[395]

THE KNICKERBOCKER.

THOUGHTS ON IMMORTALITY.
BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

There are those who reject the idea of a future state; or, at least, who deny that they ought to be convinced of its reality, because reasoning, in the method of the sciences, does not appear to prove it to them; although they acknowledge how natural it is for man to anticipate a future existence. I have thought that such persons might be included in a similitude like the following. Let us suppose a young bee, just returning from his first excursion abroad, bearing his load of honey. He has been in a labyrinth of various directions, and far from his native home; winding among trees and their branches, and stopping to sip from numerous flowers. He has even been taken, by one bearing no good-will to the little community of which he is a member, and carried onward, without being permitted a sight of the objects which he passed, that he might estimate aright his new direction. Notwithstanding, he is winging his way with unerring precision to the place where his little load is to be deposited. Not more exactly does the needle tend to the pole, than the line he is drawing points toward his store-house. But in this he is governed by no such considerations of distance and direction as enable the skilful navigator so beautifully to select his way along the pathless ocean. He has no data, by reasoning from which, as the geometrician reasons, he may determine that his course bears so many degrees to the right or so many to the left. He has never been taught to mark the right ascension of hill-tops, nor to estimate latitude and longitude from the trees. He is governed in his progress by that indescribable and mysterious principle of instinct alone, which, although developed in man, produces its most surprising effects in the brute creation. But here, as he is going onward thus swiftly and surely, by some creative power a vast addition is made to his previous character. All at once he becomes a reasoning being, possessed of all the faculties which are[396] found in the philosopher. He is endowed with judgment, that he may compare, and consciousness and reflection, to make him a metaphysician. Nor is he slow to exercise these newly-acquired faculties.

Among other things, his consciousness tells him that he is impressed with a deep presentiment of something greatly desirable in the far distance toward which he supposes his course to be fast and directly tending. Perhaps he has a memory of the place he left, of the business there going on, and of the part which he is taking in it. Probably his strong impression is, that he is fast advancing toward that place; that he expects the greeting of his friends of the swarm. Possibly he finds his bosom even now beginning to swell in anticipation of the praise which shall be bestowed on his early manifestation of industry and virtue. Perhaps his recollections are more vague; and accordingly his consciousness only tells him that he thinks of something requiring him to urge onward in that particular direction, but of which he realizes no very definite idea.

But here Reason interrupts him: 'Why are you pursuing this course so fast? I see nothing to attract your attention so strongly.' 'I am going to a place lying this way,' says the bee, 'where I can deposite my load in safety, which I am anxious to do quickly, that I may return for another.' 'But,' says Reason, 'what evidence have you that the place lies this way?' Here Philosophy whispers: 'You should not act without evidence; it becomes no reasonable creature to do so;' but Reason continues: 'There are many points in the horizon beside that you are making for; and I see not why one of them is not as likely to be the place as another.'

This rather staggered the bee at first; for he had no recollection of courses and distances taken, by a comparison of which he could prove his true direction; but suddenly he said: 'Why, I am so strongly impressed that this is the course, that I cannot doubt it.' 'But what signify your strong impressions,' says Reason, 'if they are not founded on any evidence? Were you ever led to such a place as you seek by the aid of impression alone?' 'I never was,' said the bee; for in fact he had never before been out of sight of the place where he was born. 'Then again,' says Reason, 'I ask what is your evidence?' And Philosophy again, as a faithful monitor, replies: 'Bee, you must not act without evidence.'

The bee could hardly add any thing more. Had his experience been greater, and his reflection deeper, he might have answered, that there are principles in the mind pointing to certain conclusions, and seeking to establish certain beliefs, of which those principles are at once the evidence and the source; and that the impression which now seemed so clearly to point out his course was one of this class. But in the exercise of his young faculties he had not yet arrived at that height of philosophy which could lead him to recur to such principles. He had never come to distinguish between those impressions which have taken possession of the mind by chance, and those which Nature herself has prepared to aid the very[397] weakness of reason. No wonder then, that thus sore pressed by Reason, he seemed to find himself at fault.

Whether these mental conflicts were sufficient to suspend his course entirely, or whether, like a prudent bee, he resolved to act as if nature were right and reason were wrong until he knew nature to be wrong and reason to be right, I am not able to say. But I could not fail to reflect, that if he did finally arrive at the place whither he had been directing his course, he would probably quarrel with all the arrangements in the tree.

It would not occur to him, for instance, why such particular art should be observed in constructing the cells of the comb as the bee has ever been known to observe. Why must they always be made with just six sides to them, and no more? Why could they not, upon occasion, be constructed with three or four sides, or even round, equally as well? Surely a curve is more beautiful than a combination of straight lines, with angular points to disturb the mind; and variety is undoubtedly essential to all harmony. But if six sides are to be preferred, why not have the same number for the roof and floor? and why should they be always constructed with one particular inclination? These and other rules, which the bee has hitherto followed with such admirable but unconscious wisdom, his uninstructed reason would be slow to deduce from obvious first principles. He would perhaps be no better a mathematician than man himself, with whom centuries succeeded one another before he had followed the discursive and mazy track to the point whence is seen the just and convenient architecture of the bee.

We can hardly suppose that under such circumstances he would not become a confirmed skeptic; rejecting all truths which his peculiar reasonings would not demonstrate; and failing by reason to demonstrate those truths which to him are of the greatest consequence. All this would not be because he had reason, nor because he exercised it, but because he exercised it imperfectly. And yet he would seem to use it very much as some modern philosophers recommend.

II.

When the merchant who trades abroad is about to launch upon the ocean the ship which contains perhaps the whole of his fortune, he is naturally anxious as to what may be its fate while entrusted to the winds and waves, and is solicitous to provide, so far as he can, against the possibility of ruin by its loss. His course is therefore to go to the insurance office, inform the agent what he is about to do, and ask for indemnity against risk.

The insurance office was established for the express purpose of alleviating such disasters as his would be, should his fears be realized, and his case is taken into immediate consideration. The agent regards the route of the proposed voyage, and the seas over which the ship is to pass; the season of the year in which she sails, and the storms that are commonly incident thereto; he deliberates on the propriety of insuring, and if the risk be not too great, fixes the premium to be paid by the merchant. Upon the receipt of[398] this sum, he gives him a writing, binding the company in case the vessel does not arrive safely at the destined port, to pay to the merchant the estimated value of the ship and cargo.

Now the sum which the company receives on this occasion is but a small part of what they may be obliged to return, and which they must pay to the merchant in case the ship insured does not arrive at the end of her voyage. Yet by such transactions as these neither the company is impoverished nor by his loss is he who adventures undone. The company is not impoverished, because in the whole extent of its transactions it receives from those who do not lose as much as its funds are diminished by those who do. The loser himself is not undone, because by contributing his share, and enabling the company to carry on its mitigating operations, he becomes, upon his loss, entitled to a full portion of relief. And indeed in this manner it happens that loss falleth lightly upon many, rather than heavily upon few; and those who, to the benefit of mankind, would trust their all to be carried down to the sea in ships, are not deterred therefrom by the fear of possible ruin.

When the astronomer, for the convenience of the navigator, in enabling him to ascertain his place upon the trackless ocean, determines what will take place at immense distances from our earth, and calculates at what exact though distant periods of time the satellites that revolve about Jupiter may with the telescope be ascertained to pass through the planet's shadow, his conclusions are all founded on a knowledge of causes, and of their methods of operation. The observations of Kepler and Herschel, and the sublime reasonings of Newton and Laplace, founded on fact or on axioms, and tending to pertinent conclusions, are all concerned in these useful calculations. Not so in proceedings like those to which we have referred. There parties act not more from their knowledge of causes than their ignorance of them. Neither the insurer nor the insured knows what favorable winds may waft the ship prosperously on her voyage, nor what tempestuous seas may threaten her with destruction. Did the one know that in the end she would be lost, he would not insure. Did the other know that she would arrive safely at the end of her voyage, he would not desire to be insured. But while the one has hopes and the other fears, yet both are ignorant. They are able, by the judicious exercise of the faculties which God has given them, to adopt a course which, without impairing the welfare of the one, shall tend to secure the safety of the other.

The principle which in these cases determines the insurer whether to insure, and if so at what premium, is a principle upon which the pursuit of happiness very often requires us to act. This principle is, that where a case is under consideration where particular causes cannot be taken into account, we are most strongly to expect such an event as has happened or as we know will happen, in the greatest number of possible cases; unless some particular reason appears which we are certain should make us expect a different result. The principle has a deep foundation in the nature of the human mind;[399] and nowhere is the mutual adaptation between the mind and the external world more clearly seen. Properly applied, it teaches man to look for an existence beyond the grave.

For, in the first place, we find it necessary that he should desire immortality. The prospect of annihilation must always strike the mind with horror. By nature it is capable of conceiving, of appreciating and desiring, future as well as present happiness. Its ideas and desires cannot be bounded by a day or a year, but extend onward, without the possibility of arriving at a limit. Whenever therefore the imagination is presented with a termination of enjoyment, however distant in the field of duration it may be, the mind at once starts back with a feeling of present unhappiness.

It is especially the case that this desire will not allow the mind to be consoled for the supposed termination of its existence by the possession of some other enjoyment. The object is something which cannot be supplanted by any other. It is indeed the mind's susceptibility to be gratified by its connection with other objects, which is the foundation of this desire. It desires continued existence in proportion as it feels the loveliness by which it is surrounded, and of the actions which it is invited to perform. It never so much feels the vanity of any pleasure as when that pleasure is about to terminate. Very far then must the possession of other enjoyments be from compensating for the want of this! Nay, so much livelier as is the joy which the present seems to offer, so much severer will be the pang when the mind looks forward to futurity.

The hurry of novelty and the splendor of dazzling objects may induce temporary forgetfulness, but forgetfulness is not consolation; and of little worth must be that freedom from misery which is only in proportion as the mind loses its activity. It is indeed in some degree to run into the very evil we dread, to escape the consciousness of knowing we must be subject to its consequences. Beside, in spite of such means the mind will often be aroused to a more painful remembrance of its mortality. The opiates which for a time may lull, are yet preparing morbid sensibilities to be restless under the oblivious influence, and to awaken at length to a more acute feeling of the pain that has been suppressed. Yet who can believe there is a single faculty in the mind which must ever desire, without rational hope, and whose despair must be without solace?

Of most of the affections which are implanted in the heart of man, we can discover the end and scope by an observation of them in particular. And of these, where do we find one whose nature is to fix itself on an object for whose attainment one cannot rationally hope, and for whose denial he cannot be consoled? If not in possession, the mind commonly cherishes an expectation of obtaining it. If this seem impossible, the desire reverts to something else, upon which it fixes itself while the mind as soon becomes indifferent to the possession of the former. However long, however deeply, any affection may have been fixed, and however well-founded the hope, or well enjoyed the possession, in which it has been cherished, yet the blow which severs it rarely inflicts a wound too deep to be[400] healed. Time gradually soothes; other objects invite; till at length the sigh called forth by Memory is 'pleasant yet mournful to the soul.' Now by what application of these principles of probability are we required to believe that the desire for immortality is an exception to the universality of the rule we have been exhibiting? All other affections, attachments, and desires we find to come within it. Love, filial affection, fondness for glory or wealth, patriotism—all tend to constitute a moral system which should be capable of happiness. If there be an exception to the rule, it is the desire for immortality. But if there be an exception, how does it happen that we find such long-continued uniformity? We are ignorant of any particular difference in the case, which should make it an exception. How then can we doubt?

If desire be fixed on an object for a time unattainable, the faculty of enjoyment is meanwhile increasing in power, and preparing the mind for a livelier relish of what has been withheld. When it is attained, there is also the influence of contrast to enhance the consciousness of enjoyment. Even grief at severest loss, when softened by time, adds a pleasing interest to contemplation. But after what lapse of time shall the mind's horror at annihilation be softened into mournful complacency? What present pleasure, hope being expelled, can be contrasted with former pain produced by the prospect of annihilation, without renewing that pain in the mind? And to what purpose would the power of enjoying the prospect of immortality be increased, if the prospect itself be hid in the blackness of darkness?

III.

If we might imagine the time when all mankind, proceeding on the supposition of the total want of evidence that the soul is immortal, had lost that glorious and animating hope, which is indeed the ground of all others, to what state of despair must we not imagine them to be reduced? What more total overthrow of every principle of action could possibly be conceived? How many things are there in this world which man was made to love? How many actions, how much noble labor, invite men to their performance, offering a full reward? How interesting to the virtuous mind to behold their array! How exciting to its energies, to anticipate the results to which it may attain! There are forests to be removed, fields to be cultivated, marts to be established, cities to be built; roads and artificial rivers are to be constructed, and fleets sent forth upon every sea, to bring together the productions of every handicraft, and the fruits of every clime. While this is going on, the mind is also to be employed in bringing the great agent-power to bear on the whole in the most efficient manner. Earth and air, fire and water, are to be brought in subjection, and made to yield their mighty assistance in the gigantic work which man has to do. The force of gravity and of expansion is to be guided upon engines of wood, of iron, and of polished brass, and these, with strokes and evolutions of wheels, cylinders, and pistons, and with every strong, every gentle, every delicate and complex movement, must be made[401] to imitate the works of men's hands; but with such prodigious force and rapidity, and yet with such nice exactness, as shall infinitely outvie them all. The mind of man itself is to be wrought up to a higher state of perfection. Colleges and other seminaries of learning are to be founded, and books are to be written; the secrets of nature are to be laid open, and pictures of them to be presented to every man's view. The darkness of ignorance and barbarism is to be chased away, and the light of science and virtue to be let in upon the mind. Improvement is continually to be advanced, and humanity is to be raised higher and higher toward that eminence of perfection whose peaks rise one above another, over broader and more extended regions.

This is some of the work which man has to do; and with what delight in the employment of his faculties, and with what gratifying prospects of the ends to be attained, does he address himself to the task! In the glow of his ardor, he encounters difficulties, grapples with burdens, and exults in the exercise of his powers, as he advances in the accomplishment of the 'prize of the high calling' before him. And what is it which encourages him in all this? which is the foundation of his exultation? Strike from his mind the belief in its endless existence, and every thing becomes worthless. How short is the time of action which this world affords, compared with the endless future; how strong the desire to range through that future; and oh! how deep the despair, if that great desire be without hope! Tell me not there are those who disbelieve in any future state of the soul, who yet preserve their cheerfulness and equanimity; who interest themselves in the concerns of life, and are as active as others in its pursuits. Can any experience convince us that these have a source of enjoyment equal to that which blesses his expectation who anticipates a triumph over death? Can a part be equal to the whole, or the finite compared with the infinite? If men have been able to fix their affections alone on that which earth affords, it is not because the things of this world have swelled to the full compass of the soul, but because she has been cast down from her sphere, and her aspirations trampled in the dust.

To the infidel, Nature must wear a repulsive aspect; for why should she create a phantom joy, which must soon vanish for ever? The pleasantness of spring, the voice of early birds, these should be to him the emblems of mourning, the music of a dirge. To him, the sun and stars are but torches, to light him to regions of eternal darkness and silence. God in His mercy preserve us from a belief such as his!

THE 'RICH POOR MAN:' A FRAGMENT.

[402]

AN EVENING HYMN.

Boston, Mass.

H. J. W.

[403]

THE DOOMED SHIP.
BY ROBERT L. WADE.

There was much of bustle and activity, and hurrying to and fro, in the streets of the usually quiet little town of Salem, on a fine October morning, 1740. The sun had not yet risen, but the eastern horizon, in token of its approach, was stained with a faint crimson hue, and a few of the most brilliant gems that deck the firmament were yet burning brightly in the broad expanse above. The morning had long been looked forward to with anxiety. The colonies were yet in their infancy, and every unusual circumstance had a tendency to create excitement; but to us of later times it may seem strange, and perchance cause many a one to smile, when he reads, that all this busy stirring was occasioned by the expected departure of a packet-ship.

This vessel, which was called the 'Countess of Pembroke,' after the sister of the sweet bard of Arcadia, was one of two owned by a company of London merchants, who regularly twice a year sent out one to the colonies, freighted with such matters as were in demand at the time, receiving in payment principally the produce of the country; always by shrewd calculation and management succeeding in getting the latter at very low rates, while their own goods seldom failed of bringing high prices. No particular ports were selected on this side of the Atlantic for the regular destination of the packets of this company, for the proprietors preferred sending them to whatever place promised the best market at the time; and therefore it was a matter of uncertainty altogether with the colonists where to look for the next arrival. The 'Countess of Pembroke' and her sister packet, however, had now put into Salem harbor six consecutive times; and as this was a period when the most perfect harmony existed between those of the mother country and her bantlings, the New-Englanders took as much pride in the shipping and naval matters of Britain as did their brethren under the more immediate protection of the crown. The consequence was, in this case, that the good people of Salem and its vicinity had a strong liking for these two vessels, and had begun to consider them as belonging particularly to their own community; and when reports several times spread through the town, that Newport, New-York, and Boston, and several other places, had held communications with the company, with a view to having the voyages of the sister crafts terminate at each of their respective ports, and that the owners had suffered serious thoughts to creep into their minds to the same effect, they were not slow or scrupulous in venting their indignation at what they termed acts of meanness in the other towns, and resolved, with jealous eyes, to guard against what they deemed an[404] invasion of their rights and privileges. These feelings, however, were forgotten in the all-absorbing interest created by the rapid approach of the time set for the departure of the ship. For two or three weeks it had been bruited throughout the adjacent country, that on such a morning the 'Countess of Pembroke' would sail for England, wind and weather permitting; and now when that day had dawned, beautiful and bright, and with every prospect of a happy commencement of the long voyage, (such voyages were long then,) the streets of the town were filled with active people, and all the wharves and house-tops, and in fact nearly every point from which a good view of the harbor could be obtained, was covered with interested spectators.

With the early morning tide the ship had hauled out some little distance into the stream; and now, as the sun was just lifting itself above the verge of the horizon, and pouring down its floods of golden light, her yards were covered with seamen, busily employed in loosing her sails and preparing for departure. At her peak the old ensign of England was fluttering in the clear morning breeze, while from her main top-gallant mast a long dandy red-and-white-streamer was dancing gaily upon the air. Alongside, attached by the painter to the rope-ladder which hung down from the bulwarks, a small boat was rising and falling upon the slight swell of the waters; and at the foot of the steps of the principal wharf floated another, containing four oars-men, who were waiting with all possible patience to take the captain off, who as yet had not made his appearance.

An hour, two hours, rolled away; the ship still swung at single anchor; the captain's gig still remained at the wharf; but those in it had now become quite uneasy at his protracted absence, and manifested many signs of impatience, in addition to giving vent to their feelings in their own peculiar way:

'The cap'un's on a lee-shore and going to pieces,' said one; 'I heard as how there was a false beacon up to decoy him on.' This joke, which had reference to the 'ladye-love' of their commander, was immediately understood by all, and received with a shout of boisterous laughter, which had the effect to restore good humor for the time being.

Upon the land the crowd had greatly augmented. As day advanced, the numbers had increased upon the scene; and now in every direction the eye encountered countless human faces, some turned toward the water and the gallant craft that sat upon it like a duck, and others partly back upon the town, to catch the first glimpse of the tardy officer. It was a matter of wonder and much speculation with the multitude, as to the cause of his non-appearance, an hour after sunrise having been the time appointed for the departure of the ship; and two full hours having passed beyond the time, many began to fall into the belief, in spite of themselves, that it boded no good for the anticipated voyage.

'I don't like this,' muttered one to his neighbor, with an ominous shake of his head; 'I fear some ill may befall our pretty vessel,[405] which Heaven avert! before she casts anchor in the Thames. They should have been prompt, and started at the time set—at the very minute. No good comes of tardiness. Why, friend Gibson, I heard of a vessel once, that her owners intended to despatch from Cork to Leghorn, and gave notice that she would sail on just such a morning, at just such an hour. Well, the morning came, and something was the matter; either the ship was not ready, or her cargo not all aboard, or her passengers out of the way; at any rate, she couldn't go, and so they postponed the start for three days; and when the time came, she didn't sail for six hours after.'

'Well, and what then?' rejoined his hearer, with a careless and unconcerned expression on his countenance, seeing that the croaker had come to a stop in his story, and was looking at him out of one corner of his eye, with a sort of mysteriousness that he could not account for; 'well, and what then?'

'What then!' repeated the other, in a loud tone, as though astonished at this response; and then sinking his voice to a husky whisper, added, 'Why, she was never heard of after she left port. What do you think of that?—eh?'

'Why, that she was either wrecked, or burned, or captured by pirates, or something of the kind,' coolly replied the other.

'Umph!' rejoined the first speaker, not very well satisfied with his success in the benevolent endeavor to excite the apprehensions of his neighbor; 'there was a ring round the moon last night; and hark'ee, they say there was something seen off the harbor, too, about midnight.'

'Do they though?' answered the other, with apparent interest; 'and pray what was it?'

'I don't know exactly,' was the reply; 'I haven't heard the particulars; but my son Tom heard from the Boston wagoner, who got it from the uncle of one of the fishermen who came up, that a light, a bright light, was seen for more than an hour, away off upon the water.'

'Poh! nonsense, Jenkins! you're a fool!' impatiently exclaimed the other; 'you've got a silly, superstitious, old woman's notion into your head, that something or other is going to happen to the ship, because the captain's detained ashore, and she didn't start at just the moment she was expected to. As to the captain, I can tell you where he is, and what the matter is with him. I heard the messenger, who was sent down to the boat a little while ago, tell one of the men, that he was at the counting-room of the agent, fixing his papers. He sent word that he would be down by the waterside at ten o'clock. And as to yonder brave craft, I haven't the least doubt that she will have a quick and safe run home, and that we shall see her again in this harbor a great many times, unless indeed some of those mean scamps down in Boston or off at New-York, manage to get her bringing-up place altered. She is a good, strong, staunch vessel; sails fast and don't labor much; has got an excellent crew, a first-rate captain, who will make her walk through the water like a shark, and a jewel of a mate. I tell you what it is,[406] friend Jenkins, away with all your gloomy fears and your ugly prognostications! I wish with all my heart a safe and speedy run to the 'Countess of Pembroke.''

'That is all very well, neighbor Gibson,' replied the other, not at all disposed to look upon the brighter side of the picture; 'I wish as heartily as you, that the Countess may get home safe, and if wishes would carry her there safe, she'd have no lack. But that does not alter matters in the least. Good wishes, all the good wishes in the world, won't carry her home; and I'll tell you what it is, signs and things are against her. Look you there; see how it is clouding up.'

The man who had been addressed as Gibson turned his gaze upward as the other ceased speaking, and saw that it was indeed as he said. A few straggling clouds had hung upon the distant edge of the horizon nearly all the morning; and now, taking a start from their stationary position, were moving along up the surface of the sky, with huge dark banks of the same following close in their wake. A few had already reached the bright luminary of day, and spread a thin mantle of mist over its burning face; but these were not sufficient to dim materially its glory, and the rays of light and heat pierced through like sharp and glittering daggers. Yet it was not so clearly evident that those huge dark masses, which were now slowly and gradually rolling to the zenith, would become as transparent when stretching before the dazzling orb as their pioneers; and many were the eyes that were fixed anxiously upon the sharp circle of the horizon, watching as they fondly hoped for the last ominous platoon of mist.

At that moment a whisper run through the crowd, and the whole of that vast forest of human forms was swayed to and fro like the tall trees of the woods, when the strong wind bears down upon their wide-spread ranks. A shout then rung upon the air; all stood upon tip-toe, swinging themselves backward and forward to catch the first glimpse of the commander of the ship, who was said to be coming down to the wharf, in company with the agent.

He was soon in the midst of the crowd; and as it fell back on either side as he advanced, to give him a clear passage through, many hearty huzzas rung out upon the bracing air; many in kindly tones bid him 'God speed' upon his voyage; all which awakened the most grateful feelings of his heart, and in some instances, where his eyes fell upon a familiar countenance, elicited a return of hearty and sincere thanks; while all, from the very chambers of their hearts, wished him a speedy and safe return. Arrived at the steps, at the foot of which his boat still lay in waiting, he turned and looked back upon the little town he was on the point of leaving, perhaps forever, and upon the dense and almost countless multitude, which had assembled for a last farewell; then raising his hat from his head, he waved it once and replaced it, which action was immediately followed by a startling cheer of hundreds of voices. The agent of the London Company, who had accompanied him thus far, now prepared to take leave of him, and giving him his[407] hand, whispered, while shaking it for the last time, a few parting instructions. This done, they separated; the agent falling back a little and gaining a position where he could watch conveniently the departure of the vessel, and the captain hastily descending the few steps which led down to the water. As he set one foot upon the gunwale, he halted a moment and raised his eyes toward the sky; and as he watched the gathering clouds, and noted the position of the wind, there was a slight knitting of the brows, a compression of the lips closely together, and a sparkling of his dark eyes to be discerned, which gave evidence that the appearance of matters were not exactly as he could have desired. This, however, was but momentary; for his face immediately resumed its usual calm expression; and stepping down into the boat which rocked beneath his heavy tread, he seated himself at the stern, giving command by a nod to the men to shove off; and then the little craft made its first leap forward, and the glassy surface of the water was broken by the regular dip of oars.

A few long and steady pulls sufficed to carry the boat alongside the ship, when she was suffered to float along under the counter, until opposite the rope-ladder hanging down the side. Rising then from his seat, he made two strides to the bows, and without awaiting till the boat was as close in as the men intended to have had it, he sprang off and caught the steadying rope in his hand. Unfortunately his feet missed both of the rounds upon which he had expected to alight; and such a heavy weight as his body falling suddenly upon so small a rope as that which he held in his hand, proved too much for it; one strand cracked and untwisted; another and another; then, to the horror of all within sight—and every eye upon the shore and aboard the ship and boat, was upon him—it parted, and he fell heavily into the chilly element, breaking the surface with a fearful sound, and the waters closed over him as he sunk.

Such a cry now rang forth from the lips of every man, woman, and child of that vast collection, that one would have thought it sufficient to have roused the very monsters of the deep. Ashore, everything was in confusion, and nearly all dismayed. There was shouting from one to another, to do this and to do that; there was running to and fro, from one point to another; some were calling out to put off in boats, and others to throw off planks and casks, and logs of wood, and every thing that would float; but all to no purpose; all were giving orders and none obeying them. Some two or three indeed there were, who with more presence of mind had abstained from joining in the uproar, and had upon the first alarm jumped into a little skiff that lay alongside the wharf, and were now half way to the ship. Those aboard and in the boat, however, being used to accidents and dangers incidental to a seaman's life, participated not in the least in the fears of their friends ashore. They knew that their captain was an excellent swimmer, and that he would rise in a moment or two, when they had no doubts or apprehensions of his rescue from a watery grave. Those, therefore[408] in the boat poised their oars, ready to strike off at the second toward the spot, wherever it might be, in which he should appear. The others aboard busied themselves in throwing out spars, casks, and barrels, hen-coops, and every thing that they could lay their hands upon, that would sustain his weight in the water, to assist him in getting aboard.

In less time than I have occupied in its description, all this occurred; yet short as it was, short as was the interval between his sinking and reäppearance, it was a period of the most fearfully anxious interest. Eyes were strained to catch the first glimpse of his head; and there were conflicting feelings at work within each bosom; feelings of doubt, and hope, and fear, and worse than all, a suspense that was torture. At length, to their great joy, the waters were parted a few yards from the spot where he sunk, and once more they caught sight of the object of their interest.

Was that not a shout of heart-felt gladness that then startled the echoes for miles around? Rising confidently upon the treacherous waves, as though this was his own peculiar element, he brushed the water from his face, and then struck out boldly for the ship. At the same instant the men in the boat, with a hearty cheer, simultaneously dipped their oars, and one strong pull sent the little skiff nearly a third of the distance that intervened. On board, too, more spars were thrown over, and no means were neglected to ensure his safety. Just then one of the sailors of the ship, who had thrown over every thing that he could get hold of that would float, and who had gone down into the cabin in search of something else, appeared at the bulwarks with a large heavy chair in his arms. Disregarding the expostulations of his mates, and the cries of those in the boat that enough had been thrown out, and without taking the slightest notice of its probable course, he hurled it with all his strength into the air.

'God save him now!' ejaculated many, while a half-suppressed cry of terror escaped the lips of others, as they watched its rise, and saw that the direction it was taking was such that it must inevitably strike the struggling man, or the water very near him. Shouts of warning, and cries of, 'push away, quick!' and the various sounds that would naturally occur at such a moment, filled the air, and drew his attention to the impending danger. He saw and comprehended all in a second, and with desperate effort struggled to move, though it were but a yard from the spot in which he then was. Alas! his efforts were in vain. Steadily up into the air it held its course, until it was directly over the swimmer, and the force that hurled it was expended, when it seemed to hang for a second or two, as though to give warning, and then fell with fearful rapidity. Down, down it came! None could help him now! With its full force it struck him on the head, and with a groan that went to the hearts of all who heard it, he again disappeared.

It is impossible to find words adequately to describe the consternation that prevailed at this melancholy accident. In contrast with the previous manner of expression, it displayed itself not in noise[409] and confusion, but all seemed suddenly petrified with horror, gazing motionless and in silence at the point where the unfortunate man was last seen. For ten long and dreary minutes, this fearful stillness was unbroken by any sounds, save those of the waves leaping gently over one another, and the rushing of the breeze. Weary were the watchings for the rise of the commander of the gallant ship. When they again saw his form, a few hours after, (rude grappling-irons, constructed on the spur of the moment, having been successfully used,) the seal of death was upon his brow.

Of the whole of that vast company, so interested were they all, scarcely one had left the scene; and now, when the dripping corpse of the unfortunate captain was carried on shore, and borne up to the house of the agent of the ship, as they opened to the right and left to give passage to those who carried him, many eyes were filled, and cheeks were wet with genuine tears. One and another now began to whisper among themselves, and wonder what would be done with the vessel, now that she had lost her captain; whether she would be detained long, or until another commander could be obtained, or the first mate promoted to the office; what the agent's intentions were, and whether or not it was probable that he would order her round to Boston, and try to make a more successful start from that place. These, together with speculations upon the weather, and the probability of a storm, for now the aspect overhead was threatening, formed the staple of conversation of the assembled townsfolk for another hour, when it was whispered through the crowd, and afterward spoken loudly, that the agent had altered the day of sailing to that day week, when she would sail for England, under the charge of the first mate. Nobody, however, appeared to possess authentic information relative to this matter; each one who was questioned confessed that he was told so by a friend, who had got it from another, who in his turn had received it from somebody else.

But these rumors were speedily verified by a party who had constituted themselves a committee to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the reports, and had marched up in a body to the counting-room of the agent. These now returned and announced that the counting-room was locked up, the agent being probably up at his house superintending the necessary arrangements for the reception of the body of the captain; but upon the door was affixed a paper, on which was written in his own hand-writing the sum and substance of what they had heard. There being now no occasion for remaining together, the crowd began to disperse, at first slowly; but at the expiration of fifteen or twenty minutes a few stragglers, who had stayed behind to take a long, last look, for the time being, of the ship, were alone left of all the hundreds that had so lately filled the place.

That night one of the most terrific storms that ever visited New-England broke over Salem, and the surrounding country and towns, for miles and miles around. Although it was late in the year, it was accompanied by the most fearfully vivid lightning and appalling thunder. Rain and hail poured down in torrents; and the winds, as[410] though the effort to break their chains had but increased their anger, united in sustaining such a conflict, that the effects of it were visible for weeks after. The waters of the harbor were lashed into perfect fury. Several small fishing craft were sunk at their moorings, or parted their cables and drove ashore. Boats lying at the wharves, or in the dock, were dashed in pieces against each other, or carried up high and dry into the streets of the town. A small brig which was anchored above the 'Countess of Pembroke,' loaded and ready to sail for New-York, was struck by lightning and consumed by fire in the sight of many whose fears would not suffer them to attempt to sleep, and who spent a portion of the long and dreary hours of the night in straining their eyes to catch glimpses of the ship, when the lightning for a few seconds at a time rendered it visible, without an effort being made to stay the progress of the flames. The good ship herself suffered severely. Though her anchors held her firmly, yet her spars and rigging were injured. Her foretopmast was snapped early in the storm, as though it had been a pipe-stem, and several of her upper spars were cracked. A fishing schooner, which had arrived only an hour before dark, and had not hauled up to the wharf, parted her cable, and in driving toward the shore came in contact with the ship, running her bowsprit up into her fore-rigging, and staving in the bulwarks of the 'Countess of Pembroke,' with the force of the concussion. The town also suffered much. Several houses were blown down; chimneys without number were shattered, to the imminent danger of house-tops and whatever might be in the streets; roofs were lifted up and carried away; and the spire of one of the churches was struck by lightning. But fortunately the fire was extinguished by the rain before it had acquired much headway. Nor did the country escape the general devastation. Old trees, which had braved the storms of a century or more, were torn up by their roots, as though they had been but the saplings of a summer's growth; some were struck by lightning, and others whose prongs and roots had struck too deeply into the earth to be severed from that relationship, had their massy limbs and branches broken off, and otherwise suffered severely. It was in fact a storm of fearful power. None remembered ever to have witnessed such a night; and many and many months, ay, and years too, elapsed ere its equal visited the place.

Not to draw out this narrative to a tedious length, the time intervening between the morning after the storm and that appointed for a second attempt to carry the ship out may be passed over, with merely the remark that the unfortunate captain was during that period followed to his grave by a large concourse of friends; for his many virtues had won esteem, and all who knew him felt that in his untimely end a tie of tender relationship had been severed. The morning came; not like the other, bright and beautiful, with a clear, fresh breeze careering over the water, filling the sails, toying with the numberless flags and streamers upon the little craft in the harbor, and the different flag-staffs in the town, and gladdening the hearts of the voyagers and their well-wishers with the prospect of[411] getting well off the coast; but dark, gloomy, and ominous. The whole of the broad blue canopy of heaven was shut in by one wide-spreading cloud, immovable and impenetrable, indicating the close proximity of snow. The ship had been put in complete order; but her new commander, though naturally elated at his unexpected promotion, yet felt a heavy responsibility weighing down his spirits, and a presentiment that some evil was about to befall the idolized 'Countess of Pembroke' and her crew.

Upon the shore the crowd assembled to witness her departure was if possible more dense than before; but not now, as then, rose shoutings and cheerings and well-wishings. All, alas! felt that silence was the most appropriate for the occasion; and every individual preserved it.

At the appointed hour the signal of sailing was given. The anchor was weighed, the sails filled with the chill north wind, and slowly the gallant ship stood down the harbor. Soon cries from many mouths announced that a new object of interest had been discovered; a large crow was seen hovering over the ship, now rising and now sinking, and flapping its black funeral wings over it. In those days of superstition an incident like this was, in the absence of every other sign, sufficient of itself to create consternation and dismay. In this instance, when so many omens of evil had occurred, it may well be supposed that the appearance of the dark messenger did not tend to allay the fears and misgivings of the town's-people. The motions of the bird were watched by all with intense interest. After hanging over the ship, or sweeping round for ten or fifteen minutes, now flapping so far away as to create hopes of its disappearance altogether, and then returning again to crush those hopes in the very bud, it finally settled down slowly, and alighted upon the main truck, where it remained until the ship herself was lost to the sight of all, save those who had trusted themselves to her strength, and that 'Eye that never sleeps.'

Slowly the multitude dispersed, with many shakings of the head and doubtful looks, with many whisperings among themselves, and many misgivings of the heart, that they had taken their last look of the gallant bark.

A month had rolled away since the departure of the ship, when one night the inhabitants of Salem were aroused from their beds, to behold a strange sight in the heavens. It was that of a large ship, apparently under full sail, with every yard braced up, and every square inch of canvass spread to its full extent; but from every point, from deck to trucks and from stem to stern, wide lurid flames of fire were streaming up, with fearful and appalling brilliancy. For two more nights the same scene was witnessed, with this difference on the third, that the ship was seen to go down very suddenly below the horizon in the height of the conflagration, instead of fading away gradually, as on the two previous nights. It 'was an honest ghost' of The Doomed Ship. The 'Countess of Pembroke' was never heard of more.

[412]

THE DEITY.
BY MISS MARY GARDINER, OF SHELTER-ISLAND, SUFFOLK COUNTY.

MIND OR INSTINCT.
AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE MANIFESTATION OF MIND BY THE LOWER ORDERS OF ANIMALS.

Cowper.

The cultivation of the intellectual endowments of man has raised him to such a degree above the other orders of animated existence, that he claims the exclusive possession of the Thinking Principle; forgetting, while he surveys the monuments of human intelligence, that they are but the evidence of his advancement from the savage state; and that while he remained in that primitive condition he might be considered, in fact, as many degrees below his present position in point of mental capacity, as above that of the most sagacious animals;[A] forgetting also that had he continued in a state of nature, like some of the tribes of Africa or America, leaving others to judge of his intelligence from the rude vestiges of his civilization exclusively, they could scarcely attribute to him more intellect than they would to the beaver, or even to the ant.

Animals, unlike men, do not improve materially in different generations, because they generally require no artificial means to promote their happiness; neither have they the gregarious principle to the same extent as man; but some of those which have, exhibit the extraordinary intelligence which will presently be cited.

The object of this inquiry is to ascertain, by the examination of facts, whether the principle called Instinct manifests the same intellectual qualities as Mind, without having any reference to its moral attributes. It is not claimed that each one possesses that rare combination of mental properties which distinguishes the human species; but merely that there is a similitude in the intellectual operation of memory, in men and in animals; the same of abstraction,[415] of imagination, and of reason or judgment, though possessed among all in different degrees, and under different modifications.

The word Instinct is employed to designate the exhibitions of animal nature in their endless varieties. It is a principle which performs the same office in regulating their conduct, that the mind of man does in directing his. It is usually defined, an inward persuasion, a spontaneous impulse, prompting animals to provide for their safety, and administer to their wants; but in certain cases the term has been ennobled by the substitution of sagacity, intelligence, cunning, when the gleamings of intelligence have been too certain to be misunderstood. The truth is, as of the human mind, we know nothing of its essence, of its ultimate nature; and our investigations, as in mind, must be limited to a knowledge of its properties or qualities.

This inquiry, then, will be confined to the intellectual qualities of Instinct; and if, from facts carefully examined, it can be deduced that an animal remembers, we must from necessity concede to his instinct the quality of memory; or if he exhibit an exact knowledge of means and their end, by applying the means to effect the end, we must attribute to his instinct the quality of judging; and the same of other instinctive operations.

It is important for even a tolerable elucidation of this subject, to present the utmost number of ways in which the manifestations of instinct are analogous to the manifestations of mind, as exhibited by the human race; and in doing this, no apology is deemed necessary for the introduction of numerous instances from Natural History, and from common observation.

I. OF THE MEMORY OF THE PRINCIPLE CALLED INSTINCT.

Illustrations.—In autumn, says Huber, honey has been placed in a window, where the bees resorted to it in multitudes. It was removed, and the shutters closed during winter; but when opened again on the return of Spring, the bees came back, though no honey remained; undoubtedly they remembered it; therefore an interval of several weeks did not obliterate the impression they had received.—Selections from Em. Nat's, but entitled Buffon's Nat. Hist., Vide V., 137.

A sailor who had been strolling round Wombwell's menagerie, loitering here and there to identify some of the animals with those he had seen in far distant climes, was attracted by the strange noise of a tiger, who seemed irritated beyond endurance. Jack sought the keeper, to inquire the cause of so singular a display of feeling, which became more boisterous the nearer he approached the animal. The keeper replied that the behavior of the tiger indicated either that he was vastly pleased, or annoyed; upon this the sailor again approached the den, and after gazing at the animal a few moments, during which he became frantic with seeming rage, discovered him to be the same animal brought to England under the special care of the weather-beaten tar. Jack was now as delighted as it appeared the tiger was in recognizing his old friend, and he desired to enter the den, for the purpose as he said of 'shaking a fist' with the beautiful animal. The iron door was opened, and Jack was permitted to enter. The affection of the animal was now shown by caressing and licking the pleased sailor, whom he seemed to welcome with the heartiest satisfaction; and when the honest tar left the den, the anguish of the creature appeared almost insupportable.—London Journal. Buff., II., 88, a like case.

A dog one afternoon was passing through a field near Dartmouth, England, where a washerwoman had hung her linen to dry. He stopped and surveyed one particular shirt with attention; then seizing it, he dragged it away through the dirt to his master, whose shirt it proved to be.—Buff., I., 290.

Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, having dismissed the keeper of one of his elephants, the animal refused obedience to any other, and finally escaped to the wild herd. Ten years afterward the old keeper of the elephant found him in a keddah, and he instantly submitted himself to him.—Buff., N. H., II., 190.

We need seek no clearer evidence of memory in its purest sense, than these instances afford. They are the strong arguments of fact, and need but a momentary examination. Instances however can[416] be found, in which the memory of instinct is even more powerful and retentive than the memory of mind. The homeward flight of the carrier-pigeon is a consecutive remembrance of places; and who, unaided, could retrace his steps for hundreds of miles, after one outward passage? Instances of local memory are familiar to all. The fox remembers his burrow; the bird her nest; the bee its hive; for, if they did not recall the fact of having occupied these places before, they would be found as frequently in the burrow or hive of another as their own; whereas common observation teaches the contrary. The parrot also, and the jay, have been noted for their memory. The cat and the pet sheep distinguish their favorite in the family from day to day; while the dog welcomes the return of his master with manifestations of remembrance as conclusive as the remembrance of the child or the wife.

Our knowledge of the qualities of instinct is derived from actions only; of mind, from words and actions. But these qualities can be inferred as legitimately from the latter, under proper restrictions, as from both; and if we should investigate the properties of mind from the actions of men exclusively, we could not arrive at them with any greater certainty than we can at the properties of instinct.

From the above illustrations, (if they were needed,) the conclusion is irresistible, that Instinct remembers; and all the phenomena of this memory are identical, both in analysis and synthesis, with the phenomena of memory in the human mind. No shade of distinction can be taken, except it be in the degree of strength; and on these terms, while the mass of animals would fall below man, some would rise above him.

II. OF THE PROCESS OF ABSTRACTION BY INSTINCT.

Illustrations.—The beavers begin to assemble in the month of June or July, in order to form a society, which is to continue for the greatest part of the year. They arrive in numbers from every side, and presently form a company of two or three hundred. The place of meeting is commonly the place where they fix their abode, and this is always by the side of some lake or river; if it be a running stream, which is subject to floods and falls, they then set about building a dam, or pier that crosses the river, so as to form a dead water in that part which lies above and below. This dam or pier is often four-score or an hundred feet long, and ten or twelve feet thick at the base: the part of the river over which this dam is usually built, is where it is the most shallow, and where some great tree is found growing by the side of the stream. This they pitch upon as proper for making the principal part in their building; and though it is often thicker than a man's body, they yet instantly set about gnawing it down.—Buff., II., 24. Note.—This is fallen across the stream. They then sharpen stakes, and fix them in the bed of the stream, the upper end resting against the tree.

The fox usually digs his hole in the edge of a wood, or the side of a bank; and in the vicinity of a farm-house. He chooses a dry and secluded spot, preferring a sandy soil.

The tigress, to oppose the daring invaders of her den, braves every danger. On such occasions she pursues the spoiler with an enmity the most inveterate; and he, contented to lose a part in order to save a part, is frequently obliged to drop one of her cubs. With this she immediately returns to her den, and again pursues him; he then drops another; and by the time she has returned with that, he generally escapes with the remainder.—Buff., II., 81.

By the process of abstraction, facts are separated from their original relations, and some of them contemplated apart from the rest. For example: a stream is considered with reference to its width, depth, and rapidity, or rather each property in its turn. In the familiar instance of the fox, we invariably find his burrow in a dry and secluded place; and in a sandy or earthy soil, unless it be in natural crevices. From these facts the inference necessarily results,[417] that he had examined the location with reference to each of these requisites separately; unless instinct can entertain two questions at the same instant, which is above the power of mind; otherwise, his habitation being destitute of one of these essentials, would be useless, and the poor fox be doomed to toil in blind experiment, until chance directed him to a place which combined these and numerous other elements of convenience which the dainty creature might desire, and of which we can have no knowledge.

The beaver, in selecting a site for his dam, furnishes a stronger and more interesting specimen of the abstract reasoning of instinct. The depth, width, and rapidity of the stream; banks sufficiently high to prevent an overflow; the tree upon its edge; the vicinity of food, and materials for their work; all these are to be considered in turn; and if any of these requisites are deficient, a new place must be sought. If instinct proceeded at random, the multitude of disadvantages would preclude success; their labors might be cast away upon a stream too deep and rapid, or too wide, or in a barren region. But it is asserted that instinct spontaneously impels all animals to the end they seek; than which nothing can be more irrational. It is endowing them with a principle which leads unerringly to results that man might fail to ascertain by the aid of science. It is in effect endowing them with a principle higher than mind; partaking something of Deity itself. When man's attention has been arrested by their ingenuity or intelligence, he has passed them over as the workings of mysterious instinct; and indifference has led him into such absurdities. We have seen, on the authority of naturalists, that the beaver's dam is always found at a place which furnishes certain natural advantages. Let us now institute a comparison. A student wishes to study Algebra; we next see him with a slate, algebra, and pencil in hand. The three, with reference to the end designed, make but one object or means; and the inference is natural, that he had abstractly considered the office and necessity of each. On the other hand, the beavers announce their intention of building a dam, by assembling in June and forming a company. We next see them cutting a tree to fall across the creek. The tree, and the width, depth, and nature of the bed of the stream, make but one object or means, as in the other case; and the inference is equally natural and necessary, that they had abstractly considered these elements of fitness, before they selected this particular site, in preference to another.

Comparison is also involved in this selection of a place; and in the execution of the work, reasoning upon the relations of things, as distinguished from a consecutive consideration of their properties. Figure, motion, rest, space, and number are abstract terms. A case in number only has been referred to. It would be a singular supposition, that the dam did not know the number of her offspring, if the proof, from the well-known habits of the tigress, could not be furnished.

Again: the eagle builds her nest on the most rugged cliff, and in a region scarcely inhabited by man, her only formidable enemy.[418] She might find a lofty cliff, with the plains below teeming with population, or an uninhabited region without a cliff; neither of which would answer; and to determine whether a given place combined these requisites of safety, she must consider it with reference to each of these properties separately; which would be the simple process of abstraction. The arrangement of objects into genera and species being a higher process, and the useful result of abstraction, the inquiry might be extended to ascertain, if possible, whether animals ever exhibit such classification in practice.

It is a matter of common observation, that the fox in his excursion will run through a flock of sheep, among cattle, or swine, or birds; but the human species, of whatever sex or age, and dogs, of whatever size or variety, he never approaches; and if he suddenly encounters either, he turns with alarm. By this it appears that he attributes hostility of feeling to the human family; and a disposition not very amiable to the canine species, his hereditary enemy. But horses, sheep, and oxen he considers inoffensive, and trusts himself freely among them.

Judging from actions, (to which we are confined,) the manifestations of instinct in the cases cited, are exactly analogous to the manifestations of mind, under similar circumstances; and had man exhibited such conduct, we should without hesitation pronounce it the consequence of abstract consideration. Now, since we know nothing of the ultimate nature of mind, or of instinct, and hence cannot establish a fundamental distinction between them; and since the manifestations of both are alike, in view of similar premises; it follows, that we can no more deny the quality of abstraction to one than to the other.

III. OF THE IMAGINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE CALLED INSTINCT.

Imagination is regarded as one of the highest of the mental faculties; but since it is manifested in thought rather than in actions, an additional difficulty is presented of discovering the exhibitions of this quality, by animals. It will therefore be a doubtful undertaking, to furnish proof that instinct is endued with this creative ability 'to fabricate images of things that have no existence;' and an approximation only can be expected.

The young dog exhibits his native fierceness while shaking a stick; does he not for the time raise an image of some other animal with whose properties he invests it? The same of a cat, while in the act of crouching and springing to seize a pebble. On a kindred principle, the mere boy rides his willow pony, and the infant Miss hushes her doll to sleep.

The proximate causes of playfulness in youth are the pictures raised in the mind by the fancy or imagination. This faculty, says Kaimes, 'is the great instrument of recreation.' The mind is exhilarated by the cheerfulness with which surrounding objects have been invested by its touch; and the sports of childhood, together with the gayety of youth, are mainly referable to its activity. It is not uncommon to discover the boy and his spaniel[419] at play with a ball as a go-between. The beautiful animal, with open mouth, pricked up ear, and eyes sparkling with vivacity, now eagerly watches every motion of the ball, and of his play-mate, and now seeks for either or both, in their hiding-place. It would be difficult to determine from their actions, which exhibited the quickest perception, the most ingenuity, or the most ardent relish for the amusement. A similar playfulness is seen in most young animals. The manifestations are alike in both; hence the causes cannot be very diverse.

The birds of the air constantly change their habitations in the same latitude, as well as migrate from South to North, and back again. If they did not picture to themselves images of other regions, more beautiful, more abundantly supplied with the means of subsistence, and more agreeable in climate, where is the motive to change? Hunger with them is a motive to exertion, and danger, to flight; but they could have no conception of another place, unless by imagination they might, from the scenes around them, picture another, with more of such parts as were desirable, and less of such as were not; and this would be an inducement to depart; but if they could picture no such prospect, the principle of self-preservation would prompt them to remain. To fabricate such a picture is the exact office of Imagination, and is its best definition.

A bright and still summer morning fills the mind with pleasant images, and the effect is cheerful looks and conduct. The matter-of-fact man, however, with little imagination, would be indifferent; while the poet would surrender himself to the inspiration of the scene. The birds also 'sing out their thankfulness,' and express enjoyment of the scene, by their merry notes. The very formation of song seems to be an imaginative art. On the other hand, a dull morning not only hushes the vocalist of the grove, but fills the mind with unpleasant reflections. And as Imagination 'bodies forth the forms of things unknown,' we are seized with uneasiness, and perhaps with melancholy.

Animals are known to dream, from physical indications during sleep, especially the dog. We see him agitated in every limb, and uttering low, angry growls. He sees nothing in reality; but the imagination must have created images in his instinct of real scenes, probably of conflict, as his movements would lead us to infer. The fact that some animals dream is as well understood as that the phenomena of dreaming are treated in intellectual philosophy as some of the singular results of our mental constitution.

We are forced to see the analogies between the manifestations of mind and of instinct; and any candid observer will find it as difficult to detect a distinction, (except in the degree of power,) as to prove that these analogies do not exist. The strong and uninterrupted current of analogies in animal life, also, which subsist between man and the various species of animals, furnishes an indirect support to the views hitherto advanced. They have the senses, natural affections, and propensities, in common with man. In some they excel. They are 'hurt by the same weapons, and[420] warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer.' They have also bone, muscle, and nerve; the vital fluid, and the organs of circulation, operating in such as possess them, on the same principles as in man. They have the brain; and so situated with reference to the organs of sense as to derive their knowledge of external objects by the same physical agencies that he does. They experience hunger and thirst, pleasure and pain; and some of them exhibit courage and fear; pride, anger, envy, jealousy, and hatred: others,

The existence of these functions, properties, appetites, and passions is freely admitted; the proof being drawn from physiology on the one part, and their actions on the other; and yet it is as evident, and as easy to prove, that an animal remembers as that he hears; that he exercises reason in given cases, as that he sees; and as easy that he has imagination, as that a majority of the human race possess it, seeking for the proof in their actions exclusively.

Let us now consider for a moment the manner in which a knowledge of external objects is attained. The eye is directed, for example, to a dangerous animal. Its image is imprinted upon the retina of the eye; and this impression having been conveyed by the optic nerve to the brain, which is the organ of the mind, the mind has then a perception of the animal; upon this perception, reflection ensues; of its power to destroy; its menacing attitude; the necessity and means of escape. A dog likewise directs his eye to the same animal; an image is formed upon the retina of his eye, and this being conveyed by the optic nerve to the brain, which, by parity of reason, is the organ of the principle called instinct; instinct also has a perception of the animal. The modes thus far are perfectly analogous; but here inquiry has rested; and man absolutely denied that instinct could make a rational use of the perception, which he could not deny it had obtained. He did not or would not reflect, that if the Deity had bestowed upon animals an eye of wonderful mechanism like his own; an optic nerve and brain, and a principle to take knowledge of impressions conveyed to it by the organs of vision; together with all the other senses requisite for perception; some of them most delicate, others most powerful; there was no reason why he should render them nugatory by denying to this principle the ability to reflect upon such perceptions and arrive at conclusions. He did not consider that the dog discovered the object in question to be dangerous as quick as he did; and exhibited this conclusion by fleeing as soon as he; but insisted, in the face of unyielding facts, that a blind, unfathomable impulse urged the creature to escape, while the man arrived at the same determination by a most simple process of reasoning.

In another and concluding number, the reason or judgment of the principle called Instinct will be considered at large.

[421]

OCTOBER.
BY H. W. ROCKWELL.

Bryant.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

[422]

THE INFLUENTIAL MAN.
A SKETCH OF TINNECUM.

The citizens of the little suburb of Quog pressing on to the accomplishment of any town measure would remind you of the sheep-flocks of their own extensive plains and pasture-grounds, urged helter-skelter, yet all in one direction, and that too by the agency of a single shepherd. Whoever threw himself in the way, must either press onward with the throng, or be trampled down and overcome. Yet plastic as they were in the hands of their own chosen guides, the people of Quog were an unconquered Democracy, and breathed the voluptuous air of freedom. Every man was 'as good' as his fellow, none better. Socially, morally, politically, they considered themselves on one dead level, like the country around them. Quog was the very grave of all distinctions; but although its citizens submitted to no dictation, and would not be 'druv,' yet what amounted to the same thing, they could be impelled in a pretty compact body, whether for good or for ill, by the seductive gentleness of a force applied a tergo; that is, not so much to their reasoning faculties, as to their baser propensities.

Uncle Billy Pine was beyond all question the great man of Quog; the umpire, the last court of appeal in complex cases. 'If he says so, I guess it will have to be so,' was a common saying, should any one be so obdurate as to persist in an opinion of his own. It was marvellous how two or three words from him would alter the complexion of cases which had just before been flooded with light by the eloquence of some confident orator. Arguments piled upon arguments, until they got to be highly cumulative, were thrown down in ruinous confusion, the moment his carbuncled nose appeared in sight. The school-master succumbed to him, but the school-master was seldom 'abroad' in Quog. The minority, which was ridiculously small, (for there was a minority on all important questions,) were forced to acknowledge, 'He is an influential man—an influential man.' How he came to acquire so much respect, I know not; it was a sentiment which sprang up, and gradually gained strength, in the bosom of his townsmen; and which they explained in no more philosophical way than this, that 'there was something about him.' He possessed the common rudiments of education; but although he always did take his regular potations, and always would, by reason of which his face had become as ruddy as a lobster, he claimed it as a positive virtue, on the strength of which he expected to inherit heaven, that he was unflinchingly honest, that he 'never robbed nobody,' and that so long as he was above ground, or had any thing to say, he meant to see justice done between man and man. He possessed what was esteemed a handsome property[423] in land, which enabled him to smoke his pipe at the ale-house in a very leisurely way; and here perhaps he laid the foundation of his influence, by the fascination of his social powers, his practical democracy, his cordial familiarity, and his uniform system of treating all alike. He slurred over his ignorance very handsomely by being fluent on all public topics, and by a display of what his fellow-citizens denominated 'good common sense.' Such was the 'Influential Man.'

Quog was a maritime place, at least pretty near to the salt-meadows on Long Island, and carried on a vigorous trade in clams, eels, cockles, horse-feet, fish of various kinds, and wild duck. The inhabitants were unlearned, and so were their ancestors before them, down to the first settlement. There was no occasion for this; they might have been highly educated to a man, had they desired learning, and that too without money and without price. There was a source of revenue among them, which could be instantly developed, richer than could be derived from creeks, bays, and fishing-grounds in a century. They might have varied the intervals of toil with the delight of books, whereas in the existing state of things there was not so much as a bible or an almanac to be found along the whole shore. Some philanthropists in a remote part of the town undertook to abate this ignorance, and to make the people of Quog wise. These however resented this meddling impudence with great fury, and raised up such a storm of prejudice and bad feeling as had never been known to rage within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. It was a very dangerous experiment on the part of the minority; the 'judicious Hookers' among them were fain to acknowledge that the attempt was ill-judged and premature. There were town-lands belonging to the town of Quog to the amount of some thousand acres, lying in their state of natural wildness, without fence, but capable of producing good crops, and being richly cultured. From so much waste ground but a small and partial benefit fell to the share of each inhabitant. The imagination of the philanthropist loved to picture those extensive plains, which now stretched as far as the eye could reach, without tree or shrub, in one melancholy extent of barrenness, converted into rich farms, covered with waving harvests, and giving sustenance to men inured to the noblest of all labor, the culture of the soil. There was now indeed one pleasing, picturesque sight, of which the eye never wearied; multitudes of cattle, dotting the plain in large companies, quietly grazing, or standing in reflective attitudes, almost as if they were painted on the canvass. Seen at a little distance, on the naked plain, and relieved by no near object these variegated groups would cause the eye which loves the beautiful or picturesque to dance with rapture. The air of quietude and repose diffused over these dumb creatures, recalls to the mind every picture of rural happiness, the fondest we have conceived in dreams, or read of in the lucubrations of the poets.

It was desirable to dispose of these lands for a moderate price, and convert the revenue into a fund for the education of every child[424] in the town of Quog. There were a few who had long anxiously reflected on this subject, and brought every plausible argument to bear upon the inhabitants. They should relinquish no privilege, they should reap inconceivable advantages for themselves and their posterity, and education should shed down its blessings upon all; in short, nobody could foresee what a revolution would take place among the people of Quog, if they would but sell the town-lands. There was no use however of stirring up the matter. Uncle Billy said it should not be done; no, never, never, while his head was above ground; and 'if he said so, it would have to be so.'

Years passed away, and still the light of education had never dawned on that benighted people. They were yet addicted to their old pursuits, spending most of the time in taking eels and clams, and seemed not to have a single wish beyond satisfying their present hunger. They sent their cows to pasture on the great plains; and this was a heritage which their fathers enjoyed, and which, in spite of all modern reform, they meant to transmit undiminished to their children. Mr. William Pine grew fonder of the bottle as he grew older, and was held in more affectionate respect. He threw out his disjointed philosophy with a most unstudied air, during the interval of his whiffs; and whether on general politics, or local measures, his sentiments crept abroad, and formed a standard of opinion for the whole town of Quog. So subtle a thing is influence. It is not riches, it is not talent, it is not eloquence; it is the je ne sais quoi.

At last the reform party, who had kept quiet a good while, with a forlorn hope of a better state of things, expecting moreover in the course of nature that it would please divine Providence to remove out of this mortal life their obdurate neighbor, began with a very cautious foot to stir up the old project of selling the town-lands. They talked very indefatigably, but in a gentle, subdued tone, with all their neighbors, smoothing down their asperities of temper, and presenting the subject in a great many plausible lights. Nor did their labor seem wholly in vain. Those who listened urged nothing in reply, and were even willing to acknowledge that what they had stated 'was all well enough.' These good reformers persevered in their peripatetic philosophy, and even flattered themselves that they had obtained a good position, and had got a lever adjusted with which they would move the mountain of old prejudice, and get rid of that terrible stumbling-block in the way of all good measures, that blind and ignorant, but influential old man!

The crisis had now come, when, according to their judgment, it would be judicious to bring into play their new strength, and test the whole matter by a public vote at the next meeting of the town. In the mean time, they spared no pains to seek out the most violent opposers, to reason with them emolliently; and to spread out, simplify, and explain the subject to those of extreme stupidity. At last a great many said that they were well enough satisfied, and 'thought it like enough that they would vote for the measure.' The 'friends of education' held a caucus, which was attended with great animation and rubbing of hands. A committee, appointed for the purpose,[425] presented the draught of a school-house on an improved plan. Public opinion seemed to have become so leavened by these new and enlightened views, as to leave scarcely a single doubt of the most unqualified success. One could mention three or four who were wavering; another a half a dozen who had made up their minds; another a dozen who declared expressly that they would vote for the measure. All this diffused encouraging smiles over the faces of the members, and led many of them to declare boldly that they could have carried their point some years ago, if they had only thought so; that it only required tact, management, and perseverance; and that they had vastly overrated the importance of the Influential Man.

What had hitherto produced as much popular effect as any thing at the town-meetings, was a patriotic song, composed by Uncle Billy Pine, which will serve to show the literature of Quog, and which was frequently sung with great zest, and an overpowering chorus:

The jingle of the above song, which consisted of a good many verses, and which was thoroughly learned by all the population of Quog, still sounded in the ears of the 'friends of education,' and they sincerely hoped that by the time of the approaching contest it would be forgotten.

The day at last arrived, the important day, and the townsmen, for want of a better covering, were assembled to vote beneath the open sky. The reform party were there in full force, and with an adequate degree of spirits. When other business had been transacted, the chairman said:

'Gentlemen, it is proposed to sell the town-lands; those who are in favor of this measure, will please signify it by holding up their hands.'

Then it was that the orator of the above party, being loudly called upon, spoke out. He was a thin-faced man, pale and agitated with the importance of his message, which he desired to present in the most translucent way; for he knew the benefits of education, having come to that benighted region from the very heart of New-England, where its blessings are as free as air. 'My respected friends,' said he, 'we want you all to be satisfied in your own minds. It doos seem to be a pity that all this land should lie idle, when you might just as well sell it for thousands of dollars, and have the money in your own pockets; or what is a great deal better, edicate[426] your children with it. Just këount up what it would come to, if there's any of you acquainted with arithmetic, and you'll find there's plenty, kalkalating only the interest, for all purposes of eddication. And what good do you gëit ëout of it nëow? Why every man sends his këow to pastur', and it's mighty poor pastur', that's a fact. (Cheers.) Wal, I s'pose some folks will say the poor man and the rich man get served both alike, for when the mashes are mowed, both have the same right. That isn't so, my respected friends. For the rich man can afford to send four times as many hands, and carry off four times as much hay. (Cheers.) Now the time doos seem to be come to remedy this evil, and to get a fair distribution of the proceeds. We don't want to 'take your rights away,' my christian friends; we want to give every man his own rights. I've got reason to think that many of you look at this matter in the right light, sence it's been set before you, and made all plain; and this speaks much for that wonderful nat'ral-born intelligence which is common to the people of Quog. (Cheers.) Nëow is the time to decide this matter; that's the only fault, that you've been a-thinkin' about it too long; but my friends, you can make up for lost time; put your shoulder to the wheel, and whatever you do, do it nëow! nëow! NËOW!'

This praiseworthy speech produced considerable sensation on the ground. One said it was reasonable enough; another said he couldn't pick any flaw in what the speaker had set forth; another declared he was a smart man. In short, a very general buzz of approbation ran through the assembly; and the slow dawn of intelligence beginning to break gradually over the faces of those present, gave evidence that 'the cause' had never before made such a long stride in the town of Quog. The question was now about to be taken, when somebody requested the chairman to 'hold on a minute; it was well enough to hear all sides first; and may be Uncle Billy had got a word to say.' The reform party looked a little frightened, as they had augured very favorably from not having discovered the 'Influential Man' upon the ground. He had only retired to the bar-room, however, and held himself in readiness as soon as the proper moment should arrive. He now edged his way up to the tribune, with a smiling, rubicund face, and swinging his hat around, 'Boys,' said he, with a gay, familiar tone, 'don't you hold up your hands for no such thing. Now you've got something to give to your children when you die, and they can't spend it, nor run away with it. Let the aristocrats get hold of the money, and they'll put it into their pockets, and then see where you'll be; the plains, mashes, money, all gone. That aint all. The next thing they'll do will be to sell your fishing-privileges; (great excitement;) and when you go upon the grounds you'll be druv off. What'll you do then? No clammin', no eelin', and no pastur' to feed your cow onto. That's what it'll nat'rally lead to. Now you see, I'm an old man, and know how these things work; but by ——! I won't stand by, not while my gray hairs is above ground, and see your rights taken away. So hold on to your rights, boys! hold on to your rights!'

[427]

A shout arose, a triumphant shout, from the whole mass, the above Doric eloquence having turned them completely about. Who would have thought that the aspect of things could become so changed? But this comes of having the last word. Pleasant smiles were diffused over the face of Uncle Billy; and the meeting being now ripe for the question, it was put, and the inhabitants, as it were with one voice, decided that the town-lands should remain 'just as they were.' The philanthropists departed from the ground wofully chapfallen, amid the jeers and calumniations of the crowd; and the old chorus met their ears from the tavern-doors and windows as they passed:

It is a good maxim never to despair; and perseverance in a just cause will at last accomplish its most difficult ends. For the present generation it is to be feared that nothing can be done. Their case is indeed peculiar. They never will sell the town-lands until they get education, and they never will get education until they sell the town-lands. Thus the matter stands; and it grieves me to say, in conclusion, that never was the pall of ignorance more dark than that which hangs at this moment over the benighted regions of Quog.

F. W. S.

THE BROKEN VOW.

J. T. F.

Boston, Oct., 1843.

[428]

CHRONICLES OF THE PAST.

NUMBER TWO.

The application of names to places is often a matter of mere fancy, without a semblance of appropriateness. The belligerent little State of Rhode-Island, for example, bears no more likeness to the Isle of Rhodes, from which it takes its name, than does a West Indian war-club to the queue of a Chinese mandarin. The Bay State is no more the State possessing a bay, than are half the sea-board States in the Union; nor has Connecticut any more claim to the river which enriches her meadows, nor Vermont to the greensward of her hills, than has Massachusetts to the one, or Western Virginia to the other. Far more mal-apropos, however, than all we have mentioned, is the application of palmetto to the chivalrous land of nullification, since neither on upland nor lowland, rice field nor cotton-field, saving only the dwarf specimens upon the sand-banks of Sullivan's Island, is that fantastic tree of the tropics to be found any where within the State. In truth, as a general thing, there is neither character nor cleverness in the application of names to places; and he who should form his notions of the different sections of our country from the appellations they have received, would be much in the condition of Bossuet's student of history, who had taken for his text-books Gulliver's Voyages and Rabelais's Pantagruel.

There is, however, one notable exception to the general fact. New-Hampshire is rightly and truly designated the Granite State. Not only in the bare sides of her stupendous mountains, and the broad bases of her rugged hills, does she partake largely of this firm conglomerate, but in her people also she seems to have compounded no small share of the hard material. Stern, unbending, indomitable, with physical frames like the gnarled oak, and characters rough as the huge boulders upon her soil, New-Hampshire may boast a race of men unequalled for energy and endurance by any other in the world. It would seem as if the old Saxon legend, which makes Tor, the war-god, hew the first man, with hammer and chisel, out of a block of stone, and give him life with a flash of lightning, were fully verified in these hardy sons of the mountains; for they are almost literally men of granite, with electric spirits. It has been my fortune, in a not uneventful life, to have travelled over many portions of the world's surface, and to have seen much of human manners and character; and I can truly say that I have always returned to the barren soil of New-Hampshire with a higher respect and a warmer love for the rude virtues of her sons; and it is now my firm belief, should the day ever come, which may Heaven avert! when dissensions will rend asunder that great charter of our freedom, the[429] Constitution, that Liberty, like the bird we have chosen for her emblem, scared from her resting-place in the capitol, would find her last and secure home among the dwellers on the hill-sides of the Granite State.

This is not equally true, however, of every portion of New-Hampshire. Along the southern borders of her territory the spindle and shuttle have introduced a race who are strangers to the simple virtues of her husbandmen; so that even they, tempted by the lucre of gain, have sadly fallen from the primitive plainness which was once their most enviable characteristic. Neither upon the rich intervales of the Connecticut, where wealth comes unattended by her handmaid labor, will you find the true specimens of her stalwart yeomanry. It is in the distant up-country only, among the townships far removed from the bustle of the manufactory and the crowd of the market-place, that the rough husbandmen of the hard soil, the sterling democracy of our degenerate age, are to be sought and known. There they dwell, the honest country-folk of by-gone days, undisturbed by the changes which time brings over other portions of the world, contented lords of the heritage of their fathers.

Whether it is to be attributed to some peculiarities of climate or of soil, or to some one of those other thousand influences which are ever operating upon the physical frame, it is certain that the maximum of bodily size and human life, over a considerable portion of the Granite State, is at a higher standard than in any other part of our country. It is capable of being demonstrated by the student of history, that more of pure, unadulterated Saxon blood runs in the veins of the backwoodsmen of New-Hampshire, than in any other class of our people; but whether this has any thing to do with the fact we have stated, cannot of course be determined. That fact, however, is established beyond a doubt; and he who would see a peasantry of sturdier frames and greater age than is to be found elsewhere in the whole world, may find them scattered over the rough soil and along the narrow valleys of the White Mountains. Six feet in height, and one hundred and sixty pounds in weight, make elsewhere a man above the customary standard; but in New-Hampshire scores of young men, from six feet two inches to six feet five, and weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, never deem themselves above the ordinary size. I have in my mind's eye at this moment ten young men, who would weigh two hundred pounds, without a single ounce of surplus flesh, and I doubt not thousands over the State could be found to match them in every way.

The portion of the State of which this is peculiarly true, lies north of the Winnepisseogee lake. It is a country of all others most uninviting to the farmer, and one wonders what could have tempted its first settlers to have selected it as a home. Huge rocks, tumbled from the mountains, lie thickly scattered over the tillage-ground and pastures; ledges, bare or covered with dark green moss, run for miles often through farms and homesteads; precipitous banks and abrupt precipices swell and break over the whole landscape; and the entire country is ploughed with deep ravines, and barren with a[430] scanty soil, beyond what any description can convey. To the lover of nature, indeed, it is a country full of beauty. Those old hills, black with forests of Norway pine, lying like the sleeping guardians of the beautiful lake by their side; and those rustic cottages, scattered along the narrow valley which the retreating waters have left between themselves and the mountains; and finer than all, the numerous water-falls that leap and dash and gurgle onward over scaur and precipice and wooded cliff toward the Winnepisseogee, which seems waiting like some gentle mother to welcome her joyous children to her bosom; are well worth the journey of many a long mile to the scenery-loving tourist. But the people are poor. Toiling from year to year with unceasing industry, they gain from the hard soil a bare livelihood, from youth to old age. Happy indeed in their poverty; contented, unaspiring, and satisfied if the last days of December shall find them no poorer than they commenced the year, and the produce of the farm has proved sufficient to pay the tax of poll and parsonage, and yield a sufficiency for the winter's store.

The features of the country strike the eye accustomed to a more dense population as singularly unique. One may travel those roads, winding through the mountain passes and along the high palisades, for days, and see neither village nor hamlet, nothing indeed but the low, unpainted houses, sometimes prettily covered with jessamine and ivy, but more often bare of all taste or adornment, saving the solitary lilac-trees which stand in the corners of the court-yards, or the old scented thorn-bushes by the side of the door. Looking down sometimes from an elevation he has gained, they seem to the traveller, those cottages, like martins' nests, dotting the curving shores of some beautiful bay; and again from some deep ravine, they appear like fairy domicils, perched high on the cliffs and ramparts of the mountains. Interspersed in every few miles are the district school-houses and the parish churches, the one almost invariably standing upon the fork of two or more roads, and the other crowning the summit of the highest hill attainable by horse and vehicle. And then the country tavern, whose long shed and sanded hall give surety to the stranger and his beast of a comfortable noon-tide baiting; or, in the more solitary townships, where the places of entertainment are few and far between, the quiet nook by the forest road-side, where the dipper hangs beside the overflowing water-trough, and the guide-board measures out the long miles between him and his evening resting-place; each and all objects of pleasant recollection to the traveller, as he muses upon his journeyings in after life.

The effect of a mountain atmosphere upon the health and spirits of mankind has long been known to the medical faculty, and has been treated of by its most distinguished writers. Its equal tendency to the extension of human life, however, naturally as it seems to follow from the other, has been entirely overlooked. And yet this is as capable of satisfactory demonstration as any fact connected with the animal economy. Nor is this the only fact of interest in[431] regard to this subject, which presents itself to the attentive and accurate observer. It is also capable of proof, that up to a certain distance from the equator, the length of life increases in a steady ratio with the degrees of latitude. In some recent statistics which have been carefully taken, and which upon their completion will be given to the world, it has been ascertained that the average length of human life is thirteen per cent. greater in the mountain districts of New-Hampshire than it is upon the sea-board country of Massachusetts or Maine; fourteen per cent. greater than in New-York or Pennsylvania; seventeen per cent. greater than in Virginia; and twenty-two per cent. greater than in any State south of the parallel of thirty-five degrees. There are indeed other causes to be taken into the account, to which we cannot now refer, which are every where recognized as having an important influence upon the physique, if not indeed upon the morale, of the human race. But entirely aside from these, the principle of an increasing age directly following a diminishing temperature, can be most satisfactorily shown; so that the rough mountaineer of New-Hampshire has as much right to calculate upon the good old age of eighty-six, as has the lordly planter of the Sea Islands to the premature decrepitude of three-score.

This extreme old age to which the agriculturalists of New-Hampshire attain, is perceptible to the most casual observer. Over the whole country we have described, evidences of the truth of this force themselves upon his attention, wherever he goes. The old man of seventy-five years still mows his swath in the summer, and bends his sickle in the autumn, with the elastic vigor of the prime of manhood. The barn rings with the heavy strokes of the flail, swung in alternate succession by the veteran and his grandson. The cozy couple, who could tell you stories of their own experience in revolutionary days, ride each Sabbath morning side by side upon the pillioned saddle to the house of God. The simple head-stones in the church-yard also, though they may often record the premature decay of some bright blossom of the social circle, more frequently point out the resting-places of those who were gathered to their graves like the shock of corn that cometh in in its season. In the town of Moultonborough, for example, where the population scarcely reaches to thirteen hundred souls, no less than forty-four persons have died since 1833, whose average ages were ninety-eight years. Of these forty-four, twenty-six had exceeded a century, and the youngest of the band was cut off at the premature age of eighty-seven. 'Think of that, Master Brook!' But the oldest of the group, he who was for many years the banner-veteran of our worthies, and whose memory, we opine, will still be foremost for many years to come; he, our hearty Scotchman, whose monument rises by the church-yard gate, he, unshrinking, undismayed, stood erect under the accumulated weight of six score and seven full-told years!

Brave old Donald McNaughton! thrice honored be thy memory! Year after year didst thou live on in the very greenness of decrepitude; and though old Time filched one by one the glories of thy[432] manhood, it mattered little, so long as listeners would come to thy long stories of the feats of daring at Louisburg and the Plains of Abraham! Thou type of graceful covetousness, thou realization of penurious modesty, it irks me to think that thou, at the last, malgré thy unwearied care and long delay, shouldst have been forced to pass the Lethean stream in leaky Stygian wherry! But Death took thee unawares; and he whom thou hadst so long defied, impatient of the delay, and distrusting perchance his skill to meet thee in open day, stole upon thee in thy midnight slumbers, and carried thee, a poor forked shape, unresisting because unconscious, to the pale kingdom.

The history of Donald McNaughton's life would be replete with worldly wisdom. Commencing life a 'puir bairn,' to use his own phrase, though at the time to which he alluded he must well-nigh have completed his fiftieth year, by unremitted industry and careful economy he amassed a fortune, remarkable in a new and unproductive country. Up to his one hundredth year he labored daily in the field, and his best workmen could seldom surpass him in the amount of labor. Even at that age it was not the decrepitude of years but of an accidental injury, which laid the old man by, and to the very day of his confinement, which preceded his death but a single week, he personally superintended all the business of his homestead. At the distant market-town in the coldest winter weather; at the polls on every day of election through the 'sleety dribble' and miry roads of earliest spring; at church and funeral, auction-sale and country gathering, he was ever the foremost man. Indeed in all matters, whether of state or church, public or private, he prided himself upon his superior sagacity; and not without reason. Shrewd, careful, far-sighted, firm in the tenacity with which he held, and cool in the manner with which he expressed, his opinions, he retained over three generations the undisputed sway of a superior man.

The secret of the great age to which he attained was in contravention of all the principles of dietetics. No man was ever more imprudent in his diet, or in his exposure to the weather. He was, however, habitually cheerful; a consequence rather than a cause of his continued healthfulness; and no war-worn hero ever better loved, by the fireside of the wintry night, or under the summer shade of his broad roof-tree, 'to count his scars, and tell what deeds were done,' than did old Scotch Donald. How well I remember the lighting up of his bright hazle eye as he would commence in his broad highland accent some tale of flood or field; and how readily we boys would quit the game of cricket or marbles, to listen to a story of the wars by old 'Gran'fth McNaughton!'

Nor was it in narrative alone that the old man excelled. No man better loved a ready joke, and no man better turned one, than did he. I remember a pedler one day riding up to his door, the poor beast he bestrode being ladened from shoulder to haunch with the variety of wares which he had to dispose of. Greatly to our surprise, old Donald met him at the door with a most cheerful greeting,[433] for we well knew that pedlers were his utter abomination, and, offering him a chair, inquired what he had to sell. 'Oh, every thing, Sir; every thing,' replied he of the packs; 'ribbons, silks, calicoes, combs, thimbles, needles, scissors, gloves, belts, sewing-silk—every thing, Sir, every thing! What will you have?' 'Got any grind-stones?' asked the old man. 'Oh, no Sir, I came a horse-back.' 'Ah, I thought you came a foot!' was the reply, uttered in a tone and manner that sent the poor hawker out at the door with a speed that no maledictions could have effected.

For many years Mr. McNaughton was the only justice of the peace in the town where he resided; and a history of the cases which came before him, and of his decisions thereupon, would furnish a new chapter in civil jurisprudence amusing enough. Whatever may have been the landmarks in law which influenced those decisions, it is certain that they generally gave satisfaction, and were considered by the parties in dispute as final beyond resort. Nothing gave the old man more satisfaction in his judicial capacity than to puzzle the lawyer, for we had but one in the county in those days, by the decisions he pronounced, and his frequent reply to the objections urged. 'So ye dinna ken my reasons, ye say, Mr. Bartlett, for the decision I mad' to-day? Weel, weel, I ken them mysel', an' that's a' sufficient in the law, nae doubt!' became almost proverbial in the mouths of the people. I remember two men being brought before him upon a charge of stealing the poultry of a poor widow, who lived in the outskirts of the parish, for whose conviction, Esquire Bartlett, from some personal pique, had made extraordinary efforts. The men had been taken the night previous about ten o'clock, one in bed and asleep, the other sitting up by his kitchen fire. There was but little evidence of their guilt, and the advocate had to make the most of every circumstance, in order to show a semblance of justice in binding the men over for appearance at a higher tribunal. Of course the situation in which each was found was strongly insisted upon as a proof of guilt; and while one was awake at the dead of night, stung by remorse for his crimes beyond the power of sleep to quiet, the other was shown to be even more deep in iniquity, by the utter indifference he manifested in going to sleep upon his pillow, after the perpetration of the horrible deed. Without perceiving the inconsistency of the two parts of his argument, the lawyer rested his case, and waited for the decision, which the old justice was not slow in giving. Calling the two culprits before his chair, he arose and said: 'I dinna ken what lawyer Bartlett would ha'e a mon do, at ten o'clock at night. Gin he sits up by his fire, he is a rogue for sure; an' gin he gang to bed, he is nae honest mon! Here, you John Wilkins, you may gang free this time, only never let me hear you sitting up ayont ten at night again; and you, Sam Wilkins, you may gang free too, gin you promise ne'er to shut your e'en till eleven o'clock, whenever you rob a hen-roost!'

Although Donald McNaughton was the oldest man in the town, yet there was not after all that visible contrast between him and his[434] associates, which a stranger would have expected. At that day, the minister who sat above him in the pulpit, and who, though he did not preach, still deemed himself able to do so, and the deacon who administered the sacramental ordinance, were both nearly a century in age. Of the former, one of that staunch little band of clergymen, who, from the time the constitution was accepted up to the close of the administration of Jefferson, stood manfully on the democratic side, and lived, and preached, and prayed for the people's rights, we have many anecdotes to relate at another time. If any man ever deserved a record in the hearts of freemen, it was he, the faithful pastor, the unswerving champion of the truth; and though it is a long time since

yet it is fitting to call up from the past the spirits of those who won for us the liberty we enjoy.

But the Deacon, good old Deacon Richardson, was in political sentiment, as in every thing else, the very antipodes of the minister. He too, however, was a veteran of the war of the Revolution; and the stories he told, though not equal in interest to the old Scotchman's, were yet not without their merit. Of his years, the Deacon was the most agile person I ever saw; and up to the age of ninety-four, would mount his horse, and ride over hill and dale to church or tavern, with the speed of a reckless plough-boy. Indeed he had a physical frame which seemed never to feel the effects of old age; one of those lean, tough, shrivelled bodies that wilt early, but decay late, and which, however seared by increasing winters, still cling to life, like the last leaf to the tree. At fifty years the good Deacon looked as old, and felt as old, as he did forty years after. Through Saratoga, and Monmouth, and Breed's Hill encounters, he had escaped unscathed; and but for the untoward fall of the last forest-tree he ever chopped, there was no reason apparent why he might not have lived through another century. Cheerful, merry, and frolicksome as a lamb at midsummer, the dapper little centenarian would frisk about among the matrons and spinsters at our country parties, like the licensed beau of a boarding-school. But with all his partialities for the sex, the Deacon was never married. Why this was so, no one could ever tell, unless, from a habit of stuttering, which nearly overcame him when he was embarrassed, he found it difficult to get out words enough for a proposal. And yet there were those among our lone damsels, who, one would have thought, would have eked out the sentence when it was once fairly begun, for the solitude of no man had ever more commiseration from the gentler sex than did his.

Speaking of the Deacon's stuttering habit of talking, reminds me of a reply he made to some brethren of the church, who had been deputed to converse with him upon his known disaffection to a new clergyman, whom the parish were about to settle. The real objection which he had to the minister was never known, but the avowed[435] one was the inferior mental endowments which the sermons he had preached showed him possessed of. This he urged upon the committee from the church, and this they in turn combated and denied. At last, finding the Deacon's objections to be indomitable, beyond the hope of removing, one of the brethren said: 'Well, Deacon Richardson, let us grant you all that you say, still I think you are wrong. We must not expect a man of first-rate abilities in our little congregation. We must be content with one of moderate talents. You know the Bible says, that 'one star differeth from another star in glory.'

'Humph!' replied the Deacon, 'I sh-sh-shouldn't care if you would give us a st-st-star, but we do-do-don't want a lightning-bug!' The minister was settled over the flock, however, and the old man lived to overcome all his objections, despite his naturally obstinate disposition.

Although Deacon Richardson was possessed of many excellent traits of character, he was by nature rather inclined to an eager grasping after wealth, a disposition which his solitary state greatly confirmed and increased. For the last twenty years of his life the attainment of wealth seemed to be his ruling passion, and he went on, adding farm to farm, and mortgage to mortgage, until it began to be feared that he would live to gain possession of all the property in town. Apropos to this: I remember that a Methodist clergyman, who had spent the night at my father's house, addressed a little boy, (who happened to be passing while he was performing his ablutions at the 'sink' by the door,) and received his answers somewhat in this wise, greatly to the amusement of all within hearing:

Minister. Little boy, what is your name?

Boy. John, Sir.

Minister. John what?

Boy. John Berry, Sir.

Minister. Don't you think it is time for you to be thinking about your soul, my boy?

Boy. Sir?

Minister. Don't you think it is best for you to be making preparation for a future state? Is it not time for you to be thinking about another world?

Boy. Yes, Sir; I think it is time, for father says Deacon Richardson's going to have all there is in this world!

But the Deacon has long gone to his last home, and far be it from us to recall his foibles, 'or draw his frailties from their dread abode.' He did many a kindly act, and the blessing of the fatherless rested upon his head.

But we have wandered from our subject, and it is too late to resume it now. We believe there is much in that sterling democracy of New-Hampshire, much of real gold, though it lack the guinea's stamp, which has never been revealed to the world. Not only can all that we have claimed for the physique of those hardy yeoman be incontestably proven, but it can be shown with equal[436] clearness, that in intellectual endowments and moral qualities they are seldom equalled and never surpassed. And if, in some simple sketches of these people and their progenitors, we can illustrate a page in our national history which is yet unwritten; if we can impress upon our own age the worth of those who lived before us, not for themselves alone, but to achieve our independence; if we can show what they were who framed the charter of our freedom, and what they would be now in the agitations of this hurrying age, what they did and what they would have us do, our 'chronicles' will not have been written in vain.

SUNDAY AT PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS.
BY REV. WILLIAM B. TAPPAN.

[437]

THE TOP OF NEW-YORK.
BY S. W. MANSFIELD.

Three frosts in succession; and now, with extra flannels, a day that was omitted last summer is dropped down here by mistake; and nerves that were braced up to a fine tone collapse to a broken fiddle. Men rush at the soda-shops, looking daggers at each other, and women go careless of corsets, and showing their natural color. Coal falls off again; ice-creams go up; Niblo has another 'crack night;' the beggars are happy, and so am I.

Do you remember your first julep? The gradual mounting to the brain, like the rush of joy to a sick heart that takes it doubtingly; the quick grouping and glancing of thought from your ideality; the uncorking of fancies bottled in your teens; and at last a sudden ballooning of the whole head, that brings out the stars, and the heavens opening, with angels passing to and fro, (Broadway always, after a julep,) and you forget the dun of the morning, and the girl that jilted you last night out of a week's passion. You forget her as such, but you remember, rather you repeat, the heart-flutterings of the first night; the hand gently withdrawn of the second; the delicious half-embrace (interrupted) of the third; and the fourth, body, soul, and lips, all melting innocently together, with pulses and Fahrenheit mounting the hundred! If after that she gave you the kiss coyly at the door, with ears up like an antelope's, and said it was very naughty, you remember that her dress was too airy to be disarranged; and ah! she's only timing you a little; and so God bless her forever!

Not that such things happen; never. But the julep makes you think so. Well, do you remember the charming confusion of that first julep; its beautiful bewilderment; (I premise, of course, that it surprised an unbrandied stomach;) and would you like to repeat the sensation, without breaking your late pledge? 'Juleps be hang'd!' says you. Very well, you are in trouble to-day. Your wife made you get up first, and the world rolls the wrong way with you; the sun rose in the west, you say. Exactly so. It rose to me, no'th-west and a point off, only yesterday. (Lobster salad for supper; ten devils and a young one for bed-fellows, and the universe knock'd into a cocked hat; saw it myself; every star went past my window; took an observation in the morning: sun in the north-west; the needle running round like a kitten after its tail, and the earth bound to the north star! Fact! Nobody knew it but me; but it's all right now.) Well, the sun rose in the west; your children teething, perhaps, and the nurse has a child of her own, just arrived; and you think it probable that your wife has eloped with her cousin, who urged you to marry her. Are any of these[438] things so?—or, worst of all imaginings, have you breakfasted badly? Then, Sir, Come up to the top of New-York!

If you have strained your eyes, looking up, half a life-time, take the stair-case, the easiest way in the world of getting up in it, and look down, or overlook, as you like. We have a cream left, and a dash of curacoa that colors better than strawberries. Come up, Sir, and open your lungs to the original element; quick! or you'll be carried away with the rush. A dam across Broadway for half an hour would gather a Waterloo army.

Well, here you are; sit down, Sir, and don't shout, or you will have a park-full looking at you, and probably an alarm of fire. Let the people pass. We have been through the play, and found that the farce in real life is the only tragedy. Keep your heart fresh, my young boy, and away from shilling seductions. Pass on, children; we can't 'make believe' sufficiently to-day, and will just overlook you a little. Fix your eye, Sir, upon that baboon coming out of a flue, till your nerves steady a little, and think what a sweep of mind he must have after the confinement of a chimney. You observe, the world is neither before us nor behind, for we are atop of it. How the eye blunders about amid the sea of house-tops, and what variety of chimney architecture not meant for the eye! Now and then a spire points up, like the stray pines of a southern barren, and outside are the tops of the shipping, hedging in the city like bayonets. Farther on, the white sails dash about in all directions, sweeping past each other with the untouched precision of a street-walker, bowing gallantly with a touch of the beaver. The steam-ferries cross with the straight-forward bearing of a militaire, as though they took no pleasure whatever in the goings-on; and here and there, with sails all out, top-gallantly, a tall ship moves among the crowd, with the emphasis of royalty.

Rather airy, up here! The cream of those small seas in the harbor has cooled the breeze for us, and the light over all, unless the sun-spots have grown since, is the unmixed original of the first day. The groaning of the streets comes up softened occasionally with a shout, or merry laugh, like a mocking-bird's in a menagerie; and overhead, a few clouds float about, idle to all appearances, yet each one is doing its errand of the morning, with a perfection far beyond your particular range. Some are rolling over and over in the sunshine; some just touching and parting, like women with dresses too large to salute; and in the upper heavens, a few long fellows, like ships upon the sea, are scudding in an entirely different direction. Just as you are up or down in the world, Sir, will the wind carry you.

Having looked about us, you may laugh or be sad, as you please. I advise neither; but there below us is the material, from the smile to the tear, and thousands of hearts now leaping to one or the other. Some perhaps at this moment making their first exclamation in the world, to large points of admiration from the just-made mother; and some dropping a last broken word upon the bounds of another world. Between these points are the variety of interjections,[439] the oh! ah! pish! pah! hurra! and Hallelujah! that make up human life.

There has been a lull for a while; and now New-York has dined, and the soft pattering of feet tells us that beauty is thronging down the pavé, to settle the dinner, and the pleasures of the evening.

Has your brain cooled? Take that glass, and tell me if the archangel Gabriel has unsexed and fallen—into Broadway. How elate that motion, as though she were walking on a mountain-top, and as the whole world were beneath her, but not too far for her to be a part, and the glory of it! Beauty and grace go with her, like sunshine playing on a fountain. One who has just passed is sunning his heart in the delusion that she looked at him. Poor fool! Her thoughts are not promenading. Some things in this world are rather riddlesome—rather. You would not say that sorrow had touched her heart, and that passions are coiled there like serpents sucking her very life-blood; some half-dead with gorging, and some casting their coats for new life and vigor. Lost? As the star that is falling, which nothing but the hand of God can stay! Follow her home, and as the street-look is laid aside with her scarf, how sad that face! Calm and still, with now and then a faint smile flashing over it; but sheet-lightning, my dear Sir, for with her the storm had passed. The flash shows the cloud, to be sure; and to-morrow's sun may nurse it into more thunder; but these are unpleasant reflections. We should not have looked down.

There comes another, whose heaven is in another part of the universe, separate entirely. She needs study, like an old painting; but even with that, you never would know her, unless you were of the same Heaven. Her sweet voice would be like any other, with a difference that you would wonder at, but never understand.

And now the up-towns have gone up again, and night comes on, with the stars out in the upper heavens, and the lights as stars below. Between two heavens will not do, when either can be reached.

'Ride up—Broad-w-a-y!' The boy has music in him. Good night to the Top of New-York!

Julian.

THE BIRTH-DAY.

R. S. Chilton.

New-York, July, 1843.

[440]

THE EXILE'S SONG.

A. M.

THE ELEMENTS OF A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.
'BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM.'

What are the elements and traits of a religious character? What combinations of virtue and excellence, of principle and attainment, enter into and form a character which answers to our conception of religion? We think we can recognize and judge of such a character when it appears before us as the result of a process, and therefore our first thought is, that it would be easy to describe such a character. We know and can respect such a character when we see it, and therefore we might say it could not be difficult to tell how it is to be formed, and of what elements and traits it must be composed.

But indeed it is not easy to describe a religious character, nor to tell, on the moment, the combination and proportion of its virtues, nor to analyze its parts. It is not easy, because character is of itself a wonderful and a mysterious creation; its springs are hidden, its processes are secret, its foundation and development do not admit of close observation, and the power with which it impresses us is rather realized than understood. And then the religious elements of a character only increase the difficulty of exhibiting its construction[441] and its power. And then again there has grown up such a difference of estimate, such a variance in opinion among men, as to what religion is, what it enjoins, what it allows, what it approves, that we may indeed number it among the acknowledged impossibilities, to portray the ideal of a religious character to the satisfaction of any large number of persons. What different models are held up for our imitation! As we trace back the burthened history of two thousand years, we perceive that very different traits have been insisted on, and various excellences required. Stress has been laid upon one or another virtue; illustrious homage has been offered in different generations to characters quite in contrast with each other. Indeed, the civilized world now reveres alike some departed worthies as joined in the communion of saints, who if on earth together would have mutually denied each other's claims to any measure of regard.

Call up from their graves the departed worthies of their own day, the robed and transfigured memorials of distant times; let the long line of the revered dead pass in imagination before you, and as they pass, read their titles. The difference between a smile and a tear, between martyrdom and a triumph, between a smile of joy and a pang of agony, between a feast and a fast, is not greater than the difference in model and standard of character in those whom we agree in calling religious men. The saint from the dreary caverns of Africa leads the line. His bones start from his attenuated skin; even the skin is worn away from his knees by frequent prayer; his body is wasted by fasting, watching, and scourging: he has been the companion of beasts, the prey of vermin; he has seen it may be for half a century no human face or form. There was the standard of a religious character for him, and for his age. Next in the line is the monk; renouncing what is good, and commanding what is wicked; possessing the virtues of a cloister, and the fancied holiness which has made itself necessary to supply the place of real holiness. And then the monk was accounted worthy. But with his well-kept vows, and the well-worn record of his prayers, the monk retires into shadow with the saint, and a saint of a different aspect fills the eye. He comes as a dignitary of the church, bowed down with gold and jewels; with armies at his command, and holiness for his title. His garments are suffused with the odor of incense; millions fall prostrate and do reverence even to his feet with a kiss. He is anointed in life, and canonized at death. He lived in a gorgeous palace, he sleeps in a costly shrine. But while the pilgrim is on his way to that shrine, another ideal of the religious character passes before the mind; and then there appears before the eye one who is called a pious and godly man. He is the Puritan of ancient days. He comes with sad and austere looks, yet with a kind and tender heart, only we do not see the heart, because he wishes to be known by the face, which his close-cut hair brings into full view. A laugh to him is mockery; luxury is but a feasting of the adversary of souls; amusement is impiety; outward ceremonial is blasphemy. The offices of religion in one perpetual round,[442] cases of conscience, large and little volumes of dry divinity, and rigid family government, are the sacrifices which he offers to God. He leaves his home that he may thus worship. He raises his psalm of deliverance in the wilderness, and at death he rests beside the roots of a forest-tree in a grave not without a memorial. And he was the religious character of his day. And as the shades of the departed fall back into mystery, we find ourselves surrounded by groups of the living, who arrange themselves under the different standards which they recognize for the religious character.

These standards might fitly be inscribed with the mottoes, 'Morality, Ordinances, Faith;' for from the one or the other of these titles come the different models for the religious character. Practical goodness, cheerful, kind and ready sympathy for the suffering, uprightness in dealing, blamelessness in example, these constitute the highest religious character for some. The observance of seasons or rites, the literal fulfilment of the terms of ordinances, is the great essential for the completeness of religious character to others. Then justification by faith, an embrace of doctrinal formularies, a fixed and constant and unresisting submission to a covenant which suspends mercy, is the standard for others. These are the prevailing standards of a religious character now. Of course, if they exist, they are in some quarters insisted upon, and the differences must constantly appear in the various estimates formed by religious persons. These diverse standards have likewise been chosen in the light of experience, of long experience, and in full view of all those ancient models which we have contemplated.

Now from this survey of the strange contrasts presented to us, as exhibiting the ideal of a religious character in different places and generations, and among us now, we might at first judge that there was in reality no true standard, but that it was all a matter of fancy, combined somewhat with the aspects and emergencies of society; that a religious character was no fixed, well-ascertained, and established existence. Yet, after all, this standard has been by no means so diverse as it would seem. For a deeper search proves to us, that the same qualities of heart have been seeking for expression by the most widely different manifestations. Change the skin and drop the body with its worn knees, its sordid or its golden robes, its rigid features, or its gay smiles, and the elements of Christian excellence, if they exist, will appear the same in all, divested of the local peculiarities of age and generation. Indeed, true Christian goodness, excellence of character, is like the water, the emblem of renewal and grace; water, as diffused over the earth, differing every where by elevation and clime. Here it is frozen into mountains of ice, there it issues as boiling vapor from the earth; it is scanty and brackish in the desert, profuse and clear in the green woods; here it is borne along in torrents; there it trickles in dancing rills; here it is buried in deep wells, there it oozes from full fountains; every where it is different, but every where it is water, and every where it is the element of life. Such[443] is goodness, true excellence of character every where, apart from the peculiarities of age and clime.

Now by all this we are helped in discerning the elements of a religious character. The common consent of men amounts to little more than an allowance that a religious character must be formed out of a common character by two processes; the one a process of denial, the other a process of culture. And this indeed is the key to our whole subject, the solution of the great question which we have proposed, as to the standard of a religious character. There is an element of denial, and an element of culture, in a religious character; that is, a human character is made religious by renouncing something, and by attaining something. A religious character is to be formed out of a common character with some new materials; it is to part with something of its earthly organization; something of passion, weakness, and low desire, and to endue itself with something of heavenly grace and essence; turned from darkness unto light, from the power of Satan unto God.

Self-denial and culture, renunciation and attainment, are the two great processes by which a religious character is to be formed, and which, when applied, decide its elements. Yet there is a work which precedes and accompanies these processes, and that work is discipline; discipline, the agency which forms a religious character. The first essential then in a religious character is, that it be the subject of discipline; of discipline varying in the intensity of its struggles; in the difficulty, the amount, the protraction of its efforts, according to the natural differences of individuals, but always discipline; self-knowledge and self-control, strong in its formed purpose, resolute in pursuing it. A religious character was never of spontaneous growth, nor acquired unconsciously. It is known to the heart through all its stages. It is based upon spiritual convictions; it crosses many natural wishes; it embraces prospects which lie beyond the grave. These are elements of thought, of action, of life, which never come by chance, or by mere good influences around an individual. They vary in degree and strength in individuals, but are conscious possessions to all who share them. Self-discipline is a work which summons all our faculties, purposes, knowledge, resolutions, and efforts; it has its weary hours; its seasons for starting anew with quickened strength and zeal.

The prominent feature of a religious character is, that it has been the subject of discipline; that it is itself the result of discipline; has been wrought upon, formed, and established by discipline. In such a character we expect that every element shall declare effort and principle. The man or the woman, called religious, must bear about them the proof that they are what they are, as the result of an intention. We expect to see in a religious character distinctions and differences which we do not look for in the common standard of character. Nor only this; we expect also that these differences should appear as the results of a good purpose well-endeavored; a foundation, a life, a growth, consecrated by high intentions to the highest uses and for the highest aims. This is a[444] truth which cannot be too strongly urged or insisted upon. A religious character ought to strike every one as the result of conscious effort; a work begun and in progress; a diamond in the process of being polished in the only way in which it may be polished, by other diamonds. Discipline, visible in its intention and work, this is the first of all essentials. This discipline will be strongly marked by two processes, a process of self-denial, and a process of culture; of renunciation and attainment. Of the fruits of these processes a religious character must largely partake; yet it is scarcely possible to describe in particulars the entire operation as it appears in the result.

The long and almost uniform opinion of men is right in judging that a religious character should present evidence of self-denial and self-restraint; should have renounced something of pleasure and desire; should have mortified some affections, and wrestled with some infirmities. Of the measure of this denial, each honest conscience must judge for itself. The great end of it, the sole reason for its necessity in an individual character is, that the law of the spiritual life may be obeyed, by the right exercise of the highest faculties and aims of the human heart. All indulgence inconsistent with this consecration is sin, and must be restrained. Yet who can decide the measure of this indulgence or restraint for another? A large ecclesiastical body has lately decided that dancing is inconsistent with a religious character. Whether this opinion is true or false, can be decided only by each individual for himself; by his own knowledge whether this or that amusement makes him frivolous and trifling, or whether it is only a momentary relaxation, enjoyed and then forgotten.

Now it is evident that the Almighty does not need nor require at our hands any self-denial or restraint of any kind, considered by itself, independently of its uses. Self-denial is of value only because of its influence on the character. So that we must ask ourselves what is the reason for self-denial in any given case, what is the nature of it, what the degree of it, what the result of it? Then shall we learn that in a religious character there has been a struggle between the lower and the higher nature, and that in all the parts and stages of that struggle, passion and sense have been denied; and denied for what? Not for a sour or morbid sanctimoniousness, but for the sake of a calm and meditative rest of the spirit, that unseen realities, and spiritual convictions, and noble purposes, and heavenly hopes, may have power over the character.

And as to the second process, of which a religious character is to show the visible results, the process of culture: this may appear in many traits, and graces, and actions, so as to distinguish a religious character from a common character. The elements of that culture are affections and duties, motives and convictions. The same strife between the higher and the lower nature which is begun in self-denial, is pursued in spiritual culture. The heart searcheth after the means of improvement and progress: and they are found near to us; in the lowly duties of common life, in the opportunities of a[445] day, in the necessity which our uniform experience presents, for acting from principle if we would act aright. Self-culture, in all its highest and most comprehensive processes, is the condition by which Christian elements of character are to be acquired. Of course, virtues and graces, tastes and affections, are to be valued and preferred in proportion to their relative excellence. Piety and love, which express the applications of the two great commandments, are to be cherished, cultivated, and manifested. He who is truly and earnestly pursuing these two processes of renunciation and attainment, will acquire through his own experience a better knowledge of the elements of a Christian character than any creed or covenant can teach him. The opposing systems, the controverted dogmas, the various usages and ceremonies of Christian sects, will have but little importance for him; and he will feel that there are two parties which he is to satisfy—God and his own soul.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Horace.

[446]

SKETCHES OF EAST-FLORIDA.

NUMBER TWO.
MY LAST NIGHT ON GUARD.

I was flat on my back, trying to count a small group of stars in the zenith of that part of heaven which overhangs St. Augustine, taking my observation by the camp-fire, from a pine board, with the 'stub-shot' for a pillow; the six feet of Bravo were disposed of in the same manner; and Boag and a few Spaniards were radiating in the zodiacal circle, of which the fire was the centre. The duties of our profession had not been so severe that day as to forbid our sitting up; but then it was much easier to lie down, at least so thought the Spaniards, who take every thing the easiest way possible; and Boag was deep in the invention of a new whirling contrivance for the making of egg-nogg, and chose to give himself up exclusively to the concentration of mind necessary for that purpose. Some one had thrown out, rather lazily, that it was 'very warm,' and he reckoned 'the alligators would stick their noses out to-night;' and another had remarked, with considerable effort, that 'alligators or not, it was just right and couldn't be better;' and this seemed so much the sense of the majority, that no one cared to heat himself with any argument upon the subject; and each one wandered off on his own private speculation.

It was that kind of night that seals up the lips like twilight. Warm, perhaps to a fault, and yet a change of two degrees would have drawn our cloaks over us, and we should have complained of the cold. The fire was a mere companion, that could talk to us without the effort of conversation; and in the absence of French perfumery, the smell of the pitch kindling was quite passable, and that of the orange-wood pretty much like any other. But the night was not like any other; common enough there, but not within the scope of any imagination that dates north of thirty-five degrees. The air was nowhere in particular, unless you might suppose, from the solemn tone of the pine woods, that the sea-breeze which went out in the morning was on its way back; but a feather thrown up would probably have wandered about for a while, and then balanced itself upon my nose, and I should merely have seen a strange star in the heavens; olden philosophers have done worse. But I didn't throw up a feather; too much trouble. Overhead, all was bright and still; no shooting-stars, nor any thing of a quarrelsome nature; and not a cloud to be seen, in a sky that has no clouds for mere shading purposes; and though a stranger, standing on the sea-wall, would have guessed a storm, from a flash seen occasionally in the haze lying on the eastern horizon, there was no storm to be; merely the playfulness of the Gulf Stream that is sometimes seen from that coast.

[447]

In the lower part of the city, a dog was howling out some unimaginable irritation, perhaps only to indicate that something should be said upon such an occasion; or perhaps the hoot of a porpoise disturbed him; or more likely, it was too still for him; he couldn't bear it. If I had fallen asleep, I should have dreamed of being outside some ruined city, and the cry of that dog sounding up through the narrow streets, like a man talking through a trumpet, would have been the howl of a hyena or jackal; and with fallen columns and moonlight, it would have sounded very well in a 'letter from our foreign correspondent.' But in Augustine, it was only a dog, and just like any other dog, that sometimes fancies itself very unhappy, and howls out its inspired misery in baying the moon. Beyond all doubt, dogs may be poetical. There are all varieties of dog; and it would be strange if in such a mixed breed there were not a poet-species, in a race that takes madness so easily. The dog excepted, one would have called it very still at first thought, but on listening, there was a great deal of varied music going on; one voice after another coming to the ear from the innumerable land and water fowl, making up a kind of opera, in which each one appeared to speak very much at random; and that, I take it, is the peculiar beauty of operas. Amid a great variety of short interjections, queries and answers, some were talking entirely to themselves, as it seemed, and others appeared to have a domestic, 'keep away' kind of expression in their remarks, arising probably from some member of the family's being too assiduous in his attentions; or perhaps they had dined badly, and so got up a quarrel to improve their digestion. No doubt there are unknown griefs, as well as unwritten poetry, in all animal life. Whatever the cause, there was an irritability and a nervous restlessness in the waters and salt-grass, that larger animals of two legs, who dine when they please and as they please, understand much better than I can tell.

Over all these inconsistences of a night so beautiful, swept like a minute-gun the sound of the third wave breaking on Anastasia Island; and on the other side, the forest, as aforesaid, which had hundreds of miles of even tree-tops on which to get up its 'voice of the night,' answered back in the same earnest and solemn manner. No fingering, or tugging at the bellows, in all this organ-izing, which was quite as good as could be made to order.

All this (and if any one wonders what it has to do with the incident to follow, he has read novels in vain,) all this had 'come and gone' through my mind, unconsciously, like a glass of congress-water elsewhere; and I turned to the stars as usual, before shutting up for the night. 'Very tolerable,' said I to myself, thinking of the night, 'and not to be sneezed at.' (No taking cold in that climate.) 'One, two, three; the sides of an equilateral triangle, and the square of the hypothenuse bisected in the middle,' and so forth. Q. e. d.; there we are, the fourteenth; that is, the very 'particular star.' We had agreed that she—that is, that we—would look at the same star, and not to blunder upon different stars, which would be very awkward, and, a thousand miles distant from each other, could not[448] be connected without some waste of sentiment on the passage. We had selected one in a group which had to be theorized geometrically before the bright particular one could be identified. The idea of her looking miscellaneously at the north pole and I at the south, and each expecting the requisite titillation of sympathy! We were not to be duped into any such latitudinal delusion!

I had found my star, and was looking very hard at it through the tube of one hand, while the other was brushing off musquitoes, when a gun reported itself about two miles distant; and directly another, and another; after which the enemy appeared to be entirely used up, and the engagement over.

The guard were asleep, and coming gradually to my elbow, I intimated to Bravo that there was a disturbance at the North Post. He gave the alarm to his comrades, who, one by one, came very slowly to the consciousness of an Indian alarm. Then of a sudden muskets glittered in the moon-light, belts were strapped, primings looked to, and the sentries received orders to fire at any, the least whisper, that was not perfectly intelligible and satisfactory. Bravo started for the city; and now we began to hear the tramp of the horse as they clattered up to the point of alarm. There were five hundred Charleston volunteers in the city, ready for the first show of fight or frolic; and in half an hour every man in town who had a musket or rifle, was on his way to do battle against—nobody knew what. There was much tramping, and shouting of 'Where are the rascals?' 'Which way?' 'Clear the track for the big gun!' 'Down with the red devils!' etc.; all which passed over, after a little, and the people went back again, with a keen relish for hot suppers, and a highly exhilarating sense of their increased importance. It was not, however, so trifling a matter; and upon more than one occasion during the war, the feeble and aged repaired to the fort for security. Indians had been seen near the town only a few days previous; several bold murders had been committed on the Picolata road; and the tracks of parties almost daily seen by the escort sent out between the two places. But this, if I remember aright, was the first experience of the town in this new kind of excitement.

After an hour or two Bravo returned with the fact, as he alleged, that an Indian had been seen and fired at; and the sentry thought he saw several more, but they wouldn't wait for the people to come and shoot them. The people had gone to bed again, assured that no Indian would show himself there again; and as to the southern post, it was only necessary to reflect that Corporal Bravo had command there, and turn over to unwinking repose; 'for gentlemen,' said Bravo, 'I have not thought proper to alarm the town with my views upon this matter; though it is perfectly plain that an odd Indian was sent to that post to attract attention that way, while the main body of the enemy is undoubtedly in our neighborhood, and we shall receive the first attack. Every man will sleep with one eye open, and his hand on his musket.' As the Indians might be within hearing, the speech was received with silent applause; but[449] there were quite a number of severe and very rapid gesticulatory engagements, showing what would probably be done in the course of the night. Boag and myself stood apart. We were out of favor. Our exploit as 'officer of the night' had something to do with it; and any one who likes the fag-ends of every thing will be glad to learn that we arrived safe at our quarters under the protection of the corporal, who had missed us from the camp. On retiring that night, that is, laying myself out on a board, I went down, step by step, into a very deep sleep; and although I was threatened with a 'lock-up' in the fort, and a court-martial trial, it was found impossible to make me understand that I was wanted 'on guard,' and another man was posted in my place. There was also an 'incident of travel' that had soured the 'complainants' exceedingly.

In marching down from the fort, a day or two previous, the corporal stopped at his house for a moment, and Boag and myself walked on, turned the next corner, and went direct to the camp. The corporal and guard, on resuming their march, missed us, and presuming that we had deserted, went half a mile out of their way to the house where they expected to find us. Some of my friends happened to be lounging on the balcony when the guard came up, and replied to their inquiry for us, that we were not there. Bravo insisted that we were, and he would find us, and made one step to that effect, when one of my friends, who has a very quiet and effective manner for such occasions, stepped before the door-way and remarked, in his ordinary tone, 'You can't come in, Sir.' The corporal stopped, with one foot up, lifted the pan of his musket, shook up the powder, looked up and down the street in a speculating way, and then stalked off with his men, having decided that the speculation was a bad one. They found us at the camp, target-shooting, but were too much chagrined to join us, and vented their spleen in a noisy discharge of Spanish and Minorcan, in which both seemed equally offensive.

My name was not on the sentry-list for to-night; but upon the grounds now mentioned it was determined that I should be posted; and accordingly at three o'clock I took my stand about a hundred yards from the camp-fire, and soon beat a short path in the sand, where I was to walk out the hours of the night. The night ought to have been very dark and cloudy, with high winds, and a thunder-storm. I should have liked it much better; but it was not. On the contrary, the light of the moon in that latitude is sufficient to make a common newspaper type quite readable, and I was in the full blaze of it. But directly before me was the deep shade of the forest; so near, that by lengthening my walk a little I could have stepped into it, as from a lighted room into midnight darkness; and this gave enough of the mystical for the most imaginative sentry. The 'voices of the night' had died away one by one, leaving only the solemn roar of the sea and the pine-tops, and the wash of the tide, as it swept up occasionally into the long grass of the marsh. Once in a while, perhaps at a great distance, there would be a sharp, snappish cry, which I would stop a moment to analyze, and occasionally a[450] splash, which might be an alligator crawling in from a night ramble; but to all these noises I had been previously hardened. However it may seem to the very romantic, it is not, after all, a very pleasant thing to stand in a bright light, where an enemy can approach within pistol-shot of you, or perhaps give you his first notice by a stab direct. The matter-of-fact probability, the expectancy, in this case is not so pleasant; and to one who has never been in just such a position, it would be amusing, the first night or two, to observe the increased circulation of blood, and the lively and exhilarated condition of body; far beyond a salt-water bath, and with nothing of the chill of it; on the contrary, very warm. Then the quick turn at the end of the walk, not knowing what may have taken place since the last facing; the Lot's-wife look over the shoulder; and all the time an acuteness of hearing that at last embraces a whole roar of small noises, surging and dashing like so many breakers.

I had been out about an hour, and was in something of a glow in this respect, when from the swamp side there came a sudden crashing. I halted, brought my gun to a half-bearing, and looked; nothing to be seen, but directly again, crash!—crash!—CRASH!

'Halloo!' said I, forgetting the militaire for a moment, and then resuming it with a blush, (I know I must have blushed,) cried out very boldly, 'Who comes there?' No answer, and nothing to be seen. I took out a small opera-glass and swept over a range of half a mile. Nothing moving, but the shade of the forest was so deep that any thing short of a bonfire might have been there, and I should never have seen it. All being still again, I resumed my walk, making it much shorter than before; and with very peremptory turns, half laughing to myself that any body should dare to approach a man with such a musket, and such a step, when again came the crash! crash! CRASH! and much nearer than before. 'Fury!' said I to myself; and I gave out the challenge, calling the corporal of the guard at the same time, with a rapidity that would have astonished a Frenchman. But there was no answer, and the whole camp was asleep.

This was a little too much. 'Man or devil!' I shouted, 'if you make one more step forward, I'll blow you to atoms!' and upon the last word, as a kind of bravado, as it seemed, came two more heavy crashes. Although considerably heated, I was at the same time very cool, and aiming carefully at the noise, I blazed away; a double charge of powder, a large musket-ball, and fifteen buck-shot. There was a rustling, and something like a fall, and then all was still again. I blew out the barrel, and with one eye on the marsh, was ramming down cartridge for another shot, when Boag came down, shouting like a madman: 'Where are they?' said he, looking all ways at once. 'There!' said I, ramming away, 'there; don't you see them?' 'Whoop!' said he; 'now I have 'em;' and aiming miscellaneously, he sent his ball almost any where in that direction, and gave another whoop that might have been taken for 'the real Indian.' My second cartridge followed immediately, and another was ready, when Bravo and his men marched down in battle array. 'Halt!'[451] with a voice of thunder; 'make ready, take aim, fire!' and a whole volley was poured into the marsh. Boag was in raptures, and didn't wait for orders; but now, in charging for the next round, we discovered for the first time that the enemy didn't return the fire. Boag suggested that they might have crept round to the left wing, and proposed that we should fire in that direction; but that was considered rather promiscuous for a military operation. We sent out scouts, however, who went very short distances each way, but far enough to discover that all Augustine was close by; the horsemen taking the road, and those on foot coming cross-lots, crying out to us to hold on, and not fire till they came up; and making in various ways a vast display of courage, properly proportioned to the distance. The horsemen came up first, and made a furious charge upon the marsh, and all the people received orders not to fire in that direction till the cavalry returned. The day was now breaking, and the marsh was scoured for half a mile; but the enemy—had disappeared; not an Indian was to be seen; but wandering about, in a very distracted manner, was a young heifer, dangerously wounded, and close by lay her aged mother. She had received a musket-ball, and 'expired without a groan.'

Boag would have it that he saw Indians, and swore that he winged one of them, for he heard him yell, as did the guard, who knew all about Indian yells, and myself, who did not; but in a free country people will think as they like; and as they have dined, or been called out of bed to the consultation, will be the difference of opinion. Others in my position had been suddenly sick, and variously afflicted, to avoid duty. I had not; but this last chef d'œuvre did the thing effectually. From that day I was considered impracticable.

SEED OF CONTENTMENT.
FROM THE GERMAN.

W. F. P.

[452]

TO A FAYRE PERSONNE
UPON SHORT ACQUAINTANCE.
BY JOHN WATERS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

[453]

THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.

Harry Harson.

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.

Leaving Michael Rust buried in death-like slumber, the result of intense mental anxiety that had denied his body that repose which it required, we must turn to one destined to take an active part in the succeeding events of this history; and who, on that same evening, was employed in a manner directly the reverse of that of Rust. That man was Harry Harson.

Seated at a table in his own room, with every feature puckered up into a very hard knot, the combined result of thought, perplexity, and anger, he was poring over a number of papers, occasionally pausing to scratch his head, or breaking out into an exclamation of displeasure, not unfrequently accompanied by a hard thump on the table, as something met his eye which excited his indignation in a peculiar degree.

It was past midnight; three good hours beyond the time, at which he usually retired to rest. All indications of bustle and stir in the streets had long since ceased, and not a sound was heard, except the occasional tread of a belated straggler, hurrying to his home; the sharp ticking of the clock, and the plethoric snoring of Spite, who made it a rule never to go to bed before his master; and who, being a methodical dog in habit, and an obstinate one in disposition, could not be induced to depart from old usages. As each successive hour was heralded by the voice of the clock just mentioned, Spite rose, looked at the time-piece, then at his master, as if to say, 'Halloo! old fellow, do you hear that?' gaped; sauntered round the table, and resumed his former position, each time lessening the distance between himself and the fire, as its embers gradually crumbled to ashes. Still, Harson continued his occupation; tossing over, examining, and studying the papers and letters, in utter disregard of hints and admonitions. Apparently, he became more troubled as he advanced in his investigation. His brow contracted; his breath came thick and fast; the color deepened in his cheek; his eye kindled, and more than once he threw the papers impatiently on the table, and rising up paced the room with rapid strides. This occurred at intervals, during the whole evening, until finally, he came to a letter which caused his anger to boil over. Starting to his feet, and clasping his hands, he exclaimed: 'Good God! shall such things be? and wilt Thou not protect the innocent, and punish the guilty?'

'But why ask?' added he, suddenly: 'I know, that even now,[454] through channels which were least dreamed of, justice is working its way to the light. Confirm me, great God!' added he, fervently, 'in my purpose of seeing right done; and grant that I may never swerve from my course, until that purpose is accomplished!'

Had the culprit against whom he uttered this invocation and prayer heard the muttered threat which succeeded it, and witnessed the kindling face and stern, determined eye of the person who had uttered them, his heart, had he been a man of ordinary mould, might have sunk; but as the culprit in this case was no other than Michael Rust, who had no belief in an hereafter; who entertained suspicion against all men, and who never yielded his point under any circumstances; it is possible that it would have produced no other result than increased watchfulness, increased determination, and bitter hatred.

'I have read of such schemes as these,' muttered Harson; 'but I never expected to have anything to do with them myself—never. Can there be no doubt that these came from Rust,' said he, turning them over in his hand? And is there no doubt that he is at the bottom of all this villainy? The letters certainly bear a different name from his; but such things are common; and Ned says that he can produce proof of it. They can scarcely be forgeries, vamped up to obtain money from me; for many of them were written years ago; and bear post-office stamps, whose dates correspond with the dates within.'

He stood at the table, thus talking to himself, and turning over the letters, until his eye rested on one written in a delicate hand, and indorsed, 'Mary Colton to Henry Colton.' Harson opened it, mechanically, and ran his eye over it. It was very short, and breathed a heart broken by some grief which was only alluded to, but not mentioned. It ran thus:

'My dear Henry: With all others, hope has darkened into despair; but I will not give up yet; I cannot. It would kill me, if I did. Go on, my dearest Henry; make all efforts. I feel that you have done all that can be done, and that all means have been tried without success; but even yet, do not cease; and I will pray for you, and bless you, for your disinterested kindness; and God will reward you.

'Yours, affectionately,
Mary Colton.'

"Disinterested kindness!" muttered Harson; "God will reward you!' Yes, 'Henry Colton,' God will reward you! Sooner or later, the reward always comes; and you'll get it. Yes, if I live, 'Henry Colton,' it shall be my especial business to see that you receive it!' 'But,' said he, looking at the clock, 'enough of this. It would almost make a young man gray to wade through the details of such villainy. An old man like me must spare himself. I've had enough for one dose; so I'll sleep on it, and take the rest in the morning. Ha! Spite,' said he, stooping down, and patting the dog; 'better be a good, honest dog, like thee, my old cur, than a man with such a heart as some have. The temper's a trifle, Spite; so don't be worried about your's, for your heart's right, my old dog! There's no double-dealing about you.[455] I don't know whether God blesses an honest dog, or not; but I believe he does, in some way or other. Come pup, I'll not keep you up longer.'

Saying this, he gathered up the papers, and placed them in a small box, which he locked, put under his arm, and followed by Spite, left the room, for the story above. He paused, and listened at a door at the head of the stairs; then turning the knob so as to make no noise, he went in. It was a small room, having a thick rag-carpet on the floor, and a dressing-table covered with white muslin, standing between the windows, whose curtains were as white as snow. In one corner was a bed. On a chair, at the side of it, lay a child's clothes; and in the bed itself was a girl, of about five years of age, with her light hair streaming over the pillow like a web of gold. There was little trace in her face of the outcast whom he had taken from the streets but a few weeks before; for the thin cheek had filled up, and the flush of health had succeeded the paleness of suffering and illness. Her eyes were closed, and their long lashes drooped over her cheek; but she did not sleep soundly; for once or twice she muttered to herself, as Harson bent over her: 'Come, Charley; we've been looking for you a long time. Come!'

'She's dreaming of the boy,' thought he; 'but be of good heart, my poor child; we'll find him yet.'

He leaned down, until his gray hair mingled with her bright locks, pressed his lips to her forehead, and went quietly out into the entry, where his presence was greeted with no little satisfaction by Spite, who had been shut out, and was becoming somewhat testy at being kept in the dark.

It was not long before Harson, with a thick counterpane up to his very chin, was sleeping as soundly in his own bed as Spite was under it.

What dreams hovered around the old man's pillow, or whether he had any, we cannot tell; but certain it is, that when the morning sun broke through a small opening between the window-curtains, flinging a long, thin streak of gold across the carpet, Harson was still sound asleep; and it is quite uncertain how long he might have continued so, had not the same ray of sunshine, in its passage across the room, fallen directly across the centre of the right eye of Spite, who had been drifting about the apartment since day-break; and who now vented his disapprobation of the liberty taken, in an irritable yelp.

Harry sat up in bed. 'What ails thee, pup?' said he, rubbing his eyes.

Spite, however, was not in a communicative mood; but walked to the door, and seating himself, surveyed the knob with great attention. Harson rose; threw on a dressing-gown, and going to the door, let him out, shutting it after him.

He then went to a basin, as portly and capacious as himself, dashed nearly a pailful of water into it; bared head, neck, and shoulders, and plunged them in. Out he came, very red in the[456] face, with water dripping from nose, and chin, and eye-brows. Then in again he went; and then followed such a rubbing, and puffing, and blowing, and spouting, that he seemed like a young whale at his gambols. This ceremony being repeated some half dozen times, and the same number of towels having dried him, he proceeded to dress himself.

It might have been observed, however, that during the whole time, his thoughts were wandering; for he walked to the window, with some article of apparel in his hand, and stood looking into the street, in a state of deep abstraction; and then, drawing a long breath, continued his dressing, as if it had struck him that he was neglecting it. Then again he seated himself on the side of his bed, and sat for some minutes, looking on the floor.

'It's terrible, terrible!' said he, 'but it's not too late to remedy it. Thank God for that!'

Putting on one thing after another, sometimes upside down, sometimes getting his feet in his sleeves; then thrusting an arm in the wrong side of his coat; tying and untying his huge white cravat half a dozen times, and enveloping the half of his face in its ample folds; doing every thing wrong, and rectifying his mistakes with the greatest gravity, and without the slightest appearance of impatience, Harson finally found himself fully established in coat and jacket, with no other mistake than the trifling one of having buttoned the lower button of the last article into the top button hole. Having duly surveyed himself in the glass, to see that all was right, without having detected his mistake, he went out.

He stopped at the door of the child's room. His footsteps had apparently been recognized, for it was ajar; and a pair of bright eyes were peeping out to welcome him.

'Annie, is that you? Ha! child, you're a sad sleepy-head. You'll lose your breakfast. This won't do—this won't do. Spite was up long ago.' He shook his finger at the child, who laughed in his face; and then, flinging the door open, showed herself fully dressed.

'Wrong, Harry; wrong, wrong again,' said she, springing out, and addressing him in the familiar manner that he always liked: 'I am dressed.'

The old man took her in his arms, kissed her cheek, and carried her down stairs; and did not put her down until they were in the room below.

'Come, Harry, there's breakfast; and there's your seat; and here's mine,' exclaimed she, leading him to the table. 'Martha has got here before us,' said she, shaking her head at a demure-looking woman of fifty, in a faded cap, with a rusty riband round it, who was already seated at the table, preparing the coffee. 'Here, Spite—come here.'

Spite was not a dog given to the company of children. He was by far too old, and sedate, and dignified for that; but there were occasions on which he could unbend, and these fits of relaxation generally came over him just at meal-times, when he permitted the[457] child not only to pat him, but even to uncurl his tail. Doubtless the sight of the creature-comforts which garnished Harry's table had its effect in producing this change, although it is possible the knowledge that the child devoted fully half of her time to supplying his wants, (a thing which his master sometimes neglected,) may have had its weight. Obedient at any rate to the summons, Spite hopped from a chair on which he had been seated, and placed himself at her side, watching every mouthful she swallowed, and licking his lips with great unction.

Harson's breakfast-table was, as the neighbors said, (particularly the poor ones, who now and then chanced to drop in at it,) enough to awaken an appetite in a dead man; and if dead people are peculiarly alive to hot coffee and mutton-chops, and hashed meats, and warm cakes, and fresh rolls, like snow itself, and all these things set off by crockery which shone and glittered till you could see your face in it; and table-linen without a speck or wrinkle in it, there is little doubt but that a vast number of departed individuals must have found their mouths watering at exactly half past seven each morning; that being the precise hour at which these articles made their daily appearance on Harson's table. But certain it is, that whatever may have been its effect upon them, it had little upon Harson; for he scarcely touched any thing, nor did he bestow his usual attention on those about him, but sat sometimes with his eyes fixed on the cloth, sometimes staring full in the face of the old house-keeper, who looked at the ceiling, and on the floor, and in her cup, and coughed, and hemmed, and fidgetted, and grew so red, and confused, and embarrassed, that before Harson was even aware that he was looking at her, to use her own expression, 'she thought she should have dropped.' But this was only of a piece with all the rest of his actions, during the morning; for to all remarks or questions, his only answer was an emphatic 'humph!' a species of reply to which he particularly devoted himself during the meal; and it was not until he observed the others had finished their meal that he hastily drank off his coffee at a draught, and rose from the table.

'You need not remove the things now, Martha,' said he, as the rattling of the crockery announced that this process was commencing. 'The noise disturbs me. I wish to be alone for a short time; and after that you can do as you please.'

The house-keeper made no reply; but went out, taking the girl with her, and leaving Harry to his meditations.

That these were neither pleasant nor composing, was quite evident; for after walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, and muttering to himself, he finally stopped short, and apparently addressing Spite, for his eyes were fixed upon him, and Spite returned the look, as if he supposed that he was being consulted, he broke out with:

'What am I to do? This matter on my hands; and Ned, poor Ned, kicked adrift by the old man, and Kate breaking her little heart about him; and her father quietly led by the nose to the devil. There's no doubt about it; that fellow Rust's at the bottom of it[458] all; and no one except me to unravel this knot. God bless me! it bewilders my brain, and my old head spins. But Annie, Annie, my poor little child! if I forsake thee, may I never prosper! How now, Spite?'

This exclamation was caused by a somewhat singular proceeding on the part of Spite, who, after looking at him as if deeply interested in the tenor of his remarks, suddenly uttered a sharp bark, and bolted from his chair as if shot from a gun. The cause of this movement was soon shown in the person of a man dressed in a very shabby suit of black, with a beard of several days' growth, who stood just inside the door, and who, after a familiar nod to Harson, asked:

'Is all the family deaf except the dog?'

'When a man enters a stranger's house, it is but proper to knock,' said Harson, sharply.

'Did you want your house battered about your ears?' inquired the stranger; 'for I did knock, until I was afraid it might come to that. Perhaps you're deaf, old gentleman; if so, I'm sorry for you; but as for your d—d dog, I wish he was dumb. I can scarcely hear myself speak for him.'

This explanation cleared from Harson's face every trace of anger; and silencing the dog, he said: 'I did not hear you; and yet I am not deaf.'

'Well, I made noise enough,' said the other. 'Is your name Henry Harson?'

Harson answered in the affirmative.

The stranger took off his hat and stood it on a chair; after which, he thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out a letter. 'That's not it,' said he, throwing it in his hat; 'nor that,' continued he, drawing out a handkerchief, which he rolled in a very tight ball, and transferred to another pocket.

'I've got a letter somewhere, that I know. It must belong to the mole family, for I put it uppermost, and it's burrowed to the very bottom; d—d if it hasn't! Ah! here it is,' said he, after a violent struggle, bringing up both a letter and a snuff-box. The former, he handed to Harson, and the latter he opened, and after applying each nostril sideways to its contents, took a pinch between his fingers, returned the box to his pocket, and seating himself snuffed deliberately, all the while eyeing the breakfast-table, with a fixed, steady, immovable stare.

The thread-bare, poverty-stricken look and hungry eye of his visitor was not lost on Harson, who, before opening the letter, glanced at the table and at the stranger, and then said: 'It's early; perhaps you have not yet breakfasted, Mr., Mr., Mr ——'

'Kornicker,' said the stranger.

'Kornicker, Mr. Kornicker. If so, make yourself at home and help yourself while I look over this letter; no ceremony. I use none with you. Use none with me.'

It was a tempting sight to poor Kornicker; for there stood the coffee-pot steaming away at the spout; and the dishes, far from[459] empty, and such rolls as he was not in the habit of meeting every day; but mingled with all his defects of character, was a strong feeling of pride which made him hesitate, and it is probable that pride would have carried the day, had not Harson, divining something of his feelings, added:

'Perhaps it's scarcely civil to ask you to the table, when I have left it myself; but I should not stand on a trifle like that with you; and I hope you'll not with me. Those rolls are excellent; try them.'

He said no more; but going to the window, broke the seal of the letter and commenced reading.

Left to himself, Kornicker struggled manfully; but hunger got the better of all other feelings; and at last, drawing his chair to the table, he commenced a formidable attack upon its contents.

'So you're with Michael Rust,' said Harson, after he had finished reading the note, going to the table, and standing opposite Kornicker.

Kornicker's teeth were just then engaged in a severe struggle with a roll, and he could do nothing but nod an affirmative.

'Who is he?' inquired Harson; 'what's his profession?'

Kornicker swallowed his roll, and kept it down by half a cup of coffee; and then said:

'As to who he is; all I know is, he's sometimes an old man; sometimes he isn't; sometimes he wears a red handkerchief on his head, and sometimes he don't; but who he is, or what he does, or where he goes to, or where he comes from, or who he knows, or who knows him, curse me if I know. That's all I can tell you, Sir. He's a mystery, done up in the carcass of a little, dried-up man, of a d—d uncertain age. May I trouble you for the milk?'

'Humph!' said Harson, in a very dissatisfied tone, at the same time passing the milk; 'and yet you are in his employ?'

Kornicker nodded.

'It's strange,' muttered he, 'quite strange.'

'D—d strange,' said Kornicker, burying his face in a huge coffee-cup, 'but true,' continued he, setting it down.

'True,' repeated Harson; 'true that you are in his employ; are in the habit of daily intercourse with him; attend to his concerns; see him constantly, and yet do not know who he is?'

'Partly correct, partly incorrect,' quoth Mr. Kornicker, pushing his cup away. 'I'm in his employ—correct. I know nothing of him; correct again. As to the rest—incorrect. Sometimes, I don't see him for weeks; sometimes I have something to do—often nothing. I never know when he's going, or when he's coming back.'

Harson stood quiet for some time. 'This is all very strange. Don't you know who are his acquaintances, or associates?'

Kornicker shook his head.

'Who comes to see him?'

'Nobody.'

'Do you never hear him speak of any one?'

[460]

'Never heard him name a soul, till the other day he named Enoch Grosket, and to-day you.'

'Do you know nothing of his mode of life, or intentions, or plans, or whether he's honest or dishonest, or how he lives, or where his money comes from, or what his family is?'

'Nothing,' said Kornicker. 'Indeed it never struck me till now how much there was to know on the subject, and how little conversant I was with it.'

'Shall I tell you who he is?' asked Harson.

Mr. Kornicker replied, that any information in his then unenlightened state would be acceptable.

'Well, then, he's one of the veriest villains that ever disgraced human nature. He's ——'

'Come! come! none of that! hold up, old gentleman!' interrupted Kornicker, sitting bolt upright; and grasping the handle of a coffee-cup with a somewhat hostile tenacity. 'I've just been eating your bread, backed by not a little meat, and no small quantity of coffee, and therefore am under obligations to you; and of course, a quarrel with you would be greatly against my stomach. But you must recollect, that Rust is my employer. What I eat, and drink, and snuff, comes out of his pocket; and although he was small in some matters, yet he helped me, when it required a good deal of salt to save me; my fortunes were not only at an ebb, but they'd got to dead low tide. I'm bound to stand up for him, and I'll do it. I've no doubt he's the d—dest rascal going; but I'll not hear any one say so. If I do, damme. So no more of that. Come, come,' said he, after a somewhat hostile survey of Harson's person, 'you don't look like the man to make a fellow regret that he's broken your bread.'

Quizzical as was the look of Kornicker, and vagabond as he seemed, there was something in the open, blunt manner in which he defended even Rust, that found an answering note in the bosom of Harry, and he said:

'No, no, I am not. You're an honest fellow; but I suppose there's no harm however in wishing you a better employer?'

'No, not at all,' said Kornicker, after a minute's reflection; 'I often wish that myself; but,' said he, with a philosophical shake of the head, 'some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and I wasn't one of them; mine must have been iron; and I'm rather inclined to think that there must have been no bowl to it, for it always held mighty little.'

There was a mixture of comicality and sadness in the tone in which he spoke, which left Harson in doubt in what strain to answer him. At last he drew a chair to the table; leaning his two arms upon the back of it, and surveying his guest attentively, he asked: 'What's your business, if I may be so bold?'

'Law,' replied Kornicker, leaning back. 'I'm the champion of the distressed; see widows and orphans righted, and all that sort of thing. It's a great business—devilish great business.'

'And is Michael Rust a lawyer?' inquired Harson.

[461]

'No, I attend to that part of his concerns. He's a mere child in matters of that kind; but devilishly wide awake in others; but come, old gentleman,' said he, suddenly breaking off, 'I'm to thank you for a breakfast; now let's have an answer to the letter. It's time to be off.'

Harson glanced at the letter, and then said:

'Do you know the contents of this?'

'Not a word of them,' replied Kornicker.

'Nor what it's about?'

'No. Rust is neither confidential, nor communicative,' replied Kornicker. 'So, what you've got to say say in writing. I don't want the trouble of thinking about it, or trying to recollect it.'

'Humph!' said Harson. 'There's nothing here requiring a great stretch of either. He wants me to meet him at his office, on very particular business; a request somewhat singular, as I never laid eyes on him in my life.'

'Quite singular,' ejaculated Kornicker.

'But I know much about him; and that leaves me no desire to be more intimate with him. What do you think of it?'

'I think you're in luck,' replied the other; 'you're the first that ever was asked inside the door since I've been there. Several very nice, pleasant fellows of my acquaintance, have dropped in occasionally, and although his office is nothing to brag of, d—n me if he didn't invite them to air themselves in the street, and not to come back! It was quite mortifying, especially as I was there at the time.'

'What did you do?' inquired Harson.

'You've never seen Rust, you say?' said Kornicker, in reply to the previous question.

Harson answered in the negative.

'Well, Sir, if you had, you wouldn't ask that question. I looked out of the window, and held my jaw—that's what I did; and that's what I'd advise you to do in the same trying circumstances. But come, Sir, give me the answer.'

Harson, after a moment's thought, said: 'It isn't worth while to write. Tell him I'll come, or send some one. You can remember that?'

Kornicker replied that he thought he could; and taking up his hat, and shaking hands with Harson, and favoring Spite, who was examining the quality of his pantaloons, with a sly kick, he sallied out toward Rust's office.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

'Come, Spite,' said Harson, when his visitor was gone, 'we must be up and doing. This is not a business that can be trifled with. The longer we put it off, the tighter will the knot be drawn. Stop, until I get the papers.' Leaving the room for a moment, he returned fully equipped for walking; with a huge handkerchief wrapped[462] round his chin, and his broad-brimmed beaver pulled tightly down over his forehead. 'Now my cane, Spite, and we'll see if we can't get to the bottom of this deviltry. We're embarked in a good cause, my old pup, and mustn't give up. Now then! it's a glorious day; the air's bracing, and will make your old bones quite young again. Hey! what spirits you're in!' said he, as Spite, elated at being associated in so important a matter, after wriggling his body in a most convulsive manner, by way of expressing his satisfaction, finally fell over on his back, in an abortive effort to perform a hilarious pirouette on his hind legs. 'Never mind, old fellow,' said Harson, 'pick yourself up; accidents will happen to the best of us. I warrant me you'd have done it better ten years ago; don't be down-hearted about it. We're going to see old Holmes; and when you and I and old Holmes are thoroughly at work in sifting this matter, why Rust had better look sharp. Hey, Spite?'

Thus talking to his dog, or whistling to himself, or exchanging a cheery word with an acquaintance as he passed, the old man trudged along, followed at a very staid pace by his dog, who since his late unsuccessful effort, had fallen into a very serious mood, notwithstanding all the efforts of his master to raise his spirits and to banish the recollection of it from his mind.

The person whom Harson sought was a little antiquated man, who had buried himself among his books, and spent his time in burrowing in out-of-the-way corners of the law. He had wormed his way into all its obsolete nooks, and haunted those regions of it which had become deserted, and as it were grass-grown from long disuse. By degrees he had slunk from a practice which had once promised to be large; and a name which had once bid fair to shine brightly in the annals of the law, gradually grew faint in memory, as its owner was missed from those places where the constant rush of the crowd soon wears out any impress made by those who are no longer seen. But there were times when the old man looked out from his den, and prowled among those who had crowded in his place; and there were times, (but those were on rare occasions, when some exciting case would be on the carpet,) when an old man would steal into the court-room, with a bundle of papers under his arm; and would take his seat at the table among the counsel engaged in the case; sitting silent throughout the whole; speaking to none; taking no notes; watching the witnesses with his dim eyes; studying the faces of the jury; occasionally referred to by the other counsel; but taking no part in any discussions until the evidence was closed, and the cause was to be summed up; and then, to the surprise of all, except the bench and a few of the oldest of the bar, rising to address the jury; commencing in a low, feeble tone, and apparently sinking with infirmity, until by degrees his dim eye became like fire; his faint voice like the clear ringing of a bell; his eloquence as burning as if flowing from the lips of manhood's prime; his sarcasm withering; his logic strong, clear, fervid, and direct; no loitering; no circumlocution; no repetition: what he had to say he said once, and only once. Those who missed it then[463] waited in vain for something of the same nature to explain it; it never came. His object was before him; and he hurried onward to it, sweeping every thing before him and carrying all with him. And when he had concluded, as he gathered his papers and left the court, the elder members of the bar would say among themselves: 'Old Holmes is himself again;' and the younger ones wondered who he was; and as they learned his name, remembered dimly of having heard it as that of one who had lived in by-gone days.

His office was not in the business part of the town; but in a quiet, shady street, which few frequented, rilled with huge trees, and so quiet and out of the way that it seemed like a church-yard. Thither Harson bent his steps; and it was not long before he found himself in his office.

It was a large, dim room, with high shelves filled with volumes and papers, reaching to the low ceiling. Long, dusty cobwebs hung trailing from the walls: the very spiders who had formed them, finding that they caught nothing, had abandoned them. The floor was thickly carpeted; and a few chairs were scattered about, with odd volumes lying upon them. Upon a table covered with a green cloth, were piles of loose papers, ends of old pens, torn scraps of paper, and straggling bits of red tape. Altogether, it was a sombre-looking place, so still and gloomy, and with such a chilly, forbidding air, that it seemed not unlike one of those mysterious chambers, which once abounded in antiquated castles, and tumbling-down old houses, with a ghost story hanging to their skirts; or which some ill-natured fairy had doomed to be shut up for a hundred years; and the little thin dried-up man who sat in the far corner of it with every faculty buried in the large volume on his knees, looked as though he might have dwelt there for the whole of that period. Had it been so it would have been the same to him; for in that dim room had he spent the most of his life, immersed in the musty volumes about him; now and then coming to the surface, to see that the world had not disappeared while he was busy; and then diving again to follow out some dark under-current, which was to lead him, God knows whither. What was the world to him? What cared he for its schemes and dreams and turmoil? The law was every thing to him; home, family, and friends. God help him! a poor lone man, with kindly feelings, and a warm, open heart, which might have made a fireside happy; but now without a soul to whom he might claim kindred. Many respected him; some pitied him, and a few, a very few, loved him. There he sat day after day, and often until the day ran into night, delving, and diving, and pondering, and thinking; a living machine, working like a slave for his clients; alike for rich and poor, the powerful and the friendless; beyond a bribe; too honest to fear or care for public opinion; strenuous in asserting the rights of others, and never enforcing his own, lest he might give pain to another. God help him! I say. He was not the man for this striving, struggling world; and perhaps it was well for him that in his murky pursuits he found that contentment which many others wanted. Yet he never freed his mind from its trammels,[464] and looked abroad upon the wide world, with its myriads of throbbing hearts, but he found in it those whom he could love and could help. God help him, did I say? Rather, God help those who warp and twist the abilities, talents, and wealth which are showered upon them, to unholy purposes; who make the former the slaves to minister to deeds and passions at which human nature might blush; and the last but the stepping-stone to selfish aggrandizement, or the nucleus around which to gather greater store. Pity them, but not him; for although but a pale, thin, sickly being, with barely a hold upon life, with scarce the strength of a child, growing old, and withered, and feeble without knowing it; yet was he all-powerful, from the bright, bold spirit that animated him, and a soul stern in its own integrity, which shrank from nothing except evil; and blessed was he, far above all earthly blessings, with a heart ever warm, ever open, and in which God had infused a noble share of his own benevolence and love to mankind.

It is no wonder then that Harry Harson, when he stood in the presence of one in heart so akin to himself, paused and gazed upon him with a softened eye.

'Holmes, Dick Holmes,' said he, after a moment, 'are you at leisure?'

The old lawyer started, looked wistfully up, contracting his dim eyes so as to distinguish the features of the person who addressed him, and then doubling down the leaf of the book which he had been reading, rose and advanced hesitatingly until he recognized him.

'Ah Harson!' said he, extending his hand quietly; 'honest old Harry, as we used to call you,' continued he, smiling; 'I'm glad to see you. Few save those who come on business cross my threshold; so you are the more welcome. Sit down.'

He pushed a chair toward him, and drawing another close to it, took a seat, and looked earnestly in his face. 'Time doesn't tell on you, Harry; nor on me, much,' said he, looking at his attenuated fingers; 'still it does tell. My flesh is not so firm and hard as it used to be; and I'm getting thinner. I've thought for some months past of relaxing a little, and of stealing off for a day to the country, and of rambling in its woods and fields, and breathing its pure air. It would quite build me up; perhaps you'll go with me?'

'That I will, with all my heart,' said Harson; 'that I will; and right glad am I to hear you say so; for it's enough to break down a frame of iron to spend hour after hour in this stagnant room, poring over these musty books.'

Holmes looked about the room, and at his volumes, and then said, in a somewhat deprecating tone:

'I've been very happy here. It does not seem gloomy to me; at least not very gloomy. But come; I'll walk out with you now. It does me good sometimes to see what is going on out of doors; if I can only find a person I care for, to keep me company.'

He half rose as he spoke; but Harson placed his hand on his arm, and motioned to him to keep his seat.

[465]

'You made a mistake this time,' said he, in a good-natured tone, and beginning to fumble in his pockets; 'business brought me here to-day; business, and a desire to follow the suggestions of a clearer head than mine.'

As he spoke, he drew from his pocket the package of letters, and placed it before the lawyer.

Before you examine these, I must tell you what they are about. Perhaps you won't believe me, but these letters will confirm every word I say. You must hear my story, read them, and then tell me frankly and fairly what to do; not only as a lawyer, but as a friend. I shall need your advice as both.

'You shall have it,' said Holmes; 'go on.'

The tale which Harson told was sufficient to arouse every feeling of indignation in the lawyer. As Harson went on, Holmes became excited, until, unable to control himself, he rose from his chair and paced the room, with every honest and upright feeling in arms. He forgot every thing but the deep wrongs which were recited. Debility and age were trampled under foot; and his voice, clear and loud, rang through the room, scorching in its denunciation of the wrongdoer, and bitter in its threats of retribution. Then it was that the spirit showed its mastery over the clay, and spurning the feeble form which clogged it, shone forth, strong in its own might, a glorious type of the lofty source from which it sprang. But suddenly he sat down; and passing his hand across his face, said in a feeble tone: 'I am easily excited now-a-days, but I will command myself. Go on; I will not interrupt you again.'

As he spoke he placed his arms on the table, and leaned his head upon them; and this position he maintained without asking a question or making a comment, until Harson had finished speaking; and when he looked up, his face had assumed its usual quiet expression.

'Do these letters prove what you say, beyond a doubt?' he asked.

'I think so.'

'And why do you suppose them to be written by Rust? The name, you say, is different.'

'I had it from a person who would swear to it. By the way,' added he, suddenly, 'I have just received a letter from Rust. I'll compare the writing with those; that will prove it.'

He took the letter from his pocket, and placed it beside the others; and his countenance fell. They were as unlike as possible.

Holmes shook his head. 'You may have hit upon the wrong man, or you may have been purposely put on a false scent. There certainly is no resemblance between these,' said he, carefully comparing the two; 'not even in the general character of the hand.'

Harson could not but admit the fact. It was too evident.

'Look over the whole bundle,' said he. 'There are at least twenty of them. If this is a disguised hand, it is possible that he may have betrayed himself in some of the others.'

The lawyer went over the letters, one by one, carefully comparing them; but still the character was the same. All of them were in the free, flowing style of a good penman; while the letter which[466] Harson had produced was written in a bold, but stiff and ungraceful hand.

'Where did you get this?' said Holmes, pointing to the one which Harson had received from Kornicker.

'It was brought to me by a clerk of his this morning.'

'Then you know him?' said Holmes.

'I never saw him in my life.'

'Have you ever had any business with him through others?'

Harson shook his head. 'Never.'

'How do you know that the person who brought this letter was from Rust?' inquired he.

'The letter proposes an interview. If it isn't from him, the cheat would be found out when I go.'

'How long have you been ferreting out this matter?'

'Several weeks.'

'Have you worked in secret, or openly?' inquired Holmes.

'I kept the matter as quiet as I could,' replied Harson, 'because I didn't want him to get wind of it, and place obstacles in my way; for I supposed that he was the man; but still, I was obliged to employ several persons, of whom I know little.'

'Then this Rust is the man, you may rely on it,' said Holmes, in a positive manner. 'He has discovered that you are busy, and is startled at it. Depend on it, this wish to see you has something to do with your present movements.'

'I thought so too,' said Harson, 'and shall go there this morning.'

'I'll go too,' said Holmes; 'and the sooner we start the better.'

'Thank you, thank you,' said Harson, stretching out his hand; 'the very thing I wanted.'

The old lawyer said no more; but after fumbling about his room for his hat and great-coat, and having succeeded, without any great difficulty, in putting on the last, (for he had no idea how shrunken and attenuated he was, and it was large enough for a man of double his size,) and supported by Harry's steady arm, they set out.

'Stop a minute,' said Harson; 'we've shut Spite in. There'll be the deuce to pay if we leave him. Come, pup.' He opened the door; and Spite having leisurely obeyed his call, they resumed their walk.

THIS TO THEE, LUCY.

[467]

NATURE'S MONITIONS.
AN EXTRACT.

GRAVE THOUGHTS ON PUNCH.

It was a nice remark of the distinguished French General Moreau during his residence in this country, that the next thing in the world to a shock of cavalry is the English word, What! There exists in it an irresistible abruptness, that frequently puts to flight at once the whole array of thoughts of the foreigner whose nerves are assailed by it. 'I can stand,' said he, 'any thing better than your word, What! It is impossible to reason against it; I seem to have nothing to do, when I hear it, but to submit!'

It certainly is one of those short words of power, one of those words of pistol-shot energy, that characterize our grand tongue and give it originality and force. It is a word to conjure with; and has many a time raised Truth out of the depths of the heart of the double-dealer: it is a word of defence—and not unfrequently has it overturned or repulsed in one utterance the half-formed scheme of some wheedling knave endeavoring to make a confederate, or nefariously to win the heart of a pretty girl. May you and I, dear Editor, never hear from lips we love, in the overwhelming accents of astonishment and of disappointed hope, the English word, What!

The word at the head of my Essay, and which by the way I mean to make the subject of it, is another of these short English words of great strength and pith. This carries however no disfavour with it; no discourtesy; nor does it raise up one association that is otherwise than bland and attractive to the mind: and yet how forcible is it, alike in sound and in effect! Let us listen to it——Punch!——To the ear of my Imagination it is altogether irresistible! How impossible to parry it! what a possession it takes of the faculties, and how entirely it seems to get the better[468] of one! Then how intrinsically, how essentially English it is in all the strength and vigour of the tongue!—Punch! Turn the word into the French, and behold how pitiable is the effect—ponche!

Now it is a curious fact in the Natural History of Liquids, that a similar and not less remarkable result occurs in the noble beverage which this short word is intended to designate! Try over the whole continent of Europe and wheresoever else the English language is not the vernacular, try I say to get Punch, and it invariably comes out ponche or something still more despicable! I have essayed it repeatedly and have always found the result the same; and yet I am neither a young, nor an inexperienced, nor, if you will allow me the word, an inextensive traveller!

On the other hand, the moment you recross the channel and 'set foot upon the sacred soil of Britain,' or come home quietly to our own unassuming United States and lay your hand upon the right ingredients, out of the sound of any foreign language, the mixture succeeds as a matter of course, and at once becomes virtually and essentially, Punch—Punch proper; Punch itself; in short, PUNCH!

The native merits and distinctive propriety of the word being thus established; before I enter into any consideration of the drink itself, I cannot refrain from chiming in with the general feeling of the day on this side of the Atlantic so far as to observe, how incontestably this proves the mutual interest and common origin of 'the two great nations;' and should the dark day ever arrive, when letters shall be obliterated; printing forgotten; and language lost; it is still consolatory to reflect, that a mutual and inborn affinity between the two last representatives of 'the Mother and Daughter' might be satisfactorily shown and most agreeably demonstrated by means of two lemons; four tumblers of Croton or filtered spring water; one of double refined loaf sugar well cracked; and one of old Rum!

Gentle Reader! hast thou carefully dwelt over this list of ingredients? Are earth, air, fire, and water, more dissimilar in their elementary properties than are Lemon, Sugar, Water, and Rum? and has it ever before occurred to thee, to what supernal brightness of original and fortuitous Genius thou must have been indebted for this astonishing combination? Art thou alive to the grandeur of the original conception? Alas! the name of the architect of the Temple of Ephesus might as well at this epoch be sought for as that of the author of this stupendous compound, but the irrefragable word which is universally attempted to be attached to it indicates beyond the shadow of a doubt the land that claims the honour of his birth!

I am writing to thee from the attic of the house in which I have my abode.——Canst thou tell me the name of the first artificer who planned the building of a second story? who first contemplated or imagined STAIRS? or changed the tent and the cabin into the[469] fabrick of diversified flights? The scheme of this was taken from the invention of the Beaver——But where throughout the animal creation was the instinctive indicator to the man who first conceived the thought of Punch?

Newton by the fall of an apple is said to have determined the Theory of Gravitation: how vast and limitless in its application has been the discovery! Yet is the whole but the elucidation of one principle or element of knowledge——while four different and antagonistic elements associate and are made to combine homogeneously in the glorious beverage of Punch!

Davy, in his wonderful invention of the Safety Lamp, went with it completed in his hand from the laboratory to the mine, and found his reasoning true! Throughout the terraqueous globe his achievement is cited as the conquest of abstract Science over Physics. But vain is all abstract reasoning here; all distant experiment; all knowledge of the gases; all study of the powers of repulsion;—here four palpable and repulsive reasons are placed in presence of the chemist and philosopher, and the irresistible argument of all is—Punch.

These are hints for reflection to thee, Gentle Reader, in the quiet and solitary concocting and brewing of thy Pitcher, during the two hours that thou shalt diligently pour it from one glass receptacle into the other. When all is finished, and thy star hath proved benignant to thee; and thy beverage shall have become like the harmony that steals away thy heart; gushing from four musical instruments where the sound of neither predominates;—then drink to the memory of the great original Genius who planned and inspired thy joy; and forget not to favour, with a passing thought, the verdant Spirit who would gladly be Thy Companion; and who here subscribes himself, Thy Friend,

John Waters.

HER NAME.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.

M. E. H.

[470]

THE STORY OF ABUL CASSIM'S SHOES.
FROM THE ORIGINAL IN TURKISH.

It is related that there once resided in Bagdad a very wealthy man named Abul Cassim, who was celebrated for his avarice and parsimony. So strong was his ruling passion that he could not even be prevailed upon to throw away his old shoes, but whenever it became urgently necessary, he would have them stitched at a cobbler's stall, and continue to wear them for four or five years. So finally, they became so heavy and large that it was proverbial in that city to say that a thing was 'as clumsy as Abul Cassim's shoes.'

Now one day as this man was walking in the bazaars of Bagdad, a friend of his, a broker, informed him that a merchant from Aleppo was just arrived, bringing some bottles for sale. 'Come,' added he, 'I will get them for you at a low price, and after keeping them a month or so, you can sell them again for three times as much as you gave, and so make a handsome profit.' The matter was soon arranged between them; Abul Cassim bought the bottles for sixty dinars, and after employing several porters to carry them to his house, he passed on. He had also another friend, a public crier, whom he likewise happened to meet, and who told him that a merchant from the town of Yezd had some rose-water for sale. 'Come,' said he, 'I will get it for you now at a low rate, and dispose of it for you some other time for double the amount' So Abul Cassim was prevailed upon to buy the rose-water also, and on reaching home he filled the bottles with the water, and placed them on a shelf in one of his apartments.

The day following, Abul Cassim went to a bath, and while undressing himself, one of his friends going out saw his old shoes, and jokingly said: 'Oh! Cassim, do let me change your shoes, for these have become very clumsy.' Abul Cassim only replied, 'Inshallah! if God wishes;' and continuing to undress himself, went into the bath. Just then the Cadi, or judge of the city, came to the bath, and undressed himself near to Abul Cassim. Some time afterward Abul Cassim came out of the inner room of the bath, and when he had dressed himself, looked for his shoes, which not finding, but seeing a new pair in their place, he thought his friend had made the change that he desired; so putting them on, he returned to his house.

When the Cadi came out of the bath, and had put on his clothes, he asked for his shoes, but lo! they could nowhere be found; and seeing, close by, the old ones of Abul Cassim, he naturally concluded this latter person had purloined his. So the Cadi was greatly enraged; and ordering Abul Cassim to be brought before him, he accused him of stealing shoes out of baths, imprisoned him two or three days, and fined him.

[471]

Abul Cassim on his release said to himself: 'These shoes have dishonored me, and I have been severely punished for their sake;' so with revengeful feelings he threw them into the Tigris. Two days afterward some fishermen, on drawing their seines out of that river, found a pair of old shoes in them, which they immediately recognized as those of Abul Cassim. One of them remarked that perhaps he had fallen into the river; and taking the shoes in his hand, carried them to Abul Cassim's house, and finding its door closed, he threw them in at a window which was open. Unfortunately the shoes fell on the shelf where the bottles of rose-water were ranged, so that it was thrown down, the bottles broken, and all the rose-water was lost.

When Cassim returned to his house, he opened the door and beheld the loss he had sustained. He tore his hair and beard with grief, wept aloud, and charged the shoes with being his ruin. To be free from farther misfortune on their part, 'I will bury them,' said he, 'in a corner of my house, and then all will end.' So the same night he arose and commenced digging a hole in a corner of his dwelling; but his neighbors hearing the noise, thought he was undermining their house; and rising in affright, they complained to the governor of the city, who sent and apprehended Cassim, and threw him in prison, from which he was released only on the payment of a fine.

After this Cassim returned to his house, overwhelmed with grief, and taking his old shoes, he threw them into the sluice of a neighboring caravansary. In the course of a few days, the sluice being stopped, it overran its banks, and workmen having been called to clean it out, lo! Cassim's shoes were found to be the cause of the inconvenience. So the governor again threw him in prison, and fined him to a large amount.

Abul Cassim, now perfectly in despair, took his old shoes, and after washing them clean, laid them on the terrace of his house, with the intention, after they were well dried, to burn them, and so put an end to all shame and misfortune on their account. But it happened that while the shoes were drying, a neighbor's dog passing over the terrace saw them, and mistaking them for dried meat, took one in his mouth, sprang from one terrace to the other, and in doing so let it fall. The neighbor's wife was enciente, and as she happened to be sitting at the foot of the wall, the shoe fell upon her, and in her alarm she was prematurely brought to bed. Her husband, in great anger, complained to the governor, and Abul Cassim was once more thrown into prison and made to pay a fine.

Abul Cassim now tore his hair and beard with grief, and accusing the shoes of being the cause of all his misfortunes, he took them in his hand, and going before the Cadi of Bagdad, related to him all that had befallen him. 'I beg you,' added he, 'to receive my declaration, and I hope all these Mussulmans will bear witness that I now break off all farther relation between me and these shoes, and have no longer any thing to do with them. I ask also a certificate showing that I am free from them, and they free from me; so that if[472] henceforth there are any punishments or fines to be incurred, questions to be asked or answers to be given, that they may take them all upon themselves.

The Cadi, much amused with what he heard, gave the desired certificate, and added a present to Abul Cassim. Behold in this tale to what misfortunes the avaricious subject themselves!

TO A HUMMING-BIRD.
BY H. W. ROCKWELL.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

Utica, August, 1843.

[473]

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Politicians, a Comedy: in Five Acts. By Cornelius Mathews. pp. 118. New-York: Printed for the Author.

Poems on Man, in his various Aspects under the American Republic. By Cornelius Mathews. In one volume, pp. 112. New-York: Printed for the Author, and for sale at Wiley and Putnam's and other metropolitan Book-stores.

The Career of Puffer Hopkins. Published in the 'serial form,' from the office of the 'Brother Jonathan.'

In a notice some four years since in these pages of the 'Motley Book'[B] by the author of the above-named productions, we expressed our conviction, and gave the grounds for our belief, that Mr. Mathews had mistaken his vocation; that he exhibited a mind capacious enough of vague dreams and dim similitudes of humor, but that there was no naturalness in his descriptions, and no distinctness in his pictures; that his observation of men and things was cursory and superficial, and that his style was of such a character that the reader was often led to doubt whether he always affixed any very precise idea to the language which he employed. We excepted from these remarks, we remember, a serious sketch or two of the writer, 'The Potters'-Field,' and 'The Unburied Bones,' as evincing a degree of spirit and pathos, which justified us in counselling him, if he must needs write, to confine his literary efforts to that species of composition. Since the period to which we have referred, Mr. Mathews has continued to write and print, with great industry and perseverance, what he must have considered works of humor and satire; but we are sorry to be compelled to add, without exhibiting the slightest improvement. Like Michael Cassio, Mr. Mathews, when he sits down to pen, ink, and paper, 'sees a mass of objects, but nothing distinctly.' He has a large grasp of small things, without selection and without cohesion; his ideas, if they may be called ideas, are often diffuse, pointless, and apparently aimless; and it is impossible for any intelligent reader to resist the conclusion that his 'wit's diseased,' in one sense, at least. Let us take, as an illustration of the justice of our animadversions, the 'Comedy' whose title stands first at the head of this notice. From the strutting boldness of the language in the preface, the reader is led to conclude, evidently with the author, that an 'American dramatist' has at last arisen, who is to present the proof that 'America contains within itself material quite adequate for any class of literary productions;' that there is 'no lack of materials for comedy in our country and among ourselves;' and that here we have a dramatic attempt which is to furnish 'countenance to the Cause of true National Literature.' In consonance with Mr. Mathews's own opinions of his 'Comedy,' is his modest request that nobody should 'interfere with his privileges as its author, or prevent him from deriving such emoluments from its representation as are equitably his due.' Probability rather[474] favors the conclusion, we think, that no person ever did! The writer adds, also, that he 'would be greatly rejoiced' if the play should be 'the thing' to awaken the National Legislature to a 'realizing sense' of its duty in the matter of international copy-right! Such is the character of the introduction to the public of the 'Comedy' before us. Now for a taste of its quality.

The first act opens with a dialogue between a political candidate and his 'chum' touching 'the use of a church-bell' to bring out the voters, who are to be wrought upon by an announcement of the fact that 'the steeple is in the hands of their party,' whose ticket is to be 'spread on the weather-cock.' After a discussion of various modes of catching voters, which we should be glad to have the reader see, but which we must 'respectfully decline' to quote, we come to the annexed characteristic specimen of our author's wit. Stand aside, reader; for the text says: 'Enter Botch:'

Botch. Have you heard this rumor, Sir?

Gudgeon. What rumor, for Heaven's sake? They haven't bought up all the large flags in the ward?

Botch. No, Sir.

Gudgeon. Have they got in a new barrel of beer? or hired Blaster, the popular trumpeter? I spoke to him myself last night. They haven't engaged Murphy's two starved horses, that always operate so on the popular sympathies and bring up so many voters?

Botch. None of these, Sir!

Gudgeon. What then, Botch? Be quick—what then?

Botch. Why, Sir, the Brisk party is going to use the belfry of the church to distribute tickets from, and they intend to employ the sexton to read prayers every morning of the election from the small window in the steeple.

Gudgeon. This must be counteracted: it will have an overwhelming effect. We shall have the whole religious community moving against us in platoons, pew by pew!

Botch. Something must be done, Sir; I see clearly something must be done. What shall it be, Sir?

Gudgeon. Yes, something must be done.

Botch. Certainly; something must be done.

Gudgeon. What then, in the name of Heaven, shall it be? Couldn't we get Glib to climb the steeple above the window and deliver an harangue? It might do away with the evil influence of the proceedings below, and give us a tremendous ascendency at once.

Botch. I doubt whether Mr. Glib would undertake it, even if he could snatch a notary's commission from the weathercock, as the chances of being made a martyr of by stoning would be considerable.

In the fourth scene there is a new effect given to stage song-singing, by a Mr. Blanding, one of the characters, which should neither be lost to dramatic writers, theatrical persons, nor to 'the world.' A fragment will suffice, we suspect:

Blanding. (From within.) Fol-la—my heart—andino—has gently—sa—felt—allegro—allegro—sweet Kate—piano—the sharp and sure revenge of fate—La-mi-fol-sa.

Crumb. The fit is coming upon him.

Blanding. Oh smile upon the gloomy wave
That bears me to a gloomier grave.

That goes badly in andante—so-fa-me-fi-so.

Blanding. And fly—too slow—and fly—allegro—allegro,
And fly with me. Prestissimo.

Crumb. (Breaking in.) Heigh-ho! how is this, Sir? Are you trying to set a runaway match to music?

Blanding. I beg your pardon, Sir—but—

Crumb. You may well do that, and the pardon of the whole city council, if you please. Meditating a rhymed elopement with Miss Brisk, daughter of John Brisk, candidate for alderman of the ward! Why this is an audacious breach of ordinance.

Pass we now to the second act, wherein we find Mr. and Mrs. Gudgeon engaged in a remarkably humorous colloquy. He informs her that a committee has been appointed to 'have his own portrait of his individual self, Robert Gudgeon' taken; whereupon, among other things, Mrs. Gudgeon is led to remark, that now she has a presentiment that his election is safe. To which, 'thus then Gudgeon:'

Gudgeon. And so have I. Some great event is clearly at hand. We have had a meteor the other night that whizzed round the sky, like a large Catharine-wheel; then there has been a[475] school of sixty whale cast ashore off Barnegat; and the Rain-King, only last Week, caught a storm on a lightning-rod, and held it there two days, notwithstanding the entreaties of the neighboring county, that was suffering sorely under a drouth. What do these things mean? what do they refer to? The approach of the comet foretold in the Farmer's Almanac; or, it may be so, (for I recollect the birth of my father's five-legged calf, in Danbury, was brought on by an early sun-rise,) the election of Robert Gudgeon as alderman.

Is not the wit of this undeniable? Does it not 'fortify like a cordial?' Yet it is not more striking than the humor of many other portions of the 'Comedy;' not more so indeed than several passages in the third act, especially in the dialogue between Crowder and the committee-men, concerning the means by which the candidate is to recommend himself to his constituents, though it were to 'run a sewer through his pocket (!) and drain it to the last cent.' The committee do not 'sit' in their room at a tavern without 'creature comforts.' Observe: the landlord is called:

Landlord. (From without.) Coming!

Crowder. We want your bill. That will bring him up with it, short and quick.

Landlord. (From without.) It's e'en a'most made out; only a few items to add.

Enter Landlord.

Crowder. Come, read it off, jolly Job Works, in a good clear half-price voice; by particulars, and it's cash on the nail. Begin!

Landlord. That I likes; 'four sperm candle'; Nothing like the ready metal; 'Two quarts beer, with snuffers.'

Crowder. Well, he has a fine throat of his own; it smacks of the spigot.

Landlord. Room-hire, cigars, and two juleps, with benches.

Crowder. Well.

Landlord. A small pig with lemon.

Crowder. A pig with lemon!

Landlord. Two plates pickled beans, two rolls twisted bread, and beer extra.

Crowder. Beans, bread, and beer!

Landlord. Six lobster and two pound sage-cheese; likewise a splendid pork-pie made of chops.

Crowder. A splendid pork-pie made of chops!

Landlord. And a suet pudding.

Crowder. Nothing else?

Landlord. Nothing else.

The landlord declares, in answer to a little grumbling, that 'the things' named in the bill were 'sent down for' from the committee-room by way of the chimney, in a stone-bottle 'as big-as my two-fist,' which struck his cook, 'poor hunch-back Jenny, in the small, or rather I should say in the big of her back, as she was stooping over a dish of prawns (?) for Tom Lug!' Crowder pays, of course, in the usual way; but his rival is not to be outdone by such liberality. He 'bears a charmed life:' for Mrs. Gudgeon has 'told him to buy fresh chick-weed and goose-grass to carry in his pocket, because they say it draws voters!'

But enough. If our readers desire more of Mr. Mathews' 'Comedy,' they must seek it elsewhere. We have selected the liveliest passages we could find: for there is a calm placidity of emptiness, diversified with a bustling inanity of thought, in other portions of this performance, which we have small desire to illustrate by examples; since they would not fail to produce at least twenty yawns to a page; a soporific that neither watchman not sick-nurse could support.

We come next in order to the poems on 'Man, in his Various Aspects under the American Republic;' a very comprehensive title to much incomprehensible rhyme with little reason. As a poet, Mr. Mathews cannot reasonably expect to take the exalted order of rank which he holds as a dramatist. That indeed were expecting quite too much! To use the illustration of a nautical critic, his plan of writing-verse would seem to be, to 'fire away with the high-soundingest words he can get, whereby his meaning looms larger than it is, like a fishing-boat in a fog.' Where there is such a ground-swell of language, there can be no great depth of ideas. Yet there are good ideas in some of the lines in these ten-score of pages, borne down though they be, and almost smothered, with words. For the most part, however, the volume presents but a farrago of crude expressions, ideas, and pictures, some poetical and others 'quite the reverse,' aggregated[476] in a rude and undigested mass. The writer treats, under nineteen divisions, of Man as child, father, teacher, citizen, farmer, mechanic, merchant, soldier, statesman, etc.; and from some of these we propose to select a few examples of Mr. Mathews's thoughts and style poetical. The following stanza is taken from the advice given to 'the father' of an infant:

An 'axled soul' is good, as Polonius would say; but it is not much better than one or two equally original expressions which ensue:

The writer counsels 'the citizen' not to 'overstalk' his brother, but to show in his mien 'each motion forthright, calm, and free;' and he farther advises in the words following, to wit:

In the annexed stanza there is an assortment of similes, the like of which one seldom encounters in so brief a compass. The lines are addressed to 'the farmer;' and we are acquainted with several excellent persons among that indispensable class of the community, to whom we should like to hear Mr. Mathews read them! It would be a 'rich treat' to hear their opinion of such pellucid poetry:

Cloud-like revolutions stopping on the highway to slake their chariot-wheels in a mountain-brook! If that isn't 'original poetry' we know not what is. Now the opening of the piece from which the above stanza is taken we have no doubt is considered by the writer quite inferior to it; but to our conception, the nature and simplicity which it preserves for a moment are worth all the striking figures to which we have alluded. 'The mechanic,' whose business is to 'shape and finish forth iron and wood,' comes in for his share of rythmical counsel:

Observe the felicitousness of the foregoing poetical terms. The 'tinkling smith,' and the 'big-voiced sledge' roaring against an iron bar, and tearing out its entrails with angry teeth! Could appropriateness and power of metaphor reach much beyond this? 'Not good,' we suspect. We thought to have given our friends, 'the merchants,' a lift with Mr. Mathews's moral instruction; but we can only remind them, with his assistance, that

[477]

'Next comes the soldier,' to whom Mr. Mathews thus addresses himself:

'Marbled sea' is good; as good as 'the mobled queen.' It might perhaps assist the effect a little, if the reader knew what it meant. Possibly the writer knows; yet we doubt it. The next stanza presents a cloudy vision of the sublime obscure:

'The statesman' is not less felicitously 'touched off' than the soldier:

'Hold, enough!' doubtless exclaims the reader. Yet could we go on to the end of the volume with just such 'poetry' as this. We must ask the farther attention of 'the curious' to be directed to the work itself, while we proceed to glance for a moment at the production last cited at the head of this notice.

The swelling prelude to 'The Career of Puffer Hopkins' is kindred in assumption and manner with the preface to the 'Comedy,' to which we have already adverted. 'Cervantes, Smollet, Fielding, and Scott, to say nothing of more recent examples,' are modestly invoked, to show that the author cannot justly be charged with caricaturing. We yield the point, without the examples. A caricature always bears some resemblance to an original; but Mr. Mathews's characters have no originals. They are in no respect vraisemblant. Take his whole catalogue of names, (in themselves so 'funny!') his 'Hobbleshank,' 'Piddleton Bloater,' 'Mr. Gallipot,' 'Mr. Blinker,' 'Mr. Fishblaat,' 'Attorney Pudlin,' 'Mr. Fyler Close,' 'Alderman Punchwind,' 'Mr. Shirks,' 'Counsellor Blast,' 'Dr. Mash,' 'Mr. Bust,' 'Mr. Flabby,' etc.; analyze them, if possible, and tell us if any one of them ever had any thing like a counterpart in 'the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?' Are they any more distinctive, internally, than 'the pie-faced man,' or the man 'with features like a dried codfish suddenly animated,' externally? 'Not a jot, not a jot,' will be the reply of every one who attentively scans them. The death of 'Fob' partakes in a good degree of the pathetic, and justifies the counsel which we gave the writer in our notice of 'The Motley Book.' It is however as evidently suggested by kindred scenes in the writings of Dickens, as is the writer's raven and coffin-maker's apprentice. We have not the space, had we either the leisure or the inclination, to attempt a notice in detail of 'Puffer Hopkins.' We say 'attempt,' because it defies criticism. It has neither plot nor counterplot; neither head nor tail. Memory, it has been well said, is the best of critics; but we doubt if there be a scene or part of a scene, in the entire work, that could be segregated and recalled by the recollection of the reader. Aimless grotesqueness; the most laborious yet futile endeavors after wit; and a constant unsuccessful straining for effect; are its prominent characteristics. Take up the book, reader, open it any where, and peruse two pages; and if you do not acquit us entirely of undue depreciation in this verdict, place no faith hereafter in our literary judgment. Let us open it at random for an illustrative passage or two. In the following, Puffer (after receiving a lecture on political speech-making, in[478] which among other things he is told, to 'roll his eye-balls back under the lid, and smell of the chandelier, though the odor isn't pleasant!') is thus further instructed:

'It's best to rise gradually with your hearers; and, if you can have a private understanding with one of the waiters, to fix a chair conveniently, a wooden-bottomed Windsor, mind, and none of your rushers; for it's decidedly funny and destroys the effect, to hear a gentleman declaiming about a sinking fund, or a penal code, or the abolition of imprisonment for debt, up to his belly in a broken chair-frame. As the passion grows upon you, plant your right leg on one of the rounds, then on the bottom, and finally, when you feel yourself at red-heat, spring into the chair, waive your hat, and call upon the audience to die for their country, their families and their firesides; or any other convenient reason. As Hobbleshank advanced in his discourse, he had illustrated its various topics by actual accompaniments; mounting first on his legs, then the bench, and ended by leaping upon the table, where he stood brandishing his broken hat, and shouting vociferously for more oysters.'

There are other suggestions; such as having 'immense telescopes constructed, and planted where they could command the interior of every domicil in the ward, and tell what was in every man's pot for dinner six days in a week;' together with a 'great ledger, with leaves to open like doors, on which should be a full-length likeness of each voter, drawn and colored to the life,' even 'down to his vest-buttons, and a mote in his eye!' Who shall say that this isn't 'genuine humor?' Here too is 'a touch of nature,' such as Mr. Mathews delights in. An electioneerer or 'scourer' of the wards visits a theatrical 'lightning-maker,' (a highly probable character,) at his laboratory, where the following witty dialogue ensues:

'This profession of yours,' said Puffer—he dared not call it a trade, although the poor workman was up to his eyes in vile yellow paste and charcoal-dust—'this profession, Sir, must give you many patriotic feelings of a high cast, Sir.'

'It does, Sir,' answered the lightning-maker, slightly mistaking his meaning; 'I've told the manager more than fifty times that lightning such as mine is worth ninepence a bottle, but he never would pay more than fourpence ha'penny: except in volcanoes; them's always two-quarters.'

'I mean, Sir,' continued the scourer, 'that when you see the vivid fires blazing on Lake Erie; when Perry's working his ship about like a velocipede, and the guns are bursting off, and the enemy paddling away like ducks; is not your soul then stirred, Sir? Do you not feel impelled to achieve some great, some glorious act? What do you do, what can you do, in such a moment of intense, overwhelming excitement?'

'I generally,' answered the lightning-maker with an emphasis upon the personal pronoun, as if some difference of practice might possibly prevail, 'I generally takes a glass of beer, with the froth on.'

'But, Sir, when you see the dwelling-house roof, kindled by your bomb-shells, all a-blaze with the midnight conflagration: the rafters melting away, I may say, with the intense heat, and the engines working their pumps in vain; don't you think then, Sir, of some peaceful family, living in some secluded valley, broken in upon by the heartless incendiary with his demon-matches, and burning down their cottage with all its outhouses?'

'In such cases,' answered the lightning-maker, 'I thinks of my two babies at home, with their poor lame mother; and I makes it a point, if my feelings is very much wrought up, as the prompter says, to run home between the acts to see that all's safe, and put a bucket of water by the hearth. Isn't that the thing?'

'I think it is; and I'm glad to hear you talk so feelingly,' answered Puffer Hopkins; 'our next mayor's a very domestic-minded man; just such a man as you are; only I don't believe he'd be so prudent and active about the bucket on the hearth.'

'At this, the lightning-maker smiled pleasantly to himself, and unconsciously thrust a large roll of brimstone in his cheek.'

Oh, for modern schepen, to laugh himself to death at this fine 'burst' of nature and of wit! Holding both his sides, how would he guffaw at that brimstone mistake! 'How can you make me laugh so, when I am so sick?' Well, well; it is funny, certainly; but wait until you read this fragment of 'burning satire' upon the political press:

'An 'Extra Puncheon,' pretending to give late news from the Capitol, but containing, in reality, Flabby's long-expected reply. 'Capital! capital!' cried Mr. Fishblaat, as he hurried on; 'Flabby called Busts a drunken vagabond, in the Puncheon of Wednesday week; Busts called Flabby a hoary reprobate, in Monday's Bladder, and now Flabby calls Busts a keg of Geneva bitters; says the bung's knocked out and the staves well coopered. Capital! This alludes to a threshing, in front of the Exchange in which Busts had his eye blacked and a couple of ribs beaten in.'

But we must draw our notice of Mr. Mathews's 'writings' to a close. We cannot do so, however, without again inviting the attention of our readers to the 'works' themselves, if they are desirous to partake in a yet larger degree of the kindling effect of his unique wit and humor, and to render full justice to 'the American Boz!'

[479]

The Poets of Connecticut; with Biographical Sketches. Edited by Rev. Charles W. Everest. In one volume, pp. 468. Hartford: Case, Tiffany, and Burnham. New-York: Knickerbocker Publication Office.

Honor to Connecticut for the 'bright names in song' to which she has given birth; and honor to Mr. Everest for the faithfulness and good judgment with which he has discharged his editorial function, in the large and exceedingly beautiful volume before us. Few of our readers can be aware of the number and high character of the poets of America who first drew breath in the 'Land of Steady Habits.' The catalogue 'deflours us of our chiefest treasures' in poetry; numbering as it does, Halleck, Brainard, Percival, Pierpont, Prentice, Hillhouse, Hill, Sigourney, Rockwell, and others scarcely less known to fame, and whose effusions are endenizen'd in the national heart. The volume presents a brief historical account of the poetical literature of Connecticut, from its commencement to the present period. The writers are arranged in the order of birth, as being less invidious, and as better comporting with the design of the editor. In the department of biography, the sketches have been made as complete as possible, in the case of deceased writers, while in those of the living, the principal facts of personal history are carefully preserved. The editor has judiciously confined his critical duties to the mere pointing out of a few characteristic traits of each author's verse, refraining from especial eulogy or censure. The volume is in all respects a valuable contribution to our national literature, and deserves, what we cannot doubt it will receive, a circulation commensurate with its merits. It is beautifully printed, upon large, clear types, and embellished with a fine vignette-engraving of the city of Hartford and Connecticut river.

Abbottsford Edition of the Waverley Novels. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell. London: Houlston and Stoneman. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.

We have already twice spoken of this most perfect edition of the works of the immortal Scott; but as the numbers reach us in succession from abroad, and the fine taste and profuse liberality of the publisher are more and more revealed, we are continually tempted to descant upon merits and beauties which we could wish our readers throughout the Union and the Canadas could personally appreciate. We have before us at this moment the series complete to the thirty-second issue; and how many illustrations does the reader suppose are included in these numbers? No less than five hundred and fifty; varying, in each number, from sixteen and eighteen to twenty-four. These illustrations, too, are in the very finest style of the art of engraving, whether on steel or wood. There is nothing omitted that can be illustrated, in any of the great 'Northern Magician's' works. The first painters in England are employed to paint from nature the originals of all the principal scenes; these are transferred to steel by the most eminent engravers in Europe; and the same faithfulness is apparent in all the principal portraits, which are so numerous and authentic, as to leave nothing to be desired in this department of the work. Add to this the fact, that every thing to which any especial interest attaches in the novels is pictorially presented, with a kindred care and correctness; and that the fine texture and dazzling whiteness of the paper and beauty of the printing are unsurpassed; and the reader will have some idea of the comparative cheapness of a work like this, when informed that each number costs but two shillings and sixpence sterling! The edition will contain, when completed, more than two thousand engravings, on steel and wood, and of the highest order of excellence. Indeed, the landscape engravings on steel will of themselves form a splendid series of an hundred views, illustrative of the novels.

[480]

EDITOR'S TABLE.

The late William Abbott: his Autobiographical Journal.—In briefly noticing, some months since, the decease of William Abbott, Esq., late of the Park Theatre, we promised again to advert to his career in England and this country; and the perusal with which we have recently been favored of an exceedingly entertaining autobiography of this excellent actor and accomplished gentleman, has 'whetted our almost blunted purpose.' We learn from a brief obituary in the London 'Gentleman's Magazine,' that Mr. Abbott was born at Bath, England, in 1788, and began his theatrical career in that city, whence his varied talent caused his being transported to Covent-Garden Theatre, at the age of twenty-four. He remained there twelve years, continuing all the time to grow in reputation. In social life, his house at Knightsbridge, near London, was long the scene of meetings in which good taste and refinement increased their attraction, by being blended with less ceremonious pastimes, and the constant flow of fanciful recreations. Thus he traversed a flowery time until 1824, when ambition tempted him to become the lessee of the Dublin Theatre. He lost money by the speculation; and his next move was to Paris, where with an English company he entertained the Parisian public with éclat for two years. In the French capital his enjoyment of society was of a very gratifying kind; and he spoke the language with so much purity as to escape all the usual inconveniences attendant upon foreign disclosure. In 1828 he returned to Covent-Garden to enable Miss Fanny Kemble to appear as Juliet with an adequate Romeo. Subsequently, untoward events of a pecuniary nature, connected with the management of one of the minor theatres of the metropolis, induced him to try his fortunes in America. The professional and social qualities which had won for him reputation and friends in his own country, gained him both in this, in an equal degree; while the same experience as a manager attended him here that was 'his destiny' abroad. The Charleston (S. C.) Theatre, the management of which he assumed, proved worse than valueless to his interests; and at the time of his death he had resumed his place upon the boards of the Park Theatre, where he had always given ample satisfaction to the public. He was the author of several successful dramatic productions in England, and was known on both sides of the Atlantic as a gentleman of fine literary taste and acquirements. He was a person of the most gentleman-like manners, cheerful disposition, ready wit in the play of conversation, and possessed a kindly and liberal heart. Few men were more welcome to society, or more entertaining within its bounds. He was full of anecdote; and the humorous stories of the stage found in him a most amusing reciter. He had also the song, the jest, or the repartee, which never failed to add mirth to the festive board. Above all, shone the unclouded cheerfulness of his nature, over which even his own misfortunes apparently never suffered a shadow to pass; and that good-will toward others which defied the taint of envy, (either in private life or in an envious profession,) which was happy in contributing to happiness, and would not tread[481] on a worm, or even injure an enemy. 'Such,' says our London contemporary, 'was William Abbott, who for many years was a popular favorite in the principal theatres of London, and who performed the second class of characters better than any actor we ever saw. His walk too was unconfined. In tragedy, not of the sterner sort, he was graceful and impressive; in genteel comedy, equal to any of his contemporaries in that line; in the more unlicensed exuberance of farce, a laughable and jocular actor; and in all, he was ever perfect in his part.'

We proceed now to select a few passages, almost at random, from the delightful manuscript volume to which we have referred; a work which we have no doubt will speedily be in the hands of a publisher, since it cannot fail to prove one of the most various and entertaining books of the season. We commence our extracts with the annexed sketch of personal misadventure, which will remind the reader of the somewhat similar scene in 'The Antiquary' of Scott. The locale is Tenby, in South Wales, opposite the Devonshire coast:

'What vivid recollections throng my mind, when I recall the perilous situation in which I was once placed there! It was my constant custom, whenever I had a character of importance to study, to wander on the 'Sands' in front of the town; not like Demosthenes, with a pebble in my mouth, but seating myself on some jutting rock, listen to the roar of old Ocean in storms, or watch its gentle undulations, like an infant rocking itself to sleep. On one occasion I pursued my path greatly beyond all former wanderings; passed each inlet I encountered, and again emerged on the broad Sands; and on turning, the town met my eye, and appeared, although three miles distant, to be almost within my grasp. The waters kept at a respectful distance, while I reclined upon an isolated rock, not unlike a rude arm-chair. Like another Canute, I wanted to see if the waters would dare approach me. My mind was full of 'meditation and the thoughts of love;' and many a chateau en Espagne was peopled with delightful visions of air-born spirits, paying homage to my towering theatrical genius! Casually turning round, to my utter confusion I saw the water laving the base of a high projecting rock which intercepted my return. I felt that no time was to be lost. I rushed back, and knee-deep, cleared the obstacle. Another, still more formidable, stood before me. Beyond, the golden Sands, tinged by the beams of the setting sun, gave life and hope; at my feet lay despair and death. Not a soul was in sight; and the opposing obstacle that separated me from the path by which I could reach the town, was rising perpendicularly from the deep. I was young in years; and in an instant all my previous life flashed upon me, in one dreary perspective. No escape, no hope! Death himself stood before me! The very rocks on which I had so often gazed with a romantic delight, now oppressed me with terror. Grim visages with demoniac smiles started into life from the surrounding cliffs, to mock my helplessness. The roaring waves, dashing upon the sharp rocks, uttered a voice of fearful warning. Despair was almost at its height, when suddenly my nerves became iron. I rushed to the opposing rock; I reached, and how I know not, a fearful height; I clung to some stunted brushwood, which found a frail hold in the fissures of the rock. One point of safety was visible, but as I attempted to reach it, loose particles crumbled and rolled beneath my feet, and I heard the crackling of the branches. The yawning gulf was ready to receive me! One last effort, one convulsive spring, enabled me to reach the desired refuge; and although in comparative safety, I sat there shaking with terror, and watched the rapid approach of the waves, which, although fortunately not violently agitated, covered me with the 'salt sea-foam.' The excitement prevented my feeling the cold, though I was wet to the skin. The heavens were calm and blue above, and the stars shone in all their splendor; but the restlessness of the waters, through the dim obscurity, kept me in perpetual agitation. For hours I remained in this situation; at length the early morning dawned upon me, and the receding tide lifted a weight from my heart.'

Many of our readers will remember sundry anecdotes, from theatrical persons and works upon the drama of 'Romeo Coates,' of Bath, England. Mr. Abbott gives a very amusing account of the manner in which this soubriquet, which attached to the subject of it throughout his life, was obtained:

'Though an unmitigated ass, he was the lion of the day. He came from one of the West-India islands, was very wealthy, and on all occasions wore brilliants of the first water. In a place like Bath, where ennui will step in occasionally, he was a godsend. He was followed,[482] courted, fooled to the top of his bent. The sprigs of fashion 'drew him in' to give at the York Hotel the most expensive entertainments; and at one party, when I was present, they insisted upon his mounting a table covered with decanters and glasses, to give a specimen of his skill in the small-sword exercise, and display his figure to the best advantage. One of the party, Bacchi plenus, became his opponent, and the result was, the destruction of a most superb chandelier. His face was like a baboon's, and the twistings and distorted attitudes into which he threw himself were alike indescribable and irresistible. One pleasant morning there appeared an announcement in the theatre-bills which shook the city of Bath to its foundation. It was like the precursor of a volcanic eruption: 'Romeo, by an Amateur of Fashion!' The doors were beset at an early hour in the afternoon by those who had failed to secure places at the box-office. Box-admittance was paid by crowds of gentlemen, to enable them, by jumping over, to secure places in the pit. Men of rank and distinction did not disdain to occupy seats in the gallery. The fever of excitement was at its pitch, when the gentle Romeo appeared, dressed in the most fantastic and absurd style, in consonance with the advice of his fashionable friends. He wore diamonds to the value of thirty thousand pounds! I was one of his instructors, and entered into the joke with a keen relish for the ridiculous. It was hardly to be expected that his acting would be tolerated by the true judges of art, and I was obliged to be dressed for the character, in order to finish the part. But no! The appetite of the audience grew by what it fed on; and when the dying scene came, a tremendous burst of mock enthusiasm rang from all parts of the house, and he was universally encored. He bowed most graciously, while Juliet (Miss Jamieson) was lying on the stage, not dead, but literally 'in convulsions' of laughter. Oranges were thrown upon the stage, with a request that the actor would not hurry, but refresh his energies before he recommenced his death. He kissed his hand to the ladies in graceful acquiescence with their wishes, and deliberately proceeded to suck two oranges! His second death was infinitely more extravagant than the first, and drew down repeated and prolonged bravos, and a second encore, which however was not complied with. Showers of bouquets now fell upon the stage, and 'closed one of the most extraordinary dramatic exhibitions I ever beheld in a regular theatre.'

A singular circumstance is mentioned by Mr. Abbott as having occurred to a professional friend of his at Bath, named Sidly. It is authenticated beyond all peradventure. 'Can such, things be, and overcome us like a summer-cloud, without our special wonder?'

'He was quietly seated in his arm-chair, at his lodgings in Beaufort-square, after his return from the theatre; his wife had retired to her bed-chamber, adjoining their drawing-room; while he remained, for the purpose of reading over a character for the ensuing evening. His mother resided a short distance from London, and so far as he knew, was at the time in perfect health. His mind was not preöccupied with the thoughts of home, and an unusual calmness pervaded his spirit. After reading a passage, and trying to see if he had mastered it, he raised his eyes, and on a chair opposite sat his mother, smiling benignantly upon him. His agitation was extreme. He hastily turned round, and saw that the door was closed. He struggled to speak, but his lips were sealed; and with a beating heart and hair erect, he rushed to the bed-side of his wife, and in broken sentences, and with thick-starting perspiration rolling down his face, he detailed what he had seen. His wife endeavored to persuade him that it was all a dream; and to convince him, quietly walked into the drawing-room, and found the apartment precisely as she had left it, the fire burning and the candles lighted; but nothing could do away the illusion; and in two days afterward poor Sidly received the intelligence of his mother's death at the very hour of the occurrence here narrated. He seldom referred to the circumstance, and never without deep and melancholy emotion.'

Liston, the great comedian, as most readers are aware, was an inveterate wag. He was never more happy than when successful in making a fellow-actor lose his 'power of face' upon the stage. Mr. Abbott relates a pleasant anecdote of one of his efforts in this kind:

'In Newcastle, under the management of Stephen Kemble, (who played the part of Falstaff without stuffing,) Liston on one occasion took the character of Pizarro. When he is lying on the couch, Rolla enters, apostrophizes his defenceless situation, and then rouses and drags him in front of the stage. Judge of the surprise of the actor, at finding one half of Liston's face painted in imitation of a clown! This portion of his features was of course studiously turned from the[483] audience, who were indulged only with the simple profile. Rolla burst into a fit of laughter, and rushed instantly from the stage, to the great scandal of the audience, who had not the slightest suspicion of the cause of such ridiculous conduct.'

Our excellent friend John Wilson, that most mellow of vocalists, once gave us a similar anecdote of Liston. In the play of 'Guy Mannering,' he is deputed to relieve the suffering Lucy Bertram. He places a well-filled purse in her hand, which he clasps cordially in his own, while she looks up in his face, her eyes brimming with tears of gratitude at relief so unexpected. On the occasion alluded to, a remarkable change was observed in Miss Bertram's face, when the purse was handed to her. She shrank back, and struggled, as if to liberate her hand from his grasp: and after looking imploringly at his imperturbable face for a moment, she found relief in a sort of hysterical laughter, which was very far from bespeaking the emotion of the character she represented. Instead of a purse, Liston had placed in her hand a large raw oyster, as cold as ice, and pressed her acceptance of it in a way that was irresistible! There ensues a comparison between those different but equally matchless artistes, Mesdames Siddons and O'Neil, which we have reason to believe expresses the general verdict of the time:

'From all my recollections of Mrs. Siddons, it would be absurd to attempt to draw a parallel between her performances and those of Miss O'Neil; the unapproachable grandeur and dignity of the one and the feminine tenderness and endearment of the other exhibiting widely different expressions, not formed by the same code. You approached Mrs. Siddons with a feeling of awe, bordering on reverence. With Miss O'Neil, all your hopes and fears were excited, and certain to meet with a response. Her bursts of agony and distress agitated every nerve, and would plunge her audience in tears; while the power of Siddons would choke your very utterance, and deny you all relief. What Miss O'Neil required in strong expression, she made up in exaggeration. Every nerve was strained, and her whole frame convulsed; in short, her great fault was exuberance; yet nothing could be more quietly (though distressingly) beautiful, than her performance of 'Mrs. Haller.'

The reader should have heard Mr. Abbott present the subjoined 'limning from life,' and seen him imitate the snuff-taking of the noble tragedian. The story loses much of its force in being transferred to paper. The anecdote is of Harlowe, who painted the celebrated trial-scene of 'Henry the Eighth,' in which the Kemble family figured so conspicuously:

'He had, by his ill conduct, lost the esteem of his great master, Sir Thomas Lawrence, who was the intimate friend of John Kemble; and the latter had in consequence resolutely refused to sit to him for his portrait as 'Cardinal Wolsey' in the picture alluded to. 'Mrs. Siddons and Charles and Stephen Kemble had sat to the artist, but the great tragedian was immovable. At length a friend of the painter (Mr. Thomas Welsh, the celebrated singing-master,) who had received many marks of attention and kindness from Mr. Kemble, and who had great confidence in the force of his influence with him, waited upon Mr. Kemble at his residence in Great Russel-street. He was shown into the library, and was most cordially received: 'My dear Tom, to what am I indebted for the favor of this visit?' 'My dear Sir, I come a humble suppliant to you, and I really don't know how to commence.' 'Well, well; make excuses for your modesty: and then, my good friend, come to the point.' The commencement was auspicious; but the first plunge in a cold-bath is always hard to take. 'I assure you, Mr. Kemble, I feel most grateful for your kind reception; and if I could only hope the favor I am going to ask——' 'Pooh! pooh! you know, Tom, I always told you, from a boy, there was nothing you could ask of me that I would refuse you. Now say what it is you wish; consider it as done; and I really am very much occupied; so, to the point, to the point, Tom.' 'Oh, Sir, you have made me the happiest person in the world. Will you be kind enough to sit to Mr. Harlowe for your portrait?' In an instant a deep cloud passed over the noble countenance of the great actor; and deliberately taking up his snuff-box, he applied a large pinch to his nose, and quickly replied: 'My dear Tom I'll see you d—d first!' Notwithstanding his denial, however, the Cardinal is one of the best portraits, and was caught only by occasional glances from the orchestra, during Mr. Kemble's performance.'

[484]

At Edinburgh, Mr. Abbott would seem to have attained great popularity. He mingled in the best circles of the Northern metropolis, and was for some days a guest of Sir Walter Scott. He narrates many pleasant anecdotes connected with his engagements in 'Auld Reekie;' and among them is the following, which is capital:

'I had no personal knowledge of Stephen Kemble, but I cannot refrain from mentioning a circumstance which happened when he was manager of the Edinburgh Theatre. The exiled family of the Bourbons were residing at the Palace of Holyrood, and great respect and attention were shown by the nobility in the neighborhood to the unfortunate descendants of a long line of kings. Mr. Kemble thought the patronage of the Comte D'Artois, afterward Charles the Tenth, would be a source of great attraction. Application was made at the palace, and with success. His Royal Highness left the selection of the play to the manager, who fixed upon 'Henry the Fourth,' for the purpose of exhibiting himself in his own popular character of Sir John Falstaff. One can scarcely conceive a duller play for a Frenchman, almost ignorant of the English language, and wholly unable to enter into the subtilties of such a being as the Fat Knight. The great desideratum, however, was obtained. The house was crowded, and the manager was satisfied. His Royal Highness bore the infliction in a most exemplary manner, and retired amidst the respectful greetings of the audience. A week had hardly elapsed, when Kemble (probably not from any selfish motive, but with the laudable view of affording some amusement to the illustrious exile,) again presented himself at Holyrood, and suggested another visit to his theatre. The Comte D'Artois received him most graciously; indeed, it was not in his nature to do otherwise, for he was one of the most accomplished gentlemen in Europe. He declined the invitation, however, in nearly the following words: 'I am vara mosh oblige, Monsieur Kemble; it was vara nice, indeed; I laugh mosh; bot von sosh fun, it ees enoff!'

This dubious compliment of the Count is not unlike the praise awarded by a polite French officer to a battalion of rather inferior provincial volunteers in England. He was pressed for his opinion, which he gave as follows: 'Gentlemens, I 'av seen de Garde-Royal and de Garde-Napoleon; I 'av seen de Russ and de Pruss; but by Gar! I 'av nevare see such troops as dese!—no, nevare!' With the two passages annexed, the one describing an annoyance to which popular actors are not unfrequently exposed, and the other the tricks of which they are sometimes made the subjects, we take our leave of Mr. Abbott's 'experiences' at Edinburgh:

'In passing through the gallery at Holyrood, where the miserable daubs of the Scottish kings are exhibited, I was accosted by a legitimate cockney, whom I discovered to be a traveller for some furniture-maker's establishment. He had not been long enough in his vocation to acquire the shrewdness for which that class of persons are celebrated, but made up in unsophisticated simplicity what they possess in assurance. He recognized me immediately, having, as he said, 'frequently seen me at Covent-Garden Theatre;' and without any extra ceremony he fastened himself upon me. When he came to the portrait of Macbeth, he turned quickly round upon our cicerone, and said: 'Lord bless you! that's not a bit like him; for I saw John Kemble do it, and it isn't so much like him as the moon is like a Cheshire cheese.' But the climax of his sage remarks occurred when the old woman came to the spot where David Rizzio was murdered, and pointed out the stain of his blood, which still remains, and which neither time nor soap, she said, would ever efface. Our cockney rubbed his hands with delight, and said: 'Why, my good woman, I'll give you some stuff that will take it out in half an hour!' * * * One morning I lounged into the box-office, which was crowded with persons taking places; and on looking at the playbill of the night's performance, I saw the tragedy of Isabella announced, 'Carlos by Mr. Abbott, with his celebrated hornpipe in fetters, as performed by him at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden!' This was one of the practical jokes of my friend Murray, (who married a sister of Thomas Moore.) He had given the printer directions to strike off some half a dozen bills of this stamp, for the purpose of raising a laugh against me!'

Soon after the retirement of John Kemble from the London stage, a great event, and well described by Mr. Abbott, that great tragedian gave a memorable dinner to some eighteen or twenty of the most distinguished members of the corps-dramatique of Covent-Garden[485] Theatre. Among the guests, also, was Talma, of whom we have this graphic account:

'On this occasion we had a fine trait of the tragic powers of Talma; not a bombastic display of French acting, but a grand and simple narrative of facts, connected with that frightful epoch, the French Revolution. He himself was suspected, watched; and his profession alone saved him from the blood-hounds who were on his track. During the most terrific period, he did not dare to sleep at his hotel, but lived in the outskirts of the metropolis; and when called in town by his professional avocations, he would steal like a culprit to the gate of his residence, and in an under tone inquire of the old Swiss porter the bloody news of the day. On one occasion he was told that some thirty or forty of his most intimate friends had that very morning perished by the guillotine. Feeling that the crisis of his own fate had arrived, he went tremblingly to the theatre; and during the performance the overwhelming anguish of his soul was relieved only by the tears coursing down his cheeks; and the very expression of which feeling every moment endangered his life. There was a cold, creeping chilliness about the hearts of all present as he spoke, which was perfectly thrilling; and not a sound was heard till he had ceased.'

Here is a brace of anecdotes of an absent-minded brother-actor, which will perhaps 'agitate the risible organs' of some of our readers:

'Henry,' in 'Speed the Plough,' was a character in which he had gained some reputation. At the closing scene of the play, he rushes into a wing of the castle, which is in flames, in quest of papers likely to disclose the secret of his birth. He returns in fearful agitation, with his right hand concealed in his bosom, and which in fact should contain the bloody dénouement of the plot, a towel dipped in blood, alias rose-pink, and a knife, also properly stained for the occasion. The climax of his speech ran thus: 'In vain the angry flames flashed their vengeance around me! Among many other evidences of blood and guilt, I found these!'—producing his fingers and hand! He had entirely forgotten the essential accompaniments * * * His first appearance was before Mr. Dimond had quitted the stage, and who enacted the part of 'Belcour' in 'The West Indian.' In the scene with his sister the debutant should say: 'Are you assured that Mr. Belcour gave you no diamonds?' The question however was rendered thus: 'Are you assured that Mr. Dimond gave you no Belcours?'

Such errors, we believe, are not infrequent upon the stage. The reader will perhaps remember the blunder of the Ghost in Hamlet, on one occasion; who, instead of saying that the 'knotted and combinéd locks' of the young prince would 'stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine,' reversed the terms in this ludicrous manner: 'Your twisted and combinéd locks shall stand up straight, like forks upon the fretful quillcopine!' A single passage more must close our extracts from this delightful autobiography. It is a short story, touching 'the immortal Townsend, the first of Bow-street officers, the favorite of Royalty, and the dread of all coachmen and flambeau'd footmen:'

'I think I see him now, with his flaxen wig, his low-crowned hat, long gaiters, and half-Quaker suit,' discoursing most eloquent music.' It was a source of great amusement to the young sprigs of nobility to extract from him in conversation some of his most characteristic slang expressions; nor did Royalty itself disdain to be amused at his expense. About the period of the connection between the Duke of Clarence and Mrs. Jordan, public opinion was rife on the subject. His Royal Highness was at the opera, surrounded by the world of fashion; and when he encountered Townsend, who was on duty there, he said, in his brusque, off-hand manner: 'Ah! Townsend, Townsend, how d' ye do, Townsend?' 'Why, your Royal Highness, pretty bobbish, I thank you,' replied the functionary. 'Well, Townsend, what news, what news?' 'Why, nothink, your Royal Highness, of any consequence.' 'Oh, nonsense! nonsense! The people must have something to talk about.' 'Why then, if your Royal Highness pleases, the talk is principally about you and Mrs. Jordan.' The sailor-prince was here a little thrown 'aback.' 'Never mind, never mind; let them talk; I don't care.' Observe the simplicity of the answer: 'Your Royal Highness is a d—d fool if you do!'

The foregoing is the result of a merely casual dipping, here and there, into the teeming pages of Mr. Abbott's manuscript volume. Whoever the fortunate publisher of the work may be, he may calculate with certainty upon its acquiring instant popularity.

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'The Dial' for the October quarter is a very excellent and lifeful number of that greatly-improved journal. Among the articles which most attracted our attention and admiration, are the 'Youth of the Poet and Painter,' 'A Winter Walk,' an essay on 'The Comic,' and the 'Letter' of the Editor to his correspondents. The first of these papers is characterized by several thrusts of a trenchant satire. We should rather infer, from the recorded 'experiences' of the writer, that when he first entered college, his bump of reverence for collegiate institutions and men of learning could hardly have been developed. Hear him, how he saith:

'I saw that in reciting our lessons to the conceited tutors, who think College is the Universe, and the President Jupiter, they had the impudence to give us marks for what we did, as if we, paying them for so much aid in our lessons, were therefore to be rewarded by them with a couple of pencil scratches. I found we were treated, not only as machines, but to be set up or down, at the discretion of these tutors, who had merely to scratch down a mark, and thus decide our fates. This foolery I felt I could not agree to.' 'I found here no scholars whatever. Some young men deficient in grace, were wearing out the elbows of their coats, in getting by heart some set lessons of some little text-books, and striving which should commit them the most perfectly to memory. This perfection lay in the point of a tutor's pencil, and was at last decided on by the votes of a band of professors, who loved wine and puddings better than literature or art, and whose chief merit lay in keeping their feet dry.'

Perhaps 'these be truths.' Certain it is, that the annexed passage partakes of the veritable. It is a 'picture in little' of the morning routine of a briefless lawyer; and the sitter has many a counterpart in this metropolis of Gotham:

'In the morning, you enter your office at half-past eight, read the paper till nine, and then, if you feel able, walk as far as the court-house. There you are provided with a seat by the sheriff, and cold water by the deputy-sheriff. You next stare at the Court, consisting of one or more judges, twelve jurymen, a criminal or civil case, four baize tables, and a lot of attorneys. You next begin to make motions, which consists in getting a case put off, or put on, as you happen to feel, and run your eye over the docket, which is kept at the clerk's table, in a ledger, for the accommodation of the county, and the clerk's family. If it is your case which comes on, you open your eyes wide, talk a great deal about nothing, and dine with the bar. Occasionally you will feel sleepy after dinner, but awake yourself by smoking a cigar, or driving into the country.'

Here is an extract which will be appreciated for its graceful diction, the love and observation of nature which it displays, and the pensive train of thought which its tone engenders:

'To-day has been pure golden sun-shine since morning; and how the day-god played with the trunks of the trees, as if the forest were one great harp! In the morning, as I sat among golden-rods, under the shade of a pine, where on every side these sunny flowers grew, it seemed as if the sunlight had become so thickly knotted and intertwined with the roots and stems of the plants and grasses, that it could not escape, but must remain and shine forever; yet the pine tree's shadow, at sunset and before, fell long across the place, and the gay light had fled, like the few bright days of life, which fly so rapid by. The old tell us we are young, and can know nothing of life; to me it seems I have lived centuries, out of which I can reckon on my fingers the days of pleasure, when my heart beat high. I fancy there is a race of men born to know only the loss of life by its joys; to live by single days, and to pass their time for the most part in shadowy vistas, where there is neither darkness nor light, but perpetual mist. I am one of these; and though I love nature; the river, the forest, the clouds, she is only a phantom, like myself, and passes slowly, an unexplained mystery, like my own consciousness, which shows through a want of perfect knowledge. I see myself, only as what I do not know, and others, as some reflection of this ignorance, an iceberg among other icebergs, slowly drifting from the frozen pole of birth to the frozen pole of death, through a sunny sea.'

Well pleased should we have been to accompany our observant and thoughtful essayist, when he fetched his 'Winter Walk.' Mark his delicate appreciation of the little accessories of the season. We thank him for awakening vivid glimpses of the past, that go strait to the fresh scenes of boyhood:

'There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill. It finally melts the great snow, and in January or July is only buried under a thicker or thinner covering. In the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the snow melts around every tree. This field of winter rye, which sprouted late in the fall, and now speedily dissolves the snow, is where the fire is very thinly covered. We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its bare stones shining in the[487] sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The steam which rises from swamps and pools, is as dear and domestic as that of our own kettle. What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day, when the meadow mice come out by the wall-sides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our back as we are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place. This subterranean fire has its altar in each man's breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.' * * * 'In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and merry, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning drifts increase the sense of comfort which the house affords, and in the coldest days we are content to sit over the hearth and see the sky through the chimney top, enjoying the quiet and serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening to the low of cattle in the street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long afternoon. No doubt a skilful physician could determine our health by observing how these simple and natural sounds affected us.'

We commend the following to those who seem to think that a thorough love of the comic or the burlesque argues an ill-regulated mind or a perverted taste. That there are such persons, the reader who has done us the honor to peruse our late confabulations with correspondents, will not need to be informed:

'A perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be an essential element in a fine character. Wherever the intellect is constructive, it will be found. We feel the absence of it as a defect in the noblest and most oracular soul. It insulates the man, cuts down all bridges between him and other men. The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, is a pledge of sanity, and is a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities into which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A man alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.'

In the subjoined, which we take from the 'Letter' of the Editor, already alluded to, may be seen one beneficial result of the 'hard times,' which, driving men out of cities and trade, forced them to take off their coats and go to work on the land, which has rewarded them not only with wheat, but with habits of labor:

'Speculation is no succedaneum for life. What we would know, we must do. As if any taste or imagination could take the place of fidelity! The old Duty is the old God. And we may come to this by the rudest teaching. A friend of ours went five years ago to Illinois to buy a farm for his son. Though there were crowds of emigrants in the roads, the country was open on both sides, and long intervals between hamlets and houses. Now after five years he has just been to visit the young farmer and see how he prospered, and reports that a miracle has been wrought. From Massachusetts to Illinois, the land is fenced in and builded over, almost like New-England itself, and the proofs of thrifty cultivation every where abound.'

There is much less of the new style of verbal affectations in the present than in preceding numbers of 'The Dial,' and it is just in this proportion the more readable and attractive. We see something indeed of 'externality.' 'reäction inward,' 'unitive ideas;' and certain compound terms, which are meant to be forcible, but are only foolish; such as 'flesh-meat' for meat, 'foot-tread' for tread, and other the like words; but they are scarcely worth mentioning; the infrequency of their occurrence being a sufficient proof of the decadence into which they are already falling.

'Memoirs of the Court of England.'—We have in three handsome volumes, from the press of Messrs. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, an accurate memoir of the Court of England, from the Revolution in 1668 to the death of George the Second. The work proceeds from the pen of John Henease Jesse, author of 'Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign of the Stuarts.' There are numerous and fruitful themes of instruction and warning in these volumes; lessons which have not been lost upon the world, and which are of especial interest to the citizens of a republic; aside from which, the details of the private history of some score of eminent persons, who left their impress on the eras in which they flourished, must needs have attraction for the general reader, who may only peruse them with an eye to lively entertainment. We observe, by the journals of the day, that the work is heartily welcomed and duly appreciated by the public.

[488]

THE DRAMA.

Park Theatre.—We congratulate the friends of the drama upon the bright auspices under which this establishment has commenced the present season. Those who have long predicted the downfall of things theatrical, and the utter extinction of the legitimate drama, find but little in the present aspect of affairs at this house to flatter their spirit of prophecy. So long as we continue upon the civilized side of barbarism, so long will a true taste for the drama remain with us. It is the natural food of an intellectual society, and as such will be cherished wherever that society exists; the vagaries of fashion on the one hand, and the railings of fanaticism on the other, to the contrary notwithstanding.

Mr. Wallack.—The engagement fulfilled by this gentleman, after an absence of some years, proved to his admirers that the vigor and vivacity of his acting have lost none of their former charms. In those personations which he has long since made his own, he displayed the same excellence which ever characterized his performance. To say that Mr. Wallack stands at the head of melo-dramatic actors, is not awarding him full praise. He is immeasurably beyond all rivalry in this branch of the art. Melo-dramatic performances by other artists bear about the same relation to the chaste acting of tragedy that the art of scene-painting in water-colors does to that other art which embraces alike the power of tracing upon canvass the most delicate as well as the most magnificent works of nature, in the bold and imperishable figures of a Michael Angelo or a Claude Lorraine. The outlines, the sketchy prominences, of the landscape are what the best of the melo-dramatic actors have delineated; but Wallack has gone a distance beyond them, and added a grace and a finish to the picture, of which his subjects were before thought incapable of receiving. And yet Mr. Wallack is no tragedian. With the high regard which we entertain for his talents, we have never seen them exerted in tragedy, without lamenting their sad misdirection. In the enviable station which he occupies as the first melo-dramatic actor of the age, fearless of rivalry, he should be satisfied, and consider the dignity of third-rate tragedian as entirely beneath his ambition.

Mr. Macready.—Sixteen years ago the American public were first gratified by the performance of this great tragedian—great even then; and those who remember the peculiar character of his style at that time, have recognized it again with all its beauties improved by long study and practice, and not entirely devoid of blemishes. Mr. Macready's acting presents the effect of great study; it shows the result of sound judgment, and bears witness to the absence of all feeling. Great as was Edmund Kean, and great as is the subject of this notice, in the same department of the drama, never were two artists, on or off the stage, more completely the antipodes of each other. Kean, all soul; reckless of art, and apparently despising even the most common and long-received rules and usages of the stage; rushed before his audience, embodying as he advanced the very soul of the character which he had put on with his dress; warming with it, feeling the sensations which he expressed; with

There was no study there; nothing farther than the mere committing to memory of the words of his part. He identified himself with the character, and for the time was that character, to all intents and purposes; entering into its sensations, and actually feeling its joys and its sorrows. And what are the effects of such acting? Let those whose tears have flowed at his bidding, answer! Kean did not create admiration; he awakened enthusiasm. Mr. Macready is so chaste and perfect, so artistical, to use a cant term, that admiration is the usual feeling which he creates. His acting is like a beautiful piece of mechanism, where every wheel and spring performs its perfect work. There is no jarring, no clog, to mar the exquisite regularity of its movements. But it is a piece of machinery, after all. It is man's work, to say the best of it. The power which Kean possessed was no more a merit to the man, as being the work of study, than the genius of Byron was a creation of his own. Nature made him an actor—a thing of feeling; and he could not shut within himself the rays of that divine influence. It could not be cribbed, narrowed down, or fashioned by study, but it shone forth in all its native effulgence—dazzling and unshaded. Therefore it is fairly maintained, that the high station which Mr. Macready occupies as the first tragedian of his time is more to his honor than would be the same position, if[489] gained for him by nature alone. The profession to which he belongs has reason to be proud of its head. He has done more to elevate the drama to its true position than any of his contemporaries, if John Kemble alone be excepted. We have observed during this engagement of Mr. Macready's many new and beautiful readings, many striking effects, and many bold points, which together with the unusual care and fitness in the 'dressing' of the stage, will form the subject of some future notice. We can foresee much benefit that is to grow out of his visit to the American stage. We can already perceive the good effects produced both upon the actors and the stage-manager by Mr. Macready's first engagement at the Park; and we sincerely hope that any suggestions which he may be induced to make, may be liberally and promptly acted upon.

C.

Apropos of the foregoing: Here is our friend the 'Mail-Robber,' with a most timely and apposite paper, in his

FIFTH POETICAL EPISTLE.

TO J. VANDENUOFF, ESQUIRE, OF COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE, LONDON.

T. W. P.

Mr. Placide, the universal favorite, who requires not a word of praise from any one who has ever seen him upon the stage, leaves us soon, we learn, for the South-west. As an actor and a gentleman, we commend him to the especial regards of our play-going readers, and editorial and personal[492] friends, in that meridian. Gentlemen, he is 'a trump!' Mr. Chippendale is cordially welcomed back to the Park. In his rôle, by no means a limited one, he is not second to any of his confréres. How admirably he personated the 'Intendant' in 'Werner!' It was a faultless performance, by common consent of his gratified auditors. The same may be said, and was said, indeed, and very unanimously, of his excellent representation of 'Col. Damas' in the 'Lady of Lyons.' Mr. Chippendale has been greatly missed, during his absence; and he 'can't be spared' again. We are glad of an opportunity to pay a deserved tribute to the talents of Mr. Wheatley. 'That first appeal which is to the eye' is most satisfactorily sustained by the manly person and fine features of this gentleman; and we know of no one in the profession whose improvement has been more marked. To our fancy, his performance of 'Ulrick,' in 'Werner,' was a study. The last scene won the most applause, perhaps; but the previous conception and execution of the actor, though less outwardly manifested, were certainly not less felicitous. As 'Icilius,' in 'Virginius,' also, Mr. Wheatley won golden opinions. Indeed, it seems quite certain, that with continued study and attention to the minutiæ of his characters, this young gentleman is destined to attain a high rank in his profession. Mr. Vache, the new Charleston acquisition, seems a very self-possessed, correct, and gentleman-like performer. All that we have seen him essay, has been well sustained. His success is no longer doubtful.

'American Theatre,' Bowery.—We have nothing but abundant success to chronicle of this spacious establishment. It has been crowded nightly, we are informed, to its utmost capacity, by admiring audiences, to witness the representation of Shakspeare's heroes and heroines by Mr. Hamblin, and that gifted actress, Mrs. Shaw. This fact sufficiently bespeaks the character of the personations of these two popular performers.

Mitchell's Olympic.—Full, every night, of wide-mouthed laughers, who go grinning homeward 'by the light of the moon' or the gas-lamps. What could we say more? The only thing necessary to add is, 'Go early, if you desire to enjoy with comfort the capital acting of Mitchell, in the amusing travestie of 'Macbeth,' the charming voice of Miss Taylor, or the clever personations of Walcott.'

The Chatham.—'E'yah! yah! yah!—e'look-o'-'ere!' James Crow, Esquire, has recently delighted his 'friends and fellow-citizens' at this commodious and well-appointed establishment, which has partaken, during the month, of the general prosperity of theatricals in the metropolis. Mr. Burton, a low comedian, formerly of Philadelphia, followed him in his round of characters, with satisfaction to his admirers; and 'at this present writing,' Yankee Hill is amusing crowded audiences with his unique representations of 'down-east' life and manners.

Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—It is many years since we first perused the thoughtful 'Vision of Mirza.' We have been pondering it again this wailing autumn evening; and as we read, we remembered how many companions, who went hand-in-hand with us through the valley of youth, had entered upon the bridge which spans the stream of time, and one after another disappeared in the ever-flowing tide below. Amidst the beating of the 'sorrowing rains' against the window-panes, and the fitful sighing of the night-wind, we thought of One who held with Nature an affectionate fellowship, and who loved this melancholy season as a poet only could love it; of one who stepped upon that bridge at the same moment with ourselves, but who, while yet in the first stages of his journey, growing weary and faint with the toil and strife, reached with gradually-faltering pace one of the concealed pit-falls, and was 'lost for ever to time;' leaving his companion alone, to press on toward the dark cloud which ever broods over the onward distance. Strange power of memory!

Something there is in the autumn season which reaches back into those recesses of the spirit, where lie the sources whence well out the bitter or the sweet waters; recollections of the hopes, the fears, the sorrows and the happinesses, of our incomprehensible being! Enter with us,[493] reader, upon Mirza's Bridge, and listen to the teachings of this matchless allegory of the mysterious shepherd:

'Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, 'and tell me what thou seest.' 'I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.' 'The valley that thou seest,' said he, 'is the Vale of Misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of Eternity.' 'What is the reason,' said I, 'that the tide and sea rise out of a thick mist at one end, and again lose themselves in a thick mist at the other?' 'What thou seest,' said he, 'is that portion of eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine now,' said he, 'this sea that is thus bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.' 'I see a bridge,' said I, 'standing in the midst of the tide.' 'The bridge thou seest,' said he, 'is Human Life; consider it attentively.' Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it consisted of three-score and ten arches, which, added to those that were entire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. 'But tell me farther,' said he, 'what discoverest thou on it?' 'I see multitudes of people passing over it,' said I, 'and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.' As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and upon farther examination, I perceived that there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon but they fell through them into the tide, and immediately disappeared. These hidden pit-falls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner toward the middle, but multiplied and lay close together toward the end of the arches that were entire. There were indeed some persons, but then their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through, one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.

'I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at every thing that stood by, to save themselves. Some were looking toward the heavens, in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes, and danced before them, but often, when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank. In this confusion of objects I observed some with cimetars in their hands, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped, had they not been thus forced upon them.'

The misty expanse which was spanned by this bridge opened at length, it will be remembered, at the farther end; where, thronging the Islands of the Blessed, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and 'interwoven with shining seas that ran among them,' were seen 'innumerous persons, dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers;' and there was a confused harmony of singing-birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. 'Gladness,' exclaims the rapt dreamer, 'grew in me, upon the discovery of so delightful a scene! I longed for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats!' But there was no passage to them, except through the gates of death, that were opening every moment upon the bridge. Happy are they who can say, in the fullness of faith and hope, 'Come the hour of reünion with the loved and lost on earth! and the passionate yearnings of affection shall bear us to that blessed land! Come death to this body!—this burthened, tempted, frail, failing, dying body!—and to the soul, come freedom, light, and joy unceasing!—come the immortal life!' * * * The 'Tale' of our Zanesville (Ohio) friend is too long for our pages. It is well written, however; and especially the third chapter, which describes the progress of a Yankee pedler through the 'Buckeye State,' thirty-five years ago. But for the injunction of the writer, we should have ventured to appropriate this chapter entire. The ''cute trick' upon the honest farmer was capital, and a fair quid pro quo. It was not better, however, than the following, which is equally authentic. A gentleman from New-York, who had been in Boston for the purpose of collecting some moneys due him in that city, was about returning, when he found that one bill of a hundred dollars had been overlooked. His landlord, who knew the debtor, thought it 'a doubtful case;' but added, that if it was collectable at all, a tall raw-boned Yankee, then dunning a lodger in another part of the room, would 'annoy it out of the man.' Calling him up, therefore, he introduced him to the creditor, who showed him the account. 'Wal, 'Squire, 'tan't much use tryin', I guess. I know that critter. You might as well try to squeeze ile out o' Bunker-Hill monument, as to c'lect a debt o' him. But any how, 'Squire, what'll you give, s'posin' I do try?' 'Well, Sir, the bill is one hundred dollars. I'll give you—yes, I'll give you half, if you can collect it.' ''Greed!' replied the collector; 'there's no harm in tryin', any way.' Some weeks after, the creditor chanced to be in Boston, and in walking up Tremont-street, encountered his enterprising friend: 'Look o' here!' said he,[494] ''Squire, I had considerable luck with that bill o' your'n. You see, I stuck to him like a dog to a root, but for the first week or so 't wan't no use—not a bit. If he was home, he was 'short;' if he wasn't home, I couldn't get no satisfaction. By and by, says I, after goin' sixteen times, 'I'll fix you!' says I; so I sot down on the door-step and sot all day, and part o' the evenin'; and I begun airly next day; but about ten o'clock, he g'in in. He paid me my half, an' I 'gin him up the note!' * * * We invite the attention of our readers to the following spirited lines. We shall be glad to hear again from the writer, when he returns to his 'several places of abode.' He tells us that his physician, 'after giving him a little of every thing in his shop, and doubly jeopardizing his life by a consultation, has advised a change of air.' We shall less regret his temporary indisposition, if we can be made the recipient of his pleasant letters from the Southern Springs. In the stanzas annexed, not unmixed with one or two infelicities, are several fine pictures. The chant pealing from the choir of the North Winds; the fierce armies of the pole issuing from their battlements of snow to ravage the fair fields of the temperate regions; the hail-stones beating the march of Winter on the hollow trees; the snow falling silently in the garden of the dead; all these are poetical conceptions, graphically expressed:

WINTER.
BY THE SHEPHERD OF SHARONDALE, VALLEY OF VIRGINIA.

The 'Tribune' daily journal finds the October number of the Knickerbocker 'well filled with readable and pleasant papers, upon a gratifying variety of topics;' its 'Literary Notices extended and interesting;' and 'its Editor's Table admirably filled, as usual, with whatever is light, graceful, and pleasing.' We hold ourselves bound to be duly grateful for praise so much beyond our deserts; but we cannot permit the young associate-editor of that print, howsoever prompted, to misrepresent us, as he has done, in the notice from which we derive the encomiastic tributes we have quoted. We are accused of 'going out of our way' to attack the writings and the fame (Heaven save the mark!) of the author of 'Puffer Hopkins;' and of being actuated in this by a spirit of malevolence and personal pique. We choose, for the nonce, to occupy space which we could much better employ, in opposing a point-blank denial to this charge. Such a course is not[495] the wont of the Knickerbocker; a fact no better known to our readers themselves than to the absent senior editor of the 'Tribune,' with whom for ten years and upward we have walked hand-in-hand in the support and encouragement of such native literature as was worthy of the name. Were this Magazine accustomed to be swayed in its judgments by private pique, its adverse opinions would need no corrective; its 'sneers' would be impotent; its 'satire' unavailing. No; our sin consists in exposing, without fear, favor, or hope of reward, the literary pretensions of one who has no claim to be regarded as an 'American author;' who has foisted upon the community such works as we have elsewhere considered; and whose efforts to establish a literary reputation are of a kind to heighten rather than to lessen the effect of his uniform failures. We are gravely told, that this writer has 'just conceptions of what an American literature ought to be; of the mission of the American writer,' and so forth. We have had and have nothing to say of his 'conceptions' of what our literature should be, nor of his ideas of literary 'missions;' but we have had something to say of his performances, and of the manner in which they have been presented to and received by the public; and for this reason, and this alone, are we accused of being actuated by private prejudice. But so it has always been. 'Tell these small-beer littérateurs,' says Christopher North, 'that they are calves, and sucking calves too, and they low against you with voices corroborative of the truth they deny.' We should like to know whether all who hold our own opinions touching 'Puffer Hopkins' and the other 'writings' of its author are also actuated by 'personal pique.' If so, there is a goodly number of us! ''Fore Heaven,' as Dogberry says, 'we are all in a case;' for we can truly say, that we never heard an individual speak of these productions, who did not agree with us entirely in the estimate we had formed of them. 'Personal pique!' Was it this which led the kindly 'Boston Post' to pronounce 'Puffer Hopkins' 'about as flat an affair as it ever tried to wade through?' and the 'Poem on Man' a 'mere pile of words,' in which even poetical thoughts were 'completely spoiled by verbiage?' Was it this which prompted our own lively 'Mercury' to say that Mr. Mathews had 'no more humor than a crying crocodile,' and that his short-lived Arcturus 'died of a lingering 'Puffer Hopkins?'' Was it this which caused a monthly metropolitan contemporary to declare, that his writings were 'characterized by an air of pretension, and an eternal succession of futile attempts at humor, which at once disposed the reader to dislike him and his works?' Was it 'malevolence' which prompted the publishers of 'Behemoth,' (over whom the writer had 'come the evil eye,') when they saw his proposals for a 'new edition,' to advertise their's—'four years old and complete'—at half the money? Was it 'personal pique' which caused the house whose name appears as publishers on the title-page of his last work, to complain that it had previously been used by him without their consent, and to object to its being again employed?—on the ground, too, that they did not desire their names to appear upon any of his productions? Was it 'malevolence' which suggested a new title-page, at the publisher's expense, from which their names might be omitted? As well might 'the disaffected' upon whom a humorous 'work' of the author had been inflicted abroad, be accused of acting from 'personal pique' in deciding that for them at least 'one such fun, it was enough!' Æsop is dead, but his frog is still extant; and if we were not at the end of our tether, we could 'illustrate this position' to the satisfaction of every body save Mr. Mathews himself. As it is, we take our leave of him, with no fear that he will write less creditably, and no hope that he will print less frequently, than heretofore; for such is his cacoëthes scribendi, that we verily believe he would be an author, if he were the only reader in the world. Indeed, we even hear of another edition of his writings, 'at the risk of the owner,' to be sent forth from his stereotype-plates, by our friends the Harpers! We had intended a word or two touching Mr. Mathews's position in the 'Copy-right Club'—for we hear there are two sides to that matter—but we wish well to a cause of which this Magazine was the earliest, and has been a constant advocate, and to Mr. Mathews's efforts in it; and if he is to prepare an address to the public, we earnestly hope that it may be clear, simple, and direct, as becomes the plain truths it should present; and that 'giants, elephants, 'tiger-mothers,' and curricles, angels, frigates, baronial castles, and fish-ponds,' will be carefully excluded from its arguments and its expostulations. By the by: this reminds us that we have an error to correct, alike unintentional and immaterial. It was at the Society Library, not the Tabernacle, that Mr. Mathews's great lecture on copy-right was delivered. On this point, the following passage from an editorial paragraph in the 'New World' may be deemed pertinent by many readers, and impertinent, perhaps, by one or two: 'The 'Tribune' accuses the Knickerbocker of mistaking the Tabernacle for the Society Library, as the place where Mr. Mathews delivered his lecture on copy-right to a beggarly account of empty benches, last winter, after placarding the town with the fact that 'the author of 'Puffer Hopkins' was to be heard and seen at that place. But is the fact[496] altered by this trifling error? Was there not a 'capacious edifice' almost empty, and tickets numbered as high as twelve hundred, and not fifty persons in the room?—and half of those 'dead heads?'—as dead as the lecturer's? If this is denied, it can easily be proved.' * * * We are obliged for the kind wishes and intentions of our friend and correspondent 'F.;' but he must allow us to say, that his 'Sketch of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell' embodies many anecdotes of that learned and eccentric person, which are already familiar to the public. The story of the semi-black man is 'as old as the hills.' The following, however, which we segregate, is quite new, at least to us: 'Jarvis, celebrated no less as an artist than as a pleasant social companion, walking one sultry summer morning with a friend down Murray-street, encountered the Doctor, with a pound of fresh butter upon a cabbage-leaf. 'I'll lay you a small wager,' said he to his companion, 'that I'll cross over on the sunny side, and engage the doctor in conversation, until his butter has melted completely away!' No sooner said than done. Jarvis entertained him with inquiries upon abstruse themes, which Dr. Mitchell took great delight in answering in detail, as well as the objections which Jarvis occasionally urged against the correctness of his conclusions. Meanwhile, the butter dripped slowly away upon the walk, until it was utterly wasted. The waggish painter then took leave of the Doctor, who now for the first time glanced at his cabbage-leaf, exclaiming: 'You've almost made me forget my errand, Jarvis; I started to get some fresh butter from Washington-market!' * * * We shall venture to hope that in declining the 'Stanzas to my Boy in Heaven' we shall give no pain to the bereaved author. The feeling of the lines is itself eloquent poetry; but their execution is in certain portions marked by deficiences in rythm and melody. Will the writer permit another to express for her the very emotions which she evidently depicts with her 'heart swelling continually to her eyes?'

The 'Lines to Niagara Falls' are very far from being worth double-postage from Buffalo. They are termed 'descriptive;' but they afford about as much of an idea of the Great Cataract as the 'magnificent model' of the Falls which was 'got up at an enormous expense' at the American Museum last winter. That was a sublime spectacle! We saw it, it is true, under very favorable circumstances. The whole hogshead of water had just been 'let on,' and the wheezing machine that represented the 'sound of many waters' was in excellent wind. Indeed, so abundant was the supply of cataract, (as we were afterward informed,) that a portion of the American fall, to the amount of several quarts, leaked down into the barber's-shop below. A lisping young lady present was quite carried away with the exhibition. Some one inquired if she had ever seen 'the real falls, the great original?' She had not, she said, 'but she had heard them very highly thpoken of!' They are clever, certainly; and if their real friends would occasionally 'say a good word for them,' they would doubtless soon become very 'popular!' * * * We were struck (and so we recorded it at the time) with the felicitous remarks of Mr. Consul Grattan, on 'Saint Patrick's Day in the' evening. He said he could not help wondering sometimes how the dear old country looked in her new temperance dress; remembering as he did how becoming to her was the flush of conviviality and good fellowship. 'When I picture to myself,' said he, 'the Irishman of the present day seeking for his inspiration at the handle of a pump, I cannot help thinking of the Irishman I once knew, who couldn't bear cold water at all, unless the half of it was whisky; without which they considered it as a very depreciated currency; a sort of liquid skin-plaster, in comparison with the healthful circulating medium of grog and punch.' This is both lively and witty; and we do not wish to[497] derogate from either quality; but if the reader will permit us, we will ask him to glance at the following passage from Charles Lamb's 'Confessions of a Drunkard:'

'The waters have gone over me. But out of the black depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth to whom the flavor of his first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life, or the entering upon some newly-discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will; to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruin; could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's repetition of the folly; could he feel the body of the death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and feebler outcry to be delivered; it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth in all the pride of its mantling temptation; to make him clasp his teeth,

——'and not undo 'em
To suffer WET DAMNATION to run through 'em.'

'Oh! if a wish could transport me back to those days of youth, when a draught from the next clear spring could slake the heats which summer suns and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood, how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the drink of children, and of child-like holy hermit! In my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment purling over my burning tongue. But my waking stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence, only makes me sick and faint.'

How many thousands in Great Britain, whose experience is here described as with a pencil of light, has Father Matthew rescued from 'slippery places,' and placed once more within the charmed circle of sobriety and virtue! * * * The grammatical blunder recorded by 'S. T.,' and 'suggested by the sixth claw of the constitution,' reminds us of a clever anecdote which we derive from Mr. Robert Tyler. The old negro who receives and ushers visitors at the President's mansion is always very precise in his announcements. On one occasion a gentleman named Foot, with a daughter on each arm, was shown into the drawing-room with this introduction: 'Mr. Foot and the two Miss Feet!" * * * 'Cry you mercy!' gentlemen of the long robe and of the bar; we have neither 'abused the law' nor yet 'the lawyers,' though by your wincing you would seem to say so; at least some score of law-students would, if we may judge from the communications which have thickened upon us since our last. Saving the sordid and obscure tricksters of abused law; such, for example, as may be seen any day in the week, holding their sanhedrim of babble around or within the miscalled 'Halls of Justice;' and the undignified personal bickerings of the members of the bar; nothing of a local character, in a legal point of view, deserves the whip and the branding-iron. The latter matter, too, is generally understood, we believe, by the public. A pair of lawyers, like a pair of legs, may thoroughly bespatter each other, and yet remain the best of friends and brothers. Our allusion to courts implied no reflection upon Judges. We hold in proper respect and reverence these sacred depositories of the people's rights. 'The criminal, and the judge who is to award his punishment, form a solemn sight. They are both men; both the 'children of an Universal Father, and sons of immortality;' the one so sunken in his state as to be disowned by man; the other as far removed by excellence from the majority of mankind.' No function can be more honorable, more sacred, or more beneficial, than that of an upright judge. With his own passions and prejudices subdued; attentive to the principles of justice by which alone the happiness of the world can be promoted, and by the rectitude of his decisions affording precedent and example to future generations; he presents a character that must command the reverence and love of the human race. * * * The 'London Charivarri,' or 'Punch,' maintains its repute—for which it is partly indebted to the high indorsement of the 'Quarterly Review,' 'Examiner,' 'Spectator,' etc.,—undiminished. It really overflows with genuine humor, not unmixed, certainly, with many failures. We condense from it a few items of metropolitan intelligence, commencing with an office-seeker's 'begging letter' to Lord Lyndhurst: 'My Lord: I am an Irishman, in the direst distress. To say that I am an Irishman, is I know a passport to the innermost recesses of your soul. I want something of about three hundred pounds per annum; I will not refuse four hundred. At present, however, I am destitute, and terribly out of sorts. You will have some idea of my condition, when I tell you that I have not tasted food these six weeks, and that I am so disastrously off for clothing, that the elbows of my shirt are hanging out of the knees of my breeches! P. S. Don't mind the hole in the bearer's trowsers; he is trustworthy.' To this missive the 'noble lord' replied: 'Sir: That you are an Irishman, is a sufficient passport to my fire-side, my purse, my heart. Come; never mind the shirt. With or without that conventional ornament, you will be equally well received by your devoted Lyndhurst.' The writer 'went very often to the house of his lordship, but as[498] often as he went, just so often was his lordship not at home!' Curious, wasn't it? The plan of the 'Joke Loan Society' reminds us of Sanderson's joke-company for the Opera-Comique in Paris, several members of which, with due economy, managed to live for an entire quarter upon the 'eighth of a joke' which they had furnished to the management! 'The object of the institution is, to supply those with jokes who may be temporarily distressed for the want of them. The directors invite the attention of barristers to a very extensive stock of legal jokes, applicable to every occasion. The society has also purchased the entire stock of a retired punster, at a rate so low that the jokes—among which are a few that have never been used—can be let out on very moderate terms. Damaged jokes repaired, and old ones taken in exchange. Dramatic authors supplied on easy terms, and a liberal allowance on taking a quantity. Puns prepared at an hour's notice for large or small parties!' Under the 'Infantry Intelligence' head we find the following: 'The Twelfth Light Pop-guns acquitted themselves very creditably, and discharged several rounds of pellets with great effect and precision. The First Life Squirts also highly distinguished themselves, and kept up a smart fire of ditch-water for upward of a quarter of an hour; and the Hop-Scotch Grays went through their evolutions in admirable order.' A 'commercial problem' must close our excerpts: 'How can a junior partner be taken into a house over the senior partner's head? By the senior partner sitting in the shop, and the junior partner being taken in at the first-floor window!' * * * The eulogy entitled 'Mr. Webster's Noble Speech at Rochester' is from the pen of an Englishman, or we have for the first time in our life mistaken the 'hand-write' of John Bull, Esq. The spirit of the paper is not in the main unjust to this country; yet it touches with severity upon those culprit States of our Republic, that abroad are considered remarkable for their 'swaggering beginnings that could not be carried through; grand enterprises begun dashingly, and ending in shabby compromises or downright ruin;' and for their treasuries, filled with evidences of 'futile expectations, fatal deficit, wind, and debts.' Cruel words, certes; but are they wholly groundless? 'Guess not!' But Sir Englishman, pr'ithee, don't despond—don't be scared! Look at the progress of our western States, as evinced in the growth of their towns. Louisville, in three years, has gained eight thousand additional inhabitants; Saint Louis twelve thousand; Pittsburgh nearly the same amount; Cincinnati has erected within that period nearly three thousand houses, and gained seventeen thousand inhabitants. Four western cities have added to them nearly fifty thousand inhabitants in three years; and the adjacent country has kept pace with the towns. And the like progress is visible elsewhere. Truly, this is 'a great country!'

We sometimes wish that we had been born fifty years later than it pleased Providence to send us into the world, that we might behold the ever-increasing glory of our native land. * * * The reader will be struck, we think, with the paper upon 'Mind in Animals,' elsewhere in the present number. The writer 'has firm faith in every conclusion he has drawn. He has considered the ultimate tendencies of his doctrine in many different points; and the result is, an additional confidence in the correctness of his conviction, that one principle of intelligence is bestowed upon all created beings; modified, like their physical structure, to adapt them to different spheres.' Time is an abstract term; and as touching the faculty of abstraction in animals, the writer has a curious calendar which he kept of the time of the crowing of the roosters in his neighborhood. Having observed that they gave their midnight signal at about the same hour for several nights in succession, the following record was preserved:

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As a new style of crow-nometer, this is a curiosity; but we cannot perceive that it proves any thing very conclusively. If it were in our power, however, to watch the operations of animals as carefully as our own, one could very soon place the whole question above controversy. * * * Thackeray, the exceedingly entertaining author of 'The Yellowplush Correspondence,' has in a late number of 'Frazer's Magazine' some judicious advice in relation to the modus operandi of novel-reading. 'Always look,' says he, 'at the end of a romance to see what becomes of the personages before you venture upon the whole work, and become interested in the characters described in it. Why interest one's self in a personage whom one knows must at the end of the second volume die a miserable death? What is the use of making one's self unhappy needlessly, watching the symptoms of Leonora, pale, pious, pulmonary, and crossed in love, as they manifest themselves, or tracing Antonio to his inevitable assassination? No: it is much better to look at the end of a novel; and when I read: 'There is a fresh green mound in the church-yard of B——, and a humble stone, on which is inscribed the name of Anna-Maria,' or a sentence to that effect, I shut the book at once, declining to agitate my feelings needlessly. If you had the gift of prophecy, and people proposed to introduce you to a man who you knew would borrow money of you, or would be inevitably hanged, or would subject you to some other annoyance, would you not decline the proposed introduction? So with novels. The book of fate of the heroes and heroines is to be found at the end of the second volume: one has but to turn to it to know whether one shall make their acquaintance or not. I heartily pardon the man who brought Cordelia to life. I would have the stomach-pump brought for Romeo at the fifth act; for Mrs. Macbeth I am not in the least sorry; but as for the General, I would have him destroy that swaggering Macduff, or if not, cut him in pieces, disarm him, pink him, certainly; and then I would have Mrs. Macduff and all her little ones come in from the slips, stating that the account of their murder was a shameful fabrication of the newspapers, and that they were all of them perfectly well and hearty.' * * * It has pleased some late English writer to laud the conduct of Sir Hudson Lowe, at Saint Helena, while Napoleon was under his 'treatment,' and as Byron says, 'stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.' The least said on that point, the better. 'He was England's greatest enemy, and mine, but I forgive him!' said that notorious military martinet, when informed that his renowned captive was no more. This is rather rich; and almost justifies the remark of Napoleon, in exhibiting to an English visitor, in a copy of Æsop's Fables (which Sir Hudson had sent him, among other English books) the fable of the sick lion, which, after submitting with fortitude to the insults of the many animals who came to exult over his fallen greatness, at length received a kick in the face from an ass. 'I could have borne every thing but this!' said Napoleon; and pointing to the wood-cut, he added: 'It is me and your governor!' A friend of ours once informed us, that at a table d'hôte at which he was seated in a German inn, soon after Bonaparte's death, Sir Hudson Lowe was announced; when nearly every person arose from the table, and 'left him alone in his glory.' * * * It is somewhat remarkable that so little attention is paid to the clearness of expression. Every body remembers the geographer who, in describing ancient Albany, represented it as having 'two thousand houses, and ten thousand inhabitants, all standing with their gable-ends to the street!' A similar error was made not long since by a western journalist, who in publishing a clever poem, remarked that it 'was written by an esteemed friend, who had lain in the grave many years, merely for his own amusement!' A scarcely less ludicrous misstatement occurred very lately in one of our popular daily journals. In describing the explosion of a brig, near the Narrows, and certain accidents which resulted from the disaster, the editor, among other items, had the ensuing: 'The only passengers were T. B. Nathan, who owned three thousand dollars' worth of the cargo, and the captain's wife!' * * * Bryant, our most eminent American poet, has entirely 'satisfied the sentiment' of our correspondent 'Senex's' stanzas on 'Old Age,' in his fine lines commencing, 'Lament who will, with fruitless tears,' etc. A modern English poet, too, has recently reëxhausted the theme, in an extended string of six-line verses, from which the subjoined are derived:

We should be bound to dissent from the conclusions of 'T. R.' on the Hudson, were we to give his paper a place (which we shall do, with his permission,) in the Knickerbocker. His pecuniary conclusions are right, no doubt; but his natural deductions are, in our poor judgment, decidedly wrong. 'Oh! mad world!' exclaims one who knows it well; 'oh! incomprehensible, blind[500] world! Look at the rich! In what are they happy? In what do they excel the poor? Not in their greater store of wealth, which is but a source of vice, disease, and death; but in a little superiority of knowledge; a trifling advance toward truth.' * * * We do not know who drew the following 'picture in little' of fashion's changes, (changes alike of person and apparel,) but to our mind it has the 'veritable touch and tint:' 'There is something awful in the bed-room of a respectable old couple, of sixty-five. Think of the old feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats, pomatum-pots, spencers, white satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid, boneless stays, tied up in faded riband, the dusky fans, the forty-years' old baby-linen; Frederick's first little breeches, and a newspaper containing the account of his distinguishing himself in the field; all these lie somewhere damp and squeezed down into glum old presses and wardrobes.' * * * We have observed going the rounds of the press a paragraph which speaks of 'excitements' of all kinds as prejudicial to longevity; and citing, among other examples, the constant whirl of the stage, as a reason why theatrical persons are generally so short-lived. But the premises in this particular instance are wrong. As a class, actors attain to more than common longevity. Call to mind those who in our own era have nourished in England and in this country, in proof of the correctness of this position. And it was thus in a previous age. Look at Macklin. He performed the part of 'Sir Pertinax MacSychophant' in his own Comedy of 'The Man of the World,' consisting of thirty-six 'lengths' or nearly sixteen hundred lines, including 'cues,' with a vigor and spirit that astonished every beholder, when he was in his one hundredth year! How old was Garrick when he was seen for the last time as Macbeth, marching at the head of his troops (in a modern court-suit, and a well-powdered peruke!) across the blasted heath? We do not exactly remember his age, but he was 'no chicken.' * * * There is great beauty as well as truth in the annexed brief synopsis of the characteristics of the author of 'The Spectator.' Addison, says the writer, seemed at the same moment to be taken by the hand by Pathos and by Wit, while Fiction enrobed him with her own beautiful garments which Truth confined with her cestus, and Imagination put her crown upon his head, and Religion and all her band of Virtues beckoned him along the path to immortality, both in the life of the genius and the life of the soul. All the lineaments of beauty wake into splendor in his prose. It is in his essays that his muse beams out upon the reader, and calls forth all the sleeping wonders of her face. His true tragic energy is exhibited in his earnest panegyric of virtue; his true comedy is contained in the history of Sir Roger de Coverly, and his true fancy in the 'Vision of Mirza.' He was an essayist, a tale-writer, a traveller, a critic. He touched every subject, and adorned every subject that he touched.' Do we seek for the opinions of a man of letters upon the aspect and the antiquities of the most famous country in Europe? We have his 'Remarks on Italy.' Are we fond of examining the aids which history derives from some of the obscurer stores of antiquity? We can turn to his 'Dialogues on Medals.' Are we charmed with the stateliness of Eastern fiction and the melancholy grandeur of Eastern allegory? We find it in all the allegories and visions of this charming writer. Or do we seek to be withdrawn from the cares of our maturer life into the thoughtless sports and pleasures of our youth? Who so good a guide as Addison, in those papers which unlock all the gentler and purer emotions of the heart? * * * Among the pleasant papers of the late Robert C. Sands, which we intended to have included in our late series of his 'Early and Unpublished Writings,' was the following extract from a burlesque imitation of the literary-antiquarian 'researches,' so common some years ago. The poem was 'edited' by a celebrated cook in London, and was 'intituled 'Kynge Arthour, his Puden.' It purported to have been derived from the MS. which 'contained the original Welsh, as well as the version.' It throws great light on the gastrology of the olden time:

This really seems somewhat common-place, just at this period; but twenty-five years ago it was a 'gem of one of the old English school of metrical writers!' * * * With perhaps as strong sympathies in behalf of the great philanthropic moments of the age as most of our readers possess, we are nevertheless sometimes inclined to wish that the liberal patrons of the great benevolent societies could now and then have a glance behind the curtains at the chief actors there. In many of these institutions true Christian principle is doubtless paramount, and the managers men of exalted[501] piety and worth; but there are others of them which, while the names of good men are paraded upon the 'Boards' to inspire confidence, are really directed by a set of individuals who would have done honor to the Spanish Inquisition in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Some facts have recently come to our knowledge in regard to the doings of the directors of a soi-disant charitable institution, which operates in this city and State for the ostensible benefit of a transatlantic colony, which, were they known to the public, as without doubt they soon will be, would pretty effectually set the seal of condemnation upon all their efforts toward collecting moneys from the benevolent, for many years to come. A friend and correspondent of ours, whose character stands above reproach, fell by chance into the hands of some half a dozen of these directors, who, among a body of thirty for the most part honorable men, usually form the quorums and do the business; and the treatment he received (these same half-a-dozen sheltering themselves the while under the sanctity of their religious body) would have disgraced a band of King Philip's warriors in the old Pequot war. We are no Abolitionists, technically so called, as our readers well know; nor do we take sides with either of the two great societies whose professed object is the benefit of the colored race; so that we cannot be charged with speaking from prejudice. But we do go for justice, for truth, for fair-dealing, and Christian principle; and when any body of men, whatever may be their standing or professions, outrage these; and worse than all, when they commit this outrage under the garb of pharisaical sanctity, we know of no reason why they should be screened from public rebuke. * * * Some kind-hearted and affectionate female correspondent, an integral portion of the girlery of New-York, on the strength of some remarks in our last upon the universality of the tender passion, has sent us a love-tale, with this motto:

Our fair correspondent has exalted the attractions of her heroine 'to a degree,' as the English cockney novelists have it: 'Every look of her beaming eyes penetrated to the heart; every motion of her moist coral lips gave ecstasy; and every variation of her features discovered new and ineffable beauties!' Good 'eavens!—how 'Theodore' must have felt, as he 'gradually recovered from the hurt of his fall,' (was his 'limb' amputated?) and found that angel 'lifting his head from his pillow, and touching his eye-lids with awakening light!' * * * Thanks to the kind 'Incognita,' to whom we are indebted for a beautiful worsted butterfly, destined to a 'literaneous' sort of destiny! Verily, it is a beautiful fabric; so vivid and life-like in its brilliant colors, that it seems, while hanging by the thin ear of our iron gray-hound, as if about to rise and float a living blossom of the air. How deftly the Ettrick Shepherd ('the d—d Hogg!' as Ballantyne called him,) has limned its counterpart: 'Perhaps a bit bonny butterfly is resting wi' folded wings on a gowan, not a yard from your cheek; and now, awakening out of a summer-dream, floats away in its wavering beauty; but as if unwilling to leave the place of its mid-day sleep, comin' back and back, and round and round, on this side and that side, and settling in its capricious happiness to fasten again on some brighter floweret, till the same breath o' wind that lifts up your hair sae refreshingly catches the airy voyager, and wafts her away into some other nook of her ephemeral paradise!' Answer us, all ye that ever saw a summer butterfly in the country, is not that a perfect picture? * * * We have a prospectus of a new series of the 'New Mirror,' which can now be obtained in complete sets, weekly, or in monthly parts, 'with four steel-plates, and sixty-four pages of reading matter.' When we add, that the Mirror has many of its old corps of writers, with several new ones, and that General Morris and N. P. Willis are also diligently laboring at the oars, we have said all that is necessary, to indicate the claims of the work. Success to ye, gentlemen! By the by: the first number of the new series had a full-length portrait, by the Johnston, of the eminent and deeply-lamented painter-poet, Washington Allston. If it is at all like the original, we can well believe the statement of an indignant writer in the 'Boston Post,' who avers that 'the engraving from Brackett's beautiful bust of Mr. Allston, in the last 'Democratic Review,' bears no resemblance whatever to the bust itself, and might as well be called a likeness of one of the numerous John Smiths, as a portrait of the great artist.' Speaking of likenesses: we would venture to ask, what is the thing at the end of the right arm of a figure in one of the Philadelphia 'pictorial' monthlys intended to represent? Is it a hand, (no, that it isn't!) or the end of a tri-pronged beet or radish? It is 'a copy' from the end of some diverse-forked vegetable, that is quite clear. * * * It is a very interesting work, the History of Elizabeth[502] of England, recently published by Messrs. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia. Proud, powerful, and haughty as that imperial potentate finally became, her infancy was distinguished by the want of even comfortable clothing. An uncommon intellect she certainly possessed, and she had her wrongs, no doubt; but who can think of her without at once reverting to poor Mary of Scotland? After an imprisonment of nineteen years, that unhappy Queen was left alone, without counsel and without friends; betrayed by those in whom she had trusted, and confronted by the representatives of the power and majesty of England. 'But she evinced in the last sad scene of her mournful life the spirit of the daughter of a long line of kings, and exposed to the wondering world the spectacle of a helpless woman, enfeebled by long confinement, 'gray in her prime,' and broken down by sickness and sorrow, contending single-handed against the sovereign of a mighty realm, who sought her blood, and had predetermined her death.' * * * Our entertaining correspondent, the 'American Antiquary,' has given elsewhere some account of the stalwart citizens of a portion of New-Hampshire. They are 'good men,' no doubt, and 'honest as the skin atween their brows;' but 'where two men ride a horse, one must go before.' Our friend should see a specimen or two of our western and southwestern noblemen of nature. We should like to place his hand in that of Albert Pike, for example, the Arkansas poet, politician, and lawyer. His first impression would be, that in his Blackwood 'Hymn to the Gods' he had been lauding his own kith and kin. We consider it a great pleasure to have encountered so fine an illustration of the 'mens sana incorpore sano.' Having seen him once, one could not soon forget him. We should know him now, if we were to 'come across his hide in a tan-yard!' * * * Our Salem (Mass.) friend, who complains that we 'are leagued with the Quakers against the memory of the pious Puritans,' is 'hereby respectfully invited to attend' to the following hit at old Cotton Mather and his fellow-persecutors of that era, from the pen of a true 'Son of New-England:' 'We can laugh now at the Doctor and his demons: but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth, and his life from his old palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a whole community priest-ridden and spectre-smitten; gasping in the sick dream of a spiritual night-mare, and given over to believe a lie. We may laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible, but we must also pity and shudder. God be thanked that the delusion has measurably vanished; and they who confronted that delusion in its own age, disenchanting with strong, clear sense, and sharp ridicule, their spell-bound generation, deserve high honors as the benefactors of their race. They were indeed branded through life as infidels and 'damnable Sadducees,' by a corrupt priesthood, who ministered to a credulity which could be so well turned to their advantage; but the truth which they uttered lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a divine commission and God-speed.' * * * To 'X. L.' of Hudson we say, 'By no means!' He is another 'rusty, fusty, musty old bachelor,' who lacks that 'company' which Misery is said to love. 'If love,' he commences, 'were not beneath a man, he couldn't 'fall into it,' as he is so often said to do. Borrowed, dear Sir, 'to begin with!' Learn wisdom of one of your aged fraternity, whom we have the pleasure to know, who was married within a twelvemonth, in the fiftieth year of his age. He has lately been heard to observe: 'If I had known as much about matrimony twelve years ago as I do now, I should just as lieve have been married then as not!' * * * Wherever you are, reader, if you have an opportunity to see Macready in Byron's 'Werner,' fail not to enjoy that rich intellectual repast. It is a matchless piece of acting. A friend of ours, whose experience in dramatic excellence embraces all the great standards usually referred to, tells us that Edmund Kean's 'Othello,' John Kemble's 'Coriolanus,' Talma's 'Britanicus,' and Macready's 'Werner,' in their several styles of merit, are the most admirable performances he ever beheld. * * * A correspondent inquires if there is 'any more of such charming scenes' as the one we quoted from the 'Mysteries of Paris,' in our last number. 'It was very beautiful,' she adds. Yes; there is an account of a joyous country excursion made by Rodolphe and 'Fleur-de-Marie' in the Autumn, from which we take a short passage:

'Oh! I am very happy, it is such a long time since I have been out of Paris! When I saw the country before, it was spring; but now, although we are almost into winter, it gives me just as much pleasure. What a fine sunny day! Only look at those little rosy clouds, there—there! And that hill! with its pretty white houses gleaming among the trees. How many leaves remain! It is astonishing, in the month of November, is it not, Monsieur? But in Paris the leaves fall so soon. * * * And down there—that flight of pigeons! Look! look! they are settling down on the roof of the mill! In the country, one is never tired of looking; every thing is attractive.'

'It is a pleasure, Fleur-de-Marie,' said Rodolphe, 'to see you so delighted with these nothings which make the charm of the country.' The young girl, contemplated the peaceful and smiling landscape which was spread out before her, and once more her face assumed its soft, pensive expression.'

[503]

'There!' she exclaimed; 'that fire from the stubble in those fields; see how the beautiful white smoke ascends to heaven! And this cart, with its two fat grays! If I were a man, how I should love to be a farmer!—to be in the midst of a large field, following the plough, and seeing at a great distance immense woods. Just such a day as to-day, for instance! Enough to make one sing songs, melancholy songs, to bring tears into the eyes, like 'Genevieve de Brabant.'

There is in this artless description a fine love and perception of the beautiful in nature. * * * 'Absence of Mind' is too scrappy. Its 'examples' seem collated from sundry files of old newspapers, of various dates. The man however who, in his hurry (at a late hour on a rainy day) to pay a note, took up in place of an umbrella an old broom, and rushed through Wall-street to the bank, with the besom over his head, reminds us of the 'absent' clergyman, who started one winter-Sunday for his church; and having nearly reached it, the wind blew his cloak open; upon which he turned about, that it might be blown close around him again: forgetting this fact, however, he continued to travel in the direction which he faced, until he arrived at his own door. Here he inquired for himself; and being told by a waggish servant that he was not in, he departed, with the remark that he should 'call again soon!' * * * 'The Exile's Song,' in the present number, was enclosed in a letter from its author, A. M'Craw, of Scotland, to the late lamented Dr. Timothy Upham of Waterford, by whose wish it is now published. It was written in this country, several years since; and was occasioned by the statement that two persons had been found in a cave in a forest on the bank of the Kennebeck river, who had sought seclusion and safety in that wild retreat. Dr. Upham was a gentleman of a highly distinguished family in New-Hampshire, whose mind led him to appreciate talent whenever and wherever he encountered it. Scientific and literary honors were tendered him from high sources, previous to his demise; but it pleased God to summon him to that heaven which is constantly enriching itself with the spoils of earth:

There is just now quite a passion for French Literature in this country, and translations have not only become frequent, but very indiscriminate. Much that we see is not amiss in its moral tendency, but more is positively pernicious in its effect upon society. 'What a strange opinion the world will have of French Society a hundred years from now! 'Did all married people,' they will say, 'break a certain commandment? They all do in the novels. Was French society composed of murderers, of forgers, of children without parents, of men consequently running the daily risk of marrying their grandmothers by mistake; of disguised princes, who lived in the friendship of amiable cut-throats and spotless prostitutes; who gave up the sceptre for the savate, and the stars and pigtails of the court for the chains and wooden shoes of the galleys?' It has been well said of Bernard, (author of 'The Innocence of a Galley-Slave,' in our last two numbers,) that 'he is full of fine observation and gentle feeling; has a gallant sense of the absurd; and writes in a gentlemanlike style.' * * * Here is a clever and characteristic anecdote of 'Randolph of Roanoke,' related by Mr. Harvey, a spirited (and he must allow us to add improved) racconteur: Robert Owen told John Randolph that he should live to see the day when mankind would discover the principle of vitality, and of course learn to live for ever. 'Are you not aware,' said he, 'that in Egypt, by artificial heat, the people create thousands of chickens?' 'Yes,' replied Randolph; 'but you forget to tell us who furnishes the eggs. Show me the man who can lay an egg, and I'll agree to your 'parallel case.' The proposition was a poser! * * * Mr. Peabody, in his excellent Address at Dartmouth College, speaks of the tendency of our lighter literature to 'aim primarily at impression,' without much reference to the means adopted to secure that end. What must he think of Mr. J. H. Ingraham's last infliction upon the public?—his 'Frank Rivers, or the Dangers of the Town,' the hero and heroine of which are Richard P. Robinson and Ellen Jewett? How captivating to tastes kindred with the author's, will be the headings of the different chapters: 'The two fine gentlemen; the Meeting with Ellen; the Consequences;' or, 'The Naval Officer; the Kept Mistress,' etc. Can there be but one opinion concerning such shameless 'literary' expositions as this, among all right-minded persons? * * * Many a reader of the Knickerbocker, residing in the smaller villages of our country, will recognize 'The Influential Man' among their 'fellow-citizens.' Our friend at Tinnecum has drawn from life the sketch in preceding pages, and with all his accustomed faithfulness. 'Uncle Billy Pine' reminds us of the 'influential man' who, when Rip Vanwinkle came back from the mountains, after his twenty years' sleep, made his way through a wondering crowd of his Dutch neighbors, with his arms akimbo, and after gazing at him for a moment, shook his head; 'whereat,' says our renowned historian, 'there was a general shaking of the head throughout the whole assemblage.' * * * Paris[504] has always borne away the palm in cosmetics, perfumery, fancy toilet-soaps, etc.; but we suspect that Mr. Eugene Roussel, late of the French metropolis, but now of Philadelphia, has the means, by importation and manufacture, to bring 'nigh us, even to our doors,' the best specimens in this kind to be found in the gay capital. His stores, at the late fair of the American Institute, were the admiration of visitors; and almost outvied the collections of our own artizan, Mr. Lloyd, of Prince-street, near the Bowery, whose perfumery, for excellence and cheapness combined, has 'won all suffrages' from the ladies. * * * We are glad to learn that the 'American Athenæum' at Paris is so well appreciated. Its condition is already flourishing, and its usefulness and popularity gradually increasing. American books, newspapers, etc., may be sent free of expense, through the care of Mr. R. Draper, Number fifty-one, Beaver-street, New-York. * * * Just one word to 'F.' Do you remember the lord-mayor, who when told at his first hunting that the hare was coming, exclaimed: 'Let it come, in Heaven's name!—I'm not afraid on 't?' Have the goodness to make the application. * * * It was our intention to have offered a few remarks upon 'The Embarkation of the Pilgrims,' the great national picture, by that distinguished American artist, Weir, which is now open for exhibition at the Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts, corner of Broadway and Leonard-street. We are compelled, however, to forego this duty, until another occasion. Meanwhile, we invite the attention of our metropolitan readers to the exhibition, as one well calculated to repay the most careful examination. * * * We receive at a late hour, from a friend in the French capital, the 'Proceedings of a Meeting of the Citizens of the United States in Paris, at the Royal Athenæum, in March last; embracing an Address upon the Literary Exchanges recently made between France and America, by Alexander Vattemare.' We shall probably have occasion to allude more particularly to this pamphlet hereafter. * * * Cricket, one of the fine manly games of Old England, is getting quite in vogue in this country, and excites not a little emulation between several antagonistic cities and towns. At a dinner which closed a recent spirited match in Philadelphia, our contemporary, Mr. Paterson, of the 'Anglo-American' weekly journal, gave the following felicitous 'sentiment:'

We find on our table a fervent, heart-full 'Discourse, preached before the Second Church and Society in Boston, in Commemoration of the Life and Character of their former Pastor, Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., D. D.; by their Minister, Chandler Robbins.' We shall share with our readers, in our next issue, the enjoyment we have derived from contemplating, with our friend and correspondent, the many virtues whose memory his predecessor has left in vivid greenness and freshness behind him. * * * We have lost the letter of our New-Orleans correspondent, who asked certain questions touching a foreign correspondence with the Knickerbocker. We liked the tone of his epistle very much. Write us again. Who are you? what are you? whence are you? whither are you going? and what have you got to say for yourself? * * * We hope our readers will appreciate the motives, not vain-glorious altogether, we suspect, which impel us to announce that our Twenty-Third Volume will eclipse any previous volume of the series, we think. Looking at our literary stores, (embodying papers from all our old and favorite contributors, and embracing articles, beside, from the Dutch and the Turkish, by our correspondents at Constantinople and Rotterdam,) we acknowledge a glow of satisfaction, which we hope in due time to transfer to our readers. As for matter, we were never more abundantly prepared; and for the manner, that is to be 'in keeping.' The work is to be presented upon entirely new type, in all its departments; and some of the very fine type heretofore employed in the editor's portion of the work will give place to characters more easily perused by old and young. But 'enough said.' Wait; and 'you shall see what you shall see.' * * * Among many other articles filed for insertion, or awaiting examination, are the following: 'The White-House, or the Money-Ghost; a Tale told in the Chimney-corner of a Village Public-House,' from the Dutch; 'Imaginary Conversations,' by Peter Von Geist; 'Mind vs. Instinct in Animals,' Number Two; 'Ninah and Numan,' from the Turkish, etc. 'P. G.'s favor is reserved for publication, when we can find a place for it. We shall appreciate his communications. * * * Several notices of new publications, (including 'The Rose of Sharon,' a beautiful and interesting annual, Barry Cornwall's Poems, 'Nature and Revelation,' 'The Mysteries of Paris,' and 'The Professor and his Favorites,') omitted from the present number, will appear in our next.

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LITERARY RECORD.

Greenwood Cemetery.—A desideratum is timely supplied by a small pamphlet before us, containing the rules, regulations, etc., of the Greenwood Cemetery, on the beautiful Heights of Gowanus, near this city. It contains the names of the officers of the corporation, the trustees, terms of subscription, rules concerning improvements, interments, graves, tombs, visitors to the grounds, etc., with a description of some of the principal monuments already erected. It is to be regretted that the person who furnished the inscription for the monument to the beautiful Indian wife, Do-hum-me, did not quote the admirable verse of Bryant more correctly. In riding through the grounds the other day, we observed that two words were added to the last line, which entirely destroy its measure and melody. The four lines in question are from that exquisite poem, 'The Indian Girl's Lament' at the grave of her lover. We cannot resist the inclination to preserve the following stanzas in these pages, for the admiration of our readers:

In the fourth line of the fifth stanza, thus far transferred to the marble, the words 'the fair' have been interpolated, in the inscription to which we have referred. The error is attributable to one of two causes; an ambition to 'gild refined gold,' or unpardonable carelessness.

'The Sleep Rider, or The Old Boy in the Omnibus.'—If the 'Man in the Claret-colored Coat' had kept his promise, we should not have been compelled to dismiss this amusing work with a few words of commendation; but it is 'all along of him,' and we wash our hands of any thing 'short-coming' in the way of duty. We have read enough to know that there is an abundant sprinkling of lively, sententious wit, and shrewd observation of men and things in the volume, and that it is as replete with contrasts and abruptions as any thing of Lawrence Sterne's. Lieutenant White, one of the Mesmerised tale-tellers of the Omnibus, unwinds an exceedingly graphic 'yarn' which was once 'reeled off' in these pages by a lamented and most gifted kinsman of the 'Man in the Claret-colored Coat;' and there are sundry 'scenes, events, and things' recorded in a way peculiar to the writer, whose productions our readers have often laughed at, with the fullest exercise of their cachinnatory powers. The terse hieroglyphical epigraphs at the heads of the chapters have a world of meaning, most likely; but they require study! Buy the little book, and read it. It is both 'cheap and good.'

The Use of Classical Literature.—We have only space to commend warmly to the acceptance of our readers a little pamphlet from the press of Messrs. James Munroe and Company, Boston, containing an Address delivered before the United Literary Societies of Dartmouth College in July last, by Andrew P. Peabody, Esq. It is a spirited defence of classical literature against the attacks of those short-sighted persons, the utilitarian or other 'reformers' of the time, who undervalue the advantages for which they offer no equivalent. The writer's remarks upon the tendency of modern literature, and of the taste for which it caters, are worthy of heedful note.

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Mr. Hillard's Discourse.—We have before us, from the publishers, Messrs. Little and Brown, Boston, 'The Relation of the Poet to his Age: a Discourse delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University,' in August last, by George S. Hillard. We agree in the main with the verdict of the North-American Review upon this discourse. Its diction is soft and beautiful, the style nicely polished, and marked by pictured words, glowing images, and fanciful expressions; yet, as a whole, the discourse 'lacks precision and definiteness, in the statement of the leading idea in the mind of the speaker, and a consequent defect of unity and method.' We would go as far as Mr. Hillard, or any other American, in inculcating a love of, and reverence for, the poetical in our country; its early struggles, its scenery, and its history as a nation; but with deference, it seems to us that the Merimac may fail to kindle the emotions, in ever so patriotic a heart, which the associations connected with the Tiber might naturally inspire; nor are 'Westminster Abbey, the Alps, or the Vatican,' to be excluded from a kindred place in the mind of the true poet. We must be permitted also to doubt whether 'Srumfry Davy,' as Mr. Yellowplush terms the great scientific discoverer, could have 'chosen' to be equally distinguished as a poet; or whether 'the whistle of a locomotive' has in it, per se, much poetry! The 'Discourse' is executed with great neatness, whether we regard it in a literary or external point of view, and will be found richly to reward the perusal to which we cordially commend it.

North-American Review.—The last issue of this 'ancient and honorable' Quarterly is a very good one, although less various in the style of its papers than one or two of its immediate predecessors. The 'articles' proper are nine in number, and are upon the following themes: 'The Military Academy' at West-Point; 'Our Commercial History and Policy;' 'Talfourd's Miscellaneous Writings;' 'Early Laws of Massachusetts;' 'Raczynski's Modern Art in Germany;' 'The Independence of the Judiciary;' 'Autobiography of Steffens;' 'Despatches of Hernando Cortes;' and 'Dr. Olin's Travels in the Holy Land.' The closing article contains the usual collection of brief notices of new publications, and opens with a review of Mr. Parson's translation of Dante's 'Inferno.' We are glad to find our own opinion of this excellent performance confirmed by the liberal praise of the North-American. Passages are given from Cary's version, in contrast with that of Mr. Parsons, and the palm of superiority, in poetical merit, awarded to our countryman. The poems of Friend Whittier are noticed with approbation; and also, in one or two instances, rather hypercritically, as it strikes us. The praise, however, is not scant: 'Mr. Whittier commands a vigorous and manly style. His expression is generally simple and to the point. Some passages in his poems are highly picturesque; and at times his imagery is bold and striking.' 'The Norsemen,' written for this Magazine, 'Raphael,' and 'Massachusetts to Virginia,' are pronounced 'musical, almost without fault; and the imagery and expression noble and spirit-stirring.'

'Cock-a-doodle-doo!'—Poultry merchants and 'cultivators' will have occasion to thank Mr. Micajah R. Cock (nom de plume) for his 'American Poultry Book,' a practical treatise on the management of domestic poultry. It bears the high commendation of the Board of Agriculture of the American Institute, as 'a work supplying a deficiency which has long been felt in this department of the agricultural library, and which should find a place in every farm-house.' The book originated in an attempt, for the compiler's behoof, to collect and embody in a methodical form all the various notices respecting the treatment of poultry in America, scattered through our various periodical publications. Scarcely any thing pays the farmer a better profit than poultry, fowls requiring little attention save at a season of the year when he has comparatively little to do; they are 'amenable' also to the attention of women, their best protectors indeed, in case the 'men-folk' are employed. Harper and Brothers, publishers.

The 'Illustrated Common-Prayer.'—Mr. H. W. Hewet has brought these excellent numbers to a close, and a very beautiful volume will be the result. The deserved success which has attended the work, we may presume, has led the publisher to commence an 'Illustrated Sacred History of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Four Gospels; arranged in chronological order; with an appendix and explanatory notes.' The whole will be embellished with numerous engravings on wood, illustrating the principal events from the Annunciation to the Ascension. So far as the internal character of the work is concerned, it is only necessary to say, that it is confided to the competent care of the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, while the previous publications of Mr. Hewet give assurance that his own department will not be neglected.