordinary mime, as the following illustration of his sensitiveness to newspaper criticism, from the pen of the dramatic veteran, MONCRIEF:

‘‘LOOK here,’ he would say, taking up a paper and reading: ‘Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.—We last night visited this elegant theatre for the purpose of witnessing the performance of that excellent comedian, Mr. BELVI, as Octavian, in the ‘Mountaineers,’ for his own benefit. We hope it was for his own benefit, for it certainly was not for the benefit of any one else; for a more execrable performance we never witnessed. This gentleman had better stick to his comedy!’ Grant me patience; Heaven! There’s a fellow! What does he know about it? I suppose he would abuse my Iago—say that is execrable! Isn’t this sufficient to drive any body mad? Because a man happens to have played comedy all his life, ‘we’ takes upon himself to think as a matter of course he can’t play tragedy, though he may possess first rate tragic powers, as I do myself! I should have been the best Hamlet on the stage if I didn’t limp; but let me go on: ‘We have seen ELLISTON in the character.’ A charlatan, a mountebank; wouldn’t have me at Drury; and yet ‘we’ thinks he has a syllable the advantage of his competitor in this instance. We! we! as if the fellow had a parcel of pigs in his inside; we! we! Who’s we? Why don’t he say Tompkins, or whatever his name is, Tompkins thinks Elliston better in Octavian than Belvi; Belvi could kick Tompkins then; but who can kick we?’ etc., etc. And yet poor Mathews had no warmer admirers, no truer, no more constant friends than those whose occasional animadversions would thus excite his ire.’

After running a very successful and popular career at the Park-Theatre, our artist-actor is induced to assume the management of a circus-theatre just then in high vogue at the TATTERSALL’S building in Broadway. The subjoined was one of the many incidents which occurred on his assuming the reins of the establishment:

‘THE company was both extensive and excellent; a stud of thirty-three horses, four ponies and a jack-ass, all so admirably selected and educated, that for beauty and utility they could not be equalled any where. The company was popular and our success enormous. Of course, like others when first placed in power, I made a total change in my cabinet. JOHN BLAKE I appointed secretary of the treasury and principal ticket-seller; and to prove how excellent a judge I was of integrity and capacity, he was engaged at the Park at the end of the season, and has held that important situation there ever since. A delicious specimen of the Emerald Isle, with the appropriate equestrian appellation of Billy Rider, received an office of nearly equal trust, though smaller chance of perquisites—stage and stable door-keeper at night, and through the day a variety of duties, to designate half of which would occupy a chapter. He was strict to a fault in the discharge of his duty, as every urchin of that day who attempted to sneak into the circus can testify. Conway the tragedian called to see me one evening, and in attempting to pass was stopped by Billy, armed as usual, with a pitch-fork.

‘‘What’s this you want? Who are ye? and where are you going?’ says Billy.

‘I wish to see Mr. Cowell,’ says Conway.

‘Oh then, it’s till to-morrow at ten o’clock, in his office, that you’ll have to wait to perform that operation.’

‘But, my dear fellow, my name is Conway, of the theatre; Mr. Cowell is my particular friend, and I have his permission to enter.’

‘By my word, Sir, I thank ye kindly for the explination; and it’s a mighty tall, good-looking gentleman you are too,’ says Billy, presenting his pitch-fork; ‘but if ye were the blessed Redeemer, with the cross under your arm, you couldn’t pass me without an orther from Mr. Cowell.’

‘JOE COWELL,’ in years gone by, has made us laugh many a good hour; and we hold ourselves bound to reciprocate the pleasure he has afforded us, by warmly commending his pleasant, gossipping volume to the readers of the KNICKERBOCKER throughout the United States.

AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY: on the Basis of the ‘Précis Elémentaire de Physiologie’ of MAGENDIE. Translated, enlarged, and illustrated with Diagrams and Cuts, by Prof. JOHN REVERE, M. D., of the University of New-York. In one volume. pp. 533. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.

THE American translator and editor of the volume above cited is of opinion that since the death of Sir CHARLES BELL, there is no physiologist who stands so preëminent as an original observer and inquirer, or who has contributed so much to the present improved state of the science by his individual efforts, as M. MAGENDIE. In facility in experimenting upon living animals, and extended opportunities of observation, no one has surpassed him; while through a long professional career his attention has been chiefly devoted to physiological inquiries. There is one excellence which constitutes a predominant feature in his system of Physiology that cannot be estimated too highly by the student of medicine; and that is, the severe system of induction that he has pursued, excluding those imaginative and speculative views which rather belong to metaphysics than physiology. The work is also remarkable for the conciseness and perspicuity of its style, the clearness of its descriptions, and the admirable arrangement of its matter. The present is a translation of the fifth and last edition of the ‘Précis Elémentaire de Physiologie,’ in which the science is brought down to the present time. It is not, like many modern systems, merely eclectic, or a compilation of the experiments and doctrines of others. On the contrary, all the important questions discussed, if not originally proposed and investigated by the author, have been thoroughly examined and experimented upon by him. His observations, therefore, on all these important subjects, carry with them great interest and weight derived from these investigations. The translator and editor, while faithfully adhering to the spirit of the author, has endeavored, and with success, to strip the work of its foreign costume, and naturalize it to our language. He has added a large number of diagrams and pictorial illustrations of the different organs and structures, taken from the highest and most recent authorities, in the hope of rendering clearer to the student of medicine the observations and reasonings on their functions. He has also made a number of additions on subjects which he thought had been passed over in too general a manner in the original work of MAGENDIE. In a word, his aim ‘to present a system of human physiology which shall exhibit in a clear and intelligible manner the actual state of the science, and adapted to the use of students of medicine in the United States,’ has been thoroughly carried out.

THE STUDY OF THE LIFE OF WOMAN. By Madame NECKER DE SAUSSURE, of Geneva. Translated from the French. In one volume. pp. 288. Philadelphia: LEA AND BLANCHARD. New-York: WILEY AND PUTNAM.

THE distinguished clergyman who introduces this excellent book to American readers does it no more than justice when he declares it to be the work of a highly gifted mind, containing many beautiful philosophical views of the relation which woman sustains in society, abounding in the results of careful observation, and characterized by a pervading religious spirit. It is adapted to accomplish great good, and its circulation would do much to aid those who have the care of youthful females, and who desire that they should fill the place in society for which they were designed. There is no work in our language which occupies the place that this is intended to fill; nor which presents so interesting a view of the organization of society by its great AUTHOR, and of the situation appropriated to woman in that organization. The book has reference more particularly to the elevated circles of society; to those who have advantages for education; who have leisure for the cultivation of the intellect and the heart after the usual course of education is completed, and who have opportunities of doing good to others. ‘It will supply a place which is not filled now, and would be eminently useful to that increasing number of individuals in our country. It is much to be regretted that not a few when they leave school seem to contemplate little farther advancement in the studies in which they have been engaged. A just view of the place which woman is designed to occupy in society, as presented in this volume, would do much to correct this error. We should regard it as an auspicious omen, if this work should have an extensive circulation in this country, and believe that wherever it is perused it will contribute to the elevation of the sex; to promote large views of the benevolence and wisdom of the Creator in regard to the human family, and to advance the interests of true religion.’

THE AMERICAN REVIEW, AND METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE. Numbers five and six. pp. 588. New-York: SAXTON AND MILES, Broadway.

THE number of this publication for the December quarter is a very good one. We were especially interested in the ‘Michael Agonistes’ of Mr. J. W. BROWN, which is, in parts, both powerful and harmonious, and in a dissertation upon ‘WEIR’S National Painting.’ The writer is of opinion that our eminent artist has made a sad mistake in the conception of his striking group, although he awards warm praise to certain portions of the picture. Still he says: ‘It argues slight knowledge of human nature to suppose that melancholy resignation characterized those who at Delft-Haven embarked for a land of civil and religious liberty; wild and inhospitable, to be sure, but still a land of Freedom. There were other thoughts in the hearts of that noble band than those of sorrow. Even had they been leaving the country of their birth, they would not have sorrowed; but as it was, bidding farewell to a land of foreigners, almost as hostile to freedom as their own, they felt not otherwise than joyful, and their bosoms were full of thoughtful, reasoning gladness. The parting kiss of that young wife must have tried, somewhat, the firmness of her husband, yet not enough to cloud his bright anticipations of the future. A different mood than that imagined by Mr. WEIR should have pervaded the group, if we are not widely in error. ‘With all its faults,’ adds our critic, however, ‘The Embarkation of the Pilgrims,’ although not indicative of great genius, yet regarded as to execution, does honor to Mr. WEIR. We should do injustice to the central group, did we omit to confess that the devotional grandeur of the face of the minister, raised to heaven in prayer, struck us with a feeling of awe, such as we had perhaps never before experienced.’ This especial tribute we have heard paid to this picture by every person whom we have heard refer to it.

EDITOR’S TABLE.

AMERICAN MANNERS AND AMERICAN LITERATURE.—We ask the attention of every right-minded American to the following remarks, which we take the liberty of transcribing from a welcome epistle to the Editor, from one of our most esteemed and popular contributors. The follies which it exposes and the evils which it laments have heretofore formed the themes of papers in this Magazine from the pens of able correspondents, as well as of occasional comment in our own departments; but we do not remember to have seen the subject more felicitously handled than by our friend: ‘The crying vice of the nation, and the one which of all others most fastens the charge of inconsistency on our character and professions, is that apish spirit with which we admire and copy every thing of European growth. While we exalt our institutions, character and condition over those of all other nations, and give ourselves ‘a name above every name,’ is it not supremely absurd for city to vie with city and family with family in adopting the latest fashions in dress and opinions originating in nations which have grown old in profligacy, and abound in the worthless excrescences of society? We profess to be perfectly independent of all control in our thoughts and actions: ‘Nullius addicti jurare in verba magistri.’ Yet who more readily than we shout in chorus to the newest modes of thinking ushered into ephemeral life by philosophers across the water? Who adopt so early or carry so far the most outre and preposterous styles of dress invented in Paris, as our American belles and dandies? The newest cut in garments which was hatched in Paris beneath the crescent-moon, her waning rays see carried to its utmost verge in our bustling marts. We follow the revolutions in the configuration of coats, from square to round, and from round to angular, with as scrupulous and painful a precision as if our national honor depended on the issue. Nay, we are usually a little too faithful, and fairly ‘out-Herod Herod.’ Does the cockney of the ‘world’s metropolis’ compress his toes in boots tapering at an angle of forty degrees? The republican fop promenades Broadway with his pedal extremities squeezed into an angle of thirty; and the corns ensuing he bears with christian fortitude; for does he not find his ‘exceeding great reward’ in being more fashionable than the Londoner himself? Has the fat of the Siberian bear, or ‘thine incomparable oil, Macassar’ called forth a thicket of hair on the cheek of the Frenchman, reaching from the cerebral pulse to the submaxillary bone? Instantly the pews of our churches, the boxes of our theatres, and the seats of our legislative halls, are thronged with whey-faced apes, the moisture of whose brains has exuded in nourishing a frowning hedge, of which the dark luxuriance encircles the whole face, resembling the old pictures of the saints wherewith our childhood was amused, encompassed with a glory! When the whiskered ‘petit-mâitres’ of Hyde-Park shall begin to transport their adorable persons to this new world on a summer’s trip, they will be astonished not a little to be stared at on landing through opera-glasses by counterparts of themselves; exact to the last hair of the moustache. ‘Werily,’ will be their ejaculation, ‘hit his wery great presumption in these wulgar democrats to himitate us Henglish in this way-ah!’ Every easterly wind blows in a fleet laden with cargoes of folly, and every outward-bound vessel bears an order for fresh importations of absurdity, of which milliners and tailors are the shippers, and flirts and fops the consignees. So far has this mimicking spirit proceeded, that we regard neither climate nor season. Were some accident to delay for a few months our advices from Europe, I question not but our fashionable ladies would adopt in mid-winter the same form and materials for their dresses which the Parisian damsels sported on the Boulevards beneath the scorching dog-star. The changeful and chilly atmosphere of our sea-board differs widely from the genial airs of ‘La belle France,’ and to adopt their fashions in detail is about as wise and tasteful in us as it would be for the negro panting beneath the line to wrap himself in the furs of Siberia, and substitute for his refreshing palm-juice the usquebaugh of the Highlands. Who would not laugh himself into a pleurisy to see the dandies of Timbuctoo stalking along in solemn gravity beneath their torrid sun, encumbered with a Russian fur-cloak, or a Lapland ‘whip’ on a snow-sledge, driving his canine four-in-hand, with a Turkish turban and Grecian robe folded carelessly around him? Yet wherein do we greatly differ in our absurdities! Again: we profess to have lopped from our democratic tree the old-world customs of hereditary title and patrimonial honor. We are no respecters of persons. We have no reverence for ancestral virtues, and the lustre that shines only by reflection has no charms for us. We respect no grandees but ‘nature’s noblemen.’ We look through the glittering atmosphere of place, and title, and factitious distinction, at the man himself. The artificer of his own fortunes we hail as a brother. He who possesses superior abilities or unblemished integrity, we honor, though his hands be on the plough; and he who is imbecile or dishonest, we despise, though his brow be encircled by a coronet. All noble, consistent, rational, and right. But how is this? ‘Lo! a foreigner has landed on our shores.’ Well; what then? We also should be foreigners in Europe. ‘Yes; but he bears the honorable appendage of Lord, or Sir, or De, or Di, or Von, or Don.’ Happy, meanwhile, thrice happy the youth whom his titleship will allow to treat him; blessed, triumphantly blessed, the Miss whose charms have warmed into life the cold gaze of my Lord Highbred, or Monsieur De Nonchalance. And oh! beatified beyond all rapture the doting mother, who in her ripened and expanded miniature begins to realize her dreams of ‘young romance,’ and to hope by connection with a family more lineally descended from Adam than her own, to obtain a rank

‘Whose glory with a lingering trace,

Shines through and deifies her race!’

Truth, every word truth—satire most justly bestowed; and before relinquishing this general theme, let us ask the reader to admire with us the cognate remarks of a writer in the last number of the ‘North-American Review’ upon the importance of a Literature which shall be distinctive and national in its character, and not a rifacamento of the varying literatures of various nations: ‘The man whose heart is capable of any patriotic emotion, who feels his pulse quicken when the idea of his country is brought home to him, must desire that country to possess a voice more majestic than the roar of party, and more potent than the whine of sects; a voice which should breathe energy and awaken hope where-ever its kindling tones are heard. The life of our native land; the inner spirit which animates its institutions; the new ideas and principles, of which it is the representative; these every patriot must wish to behold reflected from the broad mirror of a comprehensive and soul-animating literature. The true vitality of a nation is not seen in the triumphs of its industry, the extent of its conquests, or the reach of its empire; but in its intellectual dominion. Posterity passes over statistical tables of trade and population, to search for the records of the mind and heart. It is of little moment how many millions of men were included at any time under the name of one people, if they have left no intellectual testimonials of their mode and manner of existence, no ‘foot-prints on the sands of time.’ The heart refuses to glow at the most astounding array of figures. A nation lives only through its literature, and its mental life is immortal. And if we have a literature, it should be a national literature; no feeble or sonorous echo of Germany or England, but essentially American in its tone and object. No matter how meritorious a composition may be, as long as any foreign nation can say that it has done the same thing better, so long shall we be spoken of with contempt, or in a spirit of benevolent patronage. We begin to sicken of the custom, now so common, of presenting even our best poems to the attention of foreigners, with a deprecating, apologetic air; as if their acceptance of the offering, with a few soft and silky compliments, would be an act of kindness demanding our warmest acknowledgments. If the Quarterly Review or Blackwood’s Magazine speaks well of an American production, we think that we can praise it ourselves, without incurring the reproach of bad taste. The folly we yearly practise, of flying into passion with some inferior English writer, who caricatures our faults, and tells dull jokes about his tour through the land, has only the effect to exalt an insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling of a pert coxcomb who was discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which has not yet been fitly expressed, gives poignancy to the least ridicule launched at faults and follies which lie on the superficies of our life. Every person feels, that a book which condemns the country for its peculiarities of manners and customs, does not pierce into the heart of the matter, and is essentially worthless. If Bishop BERKELEY, when he visited MALEBRANCHE, had paid exclusive attention to the habitation, raiment, and manners of the man, and neglected the conversation of the metaphysician, and, when he returned to England, had entertained POPE, SWIFT, GAY, and ARBUTHNOT with satirical descriptions of the ‘compliment extern’ of his eccentric host, he would have acted just as wisely as many an English tourist, with whose malicious pleasantry on our habits of chewing, spitting, and eating, we are silly enough to quarrel. To the United States in reference to the pop-gun shots of foreign tourists, might be addressed the warning which Peter Plymley thundered against BONAPARTE, in reference to the Anti-Jacobin jests of CANNING: Tremble, oh! thou land of many spitters and voters, ‘for a pleasant man has come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, and thou shalt be no more!’ In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, with the gulf which separates principles from actions. Men are struggling to realize dim ideals of right and truth, and each failure adds to the desperate earnestness of their efforts. Beneath all the shrewdness and selfishness of the American character, there is a smouldering enthusiasm which flames out at the first touch of fire; sometimes at the hot and hasty words of party, and sometimes at the bidding of great thoughts and unselfish principles. The heart of the nation is easily stirred to its depths; but those who rouse its fiery impulses into action are often men compounded of ignorance and wickedness, and wholly unfitted to guide the passions which they are able to excite. We want a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thoughts; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions of conventialism and expediency; vindicate the majesty of reason; give new power to the voice of conscience, and new vitality to human affection; soften and elevate passion; guide enthusiasm in a right direction; and speak out in the high language of men to a nation of men.’

THE NORTH-AMERICAN REVIEW for the January quarter is one of the best issues of that ‘ancient and honorable’ Quarterly which we have encountered for many months. It contains eight extended reviews, five brief ‘Critical Notices,’ and the usual quarterly list of new publications. The first article is upon the ‘Poets and Poetry of America,’ a work ‘which has travelled through many States and four editions,’ and for the production of which Mr. GRISWOLD is justly commended. In the progress of this paper, the writer indulges in a sort of running commentary upon the more conspicuous poets included in the compiler’s collection, as BRYANT, HALLECK, SPRAGUE, DANA, PERCIVAL, LONGFELLOW, WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK, HOLMES, WHITTIER, etc., etc. Of BRYANT the reviewer among other things remarks:

‘MR. GRISWOLD says finely of BRYANT, that ‘he is the translator of the silent language of nature to the world.’ The serene beauty and thoughtful tenderness, which characterize his descriptions, or rather interpretations of outward objects, are paralleled only in WORDSWORTH. His poems are almost perfect of their kind. The fruits of meditation, rather than of passion or imagination, and rarely startling with an unexpected image or sudden outbreak of feeling, they are admirable specimens of what may be called the philosophy of the soul. They address the finer instincts of our nature with a voice so winning and gentle; they search out with such subtle power all in the heart which is true and good; that their influence, though quiet, is resistless. They have consecrated to many minds things which before it was painful to contemplate. Who can say that his feelings and fears respecting death have not received an insensible change, since reading the ‘Thanatopsis?’ Indeed, we think that BRYANT’S poems are valuable, not only for their intrinsic excellence, but for the vast influence their wide circulation is calculated to exercise on national feelings and manners. It is impossible to read them without being morally benefitted. They purify as well as please. They develope or encourage all the elevated and thoughtful tendencies of the mind.’

We are glad to see the reproof which the reviewer bestows upon those critics of LONGFELLOW’S poetry, who to escape the trouble of analysis, offer some smooth eulogium upon his ‘taste,’ or some lip-homage to his ‘artistical ability,’ instead of noting the tendency of his writings to touch the heroic strings in our nature, to breathe energy into the heart, to sustain our lagging purposes, and fix our thoughts on what is stable and eternal. The following is eminently just:

‘THE great characteristic of LONGFELLOW, that of addressing the moral nature through the imagination, of linking moral truth to intellectual beauty, is a far greater excellence. His artistical ability is admirable, because it is not seen. It is rather mental than mechanical. The best artist is he who accommodates his diction to his subject. In this sense, LONGFELLOW is an artist. By learning ‘to labor and to wait,’ by steadily brooding over the chaos in which thought and emotion first appear to the mind, and giving shape and life to both, before uttering them in words, he has obtained a singular mastery over expression. By this we do not mean that he has a large command of language. No fallacy is greater than that which confounds fluency with expression. Washerwomen, and boys at debating clubs, often display more fluency than WEBSTER; but his words are to theirs, as the roll of thunder to the patter of rain. Language often receives its significance and power from the person who uses it. Unless permeated by the higher faculties of the mind, unless it be not the clothing, but the ‘incarnation of thought,’ it is quite an humble power. There are some writers who repose undoubting confidence in words. If their minds be filled with the epithets of poetry, they fondly deem that they have clutched its essence. In a piece of inferior verse, we often observe a great array of expressions which have been employed with great effect by genius, but which seem to burn the fingers and disconcert the equanimity of the aspiring word-catcher who presses them into his service. Felicity, not fluency, of language is a merit.’

Exactly; yet these same ‘fluent’ versifiers are the persons who talk with elaborate flippancy of the ‘simple common-places’ of this noble poet! The reviewer adds: ‘LONGFELLOW has a perfect command of that expression which results from restraining rather than cultivating fluency; and his manner is adapted to his theme. He rarely, if ever, mistakes ‘emotions for conceptions.’ His words are often pictures of his thought. He selects with great delicacy and precision the exact phrase which best expresses or suggests his idea. He colors his style with the skill of a painter. The warm flush and bright tints, as well as the most evanescent hues of language, he uses with admirable discretion. In that higher department of his art, that of so combining his words and images that they make music to the soul as well as to the ear, and convey not only his feelings and thoughts, but also the very tone and condition of the soul in which they have being, he likewise excels.’ The reviewer illustrates these remarks, by citing the ‘Psalms of Life,’ the ‘Saga of the Skeleton in Armor,’ ‘The Village Blacksmith,’ etc., which were written by Mr. LONGFELLOW for the pages of this Magazine, and adds, that our poet indulges in no ‘wild struggles after an ineffable Something, for which earth can afford but imperfect symbols. He appears perfectly satisfied with his work. Like his own ‘Village Blacksmith,’ he retires every night with the feeling that something has been attempted, and something done.’ There is a subtle analysis of the style of that first of comic poets, HOLMES, for which we shall endeavor to find space hereafter. Of the writings of the late lamented WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK, the reviewer remarks, that they ‘are all distinguished for a graceful and elegant diction, thoughts morally and poetically beautiful, and chaste and appropriate imagery. They exhibit much purity and strength of feeling, are replete with fancy and sentiment, and have often a searching pathos and a mournful beauty, which find their way quietly to the heart.’ The poetry of our friend and correspondent WHITTIER is warmly commended: ‘A common thought comes from his pen ‘rammed with life.’ He seems in some of his lyrics to pour out his blood with his lines. There is a rush of passion in his verse, which sweeps every thing along with it.’ The remaining references are to the lady-poets, Mesdames BROOKS, CHILD, SIGOURNEY, SMITH, WELBY, HALL, ELLET, DINNIE, EMBURY, HOOPER, the DAVIDSONS, etc. The whole article is well considered; and we cordially commend it to the attention of our readers. The remaining papers are upon PALFREY’S admirable ‘Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity,’ ‘Trade with the Hanse-Towns, the German Tariff-League;’ ‘GERVINUS’S History of German Poetry;’ ‘Debts of the States,’ an excellent and most timely article;’ ‘PRESCOTT’S History of Mexico;’ ‘SAM SLICK in England;’ and a valuable dissertation on Libraries, based upon the catalogue of the library of Brown University.

JOSEPH C. NEAL’S ‘CHARCOAL SKETCHES.’—Right glad are we to welcome from the teeming press of Messrs. BURGESS AND STRINGER a new edition of these most humorous and witty sketches, illustrated with engravings by D. C. JOHNSTON, of Boston. We have re-perused them with renewed delight, and awakened again the echoes of our silent sanctum, in the excess of our cachinnatory enjoyment. Our friend MORTON M‘MICHAEL, in the ‘advance GRAHAM’ for February, (which by the way contains a breathing likeness of the sketcher,) has the following remarks upon the papers composing the volume before us, which we most cordially endorse: ‘No one, who has his faculties in a healthy condition, can read them and not feel convinced that they are the productions of a superior and highly gifted mind. They not only smack strongly of what all true men love, genuine humor; rich, racy, glorious humor; at which you may indulge in an honest outbreak of laughter, and not feel ashamed afterward because you have thrown away good mirth on a pitiful jest; but when you have laughed your fill, if you choose to look beneath the surface, which sparkles and bubbles with brilliant fancies, you will find an under current of truthful observation, abundant in matter for sober thought in your graver moments. In all of them, light and trifling as they seem, and pleasant as they unquestionably are, there is a deep and solemn moral. The follies and vices which, in weak natures, soon grow into crimes, are here presented in such a way as to forewarn those who are about to yield to temptation, not by dull monitions and unregarded homilies, but by making the actors themselves unconscious protestants against their own misdoings. And to do this well requires a combination of abilities such as few possess. There must be the quick eye to perceive, the nice judgment to discriminate, the active memory to retain, the vigorous pen to depict, and above all, the soul, the mind, the genius, call it what you will, to infuse into the whole life and spirit and power. Now, all these qualities Neal has in an eminent degree, and he applies them with the skill of an accomplished artist. What he does he does thoroughly, perfectly. His portraits, which he modestly calls sketches, are unmistakeable. The very men he wishes to portray are before you, and they are not only limned to the outward eye, but they speak also to the outward ear, and in sentences thickly clustered with the drollest conceits, they convey lessons of practical philosophy, and make revelations of the strange perversities of our inward nature, from which even the wise may gather profitable conclusions.’ Our friend speaks of Mr. NEAL’S being ‘comparatively little known.’ We have good reason to believe that one great cause of this is, that his name has often been confounded with that of another and altogether different species of NEAL, whose infinite twattle—infinite alike in degree and quantity—has prejudiced the public mind against any thing that may seem to come in ‘questionable shape’ from a questionable source. This error has had its advantages to one party, no doubt, since there was ‘every thing to gain and nothing to lose;’ an advantage however which the prefix of the first two initials of our friend and correspondent to passages from his work which may hereafter find their way into the newspapers, will transfer to the rightful recipient. But to the volume in question, from which we are about to make a few random selections, illustrating the characters of sundry ‘city worthies,’ who are ‘comprehended as vagrom men’ by the ‘charleys’ or watchmen of the good City of Brotherly Love. Let us begin with the soliloquy of the poetical OLYMPUS PUMP:

‘‘GENIUS never feels its oats until after sunset; twilight applies the spanner to the fire-plug of fancy to give its bubbling fountains way; and midnight lifts the sluices for the cataracts of the heart, and cries, ‘Pass on the water!’ Yes, and economically considered, night is this world’s Spanish cloak; for no matter how dilapidated or festooned one’s apparel may be, the loops and windows cannot be discovered, and we look as elegant and as beautiful as get out. Ah!’ continued Pump, as he gracefully reclined upon the stall, ‘it’s really astonishing how rich I am in the idea line to-night. But it’s no use. I’ve got no pencil—not even a piece of chalk to write ’em on my hat for my next poem. It’s a great pity ideas are so much of the soap-bubble order, that you can’t tie ’em up in a pocket handkerchief, like a half peck of potatoes, or string ’em on a stick like catfish. I often have the most beautiful notions scampering through my head with the grace, but alas! the swiftness too, of kittens, especially just before I get asleep; but they’re all lost for the want of a trap; an intellectual figgery four. I wish we could find out the way of sprinkling salt on their tails, and make ’em wait till we want to use ’em. Why can’t some of the meaner souls invent an idea-catcher for the use of genius? I’m sure they’d find it profitable, for I wouldn’t mind owing a man twenty dollars for one myself.’

Mr. FYDGET FYXINGTON is another worthy, who reverts continually to ‘first principles,’ and is full of schemes and projects, especially when he chances to have ‘a stone in his hat.’ Hear him:

‘‘NOTHIN’S fixed no how; our grand-dads must a been lazy rascals. Why didn’t they roof over the side-walks, and not leave every thing for us to do? I ain’t got no numbrell, and besides that, when it comes down as if raining was no name for it, as it always does when I’m cotch’d out, numbrells is no great shakes if you’ve got one with you, and no shakes at all if it’s at home. It’s a pity we ain’t got feathers, so’s to grow our own jacket and trowsers, and do up the tailorin’ business, and make our own feather beds. It would be a great savin’; every man his own clothes, and every man his own feather bed. Now I’ve got a suggestion about that; first principles bring us to the skin; fortify that, and the matter’s done. How would it do to bile a big kittle full of tar, tallow, beeswax and injen rubber, with considerable wool, and dab the whole family once a week? The young’uns might be soused in it every Saturday night, and the nigger might fix the elderly folks with a whitewash brush. Then there wouldn’t be no bother a washing your clothes or yourself, which last is an invention of the doctor to make people sick, because it lets in the cold in winter and the heat in summer, when natur’ says shut up the porouses and keep ’em out. Besides, when the new invention was tore at the knees or wore at the elbows, just tell the nigger to put on the kittle and give you a dab, and you’re patched slick; and so that whole mobs of people mightn’t stick together like figs, a little sperrits of turpentine or litharage might be added to make ’em dry like a house-a-fire. ’Twould be nice for sojers. Stand ’em all of a row, and whitewash ’em blue or red, according to pattern, as if they were a fence. The gin’rals might look on to see if it was done according to Gunter; the cap’ins might flourish the brush, and the corpulars carry the bucket. Dandies could fix themselves all sorts of streaked and all sorts of colors. When the parterials is cheap and the making don’t cost nothing, that’s what I call economy, and coming as near as possible to first principles. It’s a better way, too, of keeping out the rain, than my t’other plan of flogging people when they’re young, to make their hides hard and water-proof. A good licking is a sound first principle for juveniles, but they’ve got a prejudice agin it.’

‘A pair of Slippers’ brings us acquainted with another original personage, who one dark night soliloquizes on this wise:

‘‘I’VE not the slightest doubt that this is as beautiful a night as ever was; only it’s so dark you can’t see the pattern of it. One night is pretty much like another night in the dark; but it’s a great advantage to a good-looking evening, if the lamps are lit, so you can twig the stars and the moonshine. The fact is, that in this ‘ere city, we do grow the blackest moons, and the hardest moons to find, I ever did see. Lamps is lamps, and moons is moons, in a business pint of view, but practically they ain’t much if the wicks ain’t afire. When the luminaries are, as I may say, in the raw, it’s bad for me. I can’t see the ground as perforately as little fellers, and every dark night I’m sure to get a hyst; either a forrerd hyst, or a backerd hyst, or some sort of a hyst; but more backerds than forrerds, ‘specially in winter. One of the most unfeeling tricks I know of, is the way some folks have got of laughing out, yaw-haw! when they see a gentleman ketching a reg’lar hyst; a long gentleman, for instance, with his legs in the air, and his noddle splat down upon the cold bricks. A hyst of itself is bad enough, without being sniggered at: first, your sconce gets a crack; then, you see all sorts of stars, and have free admission to the fire-works; then, you scramble up, feeling as if you had no head on your shoulders, and as if it wasn’t you, but some confounded disagreeable feller in your clothes; yet the jacksnipes all grin, as if the misfortunes of human nature was only a poppet show. I wouldn’t mind it, if you could get up and look as if you didn’t care. But a man can’t rise, after a royal hyst, without letting on he feels flat. In such cases, however, sympathy is all gammon; and as for sensibility of a winter’s day, people keep it all for their own noses, and can’t be coaxed to retail it by the small.’

‘DILLY JONES’ is one of those unfortunate wights ‘just whose luck’ it is never to succeed in any thing they undertake. In a state of ‘mellow’ mental abstraction, while lamenting that the trade of one’s early days might not likewise be the trade of one’s latter years, he unconsciously utters his thoughts aloud:

‘‘SAWING wood’s going all to smash,’ said he, ‘and that’s where every thing goes what I speculates in. This here coal is doing us up. Ever since these black stones was brought to town, the wood-sawyers and pilers, and them soap-fat and hickory-ashes men, has been going down; and, for my part, I can’t say as I see what’s to be the end of all their new-fangled contraptions. But it’s always so; I’m always crawling out of the little end of the horn. I began life in a comfortable sort of a way; selling oysters out of a wheel-barrow, all clear grit, and didn’t owe nobody nothing. Oysters went down slick enough for a while, but at last cellars was invented, and darn the oyster, no matter how nice it was pickled, could poor Dill sell; so I had to eat up capital and profits myself. Then the ‘pepree-pot smoking’ was sot up, and went ahead pretty considerable for a time; but a parcel of fellers come into it, said my cats wasn’t as good as their’n, when I know’d they was as fresh as any cats in the market; and pepree-pot was no go. Bean-soup was just as bad; people said kittens wasn’t good done that way, and the more I hollered, the more the customers wouldn’t come, and them what did, wanted tick. Along with the boys and their pewter fips, them what got trust and didn’t pay, and the abusing of my goods, I was soon fotch’d up in the victualling line—and I busted for the benefit of my creditors. But genius riz. I made a raise of a horse and saw, after being a wood-piler’s prentice for a while, and working till I was free, and now here comes the coal to knock this business in the head.’ · · · ‘I wonder if they wouldn’t list me for a Charley? Hollering oysters and bean-soup has guv’ me a splendid woice; and instead of skeering ’em away, if the thieves were to hear me singing out, my style of doing it would almost coax ’em to come and be took up. They’d feel like a bird when a snake is after it, and would walk up, and poke their coat collars right into my fist. Then, after a while, I’d perhaps be promoted to the fancy business of pig ketching, which, though it is werry light and werry elegant, requires genus. ’Tisn’t every man that can come the scientifics in that line, and has studied the nature of a pig, so as to beat him at canœuvering, and make him surrender ‘cause he sees it ain’t no use of doing nothing. It wants larning to conwince them critters, and it’s only to be done by heading ’em up handsome, hopping which ever way they hop, and tripping ’em up genteel by shaking hands with their off hind leg. I’d scorn to pull their tails out by the roots, or to hurt their feelin’s by dragging ’em about by the ears. But what’s the use? If I was listed, they’d soon find out to holler the hour and to ketch the thieves by steam; yes, and they’d take ’em to court on a railroad, and try ’em with biling water. They’ll soon have black locomotives for watchmen and constables, and big bilers for judges and mayors. Pigs will be ketched by steam, and will be biled fit to eat before they are done squealing. By and by, folks won’t be of no use at all. There won’t be no people in the world but tea-kittles; no mouths, but safety-valves; and no talking, but blowing off steam. If I had a little biler inside of me, I’d turn omnibus, and week-days I’d run from Kensington to the Navy Yard, and Sundays I’d run to Fairmount.’’

There is a world of wisdom in the syllabus, or ‘argument,’ prefixed to each sketch; but for these we must refer the reader to the volume itself. The DOGBERRYS too are as wise as their ‘illustrious predecessor,’ and are quite as profuse of advice to ‘the plaintiffs’ who fall into their hands. Take a single specimen: ‘Take keer—don’t persume; I’m a ‘fishal functionary out a-ketching of dogs. You mustn’t cut up because it’s night. The mayor and the ‘squires has gone to bed; but the law is a thing that never gets asleep. After ten o’clock the law is a watchman and a dog-ketcher; we’re the whole law till breakfast’s a’most ready.’ ‘You’re a clever enough kind of little feller, sonny; but you ain’t been eddicated to the law as I have; so I’ll give you a lecture. Justice vinks at vot it can’t see, and lets them off vot it can’t ketch. When you want to break it, you must dodge. You may do what you like in your own house, and the law don’t know nothing about the matter. But never go thumping and bumping about the streets, when you are primed and snapped. That’s intemperance, and the other is temperance. But now you come under the muzzle of the ordinance; you’re a loafer.’ One of these ‘‘fishal functionaries’ justifies extreme physical means in ‘captivating obstropolous vagroms’ both by reason and distinguished precedent: ‘Wolloping is the only way; it’s a panacea for differences of opinion. You’ll find it in history books, that one nation teaches another what it didn’t know before by wolloping it; that’s the method of civilizing savages; the Romans put the whole world to rights that way; and what’s right on the big figger must be right on the small scale. In short, there’s nothing like wolloping for taking the conceit out of fellows who think they know more than their betters.’ ‘And so forth, et cetera,’ as may be ascertained on a perusal of the volume.

LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LATE WILLIAM ABBOTT: THIRD NOTICE.—This most entertaining manuscript-volume, from which we have already drawn so largely for the entertainment of our readers, has not been published in America, as it was designed to have been, owing partly as we learn to the fact that, through ‘something like unfair dealing’ toward the widow of the writer, a copy of half the volume had been transmitted to England, parts of which have already reached this country in the pages of a London magazine. We had the pleasure to anticipate by a month or two the best portions even of these printed chapters; and we proceed to select passages from other divisions of this interesting auto-biography, which were written out after a duplicate copy of the earlier chapters had been transmitted to the London publisher. Mr. ABBOTT (aside from the society to which he had the entrée on account of his professional merits,) was a personal favorite with many of the most eminent personages among the English nobility, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy; but we never find him illustrating his own importance by the narration of the social anecdotes or careless table-talk of his distinguished friends, as too many of his contemporaries have done. He was honored with the cordial friendship of the EARLS GLENGALL and FITZHARDING; and ‘at their tables,’ he writes, ‘I was a frequent guest, where I constantly met with society embracing the highest rank and most distinguished talent in England. I refrain, from obvious reasons, from mentioning names; but I may say that if there was ever a class of persons who confer honor upon the society in which they mingle, it is the Aristocracy of Great-Britain. There is a delicacy and forbearance in their manner, and that air of perfect equality which is so indicative of the accomplished gentleman and scholar. COLMAN was a very frequent guest at these dinners, and was, with the exception perhaps of LORD ALVANLEY, one of the most brilliant diners-out in London.’ This testimony, let us remark in passing, in favor of the ease and simplicity of the really high-born gentlemen of England, is confirmed by all Americans who have been well received in English society. The reader will especially remember the tribute paid on this point by Mr. SANDERSON, the accomplished ‘American in Paris,’ in his ‘Familiar Letters from London,’ in these pages. But we are standing before Mr. ABBOTT. In Edinburgh ‘there lies the scene:’

‘I AGAIN visited Edinburgh at the close of the Covent-Garden season, and received the same undiminished hospitality as on a former occasion. I established an intimacy with the BALLANTINES of celebrated SCOTT memory. MATTHEWS was indebted to JOHN BALLANTINE for his famous old Scotch woman, and he certainly rivalled his preceptor in the quaint and dry humor with which he narrated that most amusing story. The management of the Edinburgh Theatre rested in the hands of Mr. MURRAY. He was the only son of the MURRAY formerly of Covent-Garden Theatre, who was one of the most chaste and impressive actors I ever saw. His Adam, in ‘As you Like it,’ was really the perfection of the art. Mrs. HENRY SIDDONS, in whom the property was vested at the death of her husband, was, fortunately for me, residing with her charming family in Edinburgh, and I was a constant guest at her table. Her manners were fascinating in the extreme, and a greater compliment could not well be paid than in having the entrée to a family so intellectual in their resources, and so perfectly amiable in disposition. A very amusing and agreeable club was got up by a party of young advocates. Delightful it was, from its very absurdity; in fact the nonsense of men of sense is an admirable couch to repose upon. Our numbers were limited, and embraced some of that powerful intellect which the modern Athens possesses in so eminent degree. Mr. MILES ANGUS FLETCHER, Mr. ANDERSON, Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON, and a son of the late and brother of the present Lord MEADOWBANK, were among those I knew intimately, and whose varied talents gave life and soul to the society. We scorned the artificial light that illumined our midnight orgies, and seldom separated before the beams of the sun were dancing in our festive cups.’

The following account of the first Theatrical Fund Dinner, an entertainment of which we hear so much latterly in England, with the defence of actors against the charges of extravagance and improvidence so often brought against them, will possess interest for American readers:

‘THE Covent-Garden Theatrical Fund about this period was languishing for want of support; and the great importance to be derived from an increase of its means seriously occupied the attention of the committee. We naturally looked upon it as affording an opportunity of increasing the respectability of the profession, and the means of preventing those individual appeals to the public from our impoverished brethren. There is a popular delusion that actors form a class in which the most reckless profusion is displayed; that the habits of their lives are necessarily dissipated, and that in the enjoyments of the luxuries of to-day, the wants and cares of to-morrow are entirely lost sight of. I do not believe in these sweeping assertions. I will not pretend to say that actors are exempt from the frailties of humanity; nay, I will admit that their course of life perhaps exposes them to greater temptations; but this fact ought rather to operate in their favor, than to tell so powerfully against them. I would ask those persons who are so inimical to the profession of an actor, whether longevity is the result of dissipation; and if they will take the trouble of examining, they will find that actors in general are extremely long-lived. There is a want of thriftiness in their composition, I grant; and fortunately for them the same charge is brought against the poet; the man whose high intellectual powers prevent his descending to the level of this work-day world. But will any one take the trouble of explaining from whence the actor is to derive his wealth? We will imagine that his salary is respectable, that it is regularly paid, and that there is no excuse for his being in debt. And now take into consideration that he has an appearance to maintain; that he has a family to support; and then what becomes of the opportunity of laying by a modicum even, to guard against the decline of life when the ‘winter daisies’ shall crown his head, and a new race of performers have started up and driven the others from their posts? We have some rare instances of very large fortunes being made and retained by members of the profession it is true, but they were instances of dazzling genius, or had the world’s belief that they possessed it. I will take names within the memory of us all: Mrs. SIDDONS, Mr. KEMBLE, Miss O’NEIL, the ‘Young Roscius,’ and the late Mr. LEWIS; and I will add to that list men of accomplished talents and great honor to the profession; YOUNG, BANNISTER, MUNDEN, BRAHAM, WROUGHTON, LISTON, HARLEY, JOHNSTONE, POWER, JONES; and I am sure the reader will believe me when I state, that I heartily wish I could place my own name in the list. Take the members of any other profession, however honorable, limit their numbers and means to the same proportion, and I ask if you would be enabled to produce a greater list of independent persons. The great advantages to be derived from a Theatrical Fund are here I trust made apparent; and after many suggestions, I believe it fell to the lot of CHARLES TAYLOR to propose an annual public dinner; and it proved a most fortunate idea. The first great point to be obtained was a patron, and then a president for the dinner. Our application met with immediate success, and His Royal Highness the PRINCE REGENT condescendingly gave his name at the head of our undertaking, accompanied by a solid mark of his favor in the donation of one hundred pounds. We then had the gracious consent of the DUKE OF YORK to be our President, aided by his Royal brothers KENT and SUSSEX. The list of vice-presidents embraced many of the most distinguished noblemen and gentlemen in the country. In what an amiable point of view do the Royal Princes place themselves before the public in so thoroughly identifying themselves with the many interesting charities to which London gives birth! The grateful spirit of joyousness which they invariably displayed on these occasions, gave an interest to the festive scenes, and confirmed many a heart in its loyalty to their illustrious house. The late DUKE OF GORDON sat on the right hand of the Royal President, and favored the company with a song, which greatly surprised them, and elicited a general encore, and with which, with great good humor, he immediately complied. MATTHEWS always held a conspicuous position at these dinners, and made a point of giving an original song, selected from his forth-coming entertainment. The amount collected at our first dinner was extraordinary; no less a sum than one thousand eight hundred and seventy pounds. The Drury-Lane Fund in the following year adapted our plan of the dinner, and both these institutions now annually derive a very large sum from the volunteer subscriptions of the Friends of the Drama. The same Royal patronage is most graciously continued by her present Majesty, and Royalty continues to preside at the festival. With this accumulation of patronage the actor may fearlessly look forward to the close of his mortal career without the dread of eleemosynary contributions, and also feel the proud gratification that he has personally contributed to support so interesting a Fund.’

As a specimen of Mr. ABBOTT’S’ stock-breaking and gambling experiences, we quote the subjoined passages:

‘A FRIEND of mine connected with the Stock Exchange on one occasion pointed out to me the great advantage of occasionally purchasing five thousand consuls on time, knowing that I had capital unemployed; the certain profits were placed before me in such an agreeable point of view, that I could not resist the bait. In the course of two days I received a check for fifty pounds, a sum by no means unpleasant, considering that I had not advanced one farthing. The natural consequence was that I repeated the dose with various success until I was ultimately well plucked. I sustained a loss of one thousand pounds. I then began to be very uneasy, until I fortunately discovered that by one coup I had made two hundred pounds. My broker had waddled of course, without being able to make up his differences. The parties of whom I had purchased, through my agent, refused to pay me, as they had no knowledge of a third person, and were themselves considerable sufferers by the aforesaid broker. I could not understand the justice of this measure, for I had always paid my losses to the moment; so I walked to Temple-Bar, pulled off my hat most gracefully to that venerable arch, and vowed never again to pass it in the pursuit of ill-gotten wealth. I had always a perfect horror of gambling, and little imagined I was pursuing it in a wholesale manner. To satisfy my inordinate curiosity, for sight-seeing, I have twice or thrice in my life passed the threshhold of a gambling-house in London, but never felt the least personal desire to embark the smallest sum, although keenly alive to the dangerous excitement in others. On one of these occasions it fell to my lot to witness a most affecting and trying scene. The names of the parties came to my knowledge afterward, which from delicacy I of course suppress. A gentleman had for some years been separated from his wife, in consequence of infidelity on her part with a man of high fashion, an officer of the Guards. An action and divorce ensued; but two children whom he had previous to this unfortunate event, he refused to acknowledge, thus endeavoring to put the stain of illegitimacy upon them. Years rolled on, and the father and son never met. Rouge-et-Noir was the fashionable game of the day, and Pall-Mall and St. James-street swarmed with gambling-houses. Two gentlemen were quarrelling upon a point, each accusing the other of taking the stake. The younger man was the officer on guard that day, and consequently in uniform. High words ensued; cards were exchanged; and in one moment, from the most ungovernable rage, they became motionless as statues. The silence was at length interrupted by an explanation of ‘By Heaven! my son!’ This remark was made from the impulse of the moment, and probably struck a chord in the parent’s heart that let loose all his affections. They retired to another apartment; explanations ensued; and a reconciliation was the result.’

Elsewhere Mr. ABBOTT describes the gambling-houses of Paris, ‘those dens of iniquity,’ as he terms them. ‘The varied scenes of frantic joy and human debasement,’ he writes, ‘which I witnessed at FRASCATI’S, were truly appalling. The extremes of excitement were as powerfully exhibited in the loser of twenty francs as in the man who had lost his twenty thousand.’ The annexed sketch of the lamented career of poor CONWAY, who will be ‘freshly remembered’ by many of our readers in the Atlantic cities, is authentic in every particular. It is not without its lesson, in more regards than one:

‘I FIND I have neglected to mention an actor, who stood sufficiently forward, both by his position and his misfortunes, to be entitled to a respectful notice; I mean Mr. CONWAY. He was said to be the illegitimate offspring of a distinguished nobleman; but whether his own pride prevented his making advances, and he was resolved to lay the foundation of his own fame and fortune, or whether he met with a check upon his natural feelings from one who was bound to support him, I know not; but, gifted as he was with a commanding person, a most gentlemanlike deportment, and advantages peculiarly adapted for the stage, it is no wonder that the histrionic art held forth inducements and hopes of obtaining a brighter position than any other career open to him, without the aid of pecuniary means, and the patronage which was withheld from him. He made his appearance in 1813, the season previous to KEAN, in the character of ‘Alexander the Great.’ He met with a very flattering reception, and produced a great effect upon the fair sex. Indeed, the actors, who are upon these occasions lynx-eyed, could not avoid their remarks upon a certain Duchess, who never missed one of his performances, and appeared to take the deepest interest in his success. CONWAY was upward of six feet in height. He was deficient in strong intellectual expression, yet he had the reputation of being very handsome. His head was too small for his frame, and his complexion too light and sanguine for the profound and varied emotions of deep tragedy. There was a tinge of affectation in his deportment, which had the effect of creating among many a strong feeling of prejudice against him. His bearing was always gentlemanly, and with the exception of a slight superciliousness of manner, amiable to every body; and his talent, though not of the highest order, was still sufficiently prominent to enable him to maintain a distinguished position. And yet this man, with so little to justify spleen, was literally, from an unaccountable prejudice, driven from the stage by one of the leading weekly journals, edited by a gentleman whose biting satire was death to those who had the misfortune to come under his lash. In complete disgust, he retired from the boards, and filled the humble situation of prompter at the Haymarket-Theatre, but afterward left for the United States, where he became a great favorite. But the canker was at his heart. He again quitted the stage, and prepared himself for the Church; but there again he was foiled. The ministers of our holy religion refused to receive him, not from any moral stain upon his character, but because he had been an actor! What is to become of the priesthood, who in the early periods were the only actors, and selected scriptural subjects for representation? He left in a packet for Savannah, overwhelmed with misery and disappointment. ‘Ushered into the world by a parent who would not acknowledge him; driven out of it in the belief that he was the proscribed of Heaven!’ At the moment they were passing the bar at Charleston, he threw himself overboard. Efforts were made to save him; a settee was thrown over for him to cling to until they could adopt more decisive measures for his rescue. He saw the object; but his resolution was taken. He waved his hand, and sunk to rise no more. I have reason to believe, that the gentleman to whom I have alluded as having made such fearful use of his editorial powers, felt deep remorse when the news of his ill-timed death arrived. He also is now no more! Poor CONWAY! Had he possessed more nerve, he might still have triumphed over the unkindness of his fate:

‘Who has not known ill fortune, never knew

Himself or his own virtue.’

In the same chapter we find a bit of artistical grouping in a historical picture, which the reader will agree with us is well worthy of preservation:

‘THE world never witnessed such powerful scenes of exciting interest as took possession of Great Britain about this period. The people were drunk with enthusiasm. One victory followed so rapidly on the heels of another, that they had not time to sober down. The peninsular campaign had closed, and the hitherto sacred soil of France was invaded. The restoration of legitimacy, and the momentary enthusiasm of the French in favor of their exiled monarch, disturbed the intellects of half mankind. The magnificent entrée of LOUIS the Eighteenth into London from Heartwell Park, where he had resided for some years, almost conveyed the idea that it was his own capital he was entering, after his long and weary exile. The silken banner with the fleur de lis flaunting from the walls of Devonshire-House and all the neighboring mansions in Piccadilly; immense cavalcades of gentlemen superbly mounted, all wearing the white cockade; the affectionate sympathy and profound respect shown by all classes toward the illustrious representative of the Bourbons, was touching in the extreme. On his route from Heartwell, and through Stanmore, troops of yeomanry turned out to give him an honorable escort; and what could be more honorable than the voluntary attendance of the farmers who represented the very bone and sinew of the country? The large portly figure of the KING perfectly disabused JOHN BULL of the long-cherished idea that Frenchmen lived entirely upon frogs. Even that particular fact interested them, and repeated huzzas greeted him throughout the whole of his route to London. On his arrival at Guillon’s Hotel in Albermarle-street, which had been most splendidly prepared for his reception, His Royal Highness the PRINCE REGENT received him with that delicate attention so worthy of his high and gallant bearing; and there LOUIS must have met with one of the most touching scenes that ever thrilled the human heart. One hundred and fifty of the ancient noblesse were waiting, after years of hopeless expectation, to greet the head of that illustrious house, the recollection of whose sufferings awakened the most painful feelings. Not one of them but had shared in the horrors of that bloody revolution; and not one of them but truly felt that the happiness of that moment repaid them for all their sufferings.’

A rich specimen of the pompous ignorance sometimes exhibited by theatrical managers is afforded in the following anecdote, which has appeared in England, but which we are sure will be relished by our readers. It may seem extraordinary that a manager should be such an ignoramus; but ‘half the actors on the English stage,’ says a recent writer, ‘dare not address a gentleman a note, lest they should ‘show their hands:’’

‘WHEN I first became a member of Covent-Garden, Mr. FAWCETT held the reins of management, in consequence of the retirement of Mr. KEMBLE from that position. He had experience to guide him, but he unfortunately possessed a dictatorial manner, and a want of that refinement and education which had so distinguished his great predecessor. In speaking of his public position, however, let me pay homage to his private virtues. He was a tender husband, an affectionate father, and a warm friend. During my first season a play was produced called the ‘Students of Salamanca.’ The author was Mr. JAMIESON, a member of the bar, who had been particularly successful in several light pieces produced at the Haymarket. Mr. JONES and myself were ‘The Students,’ and it occurred to me in my character to say, ‘My danger was imminent.’ These words had scarcely passed my lips, when a dark and lowering look dimmed the countenance of the manager. I saw that something was wrong, but was quite at a loss to guess the cause. At the end of the scene, unwilling to mortify me in the presence of the company, he beckoned me aside, and said: ‘Young man, do you know what you said?’ I changed color, feeling that something fearful had occurred. I replied, very much agitated, that I was not aware of any error. ‘I thought so! Do you know where you are? You are in London, not in Bath!’ The fact was so self-evident that I did not attempt to disprove it. ‘You will be delivered up to scorn and contempt; the critics will immolate you; the eyes of this great metropolis are fixed upon you. I thought you were a well-educated young man, but I have been deceived—grossly deceived!’ The effect of this tirade may be more easily conceived than described. My face flushed, my heart beat, and I at length mustered courage to say, ‘For heaven’s sake, Sir, pray tell me; I am extremely sorry—deeply regret—but pray tell me!’ The kindness of his disposition got the better of his pedantry, and seeing the agitation under which I was really suffering, he replied: ‘Do you remember that you said your danger was imminent’? Now, Sir, there is no such word in the English language: it is eminent!!’ Need I mention the unbounded relief this explanation gave me? I quietly suggested the difference of their significations, and was never after troubled with any corrections. He was a man of sterling qualities, somewhat like a melon, as his friend COLMAN said; ‘rough without, smooth within.’’

In the way of a hoax, we remember nothing more cleverly performed, than the rather cruel one whose execution is pleasantly recorded below:

‘THERE was a lady attached to the Worthing Theatre, (mark me, reader, I did not say attached to me,) who was very eccentric, and who was, ‘small blame to her,’ as the Irishman says, also very susceptible. I was on very intimate terms with Mr. HARLEY, who was then at Worthing; and one day, while quietly dining together, we mutually agreed that there was a fickleness about this lady which deserved some reproof. We were really liberal in our feelings, and would not have objected to her shooting an extra dart occasionally; but it was not to be borne that she should let fly a whole quiver at once. We had observed that by way of having two or more strings to her bow, she had got up a flirtation with the leader of the band, a most respectable man by the way, and of considerable talent. After giving the affair all due consideration, we decided upon a mock-duel, in which I was to personate one of the heroes, my rival being the aforesaid leader. We carefully and ostentatiously avoided all appearance of communication, and in such a way that it always reached her knowledge. Thus by gentle innuendoes she discovered that something serious was in contemplation, and of course she was not a little flattered, as she was the object of dispute. Our duelling-pistols were one day ostentatiously paraded, and evident anxiety took possession of the company, who were carefully excluded from the secret. The following morning at five o’clock we each left our lodgings, accompanied by our seconds, the rain pouring in torrents. HARLEY then went to the lodgings of the frail or rather fair one, knocked at the door most violently, and at length she appeared at the window, in evident alarm. He urged her if she had the feelings of a woman immediately to accompany him, and prevent murder; briefly stating, that her ‘beauties were the cause and most accursed effect.’ In a state of real excitement, mixed up with woman’s vanity, she rushed out of the house, and accompanied that wag of wags. A white beaver hat, sweet emblem of her purity, was on her head, and partially concealed her disordered ringlets, hastily gathered together. We arranged with HARLEY always to keep ourselves a certain distance in advance on the pathway bordering the sands. The first thing that occurred was a sudden gust of wind which swept the white beaver a considerable distance and covered it with mud; her flowing locks then fell upon her alabaster neck, and her romantic appearance was perfect. We most cruelly led her on a distance of at least two miles, and took our station near some lime-kilns, close to the sea. When she was sufficiently near, one of the seconds stepped forward and gave the signal by dropping a blood-stained handkerchief, prepared for the occasion. Bang! bang! went the pistols; when she gracefully sank into the arms of HARLEY, who held her in a fine melo-dramatic attitude. The report was soon over all the town, and of course in the newspapers. My adversary put his arm in a sling, and whenever I happened to be near her, in a perfect state of despair I vowed that I could never forgive myself for having shot my friend. We mutually repulsed her by severe looks whenever she approached us; and she soon left the Worthing Theatre to seek for victims of less sensibility in other places.’

We once more take our leave of Mr. ABBOTT’S agreeable manuscript volume; by no means certain, however, that its entertaining pages may not again tempt us to share with our readers the enjoyment they have afforded us.

GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.—WILL the author of ‘Public Concert-Singing’ favor us with his address? We are desirous of communicating with him, although he does not ‘find his hastily-jotted thoughts in the pages of the KNICKERBOCKER,’ for reasons which perhaps he can partly divine from the present number, and which we could impart more directly in a private note. We agree with him entirely in his views; and if he will permit us, we will here quote a passage from an article which we penned upon a subject collateral to his general theme, many years ago, before we were hampered with the professional ‘we,’ and could write out of our ‘company dress.’ It is a little sketch of the first public singing, save that of the church, to which we had ever listened: ‘How well do I remember it! It was at the theatre of a country village; a rough, barn-like edifice, at which several Stentor-lunged Thespians ‘from the New-York and Philadelphia Theatres’ split the ears of the groundlings, and murdered SHAKSPEARE’S heroes and the King’s English. I had been watching with boyish curiosity the play which had just concluded: the mottled, patched, yellowish-green curtain had descended upon the personages whose sorrows were my own; and I was gazing vacantly at the long row of tallow candles placed in holes bored for the purpose in the stage, and at the two fiddlers who composed ‘the orchestra,’ and who were reconnoitering the house. Presently a small bell was rung, with a jerk. There was a flourish or two from ‘the orchestra;’ another tinkle of the bell; and up rose the faded drapery. An interval of a moment succeeded, during which half of a large mountain was removed from the scenery, and a piece of forest shoved up to the ambitious wood that had been aspiring to overtop the Alps. At length a young lady, whom I had just seen butchered in a most horrid manner by a villain, came from the side of the stage with a smile, which, while it displayed her white teeth, wrought the rouge upon her face into very perceptible corrugations, and made a lowly courtesy. She walked with measured step three or four times across the stage, in the full blaze of the flaring candles, smiling again, and hemming, to clear her voice. Presently a perfect stillness prevailed; ‘awed Consumption checked his chided cough;’ every urchin suspended his cat-call; and ‘the boldest held his breath for a time.’ Our vocalist looked at the leader of the orchestra and his fellow-fiddlers, and commenced, in harmony with their instruments. How touching was that song! I shall never have my soul so enrapt again. That freshness of young admiration possessed my spirit which can come but once. The air was ‘The Braes of Balquither,’ a charming melody, meetly wedded to the noble lines of TANNEHILL; and enthusiasm was at its height when the singer had concluded the following stanza, almost sublime in its picturesque beauty:

‘When the rude wintry wind wildly raves round our dwelling,

And the roar of the lion on the night-breeze is swelling,

Then so merrily we’ll sing, while the storm rattles o’er us,

Till the dear shealing ring with the light-lilting chorus!’

The air was old as the hills, but like all Scottish melodies, as lasting too. To every body the songs of Scotland are grateful; and the universal attachment to them arises from their beautiful simplicity, deep pathos, and unaffected, untrammelled melody. The romantic sway of the songs of Scotland over her sons when ‘far awa’ is to me no marvel. If they possess the power to thrill or to subdue the hearts of those who have never stepped upon the soil of that glorious country, is it at all surprising that they should exert a powerful influence over the native-born, who associate those airs with the purple heath, the blue loch, the hazy mountain-top, and the valley sleeping below?

‘What sweet tears dim the eyes unshed,

What wild vows falter on the tongue,

When ‘Scots wha ha’ wi’ WALLACE bled,’

Or ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is sung!’

The association however is touching, not alone because it awakens old recollections, but because the music is natural; it is the language of the heart. Affectation has not interpopolated tortuous windings and trills and shakes, to mar its beauty, and to clip the full melodious notes of their fair proportions. It is pleasant to think that fashion, though never so potent, can neither divert nor lessen the popular attachment to the simpler melodies. We have the authority of the WOODS, WILSON, SINCLAIR, POWER, and other eminent artists for stating that ‘Black-eyed Susan,’ ‘John Anderson my Jo,’ ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’ and kindred airs, could always ‘bring down the house,’ no matter what the antagonistical musical attraction might be. We could wish that the VENERABLE TAURUS, or ‘OLD BULL,’ as many persons call him, would take a hint from this. Let him try it once; and we venture to say that no one, however uninitiated, will again retire from his splendid performances as a country friend of ours did lately, assigning as a reason: ‘I waited till about ha’-past nine; and then he hadn’t got done tunin’ his fiddle!’ A touch of ‘music for the general heart’ would have enchained him till morning. CHRISTOPHER NORTH, we perceive, in the last BLACKWOOD, fully enters into the spirit of our predilection. He has just returned from a concert of fashionable music, where he ‘tried to faint, that he might be carried out, but didn’t know how to do it,’ and was compelled to sit with compressed lips, and listen to ‘sounds from flat shrill signorinas, quavering to distraction,’ for two long hours. When he gets home, however, he ‘feeds fat his grudge’ against modern musical affectations. Let us condense a few of his objurgations:

‘IT is a perfect puzzle to us by what process the standard of music has become so lowered, as to make what is ordinarily served up under that name be received as the legitimate descendant of harmony. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and this entrancing art, it seems, has taken it; sorely dislocating its graceful limbs, and injuring its goodly proportions in the unseemly escapade. We hate your crashing, clumsy chords, and utterly spit at and defy chromatic passages, from one end of the instrument to the other, and back again; flats, sharps, and most appropriate ‘naturals,’ spattered all over the page. The essential spirit of discord seems to be let loose on our modern music. Music to soothe! the idea is obsolete. There is music to excite, much to irritate one, and much more to drive a really musical soul stark mad; but none to soothe, save that which is drawn from the hiding-places of the past. There is no repose, no refreshment to the mind, in our popular compositions. There is to us more of touching pathos, heart-thrilling expression, in some of the old psalm-tunes, feelingly played, than in a whole batch of modernisms. The strains go home, and the ‘fountains of the great deep are broken up;’ the great deep of unfathomable feeling, that lies far, far below the surface of the world-hardened heart; and as the unwonted yet unchecked tear starts to the eye, the softened spirit yields to their influence, and shakes off the moil of earthly care; rising, purified and spiritualized, into a clearer atmosphere.’

WE often hear of odd things happening in consequence of mistakes in orthography, but seldom of any benefit accruing therefrom to the orthoöpist. But a friend mentioned to us a little circumstance the other day, which would seem to prove that it does a man good sometimes to spell somewhat at variance with old JOHNSON. In a village not far hence lived a man known by the name of BROKEN JONES. He had dissipated a large fortune in various law-suits; had become poor and crazy; and at last, like another PEEBLES, his sole occupation consisted in haunting the courts, lawyers’ offices, and other scenes of his misfortunes. To judge and attorneys he was a most incorrigible bore; to the latter especially, from whom he was continually soliciting opinions on cases which had long been ‘settled,’ and carried to the law-ledgers, where they were only occasionally hunted up as precedents in the suit of perhaps some other destined victims. As JONES hadn’t a cent of money left, it was of course impossible for him to obtain any more ‘opinions;’ but this didn’t cure him of his law-mania. One morning he entered the office of lawyer D——, in a more excited state than he had exhibited for a long time, and seating himself vis-a-vis with his victim, requested his ‘opinion’ on one of the ‘foregone conclusions’ already mentioned. D—— happening at the moment to be very busy, endeavored to get rid of his visiter, and contrived various expedients for that purpose. But JONES was not in a mood to be trifled with. ‘I came, ‘Squire,’ said he, ‘to get your opinion in writing on this case, and I will have it before I leave the room, if I sit here till the day of judgment!’ The lawyer looked upon his visiter, while a thought of forcible ejectment passed through his brain; but the glaring eye and stout athletic frame which met his gaze, told him that such a course would be extremely hazardous. At length the dinner-bell rang. A bright thought struck him; and putting on his coat and hat, he took JONES gently by the arm: ‘Come,’ said he, ‘go and dine with me.’ ‘No!’ said the latter, fiercely; ‘I’ll never dine again until I get what I came for.’ The lawyer was in a quandary, and at length, in very despair, he consented to forego his dinner and give his annoyer the desired opinion. ‘Well, well, JONES,’ said he, soothingly, ‘you shall have it;’ and gathering pens, ink and paper, he was soon seated at the table, while JONES, creeping on tiptoe across the room, stood peeping over his shoulder. The lawyer commenced: ‘My oppinion in the case——’ ‘Humph!’ said the lunatic, suddenly seizing his hat, and turning on his heel, ‘I wouldn’t give a d—n for your opinion with two p’s!’ ••• MANY of our public as well as private correspondents seem to have been not a little interested in the articles on Mind and Instinct, in late numbers of this Magazine. A valued friend writing from Maryland, observes: ‘The collection of facts by your contributor is very industrious, their array quite skilful, and the argument very strong. I think, however, that if I had time I could pick several flaws in the reasoning, or rather erect a very good counter-argument, founded principally upon the fact that the intelligence of animals is generally as great in early youth as it is in the prime of their beasthood. The author might have added to his list of facts, an account which I read when a boy, of the practice of the baboons in Caffraria, near the orange-orchards. They arrange themselves in a row from their dens to the orange-trees. One then ascends the tree, plucks the oranges, and throws them to the next baboon, and he to the next, and so on throughout the whole file; they standing some fifty yards apart. In this manner they quickly strip a tree, and at the same time are safe from being all surprised at once. The early French missionaries in Canada, also asserted that the squirrels of that region, having denuded the country on one side of the big lake, of nuts, used to take pieces of birch bark, and hoisting their tails for canvass, float to the other side for their supply.’ We have been struck with a passage in a powerful article upon ‘The Hope that is within Us,’ in a late foreign periodical, wherein the fruitful theme of our correspondent is touched upon. ‘If matter,’ says the writer, ‘be incapable of consciousness, as JOHNSON so powerfully argues in Rasselas, then the animus of brutes must be an anima, and immaterial; for the dog and the elephant not merely exhibit ‘consciousness,’ but a ‘half-reasoning’ power. And if it be true, as JOHNSON maintains, that immateriality of necessity produces immortality, then the poor Indian’s conclusion is the most logical,

‘Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.’

The truth is, that we must depend upon revelation for an assurance of immortality; which promises, however, the resurrection of the body, as philosophy is unequal to its demonstration, and modern researches into animal life have rendered the proof more difficult than heretofore.’ By the by, ‘speaking of animals:’ there is a letter from LEMUEL GULLIVER in the last number of BLACKWOOD, describing a meeting of ‘delegates from the different classes of consumers of oats, held at the Nag’s-Head inn at Horsham.’ The business of the meeting was opened by a young RACER, who expressed his desire to promote the interests of the horse-community, and to promote any measure which might contribute to the increase of the consumption of oats, and improve the condition of his fellow quadrupeds. He considered the horse-interest greatly promoted by the practice of sowing wild oats, which he warmly commended. A HACKNEY-COACH HORSE declared himself in favor of the sliding-scale, which he understood to mean the wooden pavement. Things went much more smoothly wherever it was established. He contended for the abolition of nose-bags, which he designated as an intolerable nuisance; urged the prohibition of chaff with oats, as unfit for the use of able-bodied horses; and indeed evinced the truth of his professions, that he ‘yielded to no horse in an anxious desire to promote the true interests of the horse-community.’ An OLD ENGLISH HUNTER impressed upon the young delegates the good old adage of ‘Look before you leap,’ and urged them to go for ‘measures, not men.’ A STAGE HORSE ‘congratulated the community upon the abolition of bearing-reins, those grievous burdens upon the necks of all free-going horses; and he trusted the time would soon arrive when the blinkers would also be taken off, every corn-bin thrown open, and every horse his own leader.’ Several other steeds, in the various ranks of horse-society, addressed the meeting. ‘Resolutions, drawn by two DRAY-HORSES, embodying the supposed grievances of the community, were finally agreed upon, and a petition, under the hoof of the president, founded upon them, having been prepared and ordered to be presented to the House of Commons by the members for Horsham, the meeting separated, and the delegates returned to their respective stables.’ ••• WHAT habitual theatre or opera-goer has not been tempted a thousand times to laugh outright, and quite in the wrong place, at the incongruities, the inconsistencies, the mental and physical catachreses of the stage, which defy illusion and destroy all vraisemblance? A London sufferer in this kind has hit off some of the salient points of these absurdities in a few ‘Recollections of the Opera:’

‘I’VE known a god on clouds of gauze

With patience hear a people’s prayer,

And bending to the pit’s applause,

Wait while the priest repeats the air.

I’ve seen a black-wig’d Jove hurl down

A thunder-bolt along a wire,

To burn some distant canvass town,

Which—how vexatious!—won’t catch fire.

I’ve known a tyrant doom a maid

(With trills and roulades many a score)

To instant death! She, sore afraid,

Sings: and the audience cries ‘Encore!’

I’ve seen two warriors in a rage

Draw glist’ning swords and, awful sight!

Meet face to face upon the stage

To sing a song, but not to fight!

I’ve heard a king exclaim ‘To arms!’

Some twenty times, yet still remain;

I’ve known his army ‘midst alarms,

Help by a bass their monarch’s strain.

I’ve known a hero wounded sore,

With well-tuned voice his foes defy;

And warbling stoutly on the floor,

With the last flourish fall and die.

I’ve seen a mermaid dress’d in blue;

I’ve seen a cupid burn a wing;

I’ve known a Neptune lose a shoe;

I’ve heard a guilty spectre sing.

I’ve seen, spectators of a dance,

Two Brahmins, Mahomet, the Cid,

Four Pagan kings, four knights of France,

Jove and the Muses—scene Madrid!’

THE leading paper in the present number will not escape the attention nor fail to win the admiration of the reader. The description of the Ascent of Mount Ætna by our eminent artist, is forcible and graphic in the extreme. It will derive additional interest at this moment from the recent eruption of this renowned volcano, which still continued at the last advices, and by which already seventy persons had lost their lives. If our metropolitan readers would desire a due impression of the magnificent scene which our correspondent has described, let them drop in at the rooms of the National Academy of Design, where they will find the Burning Mountain, as seen from Taormina, depicted in all its vastness and grandeur; and not only this, but the noble series of allegorical pictures, heretofore noticed at large in this Magazine, called ‘The Voyage of Life,’ representing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age; ‘Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness,’ a picture that has an horizon, and an aërial gradation toward the zenith, which alone, to say nothing of the figures, and the composition itself as a study, would richly repay a visit; ‘The Past and the Present,’ two most effective scenes, especially the second, which is overflowing with the mingled graces of poetry and art; a glorious composition, ‘An Italian Scene,’ of which we shall speak hereafter; as well as of the view of ‘Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,’ fading into dimness toward the imperial city, and of ‘The Notch in the White Mountains’ of New-Hampshire. Apropos: we perceive by a letter from an American at Rome, in one of the public journals, that THORWALDSEN, the great sculptor, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. COLE’S pictures, particularly of his ‘Voyage of Life,’ which he pronounced ‘original, and new in art.’ ‘He could talk of nothing else,’ says the writer, ‘for a long time; and every time he speaks of him, he adds: ‘Ma che artista, che grand’ artista, quel vostro compatriota! Che fantasia! quanto studio della natura!’ ‘But what an artist, what a great artist, is this countryman of yours! What fancy, what study of nature!’ ••• WE are aware of a pair of ‘bonny blue een’ swimming in light, that will ‘come the married woman’s eye’ over a kind but most antiquarian husband, when the following is read, some two weeks from now, in their ‘little parlor’ in a town of the far west. It reaches us in the MS. of a Boston friend: ‘Old Colonel W——, formerly a well-known character in one of our eastern cities, was remarkable for but one passion out of the ordinary range of humanity, and that was for buying at auction any little lot of trumpery which came under the head of ‘miscellaneous,’ for the reason that it couldn’t be classified. Though close-fisted in general, he was continually throwing away his money by fives and tens upon such trash. In this way he had filled all the odd corners in his dwelling and out-houses with a collection of nondescript articles, that would have puzzled a philosopher to tell what they were made for, or to what use they could ever be put. This however, was but a secondary consideration with the Colonel; for he seldom troubled his head about such articles after they were once fairly housed. Not so with his wife however, who was continually remonstrating against these purchases, which served only to clutter up the house, and as food for the mirth of the domestics. But the Colonel, though he often submitted to these remonstrances of his better-half, couldn’t resist his passion; and so he went on adding from week to week to his heap of miscellanies. One day while sauntering down the street, he heard the full, rich tones of his friend C——, the well-known auctioneer, and as a matter of course stepped in to see what was being sold. On the floor he observed a collection that looked as if it might have been purloined from the garret of some museum, and around which a motley group was assembled; while on the counter stood the portly auctioneer, in the very height of a mock-indignant remonstrance with his audience. ‘Nine dollars and ninety cents!’ cried the auctioneer. ‘Gentlemen, it is a shame, it is barbarous, to stand by and permit such a sacrifice of property! Nine dol-lars and ninety—— Good morning, Colonel! A magnificent lot of—of—antiques—and all going for nine dollars and ninety cents. Gentlemen, you’ll never see another such lot; and all going—going—for nine dollars and ninety cents. Colonel W——, can you permit such a sacrifice?’ The Colonel glanced his eye over the lot, and then with a nod and a wink assured him he could not. The next instant the hammer came down, and the purchase was the Colonel’s, at ten dollars. As the articles were to be paid for and removed immediately, the Colonel lost no time in getting a cart, and having seen every thing packed up and on their way to his house, he proceeded to his own store, chuckling within himself that now at least he had made a bargain at which even his wife couldn’t grumble. In due time he was seated at the dinner-table, when lifting his eyes, he observed a cloud upon his wife’s brow. ‘Well, my dear?’ said he, inquiringly. ‘Well?’ repeated his wife; ‘it is not well, Mr. W.; I am vexed beyond endurance. You know C——, the auctioneer?’ ‘Certainly,’ replied the Colonel; ‘and a very gentlemanly person he is too.’ ‘You may think so,’ rejoined the wife, ‘but I don’t, and I’ll tell you why. A few days ago I gathered together all the trumpery with which you have been cluttering up the house for the last twelve-month, and sent it to Mr. C——, with orders to sell the lot immediately to the highest bidder for cash. He assured me he would do so in all this week, at farthest, and pay over the proceeds to my order. And here I’ve been congratulating myself on two things: first, on having got rid of a most intolerable nuisance; and secondly, on receiving money enough therefor to purchase that new velvet hat you promised me so long ago. And now what do you think? This morning, about an hour ago, the whole load came back again, without a word of explanation!’ The Colonel looked blank for a moment, and then proceeded to clear up the mystery. But the good VROUW was pacified only by the promise of a ten-dollar note beside that in the hands of the auctioneer; on condition, however, that she should never mention it.’ Of course she kept her word! ••• HOW seldom it is that one encounters a good sonnet! Most sonnetteers of our day are like feeble-framed men walking in heavy armor; ‘the massy weight on’t galls their laden limbs.’ We remember two or three charming sonnets of LONGFELLOW’S; PARK BENJAMIN has been unwontedly felicitous in some of his examples; and H. T. TUCKERMAN has excelled in the same poetical rôle. Here is a late specimen of his, from the ‘Democratic Review,’ which we regard as very beautiful:

DESOLATION.

THINK ye the desolate must live apart,

By solemn vows to convent walls confined?

Ah! no; with men may dwell the cloistered heart,

And in a crowd the isolated mind:

Tearless behind the prison-bars of fate

The world sees not how sorrowful they stand,

Gazing so fondly through the iron grate

Upon the promised, yet forbidden land;

Patience, the shrine to which their bleeding feet,

Day after day, in voiceless penance turn;

Silence the holy cell and calm retreat

In which unseen their meek devotions burn;

Life is to them a vigil that none share,

Their hopes a sacrifice, their love a prayer.

‘OUR Ancient,’ the editor of the handsome ‘Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine’ hight ‘The Columbian,’ (which is to run a brisk competition, as we learn, with the other ‘pictorials,’ GODEY’S, GRAHAM’S, and SNOWDEN’S,) should have enabled us to speak of it from an examination of our own copy, instead of being obliged to filch an idea of its merits from the counter of those most obliging gentlemen, Messrs. BURGESS AND STRINGER. The work is a gay one externally, and spirited internally; having several good articles from good writers, male and female. One of the best things in it, however, is the paper on ‘Magazine Literature,’ by the Editor. How many writers, now well known both at home and abroad, who began and continue their literary career in the KNICKERBOCKER, can bear testimony to the truth of the following remarks:

‘WE have said that this is the age of magazines; adverting not merely to their number, but even more especially to their excellence. They are the field, chiefly, in which literary reputation is won. Who ever thinks of JOHN WILSON as the learned professor, or as the author of bound volumes? Who does not, when WILSON’S name is mentioned, instantly call to mind the splendid article-writer, the CHRISTOPHER NORTH of Blackwood? CHARLES LAMB was long known only as the ELIA of the New Monthly. Most of the modern French celebrities; SUE, JANIN, and half a hundred others, have made their fame in the feuilletons of the Parisian journals; a more decided graft, by the way, than is elsewhere seen, of the magazine upon the newspaper. In our own country, how many there are whose names are known from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, that are as yet innocent of books, but have nevertheless contributed largely and well to the growing stock of American literature. How many more who are bringing themselves into notice by their monthly efforts in the pages of some popular magazine. In fact, the magazine is the true channel into which talent should direct itself for the acquisition of literary fame. The newspaper is too ephemeral; the book is not of sufficiently rapid and frequent production. The monthly magazine just hits the happy medium, enabling the writer to present himself twelve times a year before a host of readers, in whose memories he is thus kept fresh, yet allowing him space enough to develope his thought, and time enough to do his talent justice in each article. Then, too, on the score of emolument, justly recognised now as a very essential matter, and legitimately entitled to grave consideration, the magazine offers advantages not within the reach of either book or newspaper. ••• BUT after all, the great point is, that magazines are more read than any other kind of publications. They just adapt themselves to the leisure of the business man, and the taste of the idler; to the spare half hours of the notable housewife and the languid inertia of the fashionable lady. They can be dropped into a valise or a carpet-bag as a welcome provision for the wants of a journey by steam-boat or rail-road, when the country through which the traveller passes offers nothing attractive to be seen, or the eyes are weary of seeing; they while away delightfully the tedious hours of a rainy day in summer, and afford the most pleasant occupation through the long evenings of winter.’

Touching the matter of payment for magazine articles: Mr. WILLIS informs us that many of the American magazines pay to their more eminent contributors nearly three times the amount for a printed page that is paid by English magazines to the best writers in Great-Britain; and he instances GODEY and GRAHAM as paying often twelve dollars a page to their principal contributors. This refers to a few ‘principal’ writers only, as we have good reason to know, having been instrumental in sending several acceptable correspondents to those publications, who have received scarcely one-fourth of the sum mentioned. Mr. WILLIS adds, however, that many good writers write for nothing, and that ‘the number of clever writers has increased so much that there are thousands who can get no article accepted.’ All this is quite true. There is no magazine in America that has paid so large sums to distinguished native writers as the KNICKERBOCKER. Indeed, our most distinguished American writer was never a contributor to any other of our Monthlys than this. The books of this Magazine show, that independent of the Editor’s division of its profits as joint proprietor, or his salary as editor, (a matter which its publishers have always kept distinct from, and in all respects unconnected with, the payments to contributors,) annual sums have heretofore been paid for literary matériel greater than the most liberal estimate we have seen of any annual literary payment by our widely-circulated contemporaries. To the first poet in America, (not to say in the world, at this moment,) we have repeatedly paid fifty dollars for a single poem, not exceeding, in any instance, two pages in length; and the cost of prose papers from sources of kindred eminence has in many numbers exceeded fifteen dollars a page. Again: we have in several instances paid twice as much for the MS. of a continuous novel in these pages as the writer could obtain of any metropolitan book-publisher; and after appearing in volumes, it has been found that the wide publicity given to the work by the KNICKERBOCKER has been of greatest service to its popularity, in more than one subsequent edition. We should add, however, that we have had no lack, at any period, of excellent articles for our work at moderate prices; while many of our more popular papers have been entirely gratuitous, unless indeed the writers consider the honorable reputation which they have established in these pages as some reward for intellectual exertion. But ‘something too much of this.’ We close with a word touching the pictorial features of the ‘Columbian.’ It has four ‘plates’ proper, with an engraving of the fashions; is neatly executed by Messrs. HOPKINS AND JENNINGS, and published by ISRAEL POST, Number Three, Astor-House. ••• SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY is just at hand; and a pleasant correspondent, in enclosing us the following lines, begs us to mention the fact, and to refer to the festivities of the day. We know of one ‘festivity’ that will be a very recherché and brilliant affair, on the evening of that day; namely, ‘The Bachelors’ Ball,’ to be given with unwonted splendor at the Astor-House, under the supervision of accomplished managers, whose taste and liberality have already been abundantly tested. ‘Take it as a matter granted,’ says our friend, ‘that very many of your lady-readers will commit matrimony before the year is done; and tell them so plainly; for it will gratify their palpitating hearts; and even should it not be true in every individual case, the disappointed ones will never complain of you for the pleasing delusion; for it was their own fault, of course, not yours. It behooves you, moreover, as a conservator of the general weal, to give the young wives that are to be some goodly counsel; and to aid you in the laudable office of advice-giver, I send you some appropriate verses, which some fifteen years ago went the rounds of the press, and met with ‘acceptance bounteous.’ The moral of the stanzas, I take it, is unexceptionable, whatever may be said of their execution:’

EPISTLE

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY JUST MARRIED.

ON matrimony’s fickle sea

I hear thou’rt ventured fairly;

Though young in years, it may not be

Thy bark is launched too early.

Each wish of mine to heaven is sent,

That on the stormy water

Thou’lt prove a wife obedient,

As thou hast been a daughter.

If every wish of mine were bliss,

If every hope were pleasure,

Thou wouldst with him find happiness,

And he in thee a treasure:

For every wish and hope of mine,

And every thought and feeling,

Is for the weal of thee and thine,

As true as my revealing.

To please thy husband in all things,

Forever be thou zealous;

And bear in mind that Love has wings,

Then never make him jealous:

For if Love from his perch once flies,

How weak are Beauty’s jesses!

In vain might plead thy streaming eyes,

And thy dishevelled tresses.

Be prudent in thy thoughts of dress,

Be sparing of thy parties;

Where fashion riots in excess,

O! nothing there of heart is!

And can its palling sweets compare

With love of faithful bosom?

Then of the fatal tree beware,

There’s poison in its blossom!

Each thought and wish in him confide,

No secret from him cherish;

Whenever thou hast aught to hide,

The better feelings perish.

In whatsoe’er ye do or say,

O never with him palter;

Remember too, thou saidst ‘obey’

Before the holy altar.

Bear and forbear, for much thou’lt find

In married life to tease ye,

And should thy husband seem unkind,

Averse to smile, or please ye,

Think that amid the cares of life

His troubles fret and fear him;

Then smile as it becomes a wife,

And labor well to cheer him.

Aye answer him with loving word,

Be each tone kindly spoken,

For sometimes is the holy cord

By angry jarring broken.

Then curb thy temper in its rage,

And fretful be thou never;

For broken once, a fearful change

Frowns over both forever.

Upon thy neck light hang the chain,

For Hymen now hath bound ye,

O’er thee and thine may pleasure reign,

And smiling friends surround ye.

Then fare ye well, and may each time

The sun smiles, find ye wiser:

Pray kindly take the well-meant rhyme

Of thy sincere adviser.

THROUGH the kindness of Messrs. MASON AND TUTTLE, Nassau-street, (who import the originals for immediate circulation to American subscribers,) we have our copies of the foreign Monthlys, as well as of the ‘Edinburgh,’ ‘Foreign,’ and ‘Quarterly’ Reviews for the current quarter. The ‘Quarterly, so savage and tartarly,’ has a notice of the ‘Change for American Notes,’ which is not conceived in the kindest spirit toward this country. It reviews PRESCOTT’S late work, however, at great length, and welcomes it with cordial commendation. Among other ‘good words,’ the reviewer observes: ‘He is full and copious, without being prolix and wearisome; his narrative is flowing and spirited, sometimes very picturesque; his style is pure, sound English.’ In conclusion, the reviewer says: ‘We close with expressing our satisfaction that Mr. PRESCOTT has given us an opportunity at this time of showing our deep sympathy, the sympathy of kindred and of blood, with Americans who like himself do honor to our common literature. Mr. PRESCOTT may take his place among the real good English writers of history in modern times.’ The ‘Foreign Quarterly’ opens with a paper upon ‘The Poets and Poetry of America,’ ostensibly based upon Mr. GRISWOLD’S book. It is not altogether a review, however, but a very coarse and evidently malignant tirade against America, her people, institutions, manners, customs, literature; every thing, in short, that she is and that she contains. We annex a hasty synopsis of the critical portion of the article in question. HALLECK is ‘praised, and that highly too.’ His ‘Marco Bozzaris’ is pronounced ‘a master-piece,’ and the ‘most perfect specimen of versification in American literature;’ and himself as possessing ‘a complete knowledge of the musical mysteries of his art.’ A quotation is made, with much laud, from his ‘RED-JACKET,’ but the lines are spoiled by two gross errors; one in the last line of the third, and the other in the first line of the fifth stanza. The highest encomiums are justly bestowed upon BRYANT, as a ‘purely American poet,’ who ‘treats the works of Nature with a religious solemnity, and brings to the contemplation of her grandest relations a pure and serious spirit. His poetry is reflective but not sad; grave in its depths but brightened in its flow by the sunshine of the imagination. He never paints on gauze; he is always earnest, always poetical; his manner is every where graceful and unaffected.’ The illustrative quotation is from ‘An Evening Reverie,’ written by Mr. BRYANT for the KNICKERBOCKER. LONGFELLOW is pronounced to be ‘unquestionably the first of American poets; the most thoughtful and chaste; the most elaborate and finished. His poems are distinguished by severe intellectual beauty, by dulcet sweetness of expression, a wise and hopeful spirit, and a complete command over every variety of rhythm. They are neither numerous nor long, but of that compact texture which will last for posterity.’ SPRAGUE is represented as having in certain of his poems imitated SHAKSPEARE and COLLINS rather too closely for all three to be original. ‘PIERPONT is crowded with coincidences which look very like plagiarisms;’ ‘but,’ adds the reviewer, ‘it is reserved for CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN to distance all plagiarists of ancient and modern times in the enormity and openness of his thefts. He is MOORE hocused for the American market. His songs are rifaciamentos. The turns of the melody, the flowing of the images, the scintillating conceits, are all MOORE. Sometimes he steals his very words.’ Mrs. SIGOURNEY’S poetry is said to be characterized by ‘feeble verbosity’ and ‘lady-like inanity,’ and Mrs. OSGOOD is represented as being in the same category. After quoting certain characteristic lines of Mr. JOHN NEAL, describing the eye of a poet as ‘brimful of water and light,’ and his forehead as being ‘alarmingly bright,’ the reviewer adds: ‘We find a pleasant relief from these distressing hallucinations, in the poems of ALFRED B. STREET. He is a descriptive poet, and at the head of his class. His pictures of American scenery are full of gusto and freshness; sometimes too wild and diffuse, but always true and beautiful.’ So some are praised and some are blamed—‘thus runs the world away!’ ••• WE are made aware, and we would not have our correspondents ignorant of the fact, that there is a critical eye monthly upon our pages, that is keen to discover errors (as well as beauties) in language and construction of sentences. See: ‘By the by, what a miserable language is our English in some respects; so awkward, so incompact! Look at the phrase ‘unheard of,’ and compare it with the Latin ‘inauditus.’ What a pity we were not born Romans or Greeks, with Yankee notions! Tell your Gotham friends that if they are speaking of a ruinous brick wall, they must say dilaterated, from ‘later,’ a brick, and not ‘dilapidated,’ from ‘lapis,’ a stone. One might as well say a man is ‘stoned’ to death with brick-bats.’ ••• WHAT sad and startling contrasts are presented to the eye and mind of one who attentively looks over the illustrated newspapers of the British metropolis! On one hand, pictures of triumphal processions, arches, bonfires, illuminations, rich presents, gorgeous equipages, state-beds, ‘royal poultry-houses, owleries, and pigeonries,’ accompanied by elaborate descriptions, arrest the attention; on the other, there is a picture of a city ‘Asylum for the Destitute,’ where poor naked wretches find a temporary refuge from the pitiless winter storm without: huddling round a dim fire, or sunk exhausted upon the straw in the human ‘stalls,’ or clutching at their bowls of pauper-soup; a scene whose true character is enforced by accounts of poor women making shirts for a farthing apiece, a hard day’s work; sleeping four in a bed; purchasing with the scanty pittance tea-leaves to boil over again! Hardly-entreated brothers and sisters of humanity! not always shall the glaring inequality that surrounds you, crush your spirits to the earth! ••• THERE is a pleasant pen in our metropolitan ‘Aurora,’ which occasionally dashes off sententious paragraphs that flash and sparkle like snow-crust in a moon-lit night in winter. There is evidently a FOSTER-ing hand over its columns; and through them (let us add, as it is that of which we especially wish to speak,) over the reputation of Mr. WILLIS. The remarks in a late number of that journal, under the head of ‘Mr. Willis’s Defence’ against a scurrilous attack on his private character in a down-eastern print, were equally just and felicitous. Had it been generally known in his native town who was the instigator of that attack, we have good authority for saying that, gross as it was, Mr. WILLIS would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. As it was, however, he deemed it not amiss at one and the same time to punish skulking envy and impotent malignity; to vindicate his reputation with his townsmen against unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks from the same source altogether ‘of none effect’ and unworthy of heed. This he accomplished by his ‘Defence’ and the ‘terrors of the law,’ which speedily produced a satisfactory sample of wholesale word-eating. ••• OF all the Polichinellos we have ever encountered, we consider ‘Punch, or the London Charivari,’ the best. His fun is exhaustless. He ought to be knighted and appointed court-jester to King ENNUI. ‘Laughter,’ he tells us, ‘is a divine faculty. It is one of the few, nay, the only one redeeming grace in that thunder-cased, profligate old scoundrel JUPITER, that he sometimes laughs: he is saved from the disgust of all respectable people by the amenity of a broad grin.’ We ourselves hold with the pleasant LINCOLN RAMBLE: ‘I love a hearty laugh; I love to hear a hearty laugh above all other sounds. It is the music of the heart; the thrills of those chords which vibrate from no bad touch; the language Heaven has given us to carry on the exchange of sincere and disinterested sympathies.’ And to the end that ‘laughter free and silvery from the heart may escape the reader, doing rightful honor to PUNCH, and bestowing cheerfulness and health upon the laughter,’ we proceed to present a few excerpta which arrested our attention in looking over late files. We suspect that the annexed report of the ‘doings of Royalty’ in the country have more than once had a precedent. PRINCE ALBERT is here at Dayton-Manor, the seat of Sir ROBERT PEEL: ‘Her Majesty slept extremely well; but whether it was the air of Dayton, or the conversation of the host, did not transpire. At eleven o’clock in the morning, Prince Albert went out to shoot. The guns were ordered at ten and the game was desired to be in attendance at half-past. The Prince first went in a boat on the water, where several ducks were appointed to be in waiting. Having granted an audience to the whole of them, and unintentionally honored two by shooting them, though it was another duck who had the distinguished gratification of being aimed at and missed, his Royal Highness landed. A numerous meeting of hares and pheasants having been called to pay their respects to the Prince, the game-keepers forming an outer circle, with their guns pointed to keep the game well up to the mark, His Royal Highness shot sixty pheasants, twenty-five head of hares, eight rabbits and one wood-cock, who would cock his bill opposite the muzzle of Royalty.’ The poetical advertisement of one MOSES, a slop-shop clothes-man, is pleasantly ‘reviewed.’ Of his ‘Prince ALBERT coats,’ PUNCH says: ‘Whatever may be the resemblance between the Prince and the coat, the similarity certainly ends with the price; one costing thirty shillings and the other thirty thousand pounds per annum.’ Here is a touch at Moses’ sea-coats:

‘These coats for nautical pursuits

Have qualities no one disputes;

The very texture of their cloth

Seems to defy the ocean’s wrath:

And then their form and make as well

Are suited to the billows’ swell.’

What can be happier than the allusion to the fact mentioned in the last two lines; namely, that the coat is quite a match for the billows, being as great a swell as any of them? The poet dashes off a few lines on trowsers, finishing with the following couplet, which is not likely to encourage purchasers. It is stated, and we dare say truly, that if any one puts on a pair of MOSES’ trowsers he becomes at once an object of general observation:

‘While oft such cries as these escape;

Look! there’s a figure! there’s a shape!’

It is a very natural consequence, no doubt, of disporting one’s-self in doe-skins made for seven-pence a pair; but the cries of ‘There’s a figure! there’s a shape!’ must make the trowsers rather dear to any one who wishes to walk about peaceably, unmolested by this species of street-criticism.’ Under the head of ‘Bolsters for Behindhand Botanists,’ we find these original questions and answers: ‘What are the most difficult roots to extract from the ground?’ The cube-root. ‘What is the pistil of a flower?’ It is that instrument with which the flower shoots. ‘What is meant by the word stamina?’ It means the pluck or courage which enables the flower to shoot.’ ‘The reversionary interest of a life-crossing, with retail lucifer business attached,’ is offered by a street-sweeper near the Bank of England, he having ‘prigged vat vasn’t his’n, and gone to pris’n.’ ‘He effected an irregular transfer at the bank one day, which, whatever his doubts upon the subject might previously have been, led to his ultimate conviction.’ The ‘Comic BLACKSTONE’ enlightens us upon one of the ‘King’s prerogatives’: ‘The King is the fountain of justice, from which are supplied all the leaden reservoirs in Westminster-Hall, and the pumps at the inferior tribunals.’ Among the public inquiries is the following: ‘At a crowded meeting at Islington, on the question of granting a theatrical license, the papers state that the judges declined at first, but upon the urgent appeal of an advocate, ‘the bench gave way.’ Are we to understand from this that the opposition fell to the ground?’ In ‘PUNCH’S Almanac’ for 1844, we find among other side-remarks, the annexed: under May seventh: ‘WASHINGTON IRVING on his way to Madrid as American Ambassador, is entertained in London, 1842. America takes the hand of Spain, and puts her best pen into it.’ ‘June sixth: The first cargo of ice comes from America, 1843, for the relief of those who had burnt their fingers with Pennsylvania bonds.’ ‘Time is money; but it doesn’t follow that man is a capitalist who has a great quantity of it on his hands.’ PUNCH’S ‘Literary Intelligence’ is very full. From it we gather that the author of the ‘Mothers,’ ‘Wives,’ ‘Maids,’ and ‘Daughters’ of England has another work in press, entitled ‘The Grandmothers of England.’ ‘No grandmother’s education will be complete till she has read and re-read ‘The Grandmothers of England.’ The book is the very best guide to oval suction extant.’ So says an ‘Evening Paper.’ ••• WE should be glad to be informed of the name of any real or pretended lover of the turf and its manifold interests, or of an admirer of one of the most entertaining weekly journals on this continent, who could ask more than is offered by the ‘Spirit of the Times’ to all new subscribers to that widely-popular sheet; being no less than any five of those fine large quarto engravings on steel, from original paintings, of Col. JOHNSON and M’lle AUGUSTA, among ‘us humans,’ and among our four-footed friends ‘of the lower house,’ Ripton, Confidence, Boston, Wagner, Monarch, Leviathan, Argyle, Black-Maria, Grey-Eagle, Shark, Hedgeford, John Bascombe, and Monmouth-Eclipse. On the second day of March a new volume commences; when we hope that this accredited organ of the sporting world, which has raised the prices of blood-stock in this country beyond all precedent, and which in its literary and dramatic departments is without a rival in this or any other country, will take a long lease of a healthful existence, and go on ‘prospering and to prosper.’ ••• THE reader will be amused we think with the ‘Veritable Sea-Story,’ told by our friend HARRY FRANCO, in a species of poetry run mad, in preceding pages. He writes us: ‘I send you an epic poem for the KNICKERBOCKER, founded on facts within my own personal experience. I mention this lest you should deem it destitute of merit; for it possesses the greatest merit that any human composition can possess; namely, truth. And in this respect, if in no other, my poem is beyond dispute superior to the Iliad and Paradise Lost. However, tastes differ, I am aware; and you may possibly prefer those two epics to mine! They are longer, it is true; but then I think it will be conceded, even by the critics of the POH school, that my metre is sufficiently long, even though my story is short. While others measure their verse by the ‘feet,’ I measure mine by the yard.’ ••• D.’S paper, (of Georgia,) so thickly interlarded with French, and Italian synonymes for far more expressive English words, reminds us of an old ‘ignorant ramus’ in the country, who was always eking out his meaning by three or four familiar Latin terms, which he almost invariably misapplied. He observed one day to a neighbor, who was speaking disrespectfully of a deceased townsman, ‘Well, he’s gone to be judged. E pluribus unum—‘speak no evil of the dead’—as the Latin proverb says!’ ••• ‘The New World’ enters upon a new year in a very beautiful dress, and with renewed attractions in all its internal departments. Its large clear types, impressed upon good paper, are exceedingly pleasant to the eye, and what they convey to the reader is equally agreeable to the mind ‘studious of novelty’ and variety. The success which it deserves, we are glad to learn it abundantly receives. The ‘Brother Jonathan’ has changed proprietors, cast its old skin, and comes out as bright and fresh as a June morning. The versatile Mrs. ANN STEPHENS (a lady of fine intellect, who has produced better prose tales and home-sketches than any one of her gifted contemporaries) and Messrs. M‘LACHLIN AND SNOW, the resident editors of the ‘Jonathan,’ discharged their functions to due public acceptance; but a name so invariably connected with unsuccessful publications that it has come to be justly regarded as the sure precursor and inevitable cause of failure, was at the head of the journal as ‘principal editor;’ and ‘down east’ editorial-ings, transmitted by the yard, and endless unreadable tales, claiming a kindred paternity, gradually ‘choked its wholesome growth,’ and finally brought it to a temporary end. The new proprietor however has wisely declined this ‘principal’ incumbrance; and having secured the services of an able editor in the person of HENRY C. DEMING, Esq., a gentleman of high literary distinction, and of popular correspondents, the journal is already, as we learn, rejoicing in a rapidly-enhancing list of subscribers. Success to thee, ‘BROTHER JONATHAN!’ ••• THE ‘Yankee Trick’ described by our Medford (Mass.) correspondent is on file for insertion. It is in one of its features not unlike the anecdote of an old official Dutchman in the valley of the Mohawk, who one day stopped a Yankee pedler journeying slowly through the valley on the Sabbath, and informed him that he must ‘put up’ for the day; or ‘if it vash neshessary dat he should travel, he must pay de fine for de pass.’ It was necessary, it seems; for he told the Yankee to write the pass, and he would sign it; ‘that he could do, though he didn’t much write, nor read writin’.’ The pass was written and signed with the Dutchman’s hieroglyphics, and the pedler went forth ‘into the bowels of the land, without impediment.’ Some six months afterward, a brother Dutchman, who kept a ‘store’ farther down the Mohawk, in ‘settling’ with the pious official, brought in, among other accounts, an order for twenty-five dollars’ worth of goods. ‘How ish dat?’ said the Sunday-officer; ‘I never give no order; let me see him.’ The order was produced; he put on his spectacles and examined it. ‘Yaäs, dat ish mine name, sartain—yaäs; but—it ish dat d——d Yankee pass!’ ••• OUR town-readers, many of them, will remember the bird MINO, who was so fond of chatting in a rich mellow voice with the customers at the old Quaker’s seed-store in Nassau-street. His counterpart may at this moment be seen at ‘an hostel’ near by; but the associations and language of the modern bird are very dissimilar. ‘How are you?’ is his first salutation; ‘do you smoke?’ his next: ‘What’ll you drink? Brandy-and water?—glass o’ wine?’ It has a most whimsical effect, to hear such anti-temperance invitations from the bill of a bird, whose bright eye is fixed unwinkingly upon you. The Washingtonians should ‘look out for him.’ ••• THE editor of the Albion has issued to his subscribers a very fine large quarto engraving, in mezzo-tint by SADD, of HEATH’S celebrated line-engraving of WASHINGTON. Its size is twenty by twenty-seven inches, and represents the PATER PATRIÆ in his most elevated character; that of a Chief Magistrate elevated by the free suffrages of his countrymen, after having voluntarily laid down his military authority. This print cannot fail to be acceptable to every reader of the Albion, unless he shall be too narrow-minded to honor true nobleness and dignity of character in one who by force of circumstances once stood in a warlike relation to his country. Apropos of the ‘Albion:’ is our friend the Editor aware that ‘The Evening before the Wedding,’ published as original in a late issue, was translated for the KNICKERBOCKER? ••• ‘OH dem! dem!’ There is on the tapis a new daily journal, to be called ‘THE EXCLUSIVE,’ which is to be the very antithesis of every thing in the ‘cheap and vulgar’ line; no slanders, no crim. con.’s, no horrible accidents; ‘no nothing’ of that sort. The affair is already creating some excitement among the beau-monde. The reputed editors are literary men of the world, who ‘know their way.’ Circulars in gold-edged and perfumed paper are already flying about. On dit: that the carriers are to be dressed in uniform, and deliver the paper in white kid gloves; that pastiles are to be kept burning in the publication-office, to disinfect the air of the room of ink and damp sheets; and that only those of the first respectability and acknowledged standing in gay society, are permitted to subscribe to or receive the journal at all! ••• HERE is a rich specimen of clerical catachresis, which we derive from an eastern correspondent: ‘Our good dominie gave us on Sunday a sermon on the ocean; its wonders, its glories, its beauties; its infinity, its profundity, its mightiness, etc., ‘But,’ said he, ‘what is all this? It is but a drop in the bucket of God’s infinity!’ I wonder what is outside of it!’ ••• IT is not the wont of the Editor of this Magazine, as those of its readers who have followed us through twenty-two volumes of the KNICKERBOCKER can bear witness, to trumpet in its pages the many kind things that are said of us by the public press; but as a fragment is wanted to fill out this page; as we are just at the commencement of a new volume; and as we are more than pleased at the cordiality with which the first number of it has been received; we shall venture to select from a great number of testimonials one or two for insertion here, which are the more gratifying, that they evince the regard in which the ‘OLD KNICK.’ is held at home, and by those who have known us the longest and most intimately. The New-York Courier and Enquirer says of our last number:

‘THIS sterling Monthly is always punctual to a day in its issues, promptly appearing with the dawn of the month, though our notices of it frequently lag sadly behind it. It is yet, however, by no means too late to say that it enters upon the year ’44 and its twenty-third volume with ability and zeal unabated, and that it is yet, as it has been heretofore, by far the handsomest, ablest, and most interesting literary Monthly issued in this country. Each number contains over a hundred pages, and in the Editor’s Table alone is often found more matter than the entire body of some of its rivals contains. It has a long list of zealous correspondents, bound to it not more by interest than affection, and numbering among them the most gifted and distinguished writers in the country. The ‘Quod Correspondence,’ a novel which is running through the successive numbers, is one of the best works of the kind ever written; its scenes possess a deep dramatic interest, and throughout the whole, moral principles are clearly and powerfully evolved. ‘The Idleberg Papers’ is the general title of another capital series, and the work is otherwise filled with excellent prose and generally good poetry. The ‘Editor’s Table’ is by far the most racy and entertaining collection of anecdotes, humorous and pathetic passages, slight criticisms, etc., to be met in any magazine. We cordially commend the old and excellent KNICKERBOCKER to the continued love and patronage of the public.’

The Evening Post bestows upon the number praise equally warm and cordial. It adverts to its typographical appearance, with the remark that ‘it is beautifully printed; that even those parts which are put in the smallest characters are so distinctly impressed that the dimmest eyes may read them.’ It lauds especially the article on ‘Descriptive Poetry,’ the ‘Idleberg Papers,’ the ‘Sketches of East Florida,’ and some of the poetry; and the editor, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Esq., is kind enough to add, that ‘no part is better than the Editor’s Table, which presents as excellent a Salmagundi as was ever served up.’ We scarcely dare claim to have earned these high encomiums; but we are anxious to evince to our subscribers, and especially to those new friends (and their friends) who have begun the year with us, that we shall spare no pains to deserve them. It will be our constant aim not only to maintain the reputation which the KNICKERBOCKER now sustains, but in return for the affection with which it seems to be every where regarded, and the liberal patronage which it has always retained, and which is now generously increased by our friends, to enhance it by every means in our power. But, to make use of two French words which have never before been quoted in America, to our knowledge—‘Nous Verrons!’

⁂ OWING to an unlucky accident, at a late hour, a ‘LITERARY RECORD’ of several excellent publications, from the following houses in Philadelphia, New-York, and Boston, is unavoidably omitted from the present number. The ‘copy,’ however, of the notices is preserved, and they will appear in our next: LEA AND BLANCHARD, R. P. BIXBY AND COMPANY, M. W. DODD, HARPER AND BROTHERS, WILEY AND PUTNAM, J. AND H. G. LANGLEY, D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, GEORGE G. CHANNING, J. WINCHESTER, JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY, B. G. TREVETT AND COMPANY, MARK H. NEWMAN, STANFORD, SWORDS AND COMPANY, LINDSAY AND BLACKISTON, MORRIS, WILLIS AND COMPANY. In a similar category are some half dozen subsections of ‘Gossip,’ (including two or three pleasant favors from favorite contributors, notice of articles received and filed, etc.,) which were in type, and which now ‘bide their time.’

Footnotes

1. Return to textI HAVE unintentionally omitted to name FALCONER, who deserves the highest honors among nautical writers.

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Table of Contents

THE KNICKERBOCKER.

SICILIAN SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES.

LINES TO TIME.

A NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE.

LIFE’S YOUNG DREAM.

THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.

HARRY HARSON.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

THE SACRIFICE.

THE DEATH BED.

A STRAY LEAF FROM THE PORT-FOLIO OF A ‘COUNTRY DOCTOR.’ BY F. W. SHELTON.

FREEDOM’S BEACON.

A WINTER TRIP TO TRENTON FALLS.

IN THREE SCENES.

SCENE FIRST.

SCENE SECOND.

SCENE THIRD.

THE RUINS OF BURNSIDE.

CORONATION OF GEORGE THE FOURTH.

I FOLLOW.

REMINISCENCES OF A DARTMOOR PRISONER.

NUMBER ONE.

A VERITABLE SEA STORY.

ON A PASSAGE IN MACBETH.

THE SMITHY.

THE FINE ARTS.

A FEW HINTS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIZE IN ITS RELATION TO THE FINE ARTS.

LIFE: A SONNET.

TWO PICTURES.

LOVE CELESTIAL.

LOVE TERRESTRIAL.

THE HERMIT OF THE PRAIRIE.

MOONLIGHT ON THE RIVER AND PRAIRIE.

TRANSLATION FROM CATULLUS.

THE PAINTED ROCK.

LINES TO J. T. OF IRELAND.

LITERARY NOTICES.

EDITOR’S TABLE.

DESOLATION.

EPISTLE

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY JUST MARRIED.

Footnotes

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