The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol.
II., No. 6, May, 1836, by Various

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Title: The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 6, May, 1836

Author: Various

Editor: Edgar Allan Poe

Release Date: September 16, 2022 [eBook #68997]

Language: English

Produced by: Ron Swanson

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SOUTHERN LITERARY
MESSENGER, VOL. II., NO. 6, MAY, 1836 ***


THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER:

DEVOTED TO EVERY DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS.


Au gré de nos desirs bien plus qu'au gré des vents.
                                      _Crebillon's Electre_.

As _we_ will, and not as the winds will.


RICHMOND:
T. W. WHITE, PUBLISHER AND PROPRIETOR.
1835-6.


{349}


SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.

VOL. II.  RICHMOND, MAY, 1836.  NO. VI.

T. W. WHITE, PROPRIETOR.  FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM.




MSS. OF BENJ. FRANKLIN.[1]

[Footnote 1: These pieces from the pen of Dr. Franklin have never 
appeared in any edition of his works, and are from the manuscript book 
which contains the Lecture and Essays published in the April number of 
the Messenger.]


_Mr. Gazetteer_,--I was highly pleased with your last week's paper 
upon SCANDAL, as the uncommon doctrine therein preached is agreeable 
both to my principles and practice, and as it was published very 
seasonably to reprove the impertinence of a writer in the foregoing 
Thursday's Mercury, who, at the conclusion of one of his silly 
paragraphs, laments forsooth that the fair sex are so peculiarly 
guilty of this enormous crime: every blockhead, ancient and modern, 
that could handle a pen, has, I think, taken upon him to cant in the 
same senseless strain. If to _scandalize_ be really a crime, what do 
these puppies mean? They describe it--they dress it up in the most 
odious, frightful and detestable colors--they represent it as the 
worst of crimes, and then roundly and charitably charge the whole race 
of womankind with it. Are not they then guilty of what they condemn, 
at the same time that they condemn it? If they accuse us of any other 
crime they must necessarily scandalize while they do it; but to 
scandalize us with being guilty of scandal, is in itself an egregious 
absurdity, and can proceed from nothing but the most consummate 
impudence in conjunction with the most profound stupidity.

This, supposing as they do, that to scandalize is a crime; which you 
have convinced all reasonable people is an opinion absolutely 
erroneous. Let us leave then, these select mock-moralists, while I 
entertain you with some account of my life and manners.

I am a young girl of about thirty-five, and live at present with my 
mother. I have no care upon my head of getting a living, and therefore 
find it my duty as well as inclination to exercise my talent at 
CENSURE for the good of my country folks. There was, I am told, a 
certain generous emperor, who, if a day had passed over his head in 
which he had conferred no benefit on any man, used to say to his 
friends, in Latin, _Diem perdidi_, that is, it seems, _I have lost a 
day_. I believe I should make use of the same expression, if it were 
possible for a day to pass in which I had not, or missed, an 
opportunity to scandalize somebody: but, thanks be praised, no such 
misfortune has befel me these dozen years.

Yet whatever good I may do, I cannot pretend that I at first entered 
into the practice of this virtue from a principle of public spirit; 
for I remember that when a child I had a violent inclination to be 
ever talking in my own praise, and being continually told that it was 
ill-manners and once severely whipped for it, the confined stream 
formed itself a new channel, and I began to speak for the future in 
the dispraise of others. This I found more agreeable to company and 
almost as much so to myself: for what great difference can there be 
between putting yourself up or putting your neighbor down? _Scandal_, 
like other virtues, is in part its own reward, as it gives us the 
satisfaction of making ourselves appear better than others, or others 
no better than ourselves.

My mother, good woman, and I, have heretofore differed upon this 
account. She argued that Scandal spoilt all good conversation, and I 
insisted that without it there would be no such thing. Our disputes 
once rose so high that we parted tea-tables, and I concluded to 
entertain my acquaintance in the kitchen. The first day of this 
separation we both drank tea at the same time, but she with her 
visitors in the parlor. She would not hear of the least objection to 
any one's character, but began a new sort of discourse in some such 
queer philosophical manner as this: _I am mightily pleased sometimes,_ 
says she, _when I observe and consider that the world is not so bad as 
people out of humor imagine it to be. There is something amiable, some 
good quality or other in every body. If we were only to speak of 
people that are least respected, there is such a one is very dutiful 
to her father, and methinks has a fine set of teeth; such a one is 
very respectful to her husband; such a one is very kind to her poor 
neighbors, and besides has a very handsome shape; such a one is always 
ready to serve a friend, and in my opinion there is not a woman in 
town that has a more agreeable air or gait._ This fine kind of talk, 
which lasted near half an hour, she concluded by saying, _I do not 
doubt but every one of you has made the like observations, and I 
should be glad to have the conversation continued upon this subject._ 
Just at this juncture I peeped in at the door, and never in my life 
before saw such a set of simple vacant countenances. They looked 
somehow neither glad nor sorry, nor angry nor pleased, nor indifferent 
nor attentive; but (excuse the simile) like so many images of rye 
dough. I, in the kitchen, had already begun a ridiculous story of Mr. 
----'s intrigue with his maid, and his wife's behavior on the 
discovery; at some of the passages we laughed heartily; and one of the 
gravest of mamma's company, without making any answer to her discourse 
got up _to go and see what the girls were so merry about_: she was 
followed by a second, and shortly by a third, till at last the old 
gentlewoman found herself quite alone, and being convinced that her 
project was impracticable came herself and finished her tea with us; 
ever since which _Saul also has been among the prophets_, and our 
disputes lie dormant.

By industry and application I have made myself the centre of all the 
scandal in the province; there is little stirring but I hear of it. I 
began the world with this maxim, that no trade can subsist without 
returns; and accordingly, whenever I received a good story, I 
endeavored to give two or a better in the room of it. My punctuality 
in this way of dealing gave such encouragement that it has procured me 
an incredible deal of business, which without diligence and good 
method it would be impossible for me to go through. For besides the 
stock of defamation thus naturally flowing in upon me, I practice an 
art by which I can pump {350} scandal out of people that are the least 
inclined that way. Shall I discover my secret? Yes; to let it die with 
me would be inhuman. If I have never heard ill of some person I always 
impute it to defective intelligence; _for there are none without their 
faults, no, not one_. If she be a woman, I take the first opportunity 
to let all her acquaintance know I have heard that one of the 
handsomest or best men in town has said something in praise either of 
her beauty, her wit, her virtue, or her good management. If you know 
any thing of human nature, you perceive that this naturally introduces 
a conversation turning upon all her failings, past, present and to 
come. To the same purpose and with the same success I cause every man 
of reputation to be praised before his competitors in love, business, 
or esteem, on account of any particular qualification. Near the times 
of election, if I find it necessary, I commend every candidate before 
some of the opposite party, listening attentively to what is said of 
him in answer. But commendations in this latter case are not always 
necessary and should be used judiciously. Of late years I needed only 
observe what they said of one another freely; and having for the help 
of memory taken account of all informations and accusations received, 
whoever peruses my writings after my death, may happen to think that 
during a certain time the people of Pennsylvania chose into all their 
offices of honor and trust, the veriest knaves, fools and rascals, in 
the whole province. The time of election used to be a busy time with 
me, but this year, with concern I speak it, people are grown so good 
natured, so intent upon mutual feasting and friendly entertainment, 
that I see no prospect of much employment from that quarter.

I mentioned above that without good method I could not go through my 
business. In my father's life time I had some instruction in accounts, 
which I now apply with advantage to my own affairs. I keep a regular 
set of books and can tell at an hour's warning how it stands between 
me and the world. In my _Daybook_ I enter every article of defamation 
as it is transacted; for scandals _received in_ I give credit, and 
when I pay them out again I make the persons to whom they respectively 
relate, _Debtor_. In my _Journal_, I add to each story, by way of 
improvement, such probable circumstances as I think it will bear, and 
in my _Ledger_ the whole is regularly posted.

I suppose the reader already condemns me in his heart for this 
particular of _adding circumstances_, but I justify this part of my 
practice thus. It is a principle with me that none ought to have a 
greater share of reputation than they really deserve; if they have, it 
is an imposition upon the public. I know it is every one's interest, 
and therefore believe they endeavor to conceal all their vices and 
follies; and I hold that those people are _extraordinary_ foolish or 
careless, who suffer one-fourth of their failings to come to public 
knowledge. Taking then the common prudence and imprudence of mankind 
in a lump, I suppose none suffer above one-fifth to be discovered; 
therefore, when I hear of any person's misdoing, I think I keep within 
bounds, if in relating it I only make it three times worse than it is; 
and I reserve to myself the privilege of charging them with one fault 
in four, which for aught I know they may be entirely innocent of. You 
see there are but few so careful of doing justice as myself; what 
reason then have mankind to complain of _Scandal_? In a general way 
the worst that is said of us is only half what might be said, if all 
our faults were seen.

But alas! two great evils have lately befallen me at the same time; an 
extreme cold that I can scarce speak, and a most terrible toothache 
that I dare hardly open my mouth. For some days past I have received 
ten stories for one I have paid; and I am not able to balance my 
accounts without your assistance. I have long thought that if you 
would make your paper a vehicle of scandal, you would double the 
number of your subscribers. I send you herewith accounts of four 
knavish tricks, two * * *, five * * * * *, three drubbed wives, and 
four henpecked husbands, all within this fortnight; which you may, as 
articles of news, deliver to the public, and if my toothache continues 
shall send you more, being in the mean time your constant reader,

ALICE ADDERTONGUE.


I thank my correspondent, Mrs. Addertongue, for her good will, but 
desire to be excused inserting the articles of news she has sent me, 
such things being in reality no news at all.

       *       *       *       *       *

QUERIES TO BE ASKED THE JUNTO.

Whence comes the dew that stands on the outside of a tankard that has 
cold water in it in the summer time?

Does the importation of servants increase or advance the wealth of our 
country?

Would not an office of insurance for servants be of service, and what 
methods are proper for the erecting such an office?

       *       *       *       *       *

Whence does it proceed that the proselytes to any sect or persuasion, 
generally appear more zealous than those that are bred up in it?

_Answer_. I suppose that people BRED in different persuasions are 
nearly zealous alike. Then he that changes his party is either sincere 
or not sincere: that is, he either does it for the sake of the 
opinions merely, or with a view of interest. If he is sincere and has 
no view of interest, and considers before he declares himself how much 
ill will he shall have from those he leaves, and that those he is 
about to go among will be apt to suspect his sincerity: if he is not 
really zealous, he will not declare; and therefore must be zealous if 
he does declare.

If he is not sincere, he is obliged at least to put on an appearance 
of great zeal, to convince the better his new friends that he is 
heartily in earnest, for his old ones he knows dislike him. And as few 
acts of zeal will be more taken notice of than such as are done 
against the party he has left, he is inclined to injure or malign them 
because he knows they contemn and despise him. Hence one Renegado is 
(as the Proverb says) worse than ten Turks.

       *       *       *       *       *

SIR,--It is strange, that among men who are born for society and 
mutual solace, there should be any who take pleasure in speaking 
disagreeable things to their acquaintance. But such there are I assure 
you, and I should be glad if a little public chastisement might be any 
means of reforming them. These ill-natured people study a man's 
temper, or the circumstances of his life, {351} merely to know what 
disgusts him, and what he does not care to hear mentioned; and this 
they take care to omit no opportunity of disturbing him with. They 
communicate their wonderful discoveries to others, with an ill-natured 
satisfaction in their countenances, _say such a thing to such a man 
and you cannot mortify him worse_. They delight (to use their own 
phrase) in seeing galled horses wince, and like flies, a sore place is 
a feast to them. Know, ye wretches, that the meanest insect, the 
trifling musqueto, the filthy bug have it in their power to give pain 
to men; but to be able to give pleasure to your fellow creatures, 
requires good nature and a kind and humane disposition, joined with 
talents to which ye seem to have no pretension.

X. Y.

       *       *       *       *       *

If a sound body and a sound mind, which is as much as to say health 
and virtue, are to be preferred before all other 
considerations,--Ought not men, in choosing of a business either for 
themselves or children, to refuse such as are unwholesome for the 
body, and such as make a man too dependant, too much obliged to please 
others, and too much subjected to their humors in order to be 
recommended and get a livelihood.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am about courting a girl I have had but little acquaintance with; 
how shall I come to a knowledge of her faults, and whether she has the 
virtues I imagine she has?

_Answer_. Commend her among her female acquaintance.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the Printer of the Gazette.

According to the request of your correspondent T. P., I send you my 
thoughts on the following case by him proposed, viz:

A man bargains for the keeping of his horse six months, whilst he is 
making a voyage to Barbadoes. The horse strays or is stolen soon after 
the keeper has him in possession. When the owner demands the value of 
his horse in money, may not the other as justly demand so much 
deducted as the keeping of the horse six months amounts to?

It does not appear that they had any dispute about the value of the 
horse, whence we may conclude there was no reason for such dispute, 
but it was well known how much he cost, and that he could not honestly 
have been sold again for more. But the value of the horse is not 
expressed in the case, nor the sum agreed for keeping him six months; 
wherefore in order to our more clear apprehension of the thing, let 
_ten pounds_ represent the horse's value and three pounds the sum 
agreed for his keeping.

Now the sole foundation on which the keeper can found his demand of a 
deduction for keeping a horse he did not keep, is this. _Your horse,_ 
he may say, _which I was to restore to you at the end of six months 
was worth ten founds; if I now give you ten pounds it is an equivalent 
for your horse, and equal to returning the horse itself. Had I 
returned your horse (value 10_l._) you would have paid me three pounds 
for his keeping, and therefore would have received in fact but seven 
pounds clear. You then suffer no injury if I now pay you seven pounds, 
and consequently you ought in reason to allow me the remaining three 
pounds according to our agreement._

But the owner of the horse may possibly insist upon being paid the 
whole sum of ten pounds, without allowing any deduction for his 
keeping after he was lost, and that for these reasons.

1. It is always supposed, unless an express agreement be made to the 
contrary, when horses are put out to keep, that the keeper is at the 
risque of them (unavoidable accidents only excepted, wherein no care 
of the keeper can be supposed sufficient to preserve them, such as 
their being slain by lightning or the like.) _This you yourself 
tacitly allow when you offer to restore me the value of my horse._ 
Were it otherwise, people having no security against a keeper's 
neglect or mismanagement would never put horses out to keep.

2. Keepers considering the risque they run, always demand such a price 
for keeping horses, that if they were to follow the business twenty 
years, they may have a living profit, though they now and then pay for 
a horse they have lost; and if they were to be at no risque they might 
afford to keep horses for less than they usually have. So that what a 
man pays for his horse's keeping, more than the keeper could afford to 
take if he ran no risque, is in the nature of a premium for the 
insurance of his horse. _If I then pay you for the few days you kept 
my horse, you should restore me his full value._

3. You acknowledge that my horse eat of your hay and oats but a few 
days. It is unjust then to charge me for all the hay and oats that he 
only might have eat in the remainder of the six months, and which you 
have now still good in your stable. If, as the proverb says, it is 
unreasonable to expect a horse should void oats who never eat any, it 
is certainly as unreasonable to expect payment for those oats.

4. If men in such cases as this are to be paid for keeping horses when 
they were not kept, then they have a great opportunity of wronging the 
owners of horses. For by privately selling my horse for his value (ten 
pounds) soon after you had him in possession, and returning me at the 
expiration of the time only seven pounds, demanding three pounds as a 
deduction agreed for his keeping, you get that 3_l._ clear into your 
pocket, besides the use of my money six months for nothing.

5. But you say, the value of my horse being ten pounds, if you deduct 
three for his keeping and return me seven, it is all I would in fact 
have received had you returned my horse; therefore as I am no loser I 
ought to be satisfied: this argument, were there any weight in it, 
might serve to justify a man in selling as above, as many of the 
horses he takes to keep as he conveniently can, putting clear into his 
own pocket that charge their owner must have been at for their 
keeping, for this being no loss to the owners, he may say, _where no 
man is a loser why should not I be a gainer_. I need only answer to 
this, that I allow the horse cost me but ten pounds, nor could I have 
sold him for more, had I been disposed to part with him, but this can 
be no reason why you should buy him of me at that price, whether I 
will sell him or not. For it is plain I valued him at thirteen pounds, 
otherwise I should not have paid ten pounds for him and agreed to give 
you three pounds more for his keeping, till I had occasion to use him. 
Thus, though you pay me the whole ten pounds which he cost me, 
(deducting only for his keeping those few days) I am still a loser; I 
lose the charge of those {352} days' keeping; I lose the three pounds 
at which I valued him above what he cost me, and I lose the advantage 
I might have made of my money in six months, either by the interest or 
by joining it to my stock in trade in my voyage to Barbadoes.

6. Lastly, whenever a horse is put to keep, the agreement naturally 
runs thus: The keeper says I will feed your horse six months on good 
hay and oats, if at the end of that time you will pay me three pounds. 
The owner says, if you will feed my horse six months on good hay and 
oats, I will pay you three pounds at the end of that time. Now we may 
plainly see, the keeper's performance of his part of the agreement 
must be antecedent to that of the owner; and the agreement being 
wholly conditional, the owner's part is not in force till the keeper 
has performed his. _You then not having fed my horse six months, as 
you agreed to do, there lies no obligation on me to pay for so much 
feeding._

Thus we have heard what can be said on both sides. Upon the whole, I 
am of opinion that no deduction should be allowed for the keeping of 
the horse after the time of his straying.

I am yours, &c.
  THE CASUIST.




TO A COQUETTE.

The Lady was playing the _Penserosa_, and the Bard rallied her. She 
suddenly assumed the _Allegra_, and rallied him in turn. Whereupon he 
sung as follows:


    Heave no more that breast of snow,
    With sighs of simulated wo,
    While Conquest triumphs on thy brow,
    And Hope, gay laughing in thine eye,
    Cheers the moments gliding by,
    Welcomes Joy's voluptuous train,
    Welcomes Pleasure's jocund reign,
  And whispers thee of transports yet in store,
    When fraught with Love's ecstatic pain,
    Shooting keen through every vein,
  Thy heart shall thrill with bliss unknown before.

    But smile not so divinely bright;
    Nor sport before my dazzled sight,
      That "prodigality of charms,"
    That winning air, that wanton grace,
    That pliant form, that beauteous face,
      Zephyr's step, Aurora's smile;
    Nor thus in mimic fondness twine,
      About my neck thy snowy arms;
    Nor press this faded cheek of mine,
    Nor seek, by every witching wile,
      My hopes to raise, my heart to gain,
  Then laugh my love to scorn, and triumph in my pain.

    I love thee, Julia! Though the flush
      Of sprightly youth is flown--
    Though the bright glance, and rose's blush
      From eye and cheek and lip are gone--
    Though Fancy's frolic dreams are fled,
      Dispelled by sullen care--
    And Time's gray wing its frost has shed
      Upon my raven hair--
    Yet warm within my bosom glows,
    A heart that recks not winter's snows,
    But throbs with hope, and heaves with sighs
    For ruby lips and sparkling eyes;
    And still--the slave of amorous care--
  Would make that breast, that couch of Love, its lair.

       *       *       *       *       *

TO THE SAME.


  Shade! O shade those looks of light;
    The thrilling sense can bear no more!
  Veil those beauties from my sight,
    Which to see is to adore.

  That dimpled cheek, whose spotless white,
  The rays of Love's first dawning light,
    Tinge with Morning's rosy blush,
    And cast a warm and glowing flush,
      Even on thy breast of snow,
    And in thy bright eyes sparkling dance,
    And through the waving tresses glance
      That shade thy polished brow
    Who can behold, nor own thy power?
    Who can behold, and not adore?

  But like the wretch, who, doomed to endless pain,
    Raises to realms of bliss his aching eyes,
  To Heaven uplifts his longing arms in vain
    While in his tortured breast new pangs arise--
      Thus while at thy feet I languish,
      Stung with Love's voluptuous anguish,
    The smile that would my hopes revive,
    The witching glance that bids me live
    Shed on my heart one fleeting ray,
    One gleam of treacherous Hope display;
  But soon again in deep Despair I pine:
  The dreadful truth returns: "Thou never wilt be mine."

  Then shade! O shade those looks of light;
    The thrilling sense can bear no more!
  Veil those beauties from my sight,
    Which to see is to adore.

  But stay! O yet awhile refrain!
  Forbear! And let me gaze again!
  Still at thy feet impassioned let me lie,
  Tranced by the magic of thy thrilling eye;
  Thy soft melodious voice still let me hear,
  Pouring its melting music on my ear;
  And, while my eager lip, with transport bold,
    Presumptuous seeks thy yielded hand to press,
  Still on thy charms enraptured let me gaze,
  Basking ecstatic in thy beauty's blaze,
    Such charms 'twere more than Heaven to possess:
      'Tis Heaven only to behold.




LIONEL GRANBY.

CHAPTER X.

  He scanned with curious and prophetic eye
  Whate'er of lore tradition could supply
  From Gothic tale, or song or fable old--
  Roused him still keen to listen and to pry.
                                          _The Minstrel_.


You judge the English character with too much favor Lionel, said Col. 
R----. The Englishman is not free! Though vain, arrogant, and 
imperious, there is not a more abject slave on earth. His boasting 
spirit, his full-mouthed independence and his lordly step quail to 
rank, {353} and he is ever crawling amid the purlieus or over the 
threshold of that fantastic temple of fashion called "Society." It is 
an endless contest between those who are initiated into its mysteries 
and those who crowd its avenues. Wealth batters down the door--assumes 
a proud niche in the chilling fane, and uniting itself to that silent 
yet powerful aristocracy which wields the oracles of the god, its 
breath can create you an _exclusive_, or its frown can degrade you to 
the vulgar herd. Rank, which is the idol of an Englishman's sleepless 
devotion, wealth because it is curiously akin to the former, and some 
indistinct conception of the difference between a people and the mob, 
render him, in his own conceit, a gentleman and a politician. His 
first thought if cast on a desert island would be his rank, and if he 
had companions in misfortune, he would ere night arrange the dignity 
and etiquette of intercourse. Literature seeks the same degrading 
arena, and alas! how few are there who do not deck the golden calf 
with the laurels won in the conflicts of genius, and who, stimulated 
solely by lucre, shed their momentary light athwart the horizon, even 
as the meteor whose radiance is exhaled from the corruption of a fœtid 
marsh. But there is a class who, ennobled by letters, are always 
independent; and though they be of the race of authors whom Sir Horace 
Walpole calls "a troublesome, conceited set of fellows," you will find 
them too proud and too honest to palter away the prerogatives of their 
station.

But we are now at the door of Elia; come, let me introduce you to one 
of his simple and unaffected suppers!

I cheerfully assented to this invitation, and following my conductor 
up a flight of crooked and dark steps, we entered into a room, over a 
brazier's shop. A dull light trembled through the small and narrow 
apartment where, shrouded in a close volume of tobacco smoke, sat in 
pensive gentility--the kind--the generous--the infant-hearted Charles 
Lamb; the man whose elastic genius dwelled among the mouldering ruins 
of by-gone days, until it became steeped in beauty and expanded with 
philosophy--the wit--the poet--the lingering halo of the sunshine of 
antiquity--the phœnix of the mighty past. He was of delicate and 
attenuated stature, and as fragilely moulded as a winter's flower, 
with a quick and volatile eye, a mind-worn forehead and a countenance 
eloquent with thought. Around a small table well covered with glasses 
and a capacious bowl, were gathered a laughing group, eyeing the 
battalia of the coming supper. Godwin's heavy form and intellectual 
face, with the swimming eye of (ες τε σε S. T. C. How quaint was his 
fancy!) Coleridge, flanked the margin of the mirth-inspiring bowl.

Col. R----'s introduction made me at home, and ere my hand had dropped 
from the friendly grasp of our host, he exclaimed--And you are truly 
from the land of the _great plant_? You have seen the sole cosmopolite 
spring from the earth. It is the denizen of the whole world, the 
tireless friend of the wretched, the bliss of the happy. You need no 
record of the empire of the red man. He has written his fadeless 
history on a tobacco leaf.

At this time Lamb was a clerk in the "India House," a melancholy and 
gloomy mansion, with grave courts, heavy pillars, dim cloisters, 
stately porticoes, imposing staircases and all the solemn pomp of 
elder days. Here for many years he drove the busy quill, and whiled 
away his tranquil evenings, in the dalliance of literature. He was an 
author belonging to his own exclusive school--a school of simplicity, 
grace and beauty. He neither skewered his pen into precise paragraphs, 
nor rioted in the verbose rotundity of the day. He picked up the rare 
and unpolished jewels which spangled the courts of Elizabeth and 
Charles, and they lost beneath his polishing hand neither their lustre 
nor value. He was a passionate and single hearted antiquary, ever 
laboring to prop up with a puny arm, the column on which was inscribed 
the literary glory of his country. He was familiar with the grace of 
Heywood, the harmony of Fletcher, the ease of Sir Philip Sydney, the 
delicacy and fire of Spenser, the sweetness of Carew, the power and 
depth of Marlow, the mighty verse of Shakspeare, the affected fustian 
of Euphues (Lilly) "which ran into a vast excess of allusion," and 
with the deep and sparkling philosophy of Burton. With all of them he 
held a "dulcified" converse, while his memory preserved from utter 
forgetfulness, many of those authors who to the eye of the world, had 
glittered like the flying fish a moment above the surface, only to 
sink deeper in the sea of oblivion.

Lamb possessed in an eminent degree, what Dryden called a beautiful 
turn of words and thoughts in poetry, and the easy swell of cadence 
and harmony which characterised his brief writings declared the 
generosity of his heart, and the fertility of his genius. He could 
sympathise with childhood's frolic, and his heart was full of boyish 
dreams, when he gazed on the play-ground of Eton, and exclaimed "what 
a pity to think that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will be 
changed into frivolous members of parliament!" He had the rough 
magnanimity of the old English vein, mellowed into tenderness and 
dashed with a flexible and spinous humor. He was contented to worship 
poesy in its classic and antique drapery. With him the fountain of 
Hypocrene still gushed up its inspiring wave; and Apollo, attended by 
the Muses, the daughters of Memory, and escorted by the Graces, still 
haunted the mountains of Helicon, lingered among the hills of Phocis, 
or, mounted upon Pegasus, winged his radiant flight to the abode 
itself of heaven-born Poesy. These were the fixed principles of his 
taste, and he credulously smiled (for contempt found no place in his 
bosom) upon the sickly illustrations and naked imagery of modern song. 
His learning retained a hue of softness from the gentleness of his 
character, for he had gathered the blossoms untouched by the 
bitterness of the sciential apple. He extracted like the bee his 
honied stores from the wild and neglected flowers which bloomed among 
forgotten ruins, yet he was no plagiarist, no imitator, for he had 
invaded and lingered amid the dim sepulchres of the shadowy past, 
until he became its friend and cotemporary!

How has he obtained those curiously bound books, I whispered to 
Coleridge, as my eye fell on a column of shelves groaning under a mass 
of tattered volumes which would have fairly crazed my poor uncle?

Tell him Lamb! said Coleridge repeating my inquiry, give him the rank 
and file of your ragged regiment.

Slowly, and painfully as a neophyte, did I build the pile, replied 
Lamb. Its corner stone was that fine old folio of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, which, for a long year had peeped out from a bookseller's 
stall directly in my {354} daily path to the India House. It bore the 
great price of sixteen shillings, and to me, who had no unsunned heap 
of silver, I gazed on it until I had almost violated the decalogue. 
Poetry made me an economist, and at the end of two months my garnered 
mites amounted to the requisite sum. Vain as a girl with her first 
lover, I bore it home in triumph, and that night my sister Bridget 
read "The Laws of Candy" while I listened with rapture to that deep 
and gurgling torrent of old English, which dashed its music from this 
broken cistern. To her is the honor due, her taste has called all 
these obsolete wits to my library, for she keenly relished their 
fantasies, and smiled at their gauderies. In early life she had been 
tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English reading, without 
much selection or prohibition and browsed at will upon that fair and 
wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls they should be brought up in 
this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be 
diminished by it, but I can answer for it that (if the worst comes to 
the worst) it makes most incomparable old maids.

But there are some fearful gaps in my shelves, Mr. Granby! See! there 
a stately and reverend folio, like a huge eye-tooth, was rudely 
knocked out by a bold _borrower of books_, one of your smiling 
pirates, mutilator of collections, a spoiler of the symmetry of 
shelves, and a creator of odd volumes.

The conversation now became general, and many a little skiff was 
launched on the great ocean of commonplace. Lamb most cordially hated 
politics which he called "a splutter of hot rhetoric;" and he only 
remembered its battles and revolutions when connected with letters. He 
had heard of Pharsalia, but it was Lucan's and not Cæsar's; the battle 
of Lepanto was cornered in his memory because Cervantes had there lost 
an arm. The glorious days of the "Commonwealth" were hallowed by 
Milton and Waller, and he always turned with much address from the 
angry debates about the execution of Charles I. to the simple inquiry 
whether he or Doctor Ganden wrote the "Icon Basilike."

Godwin in vain essayed to introduce the "conduct of the ministry," and 
being repeatedly baffled, he said pettishly to Lamb, And what benefit 
is your freehold, if you do not feel interested in government?

Ah! I had a freehold it is true, the gift of my generous and solemn 
god-father, the oil-man in Holborn; I went down and took possession of 
my testamentary allotment of three quarters of an acre, and strode 
over it with the feeling of an English freeholder, that all betwixt 
sky and earth was my own. Alas! it has passed into more prudent hands, 
and nothing but an Agrarian can restore it!

The bowl now danced from hand to hand, and I did not observe its 
operation until Lamb and Coleridge commenced an affectionate talk 
about Christ's Hospital, the blue coat boys, and all the treasured 
anecdotes of school-day friendship. This is the first and happiest 
stage of incipient intoxication, and the "willie-draughts" which are 
pledged to the memory of boyhood, ever inspire brighter and nobler 
sympathies, than are found in the raciest toasts to beauty, or the 
deepest libations to our country.

Do you not remember, said Lamb, poor Allan! whose beautiful 
countenance disarmed the wrath of a town-damsel whom he had secretly 
pinched, and whose half-formed execration was exchanged, when she, 
tigress-like turned round and gave the terrible _bl----_ for a gentler 
meaning, _bless thy handsome face!_ And do you not remember when you 
used to tug over Homer, discourse Metaphysics, chaunt Anacreon, and 
play at foils with the sharp-edged wit of Sir Thomas Browne, how your 
eye glistened when you doffed the grotesque blue coat, and the 
inspired charity boy (this was uttered in an under tone) walked forth 
humanized by a christian garment. Spenser knew the nobility of heart 
which a new coat gives when he dressed his butterfly.

  The velvet nap which on his wings doth lie
  The silken down with which his back is dight
  His broad outstretched horns, his hairy thighs
  His glorious colors, and his glistening eyes.

Col. R. now motioned to me to retire, and I bid a reluctant goodnight 
to the joyous scene, the exclamation "do you not remember!" from 
Coleridge, and the cheerful laugh ringing through the whole house and 
its dying echo following us to the street.

Gentle reader! the critics have called Lamb a trifler, the scholars 
have called him a twaddler! Read _Elia_, and let your heart answer for 
him.




THE PRAIRIE.


This word is pronounced by the common people _pa-ra-re_. I was in the 
peninsula of Michigan, and had been for a day or two traversing the 
most dreary country imaginable, when I saw for the first time a salt 
or wet prairie, which is only a swampy meadow, grown up in a rank, 
coarse, sedgy grass.

Not long after we began to catch glimpses of the upland prairies. 
These are either clear prairies, totally destitute of trees, or oak 
openings which consist of clear prairie and scattered trees. A clear 
prairie--a broad unvaried expanse--presents rather a monotonous 
appearance like the sea, but surely the human eye has never rested on 
more lovely landscapes than these oak openings present. They answered 
my conceptions of lawns, parks and pleasure grounds in England; they 
are the lawns, parks and pleasure grounds of nature, laid out and 
planted with an inimitable grace, fresh as creation.

In these charming woodlands are a number of small lakes, the most 
picturesque and delightful sheets of water imaginable. The prairies in 
the summer are covered with flowers. I am an indifferent botanist, but 
in a short walk I gathered twenty four species which I had not seen 
before. These flowers and woods and glittering lakes surpass all 
former conception of beauty. Each flower, leaf, and blade of grass, 
and green twig glistens with pendulous diamonds of dew. The sun pours 
his light upon the water and streams through the sloping glades. To a 
traveller unaccustomed to such scenes, they are pictures of a mimic 
paradise. Sometimes they stretch away far as the eye can reach, soft 
as Elysian meadows, then they swell and undulate, voluptuous as the 
warm billows of a southern sea.

In these beautiful scenes we saw numerous flocks of wild turkies, and 
now and then a prairie hen, or a deer bounding away through flowers. 
Here too is found the prairie wolf which some take to be the Asiatic 
jackall. It is so small as not to be dangerous alone. It is said 
however, that they hunt in packs like hounds, headed by a grey wolf. 
Thus they pursue the deer with a cry {355} not unlike that of hounds, 
and have been known to rush by a farm-house in hot pursuit. The 
officers of the army stationed at the posts on the Prairies amuse 
themselves hunting these little wolves which in some parts are very 
numerous.

C. C.




RANDOM THOUGHTS.


_The Age_.--Its leading fault, to which we of America are especially 
obnoxious, is this: in Poetry, in Legislation, in Eloquence, the best, 
the divinest even of all the arts, seems to be laid aside more and 
more, just in proportion as it every day grows of greater necessity. 
It is still, as in Swift's time, who complains as follows: "To say the 
truth, no part of knowledge seems to be in fewer hands, than that of 
discerning _when to have done_."

_Dancing_.--The following are sufficiently amusing illustrations of 
the fine lines in Byron's Ode,

  "You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
   Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"

The French translation of St. John (de Creve-cœur's) _American 
Farmer's Letters_--a book once very popular--was adorned with 
engravings, to fit it to the European imagination of the Arcadian 
state of things in America. The frontispiece presents an allegorical 
picture, in which a goddess of those robuster proportions which 
designate Wisdom, or Philosophy, leads by the hand an urchin--the 
type, no doubt, of this country--with ne'er a shirt upon his back. 
More delightfully still, however, in the back ground, is seen, hand in 
hand, with knee-breeches and strait-collared coats, a band of 
Pennsylvania quaker men, dancing, by themselves, a true old fashioned 
six-handed Virginia reel.

But of the Pyrrhic dance, more particularly: the learned 
Scaliger--that terror and delight of the critical world--assures us, 
in his _Poetica_, (book i, ch. 9) that he himself, at the command of 
his uncle Boniface, was wont often and long to dance it, before the 
Emperor Maximilian, while all Germany looked on with amazement. "Hanc 
saltationem Pyrrhicam, nos sæpe et diu, jussu Bonifacii patrui, coram 
divo Maximiliano, non sine stupore totius Germaniæ, representavimus."

_Ariosto_.--Has not the following curious testimony in regard to him 
escaped all his biographers? Montaigne, in his Essays, (vol. iii, p. 
117, Johanneau's edition, in 8vo.) says, "J'eus plus de despit 
encores, que de compassion, de le veoir à Ferrare en si piteux estat, 
survivant à soy mesme, mecognoissant et soy et ses ouvrages; lesquels, 
sans son sςeu, et toutesfois en sa veue, on a mis en lumiere 
incorrigez et informes."

"I was touched even more with vexation than with compassion, to see 
him, at Ferrara, in a state so piteous, outliving himself, and 
incapable of recognizing either himself or his works; which last, 
without his knowledge, though yet before his sight, were given to the 
world uncorrected and unfinished."

_Thin Clothing_.--It would be difficult more skilfully to turn a 
reproach into a praise, than Byron has done, as to drapery too 
transparent, in his voluptuous description of a Venitian revel.

                --------"The thin robes,
  Floating like light clouds 'twixt our gaze and heaven,"

form the very climax of many intoxicating particulars.

The Greeks seem not to have practised a very rigorous reserve, as to 
the concealment of the person. The Lacedemonians, indeed, studiously 
suppressed, by their institutions, whatever of sexual modesty was not 
absolutely necessary to virtue. Among the Romans, however, the 
national austerity of manners made every violation of delicacy in this 
matter a great offence. Their Satyrists (as Seneca, Juvenal, and 
others) abound in allusions to the license of dress, which grew up, 
along with the other corruptions of their original usages. The words 
of Seneca, indeed, might almost be taken for a picture of a modern 
belle, in her ball-room attire. He says, in his _De Beneficiis_, 
"Video Sericas vestes, si vestes vocandæ sint, in quibus nihil est, 
quo defendi aut corpus, aut denique pudor, possit: quibus sumtis, 
mulier parum liquido, nudam se non esse, jurabit. Hæc, ingenti summa, 
ab ignotis etiam ad commercium gentibus, accersuntur, ut matronæ 
nostræ ne adulteris quidem plus suis in cubiculo, quam in publico, 
ostendant." "I see, too, silken clothing--if clothing that can be 
called, which does not protect, nor even conceal the body--apparelled 
in which, a woman cannot very truly swear, that she is not naked. Such 
tissues are brought to us at enormous cost, from nations so remote 
that not even their names can reach us; and by the help of this vast 
expense, our matrons are able to exhibit, to their lovers and in their 
couches, nothing at which the whole public has not equally gazed."

_Mythology_.--Bryant and others have puzzled themselves not a little 
to give a rational explanation to the story of Ariadne; who, it will 
be remembered, was abandoned upon the isle of Naxos by her seducer, 
Theseus: but Bacchus chancing to come that way, fell upon the forlorn 
damsel, and presently made her his bride. All this may well puzzle a 
commentator, for the single reason, that it is perfectly plain and 
simple. The whole tale is nothing but a delicate and poetic way of 
stating the fact, that Mrs. Ariadne, being deserted by her lover, 
sought and found a very common consolation--that is to say, she took 
to drink.

_Naples_.--Its population of Lazzaroni appears, after all, to be but 
the legitimate inheritors of ancestral laziness. They were equally 
idle in Ovid's time: for he expressly calls that seat of indolence

          ------"in otia natam
  Parthenopen."

_Exhibition of Grief_.--There is a curious instance of the unbending 
austerity of Roman manners, in the trait by which Tacitus endeavors to 
paint the disorder with which the high-souled Agrippina received the 
news of the death of Germanicus. She was, at the moment, sewing in the 
midst of her maids; and so totally (says Tacitus) did the intelligence 
overthrow her self-command, _that she broke off her work_.

_Snoring_.--The following story of a death caused by it is entirely 
authentic. Erythræus relates that when Cardinal Bentivoglio--a scholar 
equally elegant and laborious--was called to sit in the Conclave, for 
the election of a successor to Urban VIII, the summons found him much 
exhausted by the literary vigils to which he was addicted. Immured in 
the sacred palace, (such is the custom while the Pope is not yet 
chosen,) his lodging was assigned him along side of a Cardinal, whose 
snoring was so incessant and so terrible, that poor Bentivoglio ceased 
to be able to obtain even the {356} little sleep which his studies and 
his cares usually permitted him. After eleven nights of insomnolence 
thus produced, he was thrown into a violent fever. They removed him, 
and he slept--but waked no more.

_Human Usefulness_.--Wilkes has said, that of all the uses to which a 
man can be put, there is none so poor as hanging him. I hope that I 
may, without offence to any body's taste, add, that of all the 
purposes to which a _soul_ can be put, I know of none less useful than 
_damning it_.

_Sneezing_.--It is the Catholics (see father Feyjoo for the fact) who 
trace the practice of bidding God bless a man when he sneezes, to a 
plague in the time of St. Gregory. He, they say, instituted the 
observance, in order to ward off the death of which this spasm had, 
till then, been the regular precursor, in the disease. If the story be 
true, such a plague had already happened, long before the day of St. 
Gregory. In the _Odyssey_, Penelope takes the sneezing of Telemachus 
for a good omen; and the army of Xenophon drew a favorable presage, as 
to one of his propositions, from a like accident: Aristotle speaks of 
the salutation of one sneezing as the common usage of his time. In 
Catullus's _Acme and Sempronius_, Cupid ratifies, by an approving 
sneeze, the mutual vows of the lovers. Pliny alludes to the practice, 
and Petronius in his _Gyton_. In Apuleius's _Golden Ass_, a husband 
hears the concealed gallant of his wife sneeze, and blesses her, 
taking the sternutation to be her own.

If there be a marvel or an absurdity, the Rabbins rarely fail to adorn 
the fiction or the folly with some trait of their own. Their account 
of the matter is, that in patriarchal days, men never died except by 
sneezing, which was then the only disease, and always mortal. 
Apparently then, the antiquity of the Scotch nation and of rappee 
cannot be carried back to the time of Jacob. Be this point of 
chronology as it may, however, it is certain that the same sort of 
observance, as to sneezing, was found in America at the first 
discovery.

Aristotle is politely of opinion that the salutation was meant as an 
acknowledgment to the wind, for choosing an inoffensive mode of 
escape. But a stronger consideration is necessary to account for the 
joy with which the people of Monopotama celebrate the fact, when their 
monarch sneezes. The salutation is spread by loud acclamations, over 
the whole city. So, too, when he of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers all 
turn their backs, and slap loudly their right thighs.

_Honor_.--The source of the following passage in Garth's _Dispensary_, 
is so obvious, that it is singular that no one has made the remark.

In the debate among the Doctors, when war is proposed, one of the 
Council speaks as follows.

  Thus he: "'Tis true, when privilege and right
  Are once invaded, Honor bids us fight:
  But ere we yet engage in Honor's cause,
  First know what honor is, and whence its laws.
    Scorned by the base, 'tis courted by the brave;
  The hero's tyrant, yet the coward's slave:
  Born in the noisy camp, it feeds on air,
  And both exists by hope and by despair;
  Angry whene'er a moment's ease we gain,
  And reconciled at our returns of pain.
  It lives when in death's arms the hero lies;
  But when his safety he consults, it dies.
  Bigotted to this idol, we disclaim
  Rest, health and ease, for nothing but a name."

_Implicit Faith_.--I am delighted with the following excellent 
contrast of ignorant Orthodoxy with cultivated Doubt. It is from the 
learned and pious Le Clerc's Preface to his _Bibliothèque Choisie_, 
vol. vii, pp. 5, 6.

"Il n'y a, comme je crois, personne, qui ne préferât l'état d'une 
nation, où il y auroit beaucoup de lumières quoiqu'il y eût quelques 
libertins, à celui d'une nation ignorante et qui croiroit tout ce 
qu'on lui enseigneroit, ou qui au moins ne donneroit aucunes marques 
de douter des sentimens reçus. Les lumières produisent infailliblement 
beaucoup de vertu dans l'esprit d'une bonne part de ceux qui les 
reçoivent; quoiqu'il y ait des gens qui en abusent. Mais l'Ignorance 
ne produit que de la barbarie et des vices dans tous ceux qui vivent 
tranquillement dans leurs ténèbres. Il faudroit étre fou, par exemple, 
pour préferer ou pour égaler l'état auquel sont les Moscovites et 
d'autres nations, à l'égard de la Religion et de la vertu, à celni 
auquel sont les Anglois et les Hollandois, sous prétexte qu'il y a 
quelques libertins parmi ces deux peuples, et que les Moscovites et 
ceux qui leur ressemblent ne doubtent de rien."

"There is, I think, no one who would prefer the state of a nation, in 
which there was much intelligence, but some free thinkers, to that of 
a nation ignorant and ready to believe whatever might be taught it, or 
which, at least, would show no sign of doubting any of the received 
opinions. For knowledge never fails to produce much of virtue, in the 
minds of a large part of those who receive it, even though there be 
some who make an ill use of it. But Ignorance is never seen to give 
birth to any thing but barbarism and vice, in all such as dwell 
contentedly under her darkness. It would, for example, be nothing less 
than madness, to prefer or to compare the condition in which the 
Muscovites and some other nations are, as respects Religion and 
Virtue, to that of the English or Hollanders; under the pretext that 
there are, among the two latter nations, some free thinkers, and that 
the Muscovites and those who resemble them doubt of nothing."

The whole of this piece, indeed, is excellent, and full of candor, 
charity and sense, as to the temper and the principles of those who 
are forever striving to send into banishment, or shut up in prisons, 
or compel into eternal hypocrisy, all such opinions as have the 
misfortune to differ with their own.

_Friendships_.--There are people whose friendship is very like the 
Santee Canal in South Carolina: that is to say, its repairs cost more 
than the fee simple is worth.

_Benefits_.--There are many which must ever be their own reward, great 
or small. Others are positively dangerous. That subtle courtier, 
Philip de Comines, declares, that it is exceedingly imprudent to do 
your prince services for which a fit recompense is not easily 
found:[1] and Tacitus avers that obligations too deep are sure to turn 
to hatred.[2] Seneca pursues the matter yet further, and insists that 
he, whom your excessive services have thus driven to ingratitude, 
presently begins to desire to escape the shame of such favors, by 
{357} putting out of the world their author.[3] Cicero, too, is 
clearly of opinion, that enmity is the sure consequence of kindness 
carried to the extreme.[4]

[Footnote 1: "Il se fault bien garder de faire tant de services à son 
maistre, qu'on l'empesche d'en trouver la juste 
recompense."--_Memoires_.]

[Footnote 2: "Beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi 
posse: ubi multum antivenere, pro gratiâ odium redditur."]

[Footnote 3: "Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere, non vult esse cui 
reddat."]

[Footnote 4: "Qui si non putat satisfacere, amicus esse nullo modo 
potest."]

_Heroes_.--Marshal de Saxe is accustomed to get the credit of a very 
clever saying, "that no man seems a hero to his own valet de chambre." 
Now, not to speak of the scriptural apothegm, "that a prophet has no 
honor in his own country," the following passage from Montaigne will 
be found to contain precisely the Marshal's idea.

"Tel a esté miraculeux au monde, auquel sa femme et son valet n'ont 
rien veu seulement de remarquable. Peu d'hommes ont esté admirez par 
leurs domestiques: nul n'a esté prophète, non seulement en sa maison, 
mais en son pais, diet l'expérience des histoires."--_Essais_, vol. v, 
p. 198.

"Such an one has seemed miraculous to the world, in whom his wife and 
his valet could not even perceive any thing remarkable. Few men have 
ever been admired by their own servants; none was ever a prophet in 
his own country, still less in his own household."




ODDS AND ENDS.


MR. EDITOR,--Many months having passed away since I last addressed 
you, I have flattered myself, as most old men are apt to do on such 
occasions, that you might very possibly begin to feel some little 
inclination to hear from me once more. Know then, my good sir, that I 
am still in the land of the living, and have collected several "odds 
and ends" of matters and things in general, which you may use or not, 
for your "Messenger," as the fancy strikes you.

Among the rest, I will proceed to give you a new classification of the 
Animal Kingdom--at least so far as our own race is concerned; a 
classification formed upon principles materially different from those 
adopted by the great father of Natural History--Linnæus, who you know, 
classed us with whales and bats, under the general term, Mammalia! 
Now, I have always thought this too bad--too degrading for the lords 
and masters (as we think ourselves) of all other animals on the face 
of the earth; and who deserve a distinct class to themselves, divided 
too into more orders than any other--nay, into separate orders for the 
two sexes. With much study, therefore, and not less labor, I have 
digested a system which assumes mental--instead of bodily 
distinctions, as much more certain and suitable guides in our 
researches. This may be applied without either stripping or partially 
exposing the person, as father Linnæus' plan would compel us to do, 
whenever we were at a loss to ascertain (no unfrequent occurrence by 
the way, in these days) whether the object before us was really one of 
the Mammalia class or not: for such are the marvellous, ever-varying 
metamorphoses wrought by modern fashions in the exteriors of our race, 
that the nicest observers among us would be entirely "at fault" on 
many occasions, to tell whether it was fish, flesh, or fowl that they 
saw. My plan, therefore, has at least one material advantage over the 
other; and it is quite sufficient, I hope, very soon to carry all 
votes in its favor.

With whales and bats we shall no longer be classed!--if your old 
friend can possibly help it; and he is not a little confident of his 
powers to do so; for he believes he can demonstrate that there is not 
a greater difference between the form, size and habits of the bats and 
whales themselves, than he can point out between the manners, customs, 
pursuits, and bodily and mental endowments of the different orders of 
mankind; and, therefore, _ex necessitate rei_, there should be a 
classification different from any yet made. The honor of this 
discovery, I here beg you to witness, that I claim for myself.

Before I proceed farther, I will respectfully suggest a new definition 
of man himself; as all heretofore attempted have been found defective. 
The Greeks, for example, called him "Anthropos"--an animal that turns 
his eyes upwards; forgetting (as it would seem) that all domestic 
fowls, especially turkeys, ducks and geese, frequently do the same 
thing; although it must be admitted, that the act in them is always 
accompanied by a certain twist of the head, such as man himself 
generally practices when he means to look particularly astute. One of 
their greatest philosophers--the illustrious Plato--perceiving the 
incorrectness of this definition, attempted another, and defined man 
to be "a two legged animal without feathers:" but this very inadequate 
description was soon "blown sky high" by the old cynic Diogenes, who, 
having picked a cock quite clean of his plumage, threw him into 
Plato's school, crying out at the same time, "Behold Plato's man!" 
True, this is an old story; but none the worse for that. This was such 
"a settler,"--to borrow a pugilistic term--as completely to 
discourage, for a long time, all farther attempts to succeed in this 
very difficult task; nor indeed, do I recollect, from that day to the 
present, any now worth mentioning. "_The grand march of mind_," 
however, has become of late years, so astoundingly rapid, and so many 
things heretofore pronounced to be _unknowable_, have been made as 
plain as the nose on our faces, that Man himself--the great discoverer 
of all these wonders, should no longer be suffered (if his own powers 
can prevent it) to be consorted, as he has so long been, with a class 
of living beings so vastly inferior to himself. To rescue him 
therefore from _this_ degradation, shall be my humble task, since it 
is one of those attempts wherein--even to fail--must acquire some 
small share of glory.

I will define him then, to be _A self-loving, self-destroying animal_, 
and will maintain the correctness and perfectly exclusive character of 
the definition, against all impugners or objectors, until some one of 
them can point out to me among all the living beings on the face of 
the earth, either any beast, bird, fish, reptile, insect, or 
animalcula, that is distinguished by these very opposite and directly 
contradictory qualities. Man alone possesses--man alone displays them 
both; and is consequently distinguished from all the rest of animated 
nature in a way that gives him an indisputable right to a class of his 
own.

I will next proceed to enumerate the different orders into which this 
most wonderful class is divided. The females, God bless them, being 
entitled, by immemorial usage, to the first rank, shall receive the 
first notice; {358} and I will rank in the first order all those who 
have unquestionable claims to pre-eminence.

_Order 1st._ The _Loveables_.--This order is very numerous, and forms 
by far the most important body in every community, being distinguished 
by all the qualities and endowments--both physical and 
intellectual--which can render our present state of existence most 
desirable--most happy. Their beauties charm--their virtues adorn every 
walk of life. All that is endearing in love and affection--either 
filial, conjugal, or parental: all that is soothing and consolatory in 
affliction; all that can best alleviate distress, cheer poverty, or 
mitigate anguish: every thing most disinterested, most enduring, most 
self-sacrificing in friendship--most exemplary in the performance of 
duty: all which is most delightful in mental intercourse, most 
attractive and permanently engaging in domestic life: in short, every 
thing that can best contribute to human happiness in this world, must 
be ascribed, either directly or indirectly, much more to their 
influence than to all other temporal causes put together; and would 
the rest of their sex only follow their admirable example, this 
wretched world of ours would soon become a secondary heaven.

_Order 2d._ The _Conclamantes_, which, for the benefit of your more 
English readers, I will remark, is a Latin word, meaning--_those who 
clamor together_. They possess two qualities or traits in common with 
certain birds, such as rooks, crows and blackbirds, that is, they are 
_gregarious_ and marvellously _noisy_; for whenever they collect 
together, there is such a simultaneous and apparently causeless 
chattering in the highest key of their voices, as none could believe 
but those who have had the good or ill fortune (I will not say which) 
to hear it. But there is this marked characteristic difference. The 
latter utter sounds significant of sense, and perfectly intelligible, 
often very sprightly and agreeable too, when you can meet them one at 
a time; nor is juxta-position at all necessary to their being heard; 
for you will always be in ear-shot of them, although separated by the 
entire length or breadth of the largest entertaining-room any where to 
be found. Their proper element--the one wherein they shine, or rather 
sound most--is the atmosphere of a "_sware-ree_" party, or a squeeze: 
but as to the particular purpose for which Nature designed them, I 
must e'en plead _ignorance_; not, my good sir, that I would have you 
for one moment to suppose, that I mean any invidious insinuation by 
this excuse.

_Order 3d._ The _Ineffables_.--I almost despair of finding language to 
describe--even the general appearance of this order, much less those 
mental peculiarities by which they are to be distinguished from the 
rest of their sex. But I must at least strive to redeem my pledge, and 
therefore proceed to state, that they rarely ever seem to be more than 
half alive: that their countenances always indicate (or are designed 
to do so) a languor of body scarcely bearable, and the most 
touching--the most exquisite sensibility of soul; that even the most 
balmy breezes of spring, should they accidentally find access to them, 
would visit them much too roughly: that to speak above a low murmur 
would almost be agony, and to eat such gross food as ordinary mortals 
feed upon would be certain death. As to their voices, I am utterly 
hopeless of giving the faintest idea, unless permitted both to resort 
to supposition and to borrow Nic Bottom's most felicitous epithet of 
"a sucking dove." You have only to imagine such a thing, (it is no 
greater stretch of fancy than writers often call upon us to make) and 
then to imagine what kind of tones "a sucking-dove" would elicit; and 
you will certainly have quite as good an idea of the voice of an 
Ineffable as you could possibly have, without actually hearing it. No 
comparison drawn from any familiar sounds can give the faintest idea 
of it, for it is unique and _sui generis_. This order serves the 
admirable moral purpose of continually teaching, in the best 
practicable manner, the virtue of patience to all--who have anything 
to do with it.

_Order 4th._ The _Tongue-tied_, or _Monosyllabic_.--This order can 
scarcely be described--unless by negations; for they say little or 
nothing themselves, and, therefore, but little or nothing can be said 
of them; unless it were in the Yankee mode of _guessing_; which, to 
say the least of it, would be rather unbecoming in so scientific a 
work as I design mine to be. The famous Logadian Art of extracting 
sun-beams from cucumbers would be quite easy in practice compared with 
the art of extracting anything from these good souls beyond a "_yes_" 
or a "_no_," as all have found to their cost, who ever tried to keep 
up the ball of conversation among them; the labor of Sysiphus was 
child's play to it. They serve however one highly useful purpose, and 
that is, to furnish a perpetual refutation of the base slander which 
one of the old English poets has uttered against the whole sex in 
these often quoted lines--

  "I think, quoth Thomas, women's tongues
   Of aspen-leaves are made."

_Order 5th._ In vivid and startling contrast to the preceding order, I 
introduce--The hoidening _Tom-Boys_. These are a kind of "Joan 
D'Arkies," (if I may coin such a term), female in appearance, but male 
in impudence, in action, in general deportment. They set at naught all 
customary forms, all public sentiment, all those long established 
canons, sanctioned by both sexes, for regulating female conduct; and 
they practise, with utter disregard of consequences, all such 
masculine feats and reckless pranks, as must _unsex_ them, so far as 
behavior can possibly do it. They affect to despise the company of 
their own sex; to associate chiefly with ours, but with the most 
worthless part of them, provided only, they be young, wild, prodigal 
and in common parlance--_fashionable_, and alike regardless of what 
may be thought or said of them. The more delicate their figures, the 
more apparently frail their constitutions, the greater seems to be 
their rage for exhibiting the afflicting contrast between masculine 
actions performed with powers fully adequate to achieve them, and 
attempted--apparently at the risk of the limbs, if not the lives, of 
the rash and nearly frantic female adventurers. Egregiously mistaking 
eccentricity for genius--outrages upon public sentiment for 
independence of spirit, and actions which should disgrace a man, or 
render him perfectly ridiculous, for the best means of catching a 
husband, they make themselves the pity of the wise and good, the scorn 
and derision of all the other orders of the community, who see through 
the flimsy and ridiculous veil of their conduct, the true motives from 
which it proceeds.

_Order 6th._ The _Hydrophobists_.--These are, at all times, such 
haters of water--especially if that unsavory {359} article called 
_soap_ be mixed with it--that insanity is by no means necessary, as in 
the case of animals affected by canine madness, to elicit their 
characteristic feeling. Their persons and their houses too, when they 
have any, all present ocular proofs of it; proofs, alas! which nothing 
but the luckless objects of their hatred can "_expunge_," if I may 
borrow a term lately become very fashionable. Whether this antipathy 
be natural or superinduced by the dread of catching cold, I can not 
pretend to say; but its effects are too notorious, too often matters 
of the most common observation, for its existence to be doubted. The 
striking contrast, however, which it exhibits to that admirable 
quality--_cleanliness_, aids much in teaching others the duty of 
acquiring and constantly practising the latter.

_Order 7th._ The _Bustlers_.--The difference between this order and 
the last mentioned is so great, so radical, so constantly forced upon 
our notice, that they might almost be ranked in distinct classes: for 
the members of the order now under consideration, are such dear lovers 
of both the articles which the others hate, as to keep them in almost 
ceaseless appliance. At such times, neither the members of their 
families, nor their guests, can count, for many minutes together, upon 
remaining safe from involuntary sprinklings and ablutions. And 
what--with their usual accompaniments of dusters, brooms, mops, and 
scrubbing brushes, if you find any secure place either to sit or 
stand, you will owe it more to your good luck than to any preconcerted 
exemption between the mistresses and their operatives. "_Fiat cleaning 
up, ruat cælum,_" is both their law and their practice. After all 
however, they are, in general, well meaning, good hearted souls; those 
only excepted among them, whose perpetual motion is kept up by a 
modicum of the Xantippe blood, which developes its quality in such 
outward appliances to the heads, backs and ears of their servants--as 
key-handles, sticks, switches, boxings and scoldings.

_Order 8th._ The _Peace-Sappers_.--These, like the underground 
artists, after whom I have ventured in part to name them, always work 
_secretly_; but whereas, the sappers employed in war, confine their 
humane labors solely to the immediate destruction of walls, 
fortifications and houses, with all their inhabitants, thereby putting 
the latter out of their misery at once; the _peace-sappers_ make the 
excellence of _their art_ to consist in causing the sufferings which 
they inflict to be protracted--even to the end of life, be that long 
or short. The master spirits of this order view with ineffable scorn 
such of their formidable sisterhood as are incapable, from actual 
stupidity, of exciting any other kind of family and neighborhood 
quarrels, than those plain, common-place matters which soon come to an 
explanation, and end in a renewal of friendly intercourse and a 
reciprocation of good offices. _They_ despise--utterly despise--such 
petty game; and never attempt sapping but with a confident belief--not 
only that its authors will escape all suspicion, but that its effects 
will be deeply and most painfully felt--probably during the entire 
lives of all its devoted victims. Their powers of flattery and skill 
in every species of gossipping, gain them an easy admittance, before 
they are found out, into most families wherein they have set their 
hearts upon becoming visiters. There they are always eager listeners 
to every thing that may be said in the careless, innocent hours of 
domestic intercourse; and being entirely unsuspected plotters of 
mischief, they treasure up as a miser would his gold, every single 
word or expression that can possibly be so tortured as to embroil 
their confiding hosts with some one or all of their neighbors. If no 
word nor expression has been heard during a long intercourse which can 
either fairly or falsely be imputed to envy, jealousy or ill-will 
towards others; absolute falsehoods will most artfully be fabricated 
to attain their never-forgotten, never-neglected purpose: for they 
sicken at the very sight of family peace--of neighborhood-harmony; and 
"the gall of bitterness," that incessantly rankles in their bosoms can 
find no other vent--no other alleviation--than in laboring to destroy 
every thing of the kind. Their communications being always conveyed 
under the strongest injunctions of secrecy--the most solemn 
protestations of particular regard and friendship for the depositaries 
of these secrets, it often happens that entire neighborhoods are set 
in a flame, and most of the families in it rendered bitter enemies to 
each other, without a single one knowing, or even suspecting what has 
made them so.

The Romans had a most useful custom of tying a wisp of hay around the 
horns of all their mischievous and dangerous cattle, by way of caveat 
to all beholders to keep out of their way: and could some similar 
contrivance be adopted for distinguishing the _Peace-Sappers_, as far 
off as _they_ could be seen, the inventor thereof would well deserve 
the united thanks and blessings of every civilized community.

_Order 9th._ The _Linguis Bellicosæ_, or _Tongue Warriors_.--The 
distinguishing characteristic of this order is, an insatiable passion 
for rendering their faculty of speech the greatest possible annoyance 
to all of their own race--whether men, women or children, who come in 
their way: and few there are who can always keep out of it, however 
assiduously they may strive to do so. Most of them are very early 
risers, for _the unruly evil_, as St. James calls it, is a great enemy 
to sleep. When once on their feet, but a few minutes will elapse 
before you hear their tongues ringing the matutinal peal to their 
servants and families. But far, very far, different is it from that of 
the _church-going bell_, which is a cheering signal of approaching 
attempts to do good to the souls of men; whereas the tongue-warrior's 
peal is a summons for all concerned to prepare for as much harm being 
done to their bodies as external sounds, in their utmost discord, can 
possibly inflict. Nothing that is said or done can extort a word even 
of approbation much less of applause; for the feeling that would 
produce it does not exist; but a cataract is continually poured forth 
of personal abuse, invective and objurgation, which, if it be not 
quite as loud and overwhelming as that of Niagara, is attributable 
more to the want of power, than of the will to make it so. It has been 
with much fear and trembling, my good sir, that I have ventured to 
give you the foregoing description; nor should I have done it, had I 
not confided fully in your determination not to betray me to these 
hornets in petticoats.

Having done with the description of the female orders of our race, as 
far as I can, at present recollect their number and distinctive 
characters, I now proceed to that of my own sex.

_Order 1st._ The _Great and Good Operatives_.--Although {360} in 
counting this order I will not venture quite as far as the Latin poet 
who asserted, that "they were scarce as numerous as the gates of 
Thebes, or the mouths of the Nile," it must be admitted that the 
number is most deplorably small, compared with that of the other 
orders. The _multum in parvo_, however, applies with peculiar force to 
the _Great and Good Operatives_. _All the orders_ certainly have 
intellects of some kind, which they exercise after fashions of their 
own--sometimes beneficially to themselves and others; then again 
injuriously, if not destructively to both. But only the individuals of 
this order always make the use of their mental powers for which they 
were bestowed; and hence it is that I have distinguished them as I 
have done. How far this distinction is appropriate, others must 
decide, after an impartial examination of the grounds upon which I 
mean to assert the justice of its claim to be adopted. Here they are. 
It is to _this_ order we must ascribe all which is truly glorious in 
war, or morally and politically beneficial in peace: to the exercise 
of their talents, their knowledge and their virtues, we are indebted 
for every thing beneficent in government or legislation; and by their 
agency, either direct or indirect, are all things accomplished which 
can most conduce to the good and happiness of mankind; unless it be 
that large portion of the god-like work which can better be achieved 
by the first order of the other sex.

_Order 2d._ _Ipomœa Quamoclit_, or the Busy Bodies.--These, like the 
little plants after which I have ventured to name them, have a 
surprising facility at creeping or running, either under, through, 
around, or over any obstacles in their way. Their ruling passion 
consists in a most inordinate and unexplainable desire to pry into and 
become thoroughly acquainted with every person's private concerns, but 
their own; to the slightest care or examination of which, they have 
apparently an invincible antipathy. Has any person a quarrel or 
misunderstanding with one or more of his neighbors, they will worm 
out, by hook or by crook, all the particulars; not with any view, even 
the most distant, of reconciling the parties, (for peace-making is no 
business of theirs), but for the indescribable pleasure of gaining a 
secret, which all their friends, as the whole of their acquaintance 
are called, will be invited, as fast as they are found, to aid them in 
keeping. Is any man or woman much in debt, the neighboring busy-bodies 
will very soon be able to give a better account of the amount than the 
debtors themselves; but it will always be communicated with such 
earnest injunctions of secrecy from the alleged fear of injuring the 
credit of the parties, as to destroy _that_ credit quite as 
effectually as a publication of bankruptcy would do. Does the sparse 
population of a country neighborhood afford so rare and titillating a 
subject as a courtship, it furnishes one of the highest treats a 
busy-body can possibly have; and it not unfrequently happens that this 
courtship is, at least interrupted, if not entirely broken off, by the 
exuberant outpourings and embellishments of his delight at possessing 
such a secret, and at the prospect of participating in all the 
customary junketings and feastings upon such joyous occasions. The 
whole of this order are great carriers and fetchers of every species 
of country intelligence; great intimates (according to their account) 
of all great people; and above all--great locomotives. But, unlike 
their namesakes, the machines so called, they rarely if ever move 
straightforward; having a decided preference for that kind of zig-zag, 
hither and thither course, which takes them, in a time inconceivably 
short, into every inhabited hole and corner within their visiting 
circle, which is always large enough to keep them continually on the 
pad.

N.B. There is an order of the other sex so nearly resembling the one 
just described, that I am in a great quandary whether I should not 
have united them, since the principal difference which I can discover, 
after much study is, that the former wears petticoats and the latter 
pantaloons. You and your readers must settle it, for Oliver Oldschool 
can not.

_Order 3d._ _Noli me tangere_, or _Touch me not_.--These are so 
super-eminently sensitive and irritable, that should you but crook 
your finger at them apparently by way of slight, nothing but your 
blood can expiate the deadly offence: and whether that blood is to be 
extracted by a bout at fisty cuffs or cudgelling, or by the more 
genteel instrumentality of dirk, sword or pistol, must depend upon the 
relative rank and station of the parties concerned. If you belong not 
to that tribe embraced by the very comprehensive but rather equivocal 
term--_gentlemen_, you may hope to escape with only a few bruises or 
scarifications; but should your luckless destiny have placed you among 
_them_, death or decrepitude must be your portion, unless you should 
have the fortune to inflict it on your adversary.

_Order 4th._ The _Gastronomes_.--The description of this order 
requires but few words. Their only object in life seems to be--to 
tickle their palates, and to provide the ways and means of provoking 
and gratifying their gormandizing appetites. They would travel fifty 
miles to eat a good dinner, sooner than move fifty inches to do a 
benevolent action; and would sacrifice fame, fortune and friends, 
rather than forego what they call the pleasures of the table. They 
show industry in nothing but catering for their meals; animation in 
nothing but discussions on the qualities and cookery of different 
dishes; and the only strong passion they ever evince is, that which 
reduces them merely to the level of beasts of prey. During the brief 
period of their degraded existence, they live despised and scoffed at 
by all but their associates, and die victims to dropsy, gout, palsy 
and apoplexy.

_Order 5th._ The _Brain Stealers_.--The chief difference between this 
and the preceding order is, that the former steal their own brains by 
eating, the latter by drinking. For the idea conveyed by the term 
brain-stealers, I acknowledge myself indebted to Cassio in the play of 
Othello, where, in a fit of remorse for getting drunk, he is made to 
exclaim, "Oh! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal 
away their brains!" This order may well follow its predecessor in 
dignity, or rather in _uselessness_, since the greatest optimist ever 
born would be puzzled to find out the way in which either can render 
any real, essential service to mankind. Although the alleged excuse 
for their practice--so long as they retain sense enough to offer 
any--is to cheer the spirits--to gladden the heart, the undeniable 
effect of that practice is, to depress the one, and to pain the other. 
Melancholy expels merriment, and the solitary feeling banishes the 
social; for the intolerable shame inspired by the consciousness of the 
{361} self-larceny they are continually committing, drives them into 
secret places for its perpetration; and into solitude during the short 
intervals between their self-destructive acts, to brood over their own 
indelible disgrace, the hopeless misery they inflict on all their 
friends and relatives, and the damning guilt they incur if there be 
any truth in Holy Writ--any such thing as eternal punishment in 
another world, for deeds voluntarily perpetrated in our present state 
of existence. But these are matters which never for a moment seem to 
arrest their desperate course. During the few intervals of sanity 
which chance rather than design seems to afford them, the retrospect 
is so full of self-condemnation, agonizing remorse, and awful 
anticipations of future retribution, of future and eternal punishment, 
that they recklessly hasten to drown all feeling--all consciousness of 
existence in the deadly draughts which they continually swallow. Thus 
they linger out their brief and pitiable lives in a kind of comatose 
stupor--a wretched burden and disgrace to themselves and a misery 
beyond description to all connected with them.

_Order 6th._ The _Devilish Good Fellows_.--These possess, in an 
eminent degree, the art of concealing much thorough selfishness under 
the guise of what are called _companionable qualities_; for although 
loud professors of sociality and great company keepers, (except that 
of the ladies, which they never voluntarily seek,) they mix in society 
rather oftener at other people's expense than their own. Their money 
is lavished chiefly on themselves, except the modicum most skilfully 
expended in purchasing a character for generosity, and that which in 
common parlance is miscalled _good fellowship_. This is easily and 
often most profitably done, by giving a few well-timed dinners, 
suppers, and card-parties to their select companions and _bosom 
friends_, whose money they scruple not to win on such occasions to the 
last cent; having first made these dear objects of their disinterested 
regard drunk, while they kept sober for the purpose, although 
apparently encountering a similar risk of intoxication. All they do is 
for effect--for gulling others to their own advantage, rather than for 
any particular pleasure which they themselves derive from their own 
actions. Thus they become uproarious at the convivial board, not so 
much from impulse as design; not to excite themselves but their 
companions; and frequently clamor for "pushing the bottle," (for they 
are brain stealers) more to stultify others than to exhilirate their 
own feelings. They are great depositaries and retailers of all such 
anecdotes and stories as are called _good_, but rather on account of 
their obscenity than their genuine humor or wit. Now and then they 
incontinently perpetrate puns; make practical jokes; and are always 
merry in appearance, (whatever the real feelings may be) so far as 
antic contortions of the risible muscles can make them so. But they 
are utter strangers to that genuine hilarity of heart which imparts 
perennial cheerfulness to the countenances of all who are blessed with 
it, and which springs from a consciousness--both of good motives and 
good actions. Their lives are spent in a feverish course of 
sensuality--often of the lowest, the very grossest kind; and they 
generally die of a miserable old age, just as truly rational, 
temperate and moral people reach the prime of life.

_Order 7th._ The _Philo-Mammonites_, or _Money Lovers_.--Although this 
term would comprehend a most numerous and motley host, if the mere 
existence of the passion itself were deemed a sufficient distinction, 
yet I mean to apply the designation only to such abortions of our race 
as love money for _itself alone_, independently as it would seem, both 
of its real and adventitiously exchangeable value. Others burn with 
affection for the beloved article, only as a means to attain the ends 
which they most passionately desire. These ends are as countless as 
the sands; some, for example, make it the grand object of their 
temporal existence to buy fine clothes, others fine equipages; others 
again fine houses, fine furniture, fine pictures, fine books--in 
short, _fine any thing_ which the world calls so, whatever they 
themselves may think of it; for, as Dr. Franklin most truly says, 
"_other peoples' eyes cost us more than our own_." The exclusive 
money-lovers despise what others love; with "the fleshly lusts that 
war against the souls" of other men, and _cost money_, they have 
nothing to do--no, not they! and even the common necessaries and 
comforts of life are all rejected for the sake of making, hoarding, 
and contemplating the dear--all-absorbing object of the only affection 
they are capable of feeling. In this respect, the money lover differs 
entirely, not only from all other human beings, but from every race of 
brutes, reptiles, and insects yet discovered. _They_, for instance, 
accumulate the food which they love, evidently for _use_, and not 
solely to look at, to gloat upon, as the ultimate, the exclusive 
source of gratification. _Their accumulation_, therefore, is but the 
means of attaining the end--_consumption_, from which all their real 
enjoyment seems to be anticipated. The propensity to collect for 
future use, which is called instinct in the latter, is identical with 
what is deemed the love of money, as it operates upon all the orders 
of mankind, except the _Philo Mammonites_. With the former, it is not 
the money they love, but something for which they have a passionate 
regard, that they know their money can procure: with the latter, the 
sole enjoyment (if indeed they may be thought capable of any) seems to 
consist in the mere looking at their hoards, and in the consciousness 
of being able to exclaim--"all this is _mine_, nothing but the 
inexorable tyrant death can take it away. Let others call it pleasure 
and happiness to spend money, if they are fools enough to do so; we 
deem it the only pleasure and happiness to make and keep it." To such 
men, the common feelings of humanity--the ordinary ties that bind 
together families and communities, are things utterly 
incomprehensible; and consequently neither the sufferings of their 
fellow men, nor their utmost miseries are ever permitted, for one 
moment, to interfere with that darling object which occupies their 
souls, to the exclusion of all others. This they for ever pursue, with 
an ardor that no discouragement can check; a recklessness of public 
sentiment that defies all shame; and often with a degree of 
self-inflicted want, both of food and raiment, which must be witnessed 
to be believed.

_Order 8th._ The _Confiscators_.--In this order must be included 
(strange as it may seem) not only all thieves, pickpockets, swindlers, 
robbers and professional gamblers, but even many others, who, although 
professing most sanctimonious horror at the bare idea of violating the 
_letter_ of the laws relative to property, scruple not to disregard 
their _spirit_, whenever pelf is to be made by {362} it. To make money 
is the great end of their existence; but the means are left to time 
and circumstances to suggest--always, however, to be used according to 
the law-verbal, in such cases made and provided. The general title 
indicates rather the _wills_ than the _deeds_ of the whole order; the 
former being permanent, intense, and liable to no change--whereas the 
latter terminate, now and then, in such uncomfortable results as loss 
of character, imprisonment, and hanging. _Self-appropriation_, without 
parting with any equivalent, without incurring any loss that can 
possibly be avoided, is the cardinal, the paramount law with every 
grade: they differ only in the "_modus operandi_." Some, for example, 
work by fraud--others by force; some by superior skill, or exclusive 
knowledge--while hosts of others rely for success upon practising on 
the passions and vices, or the innocence and gullibility of their 
fellow-men. To do this the more effectually, they make much use of the 
terms justice, honesty, fair-dealing, in their discourse, but take 
special care to exclude them from their practice; for _they_ are to 
prosper, even should the Devil take all at whose expense that 
prosperity has been achieved, if, indeed, he deemed them worth taking, 
after their dear friends, the confiscators, have done with them.

_Order 9th._ The _Blatterers_.--Although this word is now nearly 
obsolete, or degraded to the rank of vulgarisms, in company with many 
other good old terms of great force and fitness, once deemed of 
sterling value, I venture to use it here, because I know, in our whole 
language, no other so perfectly descriptive of this order; nor, 
indeed, any other which conveys the same idea. And here (if you will 
pardon another digression) I cannot forbear to express my regret at 
being compelled, as it were, to take leave of so many old 
acquaintances in our mother tongue, who have been expelled from modern 
parlance and writing. Our literary tastes and language will require 
but very little more sublimation--little more polishing and refining, 
to render that tongue scarcely intelligible to persons whose 
misfortune it was to be educated some half century ago, unless, 
indeed, they will go to school again. To call things by their right 
names, is among the "_mala prohibita_" in the canons of modern 
criticism; the strength, fitness, and power of old words, must give 
way to the indispensable euphony of new ones; and all the qualities 
once deemed essential to good style, must now be sacrificed, or, at 
least, hold a far inferior rank to mere smoothness, polish, and 
harmony of diction. I might give you quite a long catalogue of highly 
respectable and significant old words, once the legal currency of 
discourse, which have long since been turned out of doors, to make 
room for their modern correlatives; but neither my time nor space will 
permit me to mention more than the following, out of some hundreds. 
For instance, my old acquaintance, and perhaps yours, the word 
"breeches," has been dismissed for "_unmentionables_," or 
"_inexpressibles_;"--"shifts" and "petticoats" are now yclept "_under 
dress_;" and even "hell" itself, according to the authority of a 
highly polished Divine, perhaps now living, must hereafter be softened 
and amplified into the phrase, "a place which politeness forbids to 
mention." But let me return to the description of the Blattering 
order.

To say, as I was very near doing, that their peculiar trait is "_to 
have words at will_," would have conveyed a very false notion; for 
that phrase is properly applicable only to such persons as can talk or 
be silent--can restrain or pour out their discourse at pleasure. But 
the Blatterers, although their words are as countless as the sands, 
seem to exercise no volition over them whatever, any more than a sieve 
can be said to do over the water that may be poured into it. Through 
and through the liquid will and must run, be the consequences what 
they may; and out of the mouths of the Blatterers must their words 
issue, let what will happen. So invariable is this the case, that we 
might almost say of their discourse as the Latin poet has so happily 
said of the stream of Time:

  "Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."

They will unconsciously talk to themselves, if they can find no one 
else to talk to; but this soliloquizing they are rarely forced to 
perform--for so great are their diligence and tact in hunting up some 
unlucky wight or other upon whom to vent their words, that they are 
seldom unsuccessful in their search. Horace, in one of his epistles, 
has most pathetically described, in his own person, the sufferings of 
all those who are so luckless as to be caught by one of these very 
benevolent tormentors of their species; and he has hit off, most 
admirably, their multiform powers of inflicting annoyance. But many 
ways and means, never "dreamt of in his philosophy," have since been 
discovered, which it devolves upon others, far his inferiors, to 
describe. In regard, for instance, to the choice of subjects, if a 
Blatterer may be deemed capable of choosing, our modern logocracies 
have opened a field of almost boundless extent, which, in Horace's 
day, was a "_terra incognita_." Their loquacity would utterly shame 
that ancient braggart, whose boast it was, that he could extemporize 
two hundred Latin verses, while standing on one leg; and their 
matchless talents for political mistification--for comminuting, and 
spreading out all sorts of materials susceptible of being used for 
party purposes, were never called forth, and consequently never 
developed, until many a century after Horace was in his grave. The 
present age--I may say, _the present times_, may justly claim the 
distinguished honor not only of furnishing more aliment for the 
nurture of the Blattering order than any other age or times--but, on 
the political economy principle, that, "_demand will always beget 
supply_," to them must be awarded the exclusive merit of furnishing a 
much greater number of such patriotic operatives than ever could be 
found before, since our father Noah left his ark. In proof of this 
assertion, I would ask, where is there now any hole or corner, either 
in public or private life, in which Blatterers may not often be heard? 
Where is there any electioneering ground--any hustings to hold an 
election--any forensic assemblage, or legislative halls, exempt 
entirely from these most successful confounders and despisers of all 
grammatical and rhetorical rules--of all the plainest dictates of 
common sense? As every thing they utter seems the result rather of 
chance than design, it might be supposed that the former would 
occasionally lead them, (especially when acting as public 
functionaries,) at least into some approximation towards argument or 
eloquence; but, alas! no such chance ever befalls them. By a kind of 
fatality, apparently unsusceptible of change or "shadow of turning," 
all their efforts at {363} either eloquence or argument, turn out most 
pitiable or ridiculous abortions; for they invariably mistake 
assertion for the latter, and empty, bombastic declamation and 
gasconading for the former. Vociferation they always mistake for 
sense, and personal abuse of every body opposed to them, for the best 
means of promoting what they understand by the term, "public 
good"--meaning, thereby, the good of whatever party they take under 
their special care.

_Order 10th._ The _Would Be's_, or _Preposterous Imitators_.--This, 
probably, is the most numerous of all the orders of our class, 
although very far from comprehending the whole human race, as that 
witty satyrist Horace would have us believe, with his "_Nemo contentus 
vivat_." But it includes all, who by their array and management of 
"the outward man," would pass themselves off, upon society, for 
something upon which nature has put her irrevocable veto. Some few of 
the brute creation have been charged (falsely as I humbly conceive) 
with this warring against her absolute decrees; for, as far as we can 
judge, they are all perfectly content with their own forms and 
conditions, and live out their respective times without apeing, or 
manifesting any desire to ape, either the appearance or manners of 
their fellow-brutes, as _we_ so often and abortively do those of our 
fellow-men. It is true that the monkey, one of the accused parties, 
seems to possess no small talent in this way; but if the exercise of 
it were fully understood, it appears probable that we should always 
find it to be done at our expense, and in derision of those only who 
are continually aping something above their powers--as much as to say, 
(had they the gift of speech) "Risum teneatis Amici?"--see what fools 
ye are, to labor so hard and so vainly, in efforts to do what _we_ can 
do better than yourselves! If we consider their tricks and their 
travesties in any other point of view, we shall commit the same 
ludicrous blunder that one of our Would Be's of the olden time was 
said once to have committed at a certain foreign court, "in mistaking 
a sarcasm for a compliment," to the great amusement of all who had 
cognizance of the fact, except the poor Americans, of whom he was 
rather an unlucky sample.

The poor frog has also been accused of this preposterous mimicry; but 
it is only a single case, much at war with our knowledge of this 
apparently unambitious quadruped or reptile, (I am not naturalist 
enough to know which to call it)--much at war, too, with the chivalric 
principles of attacking none incapable of self-defence; and 
_moreover_, it is related by a professed inventor of fables, with 
whose professional license of fibbing we have all been familiar from 
our childhood, and are therefore prepared to estimate at its true 
value. I allude, as you must suppose, to our school-boy tale, wherein 
it is asserted (believe it who can) that a poor frog, demented by 
vanity, burst himself open, and of course perished, in his 
impracticable efforts to swell himself to the unattainable size of the 
portly ox. Why this far-fetched and incredible story should ever have 
been invented for illustrating a matter of frequent occurrence among 
ourselves, I never could well understand. The constant puffings and 
swellings-out of thousands and tens of thousands of our own class, to 
attain dimensions which nothing but gum-elastic minds and bodies, or 
something still more expansive, could qualify them to attain, are 
quite sufficient, manifest, and ridiculous, to render useless all 
resort to the invention of fabulous tales--all appeal to the imagined 
follies and gratuitously assumed vices of brute-beasts, reptiles and 
insects, for the laudable purpose of proving that man himself is no 
better than a brute in many of his propensities and habits. As to his 
particular folly of trying to change himself into something which he 
never can be, why should fabulists or any others attempt to drag the 
poor monkeys, frogs, and other animals into such a co-partnery, 
without a solitary authenticated fact to warrant the imputation, when 
innumerable facts are daily occurring among ourselves, to satisfy even 
the most sceptical, both in regard to the indigenous growth of this 
folly, and of man's exclusive right to it. The Would Be's, in fact, 
are to be seen almost in every place, and in all the walks of life; 
but especially in villages, towns, cities, and at medicinal springs, 
for in these the chances of attracting notice being generally 
proportioned to the population, there will always be more 
notice-seekers--in other words, more Would Be's than elsewhere.

Streets and public squares constitute the great outdoor theatre for 
their multiform exhibitions. The first you meet perhaps, is one who is 
enacting the profound thinker, although, probably, if the truth were 
known, not three ideas that could lead to any useful result, have ever 
crossed his brain, once a year, since he was born. His pace is slow, 
but somewhat irregular and zig-zag; his eyes are generally fixed on 
the ground, as it were geologizing; the tip of his fore-finger is on 
his nose, or his upper lip compressed between that finger and his 
thumb; the other hand and arm unconsciously swung behind his back; and 
so deep is his abstraction, that, should you be meeting him, you must 
step aside, or risk a concussion of bodies, which must end either in a 
fight or mutual apologies.

The next sample, probably, may be in quite a different style, although 
equally burlesque and preposterous. This one may be striving to play 
the gentleman of high official station, or great celebrity for 
talents, learning, or some other attainment which deservedly elevates 
him in the estimation of mankind. But mistaking exterior appearances 
for sure manifestations of internal qualities and endowments, which he 
is incapable of acquiring, he foolishly imagines that by means of the 
former he can pass himself off for what he wishes. Thus you will meet 
him, strutting and swaggering along, most majestically, with head 
erect, elevated chest, and perpendicular body--with a face, the 
owl-like solemnity of which nothing but the look of that sapient 
animal itself can equal, and a pomposity of air and manner which says, 
as far as pantomime can express words--"Who but _I_--_I myself_--_I_; 
look at _me_, ye mean and contemptible fellows, one and all!"

Pass him as soon as you have had your laugh out, and you will not go 
far before you will meet some other, probably quite dissimilar to both 
the others, although actuated by the same indomitable passion for 
conquering nature. The two former moved at a rate such as would suit a 
funeral procession; but your next man may be seen hurrying along with 
the speed of a courier despatched after an accoucheur, or for a doctor 
to one at the point of death. His legs are moving with the utmost 
rapidity short of running, and his feet are {364} thrown forward with 
a kind of sling, as if he were trying to kick off his shoes; while his 
arms, from the shoulder joint to the extremities, are alternately 
swung with a force and quickness of motion, as if he expected from 
them the same service that a boatman does from his oars. This worthy 
gentleman's highest ambition is, to be mistaken for a man nearly 
overwhelmed with business so multifarious and important, as scarcely 
to allow him time to eat or sleep, when it is very probable that he 
either has none at all, or none which would prevent him from moving 
quite as slowly as he pleased.

When tired with contemplating what I will venture to call the 
physiognomy of walking, you may betake yourself to some large dinner 
party, should your good fortune have furnished you with an invitation. 
There you will rarely fail to have an _in-door_ treat quite equal, if 
not superior to the former, in witnessing other modes developed by 
speech, in which "the Would Be's" betray their ruling passion--a 
treat, by the way, which some travesty wag has most maliciously called 
"_the feast of reason and the flow of soul_," when all who have ever 
tried it, perfectly well know, that in nineteen cases out of twenty, 
it is very little more than the flow of good liquor, and the feast of 
good viands--not that _I_, Mr. Editor, mean to object to _either_, 
when _used in a way_ to heighten all the innocent enjoyments of social 
intercourse, without endangering health or shortening life, as they 
are too often made to do. But having been always accustomed to deem it 
very disgraceful for rational beings to rank either eating or drinking 
to excess among these enjoyments, I cannot forbear to enter my protest 
against any such misnomer. Might I be permitted here to say what 
should be the chief object of all social parties whatever, I would 
decide that it should be _mutual improvement_, and that the 
individuals who compose them should consider themselves as members of 
a kind of joint stock company, met, on such occasions, to perfect each 
other in their parts, as performers in the great drama of human 
life--that whenever called on _to act_, they might acquit themselves 
most naturally, agreeably, and usefully, both to themselves and 
others. Few indeed, "and far between," will be the dinner parties 
answering this description; for, in general, there are no social 
meetings at which you will find a greater assemblage of the Would 
Be's. Here you will often find very garrulous and deep critics in 
wine, who if the truth were known, would probably vastly prefer a 
drink of fourth proof whiskey, gin or brandy, to the choicest products 
of the best vineyards in the world. Occasionally you may also see 
exquisite amateurs of music, who, would they be candid, must plead 
guilty of utter ignorance on the subject, or confess a decided 
preference for some such old acquaintance as "Poor Betty Martin tip 
toe fine," or "Yankee Doodle," on a jews-harp or hurdy-gurdy, to the 
finest compositions of the most celebrated masters, performed by 
themselves, in their highest style, on their favorite instruments. A 
good assortment too of gormandizers is rarely wanting at such places; 
men whose gift of speech is never exercised but in praise of good 
cookery--whose mouths seem formed for little else than to eat and 
drink, and whose stomachs may truly be called "_omnibuses_," being 
depositories for full as great a variety of dead eatable substances, 
as the vehicles properly so called are of living bodies. The chief 
difference consists in the latter moving on four wheels--the former on 
two legs! There, likewise, may sometimes be seen the Virtuoso, "_rara 
avis in terris_," at least in our land, whose affected skill in 
ancient relics transcends, a sightless distance, that of the renowned 
Dr. Cornelius Scriblerus, the antiquary, rendered so famous by 
mistaking a barber's old rusty basin for an antique shield of some 
long deceased warrior.

Although science and literature are articles generally in very bad 
odor, if not actually contraband in such assemblages, (bodies and not 
minds being the thing to be fed,) still both are now and then 
introduced, and rare work are made of them by the would be scholars. 
To the real scholar--the well educated gentleman, there cannot well be 
any more severe trial of his politeness and self-command, than is 
afforded by their ridiculous attempts to display their taste and 
erudition. But the farce, incomparably the best of the whole, will 
usually be enacted by the little party politicians, who almost always 
constitute a considerable portion of a dinner party in these times. 
With these the settling of their dinners is quite a secondary affair 
to the settling of our national affairs, a most important part of 
which duty they most patriotically take upon themselves. _Ex 
necessitate rei_, their vehement volubility, their ardent zeal, 
constantly blazes out with an intensity of heat in full proportion to 
the self-imputed share of each in our national concerns. With this 
volcanic fire burning in their bosoms, cotemporaneously with so large 
a portion of the government of fifteen millions of human beings 
pressing on their shoulders--gigantic though they be--it is truly 
amazing with what alacrity and perseverance they at the same time 
talk, eat, and decide on the most difficult problems in political 
science--the most complex and really doubtful measures of national 
policy and legislation--when their whole outfit for so arduous a work 
consists, in all human probability, of a few hours of weekly reading 
in some party newspaper, edited by some man equally conceited, 
ignorant, and opinionated with themselves.

All this while, although the entertainer and a portion of his guests 
may be well qualified to sustain conversation both highly improving 
and interesting, _fashion_ has vetoed the attempt--and they must 
either be silent, or join in the usual frivolous, desultory, and 
useless verbosity generally uttered on such occasions. Alas! that man, 
made after God's own image, and endowed with the noble gifts of 
speech, intellect, judgment, and taste, should so often and so 
deplorably abuse them.

When satiated with the dinner party, should you still wish to see more 
of the Would Be's, hasten to the Soirée or the Squeeze, and you will 
_there_ find fresh and most titillating food for your _moral_ palate, 
if you will pardon the figure. All that is most exquisitely 
ridiculous, either in attitude, gesture, or language, may, not 
unfrequently, be there witnessed in its most comic, most 
laugh-provoking form. There you may often witness nearly every 
possible disguise under which vulgarity apes gentility--every 
imaginable grimace and gesticulation that can be mistaken for graceful 
ease of manner--and every style of conversation or casual remark which 
"the Would Be's" may imagine best calculated to substitute their 
counterfeit currency for _that_ which is genuine and acceptable to 
all. In these motley assemblages {365} you may prepare to behold, 
among other sights, the now universally prevalent walk for fashionable 
ladies, in its highest style. This consists in a kind of indescribable 
twitching of the body, alternately to the right and left, which the 
gazing green-horns, not in the secret that _fashion commands it_, 
would surely mistake for the annoyance occasioned by certain pins in 
their dresses having worked out of place, and would accordingly 
commiserate rather than admire the supposed sufferers.

But to cap the climax of these abortive contests against nature, you 
must move about until you come to the _rocking-chairs_, those articles 
which, in bygone times, were used only by our decrepid old ladies, or 
the nurses of infant children; but which, in our more refined age, are 
now deemed indispensable appendages of every room for entertaining 
company. When you come to one of these former depositories for nearly 
superannuated women and nurses of infants, instead of similar 
occupants to those of the olden time, you will find them sometimes 
occupied by those of "the woman kind" who are making their first 
fishing parties after "_a tang-lang_,"[1] and who have been taught to 
believe that a well turned ankle and pretty foot are very pretty 
things, the sight of which it would be quite unreasonable and selfish 
that the possessor should monopolize. But generally, the operatives in 
these quasi-cradles for decrepitude and helpless infancy, will be 
found to be youths of the male sex scarcely of age, and surrounded 
often by ladies old enough to be their mothers, and wanting seats--but 
wanting them in vain. These exquisite young gentlemen will always be 
found, when thus self-motive, so entirely absorbed, as to have 
forgotten completely not only the established rule, even in our rudest 
society, of offering our seat to any standing lady, but almost their 
own personal identity, which is frequently any thing but 
prepossessing. Rocking away at rail road speed, self-satisfied beyond 
the power of language to describe, with head thrown back, and 
protruded chin, "bearded like the pard," as much as to say, "Ladies, 
did you ever behold so kissable a face?--pray come try it"--they rock 
on to the infinite amusement, pity, or contempt of all beholders.

[Footnote 1: "Tang-lang." For this term and the little story in which 
it is introduced, I am indebted to that admirable writer Oliver 
Goldsmith; but before I give the tale itself, I must beseech your 
readers not for a moment to suspect me of any such treasonable design 
against the fair sex, as to represent all young ladies, upon their 
first entrance into company, as fishing for tang-langs. My purpose is 
merely to supply them with a few very useful moral hints, in the 
highly entertaining language of an author, who being "old fashioned," 
may probably be little known to many of them. But now for the story.

"In a winding of the river Amidar, just before it falls into the 
Caspian sea, there lies an island unfrequented by the inhabitants of 
the continent. In this seclusion, blest with all that wild, 
uncultivated nature could bestow, lived a princess and her two 
daughters. She had been wrecked upon the coast while her children as 
yet were infants, who, of consequence, though grown up, were entirely 
unacquainted with man. Yet, inexperienced as the young ladies were in 
the opposite sex, both early discovered symptoms, the one of prudery, 
the other of being a coquet. The eldest was ever learning maxims of 
wisdom and discretion from her mamma, whilst the youngest employed all 
her hours in gazing at her own face in a neighboring fountain.

"Their usual amusement in this solitude was fishing. Their mother had 
taught them all the secrets of the art: she showed them which were the 
most likely places to throw out the line, what baits were most proper 
for the various seasons, and the best manner to draw up the finny 
prey, when they had hooked it. In this manner they spent their time, 
easy and innocent, till one day the princess being indisposed, desired 
them to go and catch her a sturgeon or a shark for supper, which she 
fancied might sit easy on her stomach. The daughters obeyed, and 
clapping on a goldfish, the usual bait on these occasions, went and 
sat upon one of the rocks, letting the gilded hooks glide down the 
stream.

"On the opposite shore, farther down at the mouth of the river lived a 
diver for pearls, a youth who, by long habit in his trade, was almost 
grown amphibious; so that he could remain whole hours at the bottom of 
the water, without ever fetching breath. He happened to be at that 
very instant diving, when the ladies were fishing with a gilded hook. 
Seeing therefore the bait, which to him had the appearance of real 
gold, he was resolved to seize the prize; but both hands being already 
filled with pearl-oysters, he found himself obliged to snap at it with 
his mouth; the consequence is easily imagined; the hook, before 
unperceived, was instantly fastened in his jaw; nor could he, with all 
his efforts or his floundering, get free.

"Sister, cries the youngest princess, I have certainly caught a 
monstrous fish; I never perceived anything struggle so at the end of 
my line before; come and help me to draw it in. They both now, 
therefore, assisted in fishing up the diver on shore; but nothing 
could equal their surprize upon seeing him. Bless my eyes! cries the 
prude, what have we got here? This is a very odd fish to be sure; I 
never saw any thing in my life look so queer; what eyes--what terrible 
claws--what a monstrous snout! I have read of this monster somewhere 
before, it certainly must be a tang-lang that eats women; let us throw 
it back into the sea where we found it.

"The diver in the mean time stood upon the beach, at the end of the 
line, with the hook in his mouth, using every art that he thought 
could best excite pity, and particularly looking extremely tender, 
which is usual in such circumstances. The coquet, therefore, in some 
measure influenced by the innocence of his looks, ventured to 
contradict her companion. Upon my word, sister, says she, I see 
nothing in the animal so very terrible as you are pleased to 
apprehend; I think it may serve well enough for a change. Always 
sharks, and sturgeons, and lobsters, and craw-fish, make me quite 
sick. I fancy a slice of this nicely grilled, and dressed up with 
shrimp sauce would be very pretty eating. I fancy too mamma would like 
a bit with pickles above all things in the world; and if it should not 
sit easy on her stomach, it will be time enough to discontinue it, 
when found disagreeable, you know. Horrid! cries the prude, would the 
girl be poisoned? I tell you it is a tang-lang; I have read of it in 
twenty places. It is every where described as the most pernicious 
animal that ever infested the ocean. I am certain it is the most 
insidious, ravenous creature in the world; and is certain destruction, 
if taken internally. The youngest sister was now, therefore, obliged 
to submit: both assisted in drawing the hook with some violence from 
the diver's jaw; and he, finding himself at liberty, bent his breast 
against the broad wave, and disappeared in an instant.

"Just at this juncture, the mother came down to the beach, to know the 
cause of her daughters' delay: they told her every circumstance, 
describing the monster they had caught. The old lady was one of the 
most discreet women in the world; she was called the black-eyed 
princess, from two black eyes she had received in her youth, being a 
little addicted to boxing in her liquor. Alas! my children, cries she, 
what have you done? The fish you caught was a man-fish, one of the 
most tame domestic animals in the world. We could have let him run and 
play about the garden, and he would have been twenty times more 
entertaining than our squirrel or monkey. If that be all, says the 
young coquet, we will fish for him again. If that be all, I'll hold 
three tooth-picks to one pound of snuff, I catch him whenever I 
please. Accordingly they threw in their lines once more, but with all 
their gliding, and paddling, and assiduity, they could never after 
catch the diver. In this state of solitude and disappointment they 
continued for many years, still fishing, but without success; till, at 
last, the Genius of the place, in pity to their distress, changed the 
prude into a shrimp, and the coquet into an oyster."]

But in tender mercy to your own patience and that of your readers, 
both of which I have so severely taxed, I will conclude for the 
present, and remain your friend,

OLIVER OLDSCHOOL.


{366}


ON THE DEATH OF CAMILLA.

BY L. A. WILMER.


    'Tis past; the dear delusive dream hath fled,
    And with it all that made existence dear;
    Not she alone, but all my joys are dead,
    For all my joys could live alone with her.
    O, if the grave e'er claim'd affection's tear,
    Then, loved Camilla, on thy clay-cold bed
    Clothed with the verdure of the new-born year,
    Where each wild flower its fragrance loves to shed--
  There will I kneel and weep, and wish myself were dead.

    'Tis not for _her_ I weep--no, she is bless'd;
    A favor'd soul enfranchis'd from this sphere:
    A selfish sorrow riots in my breast;
    I mourn for woes that she can never share.
    She sighs no more--no more lets fall the tear,
    She who once sympathiz'd with every grief
    That tore this bosom, solac'd every care;
    She whose sweet presence made all sorrows brief,
  Ah, now no more to me can she afford relief.

    Around this world--(a wilderness to me,
    Not Petrea's deserts more forlorn or dread)
    I cast my eyes, and wish in vain to see
    Those rays of hope the skies in mercy shed--
    Each dear memorial of Camilla dead--
    Her image, by the pencil's aid retain'd,
    The sainted lock that once adorn'd her head,
    These sad mementos of my grief, remain'd
  To tell me I have lost what ne'er can be regain'd.

    On these I gaze, on these my soul I bend,
    Breathe all my prayers, and offer every sigh;
    With these my joys, my hopes, my wishes blend,--
    For these I live--for these I fain would die;
    These subject for my every thought supply--
    Her picture smiles, unconscious of my woe,
    Benevolence beams from that azure eye,
    From mine the tears of bitter anguish flow,
  And yet she smiles serene, nor seems my grief to know!

       *       *       *       *       *

    Still let imagination view the saint,
    The seraph now--Camilla I behold!--
    Such as the pen or pencil may not paint,
    In hues which shall not seem austerely cold.
    To fancy's eye her beauties still unfold.
    What fancy pictures in her wildest mood,
    What thought alone, and earth no more can mould
    She was; with all to charm mankind endued,
  Eve in her perfect state, in her once more renew'd!

    Chang'd is the scene! The coffin and the tomb
    Enfold that form where every grace combin'd!
    Death draws his veil--envelopes in his gloom
    The boast of earth--the wonder of mankind!
    She died--without reluctance, and resigned;
    Without reluctance, but one tear let fall
    In pity for the wretch she left behind,
    To curse existence on this earthly ball--
  One thought she gave to him, and then the heavens had all.

    Who that hath seen her but hath felt her worth?
    Who praise withholds, and hopes to be forgiven?
    Her presence banish'd every thought of earth,
    Subdued each wish unfit to dwell in heaven.
    From all of earth her hopes and thoughts were riven,
    She lived regardful of the skies alone;
    A saint, but not by superstition driven,
    Not by the vow monastic, to atone
  For sins that ne'er were hers,--for sins to her unknown!

    Hers was religion from all dross refin'd,
    A soul communing with its parent--God;
    Grateful for benefits and aye resigned
    To every dispensation of His rod.
    Pure and immaculate, life's path she trod--
    Envy grew pale and calumny was dumb!
    Till drooping, dying--this floriferous sod,
    And this plain marble, point her lowly tomb;
  Even here she still inspires a reverential gloom!

    O lost to earth, yet ever bless'd,--farewell!
    This poor oblation to thy grave I bring;
    O spotless maid, that now in heav'n dost dwell
    Where choral saints and radiant angels sing
    The eternal praises of the Almighty king;
    While this sad cypress and funereal yew
    Unite their boughs, their gloom around me fling,
    Congenial glooms, that all my own renew;
  I still invoke thy shade, still pause to bid adieu!




SONNET.


  Science! meet daughter of old Time thou art,
    Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes!
  Why prey'st thou thus upon the poet's heart,
    Vulture! whose wings are dull realities!
  How should he love thee, or how deem thee wise,
    Who would'st not leave him in his wandering,
  To seek for treasure in the jewell'd skies,
    Albeit he soar with an undaunted wing?
  Hast thou not dragg'd Diana from her car,
    And driv'n the Hamadryad from the wood
  To seek a shelter in some happier star?
    The gentle Naiad from her fountain flood?
  The elfin from the green grass? and from me
    The summer dream beneath the shrubbery?

E. A. P.




THE LAKE.

  On thy fair bosom, silver lake,
  The wild swan spreads his snowy sail,
  And round his breast the ripples break,
  As down he bears before the gale.
                                      _Percival_.


The way we travelled along the southern shore of Lake Michigan was 
somewhat singular. There being no road, we drove right on the strand, 
one wheel running in the water. Thus we travelled thirty miles, at the 
rate of two miles an hour. In the lake we saw a great many gulls 
rocking on the waves and occasionally flying up into the air, sailing 
in circles, and fanning their white plumage in the sunshine.

While thus slowly winding along the sandy margin of the lake we met a 
number of Pottowatimies on horseback in Indian file, men with rifles, 
women with papooses, and farther on we passed an Indian 
village--wigwams of mats comically shaped. This village stood {367} 
right on the shore of the lake; some Indian boys half-naked were 
playing in the sand, and an Indian girl of about fourteen was standing 
with arms folded looking towards the lake. There was, or I imagined 
there was, something in that scene, that attitude, that countenance of 
the Indian girl, touching and picturesque in the highest degree--a 
study for the painter.

Alas--these Indians! the dip of their paddle is unheard, the embers of 
the council-fire have gone out, and the bark of the Indian dog has 
ceased to echo in the forest. Their wigwams are burnt, the cry of the 
hunter has died away, the title to their lands is extinguished, the 
tribes, scattered like sheep, fade from the map of existence. The 
unhappy remnant are driven onward--onward to the ocean of the West. 
Such are the reflections that came into my mind, on seeing the 
beautiful Pottowatimie of Lake Michigan.

C. C.




THE HALL OF INCHOLESE.

BY J. N. McJILTON.

  Host and guests still lingered there,
  But host and guests were dead.
                                    _Old Ballad_.


Venice is the very _outrance_--_gloria mundi_ of a place for fashion, 
fun and frolic. Does any one dispute it? Let him ask the San Marco, 
the Campanile, the iron bound building that borders one end of the 
Bridge of Sighs, or the Ducal Palace, that hangs like a wonder on the 
other. Let him ask the Arena de Mari, the Fontego de Tedeschi, or if 
he please, the moon-struck _Visionaire_, who gazed his sight away from 
Ponte de Sospiri, on the Otontala's sparkling fires, and if from each 
there be not proof, _plus quam sufficit_--why Vesuvius never 
illuminated Naples--that's all.

Well! Venice is a glorious place for fashion, fun and frolic; so have 
witnessed thousands--so witnessed Incholese.

Incholese was a foreigner--no matter whence, and many a jealous 
Venetian hated him to his heart's overflowing; the inimitable Pierre 
Bon-bon himself had not more sworn enemies, and no man that ever lived 
boasted more pretended friends, than did this celebrated operator on 
whiskey-punch and puddings.

His house fronted the Rialto, and overlooked the most superb and 
fashionably frequented streets in Venice. His hall, the famed "Hall of 
Incholese," resort of the exquisite, and gambler's heaven, was on the 
second floor, circular in shape, forty-five feet in diameter. Windows 
front and rear, framed with mirror-plates in place of plain glass, 
completed the range on either side, all decorated with damask 
hangings, rich and red, bordered with blue and yellow tasselated 
fringe, with gilt and bronze supporters. It seemed more like a Senate 
hall, or Ducal palace parlor, than a room in the private dwelling of a 
gentleman of leisure--of "elegant leisure," as it was termed by the 
_politesse_ of the _Republique_. A rich carpet covered the floor, with 
a figure in its centre of exactly the dimensions of the rotondo table, 
which had so repeatedly suffered under the weight of wine; to say 
nothing of the gold and silver lost and won upon its slab, sufficient 
to have made insolvent the wealthiest Crœsus in the land--in _any_ 
land. Over this table was suspended a chandelier the proud Autocrat of 
all the Russias might have coveted; and forming a square from the 
centre, were four others, less in size, but equal in brilliancy and 
value. Mirrors in metal frames, and paintings of exquisite and costly 
execution, filled up the interstices between the windows. 
Chairs--splendid chairs, sofas, ottomans, and extra wine tables, made 
up the furniture of the Hall of Incholese. This Hall however was not 
the sole magnificence of the huge pile it beautified. Other and 
splendid apartments, saloons, galleries, etc., filled up the wings, 
and contributed to the grandeur of the building. Yet, strange to say, 
the proprietor, owner and occupier of this vast establishment, had no 
wife, to share with him its elegances--to mingle her sweet voice in 
the strains of purchased melody and revel, that made the lofty edifice 
often ring to its foundation. He had no wife. And why? Let the sequel 
of his history rehearse.

Thousands flocked to this magnificent Hall--citizens, strangers, 
travellers; many drank, gambled, revelled--were ruined. Few left it 
but were blasted wrecks, both in health and fortune. Thousands left 
it, tottering from their madness, cursing the brilliant revel that 
lighted them to doom.

Millions rolled into the coffers of Incholese; he seemed a way-mark 
for fortune--a moving monument of luck. Hundreds of his emissaries 
went out in different directions, and through different kingdoms, 
supplied with gold, for the purpose of winning more for their wealthy 
master. The four cardinals of the compass with all the intermediate 
points became his avenues of wealth.

"Wealth is power"--Archimedes knew it when he experienced the want of 
means to make a lever long enough to reach beyond the power of this 
little world's attraction; and the ingenious Tippet often felt the 
inconvenience and uncomfortableness of the want of it in executing his 
admirable plans for perpetual motion.

Incholese had wealth--he had power--_c'est un dit-on_. The Venetian 
Senate resolved on a loan from his ample store, and bowed obsequious, 
did every member, to the nod of the patron of the State. The Spanish 
minister forgot to consult as his only guide the _Squittinio della 
Liberta Veneta_ and was seen whispering with Incholese; and instead of 
the Marquis of Bedmar, first minister to Flanders, the _primum mobile_ 
received in mistake from Rome the hat of the cardinal. The fingers of 
a man of wealth turn every thing they touch to gold. We have said 
Incholese was a foreigner--so was the Spanish minister, and they 
whispered about more than State affairs and gold, though the gambler 
had gone deep into the pockets of the friend of his Catholic majesty.

The Doge, Antonio Priuli, had a daughter, adopted or otherwise, who 
was considered by the most popular _amateurs_ the perfection of 
beauty. She had more admirers than all the beauties of the Republic 
put together; but the scornful Glorianna looked with disdain upon them 
all. She curled her lip most contumeliously at the crowd of waiting 
votaries humiliated at her feet. Pride was her prevailing, her only 
passion; love and affection were strangers to her haughty nature. She 
reigned and ruled, the absolute queen, in thought, word and deed of 
the vast throng that followed in her footsteps, and fain would revel 
in her smile. Incholese attended in her train, and swore by the 
pontiff's mace, that he would give his right ear for a kiss from her 
sweet lips; he worried the saints with prayers and the priests with 
{368} bribes, to bring the haughty fair one to his arms, but prayers 
and bribes proved fruitless--the daughter of the Doge was above them 
all, and only smiled to drive her victim mad.

Incholese was proud and spirited, and so completely was he irritated 
at the repeated efforts he made to gain a single hour's social 
converse with the lofty Helen of his hopes, that he vowed at last at 
the risk of a special nuncio from his Holiness to go the length of his 
fortune to bring her upon a level with himself if he remained in the 
parallax but fifteen minutes.

The Spanish minister was married; but a star on the fashionable 
horizon higher than the Vesta of his own choice, prompted the proffer 
of his help, in the establishment of a medium point of lustre. The 
Senate did not assemble oftener to devise ways and means for the 
discharge of the public debt and for the safety of the State, than did 
Incholese and the minister, to humble the haughty heiress of the rich 
possessions of the Doge; and the conspiracy seemed as perilous and 
important as the great stratagem of the Duke de Ossumna against the 
government of Venice. A thousand plans were proposed, matured and put 
in execution, but their repeated failure served only to mortify the 
conspirators and make them more intent upon the execution of their 
plan. It was to no purpose that the Doge was invited _with his family_ 
to spend a social hour, or that in return the invitation was given 
from the palace; the uncompromising object of innumerable schemes, and 
proud breaker of hearts, still kept aloof--still maintained her 
ascendancy.

While these petty intrigues were going forward, a conspiracy of a more 
daring character was in the course of prosecution. It was nothing less 
than the conspiracy of the Spaniards against the government of 
Venice--a circumstance which at the present time forms no unimportant 
portion of Venetian history.

Every thing by the conspirators had been secretly arranged, and 
Bedmar, notwithstanding his being among those who were deepest in the 
plot, never once hinted the subject to Incholese, though at the time 
they were inseparable companions, and co-workers in establishing a 
standard of beauty for the Italian metropolis. This however may be 
easily accounted for; he knew the government was debtor to Incholese; 
he knew also of the intimacy that existed between the Doge and the 
gambler, and he was too familiar with intrigue not to suspect a 
discovery when the secret should be in the knowledge of one so 
interested; he therefore bit his lip and kept the matter to himself. 
Had there been a no less villain than Bedmar in the conspiracy, the 
plot might have succeeded and the Spaniards become masters of Venice. 
But the heart of Jaffier, one of the heads of the conspiracy, failed 
him, and he disclosed to Bartholomew Comino the whole affair. Comino 
was secretary to the Council of Ten, which Council he soon assembled 
and made known the confession of Jaffier. Comino was young and 
handsome, and he took the lead in the discovery of the plot and 
bringing the conspirators to justice. His intercourse with the Doge 
was dignified and manly, and at such a time with such a man, the proud 
Glorianna condescended to converse. She was won to familiarity, and 
requested the secretary to call at her apartment and tell her the 
history of an affair, in which she, with all the household of the 
Doge, were so deeply interested. She insisted particularly that he 
should take the earliest opportunities to inform her of the further 
procedure of the Council with the faction. The secretary consented, 
and every intercourse tended to subdue her haughty spirit, and he was 
soon admitted to her friendship as an equal.

Bedmar was disgraced and sent back to Spain in exchange for Don Louis 
Bravo, the newly appointed minister. Incholese followed the fallen 
Marquis with his hearty curse, and vowed if so deceived by man again, 
the villain's life should appease his hate. The conspirators who were 
not screened by office were executed, and peace and tranquillity were 
soon restored to the State. The new minister being averse to the 
society of gamesters, Incholese and himself could not be friends--a 
singular enough circumstance that a titled gentleman from the great 
metropolis of Spain should despise the friendship of a gentleman 
gambler, highly exalted as was the famous Incholese. Bartholomew 
Comino in the discharge of his official functions, was compelled to 
visit and exchange civilities with the popular gamester. Incholese had 
observed the condescension of the empress of his heart's vanity 
towards this individual, and determined to avail himself of his 
friendship. He solicited an introduction to the south wing of the 
palace of the Doge, and to the scornful Glorianna. The palace of the 
Doge he had frequently visited, and as often gazed, till sight grew 
dim, upon the celebrated south wing, where, in all the indolence of 
luxurious ease, reposed the object of his anxious thoughts.

The last effort succeeded. Incholese was invited to the south 
wing--talked with Glorianna, who seemed another being since her 
intimacy with Comino--and resolved on a magnificent entertainment at 
his own Hall, where he knew the Doge and the most prominent members of 
the Senate would not refuse to give their attendance, and he devoutly 
hoped the influence of the secretary would bring the humiliated 
heiress. He was not disappointed. All came--all prepared for splendid 
revelry.

Incholese had but one servant whom he admitted to his _sanctum 
sanctorum_, the only constant inmate of his house beside himself. 
Other servants he had to be sure, but they were employed only when 
occasion demanded them. Farragio was the prince of villains, and the 
only fit subject in Venice for a servant to the prince of gamesters. 
Eleven years he had waited on his table of ruin. His conscience had 
rubbed itself entirely away against his ebon heart and left a villain 
to the climax. He hated his master--hated his friends--hated the 
world--supremely hated mankind, and meditated deeds of blackest crime. 
Hell helped him in his malignant resolve, and the fell demon smiled 
when he whispered in his ear the sweet madness of revenge. Revenge for 
what? "Eleven years," said he, "I have labored in the kitchen of 
Incholese and performed his drudgery--eleven years I have been his 
messenger of good and evil. I have toiled and panted beneath my 
burdens of viands, rare and costly, and I have rested on my way with 
wine, and what I have devoured myself I have stolen--stolen and 
devoured in secret. I hate--hate--hate the world--and I will be--aye, 
_will_ be revenged." He yelled with fiendish exultation at the 
thought.

Three weeks before the time appointed for the great festival in the 
Hall, Farragio was alone in his kitchen {369} preparing his own 
supper--soliloquizing as usual on his lonely and miserable situation. 
He remembered his youthful sports on the banks of the grand canal, and 
thought over the time when his mother called him from his little 
gondola beneath the Rialto, and sold him to Incholese--sold him for a 
slave. Eleven years had brought him to the vigor of manhood, and 
strengthened the purpose he had formed in youth of gratifying when he 
had the opportunity the only feeling that occupied his heart--revenge. 
While occupied in retrospection and smiling with seeming joy in the 
thought of executing his purpose, the latch of the yard door raised 
and the door itself slowly moved upon its long iron hinges; when about 
half opened a little figure in black limped upon the threshold and, 
bowing to Farragio, took his station by his side.

"Pretty warm for the season," said he, as he cast a glance at the fire 
where Farragio's supper was cooking.

"Pretty warm," replied Farragio, raising his head from the fire and 
wiping the perspiration from his forehead. He eyed the little 
gentleman closely, and from the worn and threadbare appearance of his 
coat, began to entertain some doubts in his mind touching his probable 
respectability. After surveying the stranger longer than politeness 
required, suddenly recollecting himself he removed his eyes from his 
dress and asked,

"Have you travelled far to-day, friend?"

"Travelled! ha, ha, ha, ha; no, I have been at your elbow for a 
month."

The eyes of the little gentleman flashed fire as he spoke, and 
Farragio for the first time in his life felt affrighted. He retreated 
a few steps and repeated with a trembling voice--"at my elbow for a 
month--fire and misery, how--how can that be? I--I--never saw you 
in--in my life before."

"Well, Farragio," and he pronounced the name with great familiarity, 
"whether you ever saw me or not, I have been your constant attendant 
for a month past, and I have had a peculiar regard for you ever since 
you were born."

Farragio's astonishment increased, and he gazed for some minutes in 
mute wonder upon the little stranger. A little reflection, however, 
soon restored his courage, and in an unusually authoritative tone he 
demanded the name of his visiter, and the purport of his singular and 
unceremonious visit.

"Oh!" replied the little fellow with a careless shake of his head, 
"it's of no importance."

By this time the supper was ready, and placing his dishes upon the 
table, Farragio invited his guest to partake of the fare, which 
consisted of ham and chicken, with cheese, hot rolls and tea.

The little man did not wait for a second invitation, but immediately 
took his seat at the table and commenced breaking a roll with his 
fingers.

"Will you take some ham?" asked Farragio in a tone of true 
hospitality, and appearing to forget that his guest was an intruder 
upon the peace of his kitchen.

"Ham--no, no, no, I hate ham--hate it with a perfect hatred, and have 
hated it since the foun--foundation of the 
Chris--Chris--Christian--since the foundation of the world. The 
followers of Mahomet are right, and the outlaw Turk, that is outlawed 
by re--re--reli--religious dispensations, which are always arbitrary 
in the extreme, I say he displays more sound judgment than all the 
philosophers that ever lived, that is--I mean those of them who have 
ever had any thing to do with ho--ho--ugh--hog."

Farragio helped himself largely to ham, swearing he was no follower of 
Mahomet, and if he was, and held emperorship from Mecca to Jerusalem, 
he'd eat ham till he died.

The little stranger manifested no surprise at this bold speech of 
Farragio, but continued to eat his roll in a very business like 
manner.

"Take some chicken," said Farragio after a short pause, which was 
permitted for the sake of convenience, "Take some chicken," and 
accompanying the request with an action suited to the unrestrained 
offering of a generous heart, he threw the west end of a rooster upon 
his plate.

"Chicken--chicken--yes, I like chicken, so did Socrates like it. 
Socrates was a favorite of mine. When he was dying he ordered a cock 
to be sacrificed to Esculapius--poor fellow, he thought his soul would 
ascend through the flame up to the gods, but he was mistaken; his soul 
was safe enough in other hands."

"I understood it sprouted hemlock," said Farragio knowingly.

"And where?"

"On the south side of the Temple of Minerva, wherever that was."

"Who gave you the information?"

"O, I--I saw--rea--hea--heard my master Incholese talk about once when 
he wished to appear like a philosopher before some of his company."

"Who told him?"

"Who? Why I've heard him say a thousand times that he was a real 
_Mimalone_, whatever that is, and for years had slept on _bindweed_ 
and practised the arts of a fellow they call Dic--Dip--Dith--Dithy"--

"Dithyrambus I suppose you mean."

"Aye, that's the fellow."

"A particular friend of mine, I dined with him twice, and the last 
time left him drunk under the table."

"_His_ soul sprouted grapes I've heard, and was the first cause of 
vineyards being planted in Edge e--e--Edge"--

"Egypt you mean to say."

"Yes."

"That's not exactly correct, but it will answer about as well as any 
thing else."

"Do you like cheese?"

"I was formerly very fond of it, but I once saw Cleopatra, Mark 
Antony's magnet as she was called, faint away at the sight of a 
skipper, and since then I've only touched cheese at times, and then 
sparingly.--I saw ten million skippers at once fighting over a bit of 
cheese not bigger than your thumb in that same Cleopatra's stomach, 
and that too on the very night she dissolved her costly ear-bob to 
match old Mark's greatness. But I never said any thing about it."

"You must be pretty old, I guess; I've often heard my master talk of 
that Clipatrick, and he said she died several hundred years ago. I've 
heard him say she was the very devil, and must have been trans, 
trans"--

"Transfused. I take the liberty of helping you along."

"Yes, transfused--her spirit transfused down through {370} mummies and 
the like, till it reached the old Doge's daughter, for he swears she's 
the very dev"--

"Don't take that name in vain too often; a little pleasantry is 
admissable, but jokes themselves turn to abuse when repeated too many 
times--say Triptolemus, a term quite as significant, and not so much 
used."

"Triptolemus, hey--and who's Triptolemus? I don't mean him. I mean the 
old dev--devil himself." Farragio shuddered as he uttered the last 
words, for the countenance of his heretofore pleasant and good humored 
companion changed to a frown of the darkest hue, and Farragio imagined 
he saw a stream of fire issuing from his mouth and nostrils; 
terrified, he dropped his knife and fork, and fled trembling into the 
farthest corner of his kitchen.

"Have you any wine?" asked the little gentleman, in a tone of 
condescension.

"Plenty," was the emphatic reply of Farragio, willing to get into 
favor again at any price, and away he went in search of wine. It was 
with difficulty the article was obtained, and Farragio risked his neck 
in the enterprise--the wine vault in the cellar of Incholese was deep, 
and the door strongly fastened; he was therefore obliged to climb to 
the ceiling of the cellar, crawl between the joists of the building, 
and drop himself full ten feet on the inside. He however surmounted 
every obstacle, and procured the wine. On his return to the kitchen 
with four or five bottles, curiosity prompted him to wait awhile at 
the door before he opened it to ascertain what his little visiter was 
about. He heard a noise like a draught through a furnace, and thought 
he saw fire and smoke pouring through the pannels of the door. It was 
some time before he recovered sufficient courage to enter, and then 
only, after the door had been opened by the little gentleman.

"Have you glasses?" said he, surveying the apartment, where none were 
to be seen, and Farragio having already commenced pouring the precious 
liquid into a cup, he added "I do not like to drink wine from a tea 
cup."

"Glasses--glasses, I--we--no--yes--yes, plenty of them," and off he 
started to another apartment for glasses.

"Now we'll have it," said the little gentleman; "wine is good for soul 
and body. I've seen two hundred and sixteen shepherdesses intoxicated 
at one time upon a mountain in Arcadia."

"They enjoyed the luxury of drinking wine to the full, I suppose."

"O, it's no uncommon thing--women love wine, and they're the best 
amateurs of _taste_,--but here's a health to Pythagoras, (turning off 
a glass,) a man of more affected modesty than sound judgment, but 
withal a tolerably clever sort of a fellow: I used to like him, and 
helped him to invent the word _philosopher_--it was a species of 
hypocrisy in us both. I never repented it, however, and have found it 
of much service to me, in my adventures upon this ugly world."

"You invented the word philosopher. I thought it was in existence from 
the beginning of time; inventor of words, good gracious! what an 
employment; now if I may be so bold, what business do you follow?"

"O, it's no matter. Pythagoras was a pretty good kind of a man, and"--

"I never heard of him; who was he any how?"

"Ha! ha! ha! you've much to learn--Pythagoras was a hypocrite, but he 
gained an immortality by it."

"How?"

"How? why if you've brains enough to understand, I'll tell you. The 
learned before his day were called ΣΟΦΟΣ, that is, _wise_, what they 
really were; but professing not to like the appellation, and through 
my instrumentality I must confess, for I suggested it, proposed that 
they should be called ΦΙΛΟΣ _the friend_, ΣΟΦΙΑΣ _of learning_, hence 
the word _philosopher_: but it's no difference; names are arbitrary at 
any rate, and I like Pythagoras about as well as any of his 
cotemporaries; they were all deceitful, fond of flattery, and as 
jealous a set of villains as ever tried to rival each other out of 
fame. Did'nt they all imitate each other in some things, and at the 
same time swear that they differed, and each was the founder of his 
own especial system, which was distinct and separate from the rest, 
when the real truth was, they had all only parts of the same system; 
and by their rivalry and meanness in keeping the parts distinct, for 
fear of losing a little of what they thought was glory, they have 
prevented the world from understanding them ever since. I like 
hypocrisy, but I like it on a large scale. Your grovelling hypocrite 
has'nt a soul big enough to burn. Man is only a half-made creature at 
best. If I had the making of him, I'd--but you're asleep," said he, 
looking up at Farragio who was nodding over his wine. "My long 
discourse has wearied you."

Farragio started. "No--O! no--not--not asleep. I was thinking 
that--thinking how that--I wondered how you liked the wine."

"Very much, very much; that's good wine--here, try this, it's better 
than yours." Farragio drank of the little gentleman's glass, and soon 
felt the effects of the draught upon his brain. He fancied himself a 
lord: his guest persuaded him he was one, and a far better man than 
his master. "Yes," said he, springing upon his feet at the mention of 
his master's name--"and I swear by all the horrors of my servitude, 
that I will soon convince him of my superiority." The effort was too 
much for his relaxed muscles, and he fell full length upon the floor. 
The little gentleman very carefully assisted him in rising, and 
handing him to a chair, presented another glass to his lips. He 
pledged his soul in the bumper, and reeled a second time to the floor. 
It was now past midnight, and the little gentleman thought he had 
better retire; he did so, during the insensibility of Farragio, and 
left him to repose "alone in his glory."

In the morning Farragio awoke sober, but his head ached violently; the 
lamp was still burning, and was the first thing to remind him of his 
last night's revel. After his surprise had abated, he examined the 
apartment to ascertain if the little gentleman had taken any thing 
away with him; he had left many of his master's fine dishes, and some 
silver spoons, in the kitchen, and felt anxious for their safety. 
Every thing was safe, and he pronounced the little stranger honest. In 
looking around he discovered a strange impression upon the floor, the 
print of a foot, circular, except at one point, where it branched out 
into four distinct toes, all of a size--the foot was about three 
inches in diameter. "Hang the rascal," he exclaimed, "I knew he had 
one short leg, but had I known he was barefoot I would have given him 
lodgings in the sewer."--"_In the sewer_" was {371} audibly echoed, 
and Farragio rushed from the room. The bell of his master's chamber 
rang. It reminded him that he was still a slave, and he went up 
cursing his fate and vowing an eternity of revenge.

For two or three days the little gentleman kept his distance, and 
Farragio bore the wine and its etceteras to his master's table 
unmolested, save by the discontented spirit that struggled in his 
bosom, and brooded over the deadly purpose it had given birth to. 
Farragio felt himself to be the meanest of slaves, but he possessed an 
ambition superior to his servitude. His intercourse with his little 
mysterious visiter, if it had failed to teach him the meaning of 
philosophy, had learned him to philosophize. "If," said he, "I am to 
wear the chain that binds me to my master's service, why do the 
feelings of my bosom prompt me to despise it? When I was young, I was 
happy in the yoke I wore, but years have brought another feeling, and 
I despise the yoke, and hate--_hate_ the hand that fixed it on me. My 
curses cannot reach the mother that was so heartless as to make 
merchandize of her child, but my revenge shall fall on Incholese, my 
master--_master_, despicable word--and if it must exist, I'll be 
master and Incholese, aye Incholese, shall be my slave; the hand of 
death can hold him passive at my feet. Deep and deadly as my hate, 
shall be the revenge I seek--and by my soul I swear!"--A voice 
repeated "_thy_ soul!" and the little gentleman in black was before 
him. Farragio, provoked beyond endurance at his intrusion, bit the 
blood from his lip with rage, and attempted to hurl him from his 
presence; thrice he essayed to seize him by the throat, but thrice he 
eluded the grasp, and the foaming Farragio beat upon the empty air; 
wearied with his exertion he sought a moment's respite and sunk upon a 
chair.

"It's my turn now," said the little gentleman, "and your fury, my dear 
fellow, will quickly give place to repentance. Go--faithless to thy 
oath--wait still upon thy master." For three days and nights the 
figure of the little gentleman, perfect in all its parts, kept before 
him; it was beside him at his meals, and floated in the wine he 
carried to the hall. In every drop that sparkled in the goblet the 
little figure swam--his threadbare coat and club foot were outlined in 
admirable distinctness, and the contumelious smile that followed the 
threat he made in the kitchen, played upon his lips in insupportable 
perfection: the figure was shadowed in the tea he drank and seemed 
tangible in the empty dish; it clung like vermin to his clothes, was 
under his feet at every step, dangled pendulous from his nose and was 
snugly stowed away in both its nostrils. Farragio felt him continually 
crawling upon the epidermis of his arms and legs, and carried him 
between his fingers and his toes. The figure danced in visible shadow 
upon the very expressions that fell from his lips, and roosted in 
number as an army upon the tester of his bed. Did the bell of his 
master summon him to his chamber or the hall, the figure, large as 
life, was in the door way to impede his passage; if he went to either 
place, it was between him and his master or with whomsoever else he 
was engaged. His goings out and his comings in, his lyings down and 
his risings up, were all molested by this singular Protean thing, 
which, though always the same figure, accommodated itself to any size. 
If he laid his hand upon any of the furniture of his kitchen, or felt 
in his pocket for his penknife or his toothpick, his fingers were sure 
to encounter the elastic contour of his accommodating but most 
uncomfortable companion. On the third day his torment was 
excruciating, and the poor wretch seemed about to expire in 
unsufferable misery.

"Wretch that I am!" he exclaimed, when alone in his nether 
apartment--"Wretch that I am, born to misfortune and tormented while 
living by the execrable brood of hell." "_Execrable brood of hell!_" 
sang the little gentleman with a most musical sneer, as he rolled from 
all parts of the body of his victim and appeared in _propria persona_ 
before him.

"I meant no offence," roared the affrighted Farragio.

"Nor is it taken as such," replied his polite tormentor, who appeared 
to be in a very pleasant humor, accompanying every word with a most 
condescending smile. Farragio stammered out "I was--you know 
when--sir--you are acquain--that is you--you remember--remember the 
advice you gave me on the night when--I sa--you said I ought to be 
re--re--rev"--

"Revenged."

"Exactly."

"To blood."

"Aye, and more than blood."

"What! would you touch the soul?"

"Yes, and punish it forever."

"Would you have it transformed to millions of animalculæ, each to teem 
with life, and sensation the most acute, and continued in pain 
throughout eternity?"

"Aye, and longer, and for such sweet revenge I'd punish my own soul 
with his."

"Meet me to-morrow night, we'll fix it; success is certain."

Farragio hesitated, he was afraid of his accomplice; more than once he 
had suspected the smell of brimstone, and would have given worlds to 
be relieved from such acquaintanceship.

"Meet me to-morrow night," repeated the impatient little gentleman in 
a voice of thunder.

"At what hour?"

"Nine."

Farragio was about to offer an excuse, but the threatening aspect of 
his companion, and the remembrance of his misery warned him to 
acquiesce. He replied "I'll meet you," and the little gentleman 
disappeared.

At nine the confederates met, punctual to their engagement. Farragio 
was there through fear, the little stranger to effect some deeply 
hidden purpose. They talked of science and the arts, of philosophers, 
philosophy and religion. The little gentleman appeared to be perfect 
master of every subject, and astonished Farragio with his loquacity. 
He drank wine, and was much more familiar than at any previous visit; 
he sang, danced and left the impression of his foot as before. 
Farragio had prepared for the entertainment of his guest, and for two 
hours they rioted in the profusion of sweetmeats and wine, furnished 
from the sideboard and cellar of Incholese. At length said the little 
gentleman, "Mr. Farragio, I am happy of your acquaintance."

"Not at all," answered Farragio, whose vanity had been considerably 
excited.

"And you shall be happy of mine."

"And if my revenge shall be fully and entirely gratified, I'll thank 
you from my soul."

"And _with_ your soul."

"With all my soul."

{372} "Then we are friends for ever. Hear me--In a short time 
Incholese will hold a magnificent entertainment; nothing like it has 
ever happened in Venice since I have been interested for the welfare 
of its people. The great hall will be crowded with visiters--the four 
splendid chandeliers will be lighted, and without doubt the hall shall 
glitter more brilliant than the jewelled cavern of Aladdin. The 
beautiful, the young, the gay, will be there, and in the midst of the 
merriment old age will forget its infirmities and leap like youth. The 
old, however, will get weary and retire. When the Doge and his 
attendants have gone, pour the contents of this vial into the wine you 
carry up, and the morning will afford your heart a brimming revenge. 
Venice is just restored to tranquillity; the plot of the foolish 
Bedmar and his more foolish associates has failed, and the reason why 
I will tell you--it was, because I was not consulted; the conspirators 
relied in their own cunning and strength and were justly disappointed. 
The guardian genius of this republic and of all republics can be 
overcome, and prostrated by a power not inferior to my own, but times 
and seasons and circumstances must be consulted if even I succeed. Our 
little plot is of far less import, and with the exception of the Doge 
and a few of the high officers we can sweep the hall. Be firm to the 
purpose. Give them the contents of the vial in their wine, and in 
three nights after I will show you the souls of all, and then you may 
roll in vengeance for your wrongs. Farewell, Farragio; remember to 
follow strictly my injunctions." It was past midnight, and without 
another word the little gentleman took his leave.

Time rolled heavily along, and nothing but the bustle of preparation 
enabled Farragio to endure its tardiness.

The eventful evening came. The Doge with the members of the Senate and 
their wives, and many distinguished citizens and their families, 
graced the sumptuous feast. Comino, according to promise, led in the 
beautiful Glorianna. The chandeliers blazed like jasper in the 
sunbeams, and threw additional charms from their lustre around the 
"fairest of the fair." She walked amid their light--proud as the 
Egyptian queen whose beauty made slaves of kings and brought 
conquerors at her feet. Lightly went the revel on; song and wine 
followed each other in quick succession; each guest seemed gayest of 
the gay, and gave heart and soul to the bewitching joy.

The Doge retired, the elder citizens soon followed; one by one they 
dropped off till youth alone was left to roll the revel anthem on--and 
loud and long it rang, till merry peals broke on the morning's verge.

Farragio, true to his hellish purpose, mingled the contents of the 
vial with the wine. All drank--and as if by the power of enchantment 
were hurried on to doom.

In the morning, smiles were on their marble lips. Incholese sat like 
one rapt in ectsacy, and Glorianna's fingers were still upon the harp 
whose melody had charmed the host to bliss--a silent throng they 
lingered there.

The little gentleman was also true to his appointment--in three days 
he showed to Farragio the souls of his enemies. But his own looked 
from its infernal abode upon those--in a place of less torment than 
the bottomless abyss that foamed its fury upon him.




A LEAF FROM MY SCRAP BOOK.


My friend Bob for the most part made verses in commendation of the 
eyes and cheeks of Betty Manning. After her death, however, he at 
times left these to the worm, and wrote upon other matters.

One thing for which Bob was renowned was his disregard of everything 
like accuracy in his literary statements, and in his quotations from 
books. I find the following singular note appended to a little poem 
which with many others, fell to my care at his death.

"The flight of the Huma is in so rarified an atmosphere, that blood 
oozes from its pores; its plumage is constantly colored with it. The 
eyes, too, of this comrade of the clouds, unlike those of the eagle or 
hawk, have a sorrowful and lack lustre appearance."--_Spix_.

Bob must have found this note on the same page with the description of 
the "Chowchowtow." But that is no business of mine.

The verses to which the above note was appended were headed "_The 
Huma_."

  Mark how the sun flush dyeth
      Earth and sky!
  Bravely yon Huma flyeth
      Lone and high.
  Thine is a flight of glory
  Bold bird of the bosom gory,
  And mournful eye!--what story
      Hath that eye?
  What tale of sorrow telleth
      That bosom?--Hark!
  In yon high bright breast dwelleth
      Pain low and dark.
    O is it not thus ever
      With human bard?
    His wings of glory quiver
      By no mist marred;
  The clouds' high path he shareth,
  His breast to heaven he bareth--
  And a regal hue it weareth--
      But--dark reward!
  'Tis blood his breast that staineth--
      His own hot blood.
  Over thought's high realm he reigneth
      His heart his food.




THE CORPUS JURIS.


The "_Corpus Juris_," which is written in Latin, has never been 
translated into any living tongue; yet it is the basis of law in 
nearly all Europe and America. It was written by Tribonien, 
Theophilus, Dorotheus, and John, and although called The Roman Law, is 
in nothing Roman but the name. It is in four parts--Institutes, 
Pandects or Digests, The Code, and The Novel Law. This celebrated book 
is full of pedantry, and abounds in the most whimsical platitudes. For 
example, in the chapter, "De patria potestate," 'The father loses his 
authority over the son in many ways, firstly, when the father dies, 
secondly, when the son dies,' &c. There is a Greek version of the 
Institutes by Angelus Politianus.


{373}


A LOAN TO THE MESSENGER.

NO. III.


The following is from a poet of no ordinary talent, whose main fault 
is indolence. He gave it me for my collection, where I believe it has 
slumbered until now, since its conception. I think it a very pretty 
song, and hope it will be a favorite with your readers, to whom I lend 
it for May.

J. F. O.


TO ---- ----.

  Come, fill the bowl,--'twill win a smile
    To glad once more your drooping brow,
  Nor scorn the spell that can beguile
    One thought from all that wrings you now!
  For who, in worlds so sad as this,
  Would lose e'en momentary bliss?

  Come,--touch the harp,--its notes will bring
    At least a wreck of happier years,--
  The songs our childhood, used to sing,--
    Its artless joys,--its simple tears.
  How blessed, if weeping could restore
  Those bright glad days that come no more!

  Then touch the harp! and free and fast
    The tears I fain would weep shall flow:
  And fill the bowl! the last, the last!
    Then back to Life's deceitful show!
  And waste no more a single tear
    On Life, whose joys are sold so dear!

GEORGE LUNT.




GERMAN LITERATURE.

_A Lecture on German Literature, being a Sketch of its history from 
its origin to the present day, delivered by request, before the 
Athenæum Society of Baltimore, on the 11th of February 1836, by GEORGE 
H. CALVERT, Translator of Schiller's Don Carlos: now first published._


A nation's literature is the embodied expression of its mind. That in 
a people, there be impulse, depth, individuality enough to give clear 
utterance to its thoughts, passions, and aspirations, and that these 
have the distinctness and consistency necessary to mould them into 
definite forms, denotes a degree of mental endowment and cultivation 
traceable in but few of the nations of whose history we have record. 
But few have attained to the creation and enjoyment of a literature. 
Regions of the globe there are, whole continents indeed of its 
surface, hitherto inhabited by races of men, who, like the 
cotemporaneous generations of brute animals, have only lived and died, 
leaving behind them nought but a tradition of their 
existence,--communities, in which the essentially human was too feebly 
developed to erect the brain-built structures, which, while they 
preserve and refine the spirit whence they arise, from it derive the 
indestructible character that perpetuates them, as honorable monuments 
of the past, and for the present ever-open temples whither the wise 
resort for worship and inspiration.

Out of the darkness that envelops all else of the primeval ages, the 
words of the Jewish writers shine upon the minds of every successive 
generation as brightly and fixedly as do the stars from the mysterious 
heavens upon the shifting appearances of our shallow earth; and the 
books of the Old Testament stand, the sole human relics of eldest 
time, as lofty objects of admiration to the literary as they are of 
wonder to the religious. Of the architectural and sculptural creations 
of the gifted Greeks, embodied in perishable marble, but a few 
fragments have been saved from the consuming breath of time; but in 
the poet's lines, fresh and perfect, lives the spirit which produced 
them. As audible and musical as is to-day the murmur upon the Chian 
shore of the same waves to which Homer listened, is still the sound of 
Grecian song, imparting through our ears as deep and new a pleasure as 
it did to those who fought at Salamis. The conquests Cæsar made with 
his sword, a few centuries wiped from the face of the earth, but time 
has not touched and cannot touch those of his pen; and, though the 
language wherein the imperial chiefs of Rome gave orders to the 
prostrate world, has passed from the mouths of men, so long as they 
shall value beauty and wisdom, will the cherished lines of Tacitus and 
of Virgil be reproduced for their enjoyment.

Of the many nations of antiquity, these three are the only ones that 
possessed enough of mind to have each a distinct literature.

Within a much shorter space of time than elapsed between the birth of 
Moses and the birth of Seneca, have grown up to the maturity needed 
for the cultivation of letters, double the number of modern nations, 
separately formed out of the deposites of northern hordes, who, 
overrunning central and southern Europe, settled upon the mouldering 
strata of the Roman Empire, infusing apparently by their mixture with 
the conquered people, a new vigor into the inhabitants of these 
regions. As the states of modern Europe date their origin from the 
confused period of this conquest, so does the literature of each trace 
its birth to the same, presenting in its history a bright and 
elaborate picture, standing forth on a rude and dark back ground.

Notable among them, for the depth and nature of its foundations, for 
the character of the influences which affected its progress, for the 
richness and fullness of its late development, and for its present 
power upon the general mind of the human race, is the literature of 
Germany. Little more than a sketch of its history is all that I can on 
this occasion undertake.

In order to present to your minds an outline whereby will be rendered 
easier the following of its course from its rise to the present day, I 
will, in the first place, label three great epochs in its progress, 
with the names which made them epochs. Of the first, however, can be 
given but the name of the work, that of its author being unknown. I 
allude to the _Nibelungenlied_, the Song of the Nibelungen, the great 
Epic of the Germans, written about the beginning of the thirteenth 
century, more than a hundred years before the birth of Chaucer. Luther 
makes the second epoch, and Goethe represents the third. We have here 
a period embracing six hundred years. But long before the production 
of the _Nibelungenlied_, and the cotemporaneous lyrical poetry, 
letters were cultivated in Germany and books written, which, though 
containing nothing worthy of preservation, deserve to be considered 
and respected as bold forerunners, that fitted the Germans to value 
the singers of the Nibelungen period, while for these they cultivated 
{374} the language into the degree of flexibility and fullness 
required for the medium of poetry. Charlemagne, who in the eighth 
century, conquered and converted Germany to Christianity, established 
schools in the monasteries, caused to be collected the ancient songs 
and laws, ordered the preaching to be in German, and had translations 
made from Latin. As the immediate result of this beginning, chronicles 
and translations in verse of the Bible, were written by the inmates of 
monasteries during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.

The first period of German literature, I have named after the 
_Nibelungenlied_, a work which is not only the greatest of its age, 
but stands alone and unapproached as a national epic in the literature 
of all modern Europe. This period is commonly called the Swabian, from 
the influence of the Swabian line of emperors, who commenced to reign 
as emperors of Germany in the twelfth century, and who, by their 
zealous and judicious encouragement of letters, made the Swabian 
dialect prevail over the Franconian, which had hitherto been 
predominant. In the Swabian dialect is written the Song of the 
Nibelungen, which, like the Iliad--according to the well supported 
theory of the great German philologist Wolff--is wrought into a 
compact whole out of the traditions, songs and ballads, current at the 
time of its composition. The name Nibelungen, is that of a powerful 
Burgundian tribe, whose tragic fate is the subject of the poem. 
Nibelungen is obviously a name derived from the northern mythology, 
and is transferred to the Burgundians, when these get possession of 
the fatal Nibelungen hoard of treasure. The time is in the fifth 
century, and the scene is on the Rhine and afterwards on the frontier 
of Hungary and Austria.

Chriemhild, a beautiful daughter of a king of the Burgundians, is 
wooed and won by Siegfried, a prince of Netherlands, who possesses an 
invisible cloak, a sword of magic power, the inexhaustible hoard of 
the Nibelungen, and, like Achilles, is invulnerable except in one 
spot. Brunhild, a princess, endowed, too, with supernatural qualities, 
weds at the same time king Gunther, Chriemhild's brother; having been 
won by force by Gunther, aided by Siegfried. Jealousy and discord grow 
up between the two princesses, and reach such a pitch, that Brunhild 
plots against the life of Siegfried, and has him treacherously 
assassinated by the brothers of his wife, who wound him through the 
vulnerable spot between his shoulders. After years of grief, during 
which she harbors designs of vengeance, Chriemhild accepts, as a means 
of avenging her wrongs, the offer of the hand of Etzel, king of the 
Huns, the Attila of history, and leaving Gunther's court, accompanies 
Etzel to Hungary. Hither, after a time, she invites with his 
champions, Gunther, who in the face of dark forebodings, accepts the 
invitation, and with a chosen army of Nibelungen, comes to Etzel's 
court, where by Chriemhild's contrivance, he and all his band are 
enclosed in an immense Minster and therein slain.

Such is the outline of the story of this poem, which consists of 
thirty-nine books, or _Adventures_, as they are called, extending to 
nearly ten thousand lines. Over the whole hangs the dark northern 
mythology, under whose mysterious influences the action proceeds. The 
narrative is full of life and picturesque beauty. The story is 
developed with life-like truth and sequence, and with a unity of 
design unsurpassed in any poetic work. Naif simplicity and tragic 
grandeur unite to give it attraction.

At the time when the song of the Nibelungen was written, Germany was 
richer than any European country in poetic literature. Besides this 
great Epic, many poems of an epic character were written, relating, in 
addition to national themes, to Charlemagne and his knights, King 
Arthur and his round table, and others noted in the times of chivalry. 
There too flourished the _Minnesinger_, that is, love-singers, numbers 
of them knights and gentlemen, who, in imitation of the Troubadours of 
southern France, cultivated poetry and sang of love and war. The 
characteristics of the _Minnelieder_, or love songs, are simplicity, 
truth, and earnestness of feeling, joined with beautiful descriptions 
of nature. The golden age of German romantic poetry, was in the 
beginning of the thirteenth century. After the fall of the 
Hohenshauffen family from the imperial throne in the middle of this 
century, anarchy and civil war prevailed for a time in Germany. The 
nobility, given up to petty warfare, soon fell back from the state of 
comparative culture to which, by devotion to poetry, they had 
ascended, into rudeness and grossness.

Meanwhile the towns, particularly the imperial cities, which were 
directly under the emperor, were growing into importance. In these the 
civilization of the age centered. To them too, Poetry fled for 
preservation, and, deserted by nobles, took refuge with mechanics. And 
in a spirit that cannot be too warmly praised, was she welcomed. 
Zealously and earnestly did the worthy shoemakers, and carpenters of 
Nüenberg, Augsburg, Strasburg, and other towns betake themselves to 
reading poetry, and writing verse,--for with all their good will and 
zeal and laborious endeavors, they could produce only a mechanical 
imitation of their predecessors. Nevertheless, much good did they do. 
For carrying on the business of verse-making, they formed themselves 
into guilds or associations, on the principle of those established by 
the different trades: hence their name of master-singers, an 
apprenticeship being required for admission into the guild. So 
respectable and so much respected were these associations, that 
knights and priests did not disdain to belong to them. Thus did the 
master-singers, though ungifted with the soul of poetry which animated 
the Minnesingers, keep alive the love of literature and preserve as it 
were its body. Their most prosperous period was in the 15th century, 
when several of their number laid the foundation of the German Drama, 
and by their writings, particularly the satirical, contributed to 
prepare the German mind for the influence of Luther. Especially 
distinguished were men with the unmusical names of Hans Folks, Hans 
Rosenplüt, and Hans Sacks. The last,--an industrious shoemaker who 
still found time to write numberless dramas, not without wit, spirit 
and invention,--still holds an honorable place in German Literature.

During the same period, the result of the tendency to intellectual 
developement then manifested throughout Europe,--were first founded in 
Germanic Universities. The oldest is that of Prague, established by 
Charles IV in 1345. In imitation of it, that of Heidelberg was founded 
in 1386; and in the following century they multiplied all over 
Germany. Their effects were for a time injurious. By introducing 
Latin, they brought {375} contempt upon the native language, and as a 
consequence, contempt also upon native poetry. This influence lasted 
until within less than a century of the present time. It is only 
indeed fifty years since the practice, for a long while universal, of 
lecturing in Latin, was entirely disused in the universities of 
Germany. As the universities rose, literature sank. Latin usurped the 
place of German: scholastic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and 
medicine with its kindred studies,--for, as yet there was no science, 
engrossed these seats of mental labor. But even in the early stage of 
their existence, while delving blindly at veins, many of them not 
destined ever to yield a precious metal, they have a claim to be 
regarded with honor and thankfulness, not only as the sources of so 
much after-fertility, but that within their walls was disciplined and 
instructed, and stored with the manifold learning which made more 
fearful its gigantic powers, that mind whose startling flashes fixed, 
in the opening of the 16th century, the gaze of the world it was about 
to overspread with a purifying conflagration. In 1503 was first heard 
in public, lecturing in the university of Erfurt, on the physics and 
ethics of Aristotle, the voice of Martin Luther.

On the long undulating line of human progression, here and there 
appear, at wide distances apart, men, in whom seem to centre, 
condensed into tenfold force, the faculties and spirit of humanity, 
apparently for the purpose of furthering by almost superhuman effort, 
its great interests,--men who, through the union of deep insight with 
wisest action, utter words and do deeds, which so touch, as with the 
hand of inspiration, the chords of the human heart, that their fellow 
men start up as though a new spring were moved in their souls, and, 
shaking off the clogging trammels of custom, bound forward on their 
career with freer motion and wider aim. High among these gifted few, 
stands Luther,--the successful assertor, in the face of deeply founded 
and strongly fortified authority, of mental independence. This is not 
the occasion to dwell on the keen sagacity, the wise counsel, the 
hardy acts, the stern perseverance, the broad labors, wherewith this 
mighty German made good his bold position, and, partly the 
trumpet-tongued spokesman, and partly the creator of the spirit of his 
age, so powerfully affected the world's destiny. I have here to speak 
of his influence upon the literature of Germany. That influence was 
twofold. First, by the mental enfranchisement--whereof he was the 
agent and instrument--of a large mass of the German people, he gave an 
impetus to thought and a scope to intellectual activity, and thereby 
opened up the deep springs of the German mind; and secondly, by one 
great and unsurpassed literary effort, he fixed the language of his 
country. The bold spirit of inquiry, of which he set the example with 
such immense consequences--and with such immense consequences because 
it was congenial to his countrymen,--has been the chief agent in 
working out the results that in our age have given to German 
literature its elevated rank: while upon the dialect which, two 
hundred years after his death, was the pliant medium for the thoughts 
of Kant and the creations of Goethe, he exerted such a power, that it 
is called Luther's German.

When Luther began to preach and to write, Latin was the language of 
the learned. Towards the end of the 15th century, that is, about the 
period of his birth, unsuccessful attempts were made to circulate 
translations of the ancient classics. The translations found few 
readers and made no impression. Cotemporaneous with Luther, and a 
forerunner of the great Reformer in attacking with boldness and skill 
the usurpations of the Roman hierarchy, was Ulrich von Hutten, a name 
much honored in Germany. But he wrote excellent Latin and wretched 
German. The union in one man of the power to fix upon himself, and 
hold as by a spell, the minds of his countrymen, with the power of a 
language-genius over his native tongue--a union consummated in 
Luther--was required, to raise the German language from its degraded, 
enfeebled condition, to its due place, as the universal medium of 
intercommunication among Germans of all classes.

About this time, two dialects contended for supremacy--if in a period 
of such literary stagnation their rivalry can be termed a contest. 
These were, the Low German, prevalent in Westphalia and Lower Saxony, 
and the High German, spoken in Upper Saxony. The latter had just 
obtained the ascendancy over the former in the Diet and the Courts of 
Justice. The High German, therefore, modifying it however, in his use 
of it, Luther adopted in his great work; and by the adoption for ever 
determined the conflict. This great work was the translation of the 
Bible.

While by speech and deed, writing, preaching, and acting, he fomented 
and directed the mighty struggle for liberty, whereto his bold 
words--called by his countryman Jean Paul "half-battles"--had roused 
the civilized world, Luther took time to labor at the task whose 
accomplishment was to forward so immensely his triumph, and which, 
executed as it was by him, is an unparalleled literary achievement. At 
the end of thirteen years, he finished his translation. "Alone he did 
it;" and alone it stands, pre-eminent in the world among 
cotemporaneous performances for its spiritual agency, and in Germany 
for its influence upon literature. Before him, there scarcely existed 
a written German prose. He presented to his country a complete 
language. With such a compelling and genial power did he mould into a 
compact, fully equipt whole, the crude and fluctuating elements of the 
German language of the 15th century, that it may be said, his mother 
tongue came from him suddenly perfected. And not only did he, in 
vigor, flexibility, precision, and copiousness, vastly excel all who 
had written before him, but not even could those who came after him 
follow in his footsteps in command over the new language, for a 
century. The time when the pliant, well-proportioned body he created 
was to indue the spirit of the German people, was postponed to a 
distant period: and of this very postponement, was he too the cause; 
for the religious and civil wars, the disputes and jealousies, 
consequent upon the great schism he produced, so engrossed during a 
long period the German mind, that literature languished. In the latter 
half of the 16th century, it was poor. In the 17th, through the 
impulse given to thought by the Reformation, it would have revived, 
but for the outbreaking of the terrible _thirty years' war_, which, 
remotely caused by the division between Catholics and Protestants, 
commenced in 1618 and lasted till 1648, and which not only during its 
continuance desolated and brutalized Germany, but left it 
impoverished, disorganized, and, by the protracted internal strife and 
foreign {376} participation therein, in spirit to a great degree 
denationalized.

Here in our rapid survey of German literature, it will be well for a 
moment to pause, and before entering upon the period in which it 
attained its full multiform development, cast a look back upon the 
stages through which we have traced its progress.

We have seen, that in the 12th and 13th centuries, the mind of the 
German people manifested its native depth and beauty in the fresh rich 
bloom of a poetry, characterised in a rude age by tenderness and 
grandeur. Before this, it had evinced its ready capability, in the 
production of chronicles and translations in verse from the Bible, the 
moment opportunity was given it in the monasteries early founded by 
the enlightened spirit of Charlemagne. Afterwards, in the 14th and 
15th centuries, in the wars and contests incident to the political 
development of Germany, the nobles--to whom, and the clergy, the 
knowledge of letters was at first confined--were drawn off by grosser 
excitements from the culture and encouragement of poetry. With the 
fine instinct that knows, and the aspiring spirit that strives after 
the highest, which denote a people of the noblest endowments, 
poetry--thrown aside as the plaything of idle hours by warrior 
knights--was cherished by peaceful artizans, whose zealous devotion 
vindicated their worthiness of the great gift about to be bestowed; by 
whose wondrous potency, not only were the hitherto barred portals of 
all pre-existing literature thrown down, but a highway was opened to 
all who should seek access by letters to the temples of wisdom or 
fame.

The invention of printing preceded the birth of Luther about half a 
century. This great event--infinitely the greatest of a most eventful 
age--facilitated vastly his labors and made effective his efforts. It 
showered over Germany the new language and the new ideas embodied in 
his translation of the Bible and his other writings. Thus, through its 
means chiefly, the German mind was progressive, notwithstanding the 
long period, extending through a century, of internal convulsion, 
ending in physical exhaustion, which followed Luther's death. The 
language, nervous, copious, homogeneous, as it came from Luther, was 
fixedly established,--a standard by which the corruptions and ungerman 
words, introduced through the long and intimate intercourse with 
foreigners during the _thirty years' war_, could be cast out.

In the beginning of the 17th century, in the midst of the civil war, 
an attempt was made to revive literature by Martin Opitz, a Silesian. 
Silesia was then not included in the German empire. The language of 
the peasantry was bad Polish; but German had been introduced into the 
towns. Silesia suffered little from the _thirty years' war_. Here, 
therefore, was made the beginning of the endeavors which, after 
various fluctuations, resulted in the rich literary produce of the 
18th century. Opitz was a scholar, versed in ancient literature as 
well as in that of France and of Holland, which latter had in the age 
of Hugo Grotius higher literary pretensions than at present. He 
endeavored to introduce a classical spirit into German poetry, and to 
create a new poetical language; but he was not a man of high genius, 
and therefore, though entitled to praise for his zeal and for having 
given to the German mind an impulse towards the path, so long 
deserted, neither he nor his feebler followers are now read but by the 
literary antiquarian or historian. Through the 17th and first part of 
the 18th centuries, writers were not wanting; but their productions 
were without force or originality. Though heartily devoted to letters, 
they were powerless to revive literature. Their efforts betoken a 
craving for that which they could not supply. Vile imitations of 
French taste, extravagant romances, exaggerated sentiment, are the 
characteristics of the works wherewith it was attempted to supply the 
national want of a literature. The authors of these were, however, the 
precursors of a class, who, themselves shining luminaries compared to 
those who preceded them, were made pale by the brilliant light of the 
mighty spirits in whom and through whom the literature of Germany now 
stands the object of admiration and of study to the most cultivated 
scholars of all nations, and, by general acknowledgment, unsurpassed 
by that of any other people for richness, for depth and truth of 
thought and sentiment, for beauty in its forms and solidity of 
substance, for, in short, multifarious excellence.

Gottsched, Bodmer, Haller, Gellert, Rabener, Gleim, Kleist, Gessner, 
Hagedorn, are names worthy of honor, though their volumes are now 
seldom disturbed in their repose on the shelves of public libraries. 
They broke the long darkness with a promising streak of light, which 
expanded into day in the works of Klopstock, Winkelman, Lessing, 
Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Richter.

The two first named of the first class, Gottsched and Bodmer, are 
noted in German literature as the chiefs of two rival schools, in the 
merging of which into more enlarged views,--whereto their lively 
conflict greatly contributed,--appeared the second class. Gottsched 
aimed to create a German literature by imitating French models and 
introducing the French spirit. Bodmer warmly opposed Gottsched, and by 
translations from English authors,--far more congenial to the German 
people than French,--endeavored to produce good by English influence. 
This was in the first half of the 18th century. They both did service. 
Their keen rivalry excited the German mind. The fertile soil was 
stirred, and from its depths burst forth in thronging profusion a 
mighty progeny, as though the land of Herman and of Luther had been 
slow in bringing forth the children that were to make her illustrious, 
because they were a brood of giants, whose first cries startled even 
the mother that bore them. In one grand symphony ascended their 
matured voices, lifting up the minds of their countrymen to loftiest 
aspirations, and sounding in the uttermost parts of the earth, 
wherever there were ears that could embrace their artful music.

Accustomed to spiritless imitations, the souls of the deep-minded 
Germans were moved with unwonted agitation by the _Messiah_ of 
Klopstock, of which the first books were published in the middle of 
the 18th century. A voice, free and vigorous, such as since Luther 
none had been heard, was eagerly heeded, and with warm acclaim all 
over Germany responded to. To literature a new impulse was given, to 
swell the which rose other voices, similar in strength and 
originality--especially those of Kant in philosophy, and Lessing in 
criticism. 'Mid this heaving and healthy excitement, came with 
maddening power the first wild outpourings of the master-spirit, not 
of Germany only, but of the {377} age. Twenty years after the 
_Messiah_, appeared the first works of the then youthful Goethe, whom 
in our day, but four years back, we have seen at the age of four score 
descend gently to the tomb, having reached the natural end of a life 
that was only less productive than that of Shakspeare. Ten years 
later, another mighty genius announced himself, the only one who has 
been honored with the title of Goethe's rival, and Schiller burst upon 
Germany and the world in the _Robbers_. Poets, philosophers, critics, 
historians--of highest endowment, genial, profound, of many-sided 
culture, world-famous, illustrate this brilliant epoch.

A brief description of the career and best productions of the most 
noted among them, will enable you to understand why, in the latter 
half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, German 
literature suddenly reached so high a stage of perfection.

Klopstock has the high merit of being the leader of the glorious band, 
through whose teeming minds the want of a national literature was so 
suddenly and fully satisfied. Klopstock was the first who by example 
taught the Germans the lesson they were most apt at learning, that the 
French rules of taste are not needed for the production of excellence. 
Therefore is he called by Frederick Schlegel the founder of a new 
epoch, and the father of the present German literature. Born at 
Quedlinburg, a small town of North Germany, he was sent to school to 
the Schulpforte, then and now one of the most famous schools in 
Germany. As a boy, he was noted for warmth of feeling and patriotic 
enthusiasm. A youth under age, he conceived the idea of writing a 
national epic, taking for a subject the exploits of Henry I, Emperor 
of Germany. This design he however abandoned for that of a religious 
epic, and at twenty-one planned and commenced, before he knew of 
Milton's poems, his _Messiah_. In his own deep meditative mind, 
wrought upon by religious and patriotic zeal, originated and was 
matured the bold conception. Klopstock was in his twenty-fourth year 
when the first three books of the _Messiah_ appeared. His countrymen, 
ever susceptible to religious appeals, and prepared at that period for 
the literary revolution, or, more properly, creation, of which the 
_Messiah_ was the first great act, received it with an enthusiasm to 
which they had long been unused. The people beheld the young poet with 
veneration, and princes multiplied upon him honors and pensions. The 
remaining books were published gradually, and in the execution of his 
lofty work, the German bard felt, as was natural, the influence of the 
genius and precedent verse of Milton and of Dante. Like Paradise Lost, 
the _Messiah_ has won for its author a reputation with thousands, even 
of his countrymen, where it has been read by one. Klopstock also 
attempted tragedy; but in this department he failed signally. Indeed, 
he had no clear notion of the essential nature of the drama, as may be 
inferred from the fact of his choosing as the subject for a tragedy, 
the death of Adam. But, as a lyrical poet, he is even greater than as 
an epic, and for the excellence of his odes justly has he been styled 
the modern Pindar. In these,--distinguished for condensation of 
thought, vigor of language, and poetic inspiration,--the Germans first 
learned the full capacity of their language in diction and rhythm.

As to Klopstock is due the praise of being the first to teach the 
Germans by great examples, that reliance upon native resources, and 
independence of the contracting sway of meager French conventional 
rules, were the only paths to the production of original, enduring 
literature; to Lessing belongs that of enforcing the wholesome lesson 
by precept. Lessing is the father of modern criticism. Born in 
Kaments, a small town of Lusatia, in 1729, five years later than 
Klopstock, he wrote at the age of twenty-two a criticism of the 
_Messiah_. Later, in his maturity, he produced his _Dramaturgie_, or, 
theatrical and dramatic criticism, and his _Laocoon_, or, the limits 
of poetry and the plastic arts. He sought always for first principles; 
and in the search he was guided by a rare philosophic acuteness, 
co-operating with strong common sense. His fancy--whereof a good 
endowment is indispensable to a critic--is ever subordinate to his 
reason; his fine sensibility to the beautiful, supplying materials for 
the deduction of principles of taste and composition by his subtle 
understanding. Though greater as a critic than as a poet or creator, 
he has nevertheless left three different works in the dramatic form, 
that are classics in German literature;--_Minna von Barnkelm_, a 
comedy; _Amelia Galotti_, a domestic tragedy; and _Nathan the Wise_, a 
didactic poem of unique excellence. He himself regarded as his best 
work his _Fables_, remarkable for sententiousness, simplicity of 
language, and pithy significance. His prose style, concise, 
transparent, forcible without dryness, is a model for the literary 
student. Not the least of his great services is, that he was the first 
to draw attention in Germany to Shakspeare, whose supremacy over all 
poets has since been no where more broadly acknowledged, and the 
causes of it no where more lucidly developed.

Cotemporary with Klopstock and Lessing, and, from his works and 
influence, deserving of being mentioned next to them, was Wieland, 
born in 1733 in Biborach, a town of Swabia. Wieland commenced writing 
at the age of seventeen, and finished at that of eighty, during which 
extended period he addicted himself to almost every department of 
authorship. He is the first German who translated Shakspeare. As the 
author of _Oberon_, his name is familiar to English readers. This is 
much the best work of Wieland, more remarkable for grace and 
sprightliness than force or originality. He drew largely from the 
Greeks, Italians, English and French, and though a poet and writer of 
high and various merit, but a small portion of the much he has written 
is now read.

Following chronological order in this fertile period, we come after 
Wieland to Herder, born at Mohrungen, a small town of Eastern Prussia, 
in 1744. Like Wieland, Goethe, and Schiller, Herder was drawn to 
Weimar by the munificient spirit of the Duchess Amalia, and her son, 
the grand Duke Augustus, illustrious and ever memorable, as 
enlightened fosterers of genius--shining examples to sovereigns, 
kingly or popular. Herder was appointed in his thirty-second year, 
court preacher at Weimar, and there passed the remainder of his life, 
in diversified usefulness, simultaneously inspecting schools and 
elaborating philosophical essays, learnedly elucidating the Old 
Testament, and at the same time reviving and awakening a taste for 
national songs. His greatest work, entitled _Ideas for the Philosophy 
of History_, is esteemed one of the noblest productions of modern 
times. Herder is called by Richter, a Christian Plato.

And here, next to Herder, and a congenial and profounder spirit, we 
will speak of Richter himself, born in {378} 1763. Richter, better 
known by his Christian names, Jean Paul, is a fine sample of the 
German character. The truthfulness of the Germans, their deep 
religious feeling, their earnestness and their playfulness, (far 
removed from frivolity) their enthusiasm and their tendency to the 
mystical, their warm affections and aptness to sympathy, are all not 
only traceable in his works, but prominent in the broad vivid lines of 
his erratic pen. In the union of learning with genius, Richter 
surpasses Coleridge. His wonderful fictions are out of the reach of 
common readers, not more by their learned illustrations and their 
subtleties, than by their wild irregularity of form and arbitrary 
structure, whereby the world generally is deprived of the enjoyment of 
a fund of the most tender pathos, gorgeous description, bold, keen wit 
and satire, and the richest humor in modern literature. His two 
greatest works are on education, and on the philosophy of criticism. 
He was several years in writing each; and storehouses they are of deep 
and just thought, of searching analysis, and of great truths, evolved 
by the reason of one of the world's profoundest thinkers, and 
illuminated by flashes of genius of almost painful intensity. They are 
works, each of them, to be studied page by page. Nothing similar to or 
approaching them exists in English literature.

Of the writers who in this remarkable epoch belong to the first class 
in the highest department of letters, the poetical or creative, we 
have spoken--in the cursory manner necessary in a general sketch--of 
all, save the two greatest, Schiller and Goethe.

Frederick Schiller was born in 1759, at Marbach, a small town of 
Wurtemberg. In his mind seem to have been blended, and there 
strengthened, elevated, and refined, the qualities of his parents--the 
one, a man of clear upright mind; the other, a woman of more than 
common intelligence and taste, who both enjoyed the fortune of living 
to witness the greatness of their son. Schiller had the benefit of 
good early instruction. At the age of fourteen he was placed in a high 
school, just founded by the reigning Duke of Wurtemberg, and conducted 
with military discipline. Here, while his daily teachers were tasking 
him with irksome lessons, first of jurisprudence and afterwards of 
medicine, the chained genius, chafing like the lion in his cage, was 
brooding over the thoughts, and by stealth feeding with a translation 
of Shakspeare the cravings, which nature had implanted in him to 
produce one of her noblest works--a great poet. At eighteen he began, 
within the walls of the Duke's military school, _The Robbers_, often 
feigning sickness, that he might have a light in his room at night to 
transfer to paper his daring conception and burning thoughts. He 
postponed its publication until after he had finished his college 
course and had obtained the post of surgeon in the army, in his 
twenty-first year. The appearance of _The Robbers_, as a consequence 
of the formal drilling of the self-complacent pedagogues of the Duke 
of Wurtemberg, I have elsewhere[1] likened to the explosion of a mass 
of gunpowder under the noses of ignorant boys drying it before a fire 
to be used as common sand. Schiller himself, in after life, described 
it as "a monster, for which by good fortune the world has no original, 
and which I would not wish to be immortal, except to perpetuate an 
example of the offspring which genius, in its unnatural union with 
thraldom, may give to the world." Never did a literary work produce a 
stronger impression. With enthusiastic admiration, the world hailed in 
it the advent of a mighty poet.

[Footnote 1: North American Review, for July 1834.]

That which roused enthusiasm throughout Germany, roused anger in the 
sovereign of Wurtemberg; and while all eyes were turned towards the 
land whence this piercing voice had been heard, he from whose bosom it 
issued was fleeing from his home to avoid a dungeon. For having gone 
secretly to Manheim, in a neighboring state, to witness the 
performance of _The Robbers_, the Duke had the young poet put under 
arrest for a week, and Schiller, learning that for repeating the 
transgression a severer punishment awaited him, fled in disguise, 
choosing rather to face the appalling reality of sudden 
self-dependence than brook the tyranny of mind, which to the soaring 
poet was even more grievous than to the high-souled man. He quickly 
found friends. Baron Dalberg supplied him with money, while he lived, 
for a short time, under the name of Schmidt in a small town of 
Franconia, until Madam von Wollzogen invited him to her estate near 
Meinungen. Under this lady's roof he gave free scope to his genius, 
and produced two more dramas--_Fiesco_, and _Kabal und Liebe_ (Court 
Intrigue and Love.) These, with the _Robbers_, constitute the first or 
untutored era of Schiller's literary life. With faults as glaring as 
their beauties are brilliant, they are now chiefly valued as the broad 
first evidence of that power, whose full exertion afterwards gave to 
the world _Don Carlos_, _Wallenstein_, and _Tell_, and to Schiller 
immortality. Their reputation obtained for him the post of poet to the 
Manheim theatre. Thence, after a brief period he went to Leipsic and 
to Dresden, developing his noble faculties by study and exercise. In 
1789, at the age of thirty, he was appointed by the Grand Duke of 
Weimar, at the instigation of Goethe, professor of History in the 
university of Jena. Here and at Weimar he passed, in constant literary 
labor, the remainder of his too short life.

Schiller's great reputation rests, and will ever rest, unshaken, on 
his dramas. Regarding his first three, which we have named, as 
preparatory studies to his dramatic career, he has left six finished 
tragedies, viz.--_Don Carlos_, _The Maid of Orleans_, _Wallenstein_ 
(in three parts,) _Mary Stuart_, _The Bride of Messina_, and _William 
Tell_--works, in whose conception and execution the highest principles 
of art control with plastic power the glowing materials of a rich, 
deep, fervent mind, ordering and disposing them with such commanding 
skill, as to produce dramas, which are not merely effective in 
theatrical representation, and soul-stirring to the reader as pictures 
of passion, but which, by the rare combination of refined art with 
mental fertility and poetic genius, exhibit, each one of them, that 
highest result of the exertion of the human faculties--a great poem. 
Possessing, in common with other gifted writers, the various 
endowments needed in a dramatist and poet of the highest order, the 
individual characteristic of Schiller is elevation. The predominant 
tendency of his mind is ever upwards. Open his volumes any where, and 
in a few moments the reader feels himself lifted up into an ideal 
region. The leading characters in his plays, though true to humanity, 
have an ideal loftiness. You figure them to yourself as of heroic 
stature, such grandeur and nobleness is there in their strain of 
sentiment {379} and expression. The same characteristic pervades his 
prose and lyrical poetry. Had he never written a drama, his two 
volumes of lyrical poetry would suffice to enthrone him among the 
first class of poets, so beautiful is it and at the same time of such 
depth of meaning, so musical and so thought-pregnant. No where is the 
dignity of human nature more nobly asserted than in the works of 
Schiller; as pure, and simple, and noble, as a man, as he is powerful 
and beautiful as a poet. In the full vigor of his faculties, his mind 
matured by experience and severe culture, and teeming with poetic 
plans, he died in 1805, having reached only his forty-sixth year.

Of Schiller's great rival and friend, Goethe, as of Schiller himself, 
I can, in the limited space allowed in such a lecture as this, only 
give you a rapid sketch.

John Wolfgang Goethe was born at Frankfort on the Maine in 1749, ten 
years before Schiller. "Selectest influences" leagued with nature to 
produce this wonderful man. To give its complete development to a 
mighty inward power, outward circumstances were most happily 
propitious. Upon faculties of the quickest sensibility, and yet of 
infinitely elastic power, wide convulsions and world-disturbing 
incidents bore with tempestuous force, dilating the congenial energies 
of the young genius, who suddenly threw out his fiery voice to swell 
the tumult round him, and announce the master spirit of the age. For a 
while, the thrilling melody of that voice mingled in concert with the 
deep tones of the passionate period whence it drew so much of its 
power. Soon, however, was it heard, uttering with calmer inspiration 
the words of wisdom, drawn from a source deeper than passion--passion 
subdued by the will, and tempered by culture. "It is not the ocean 
ruffled," says Jean Paul, "that can mirror the heavens, but the ocean 
becalmed."

Goethe's father was a prosperous honored citizen of Frankfort, 
improved by travel and study--a man of sound heart and sharp temper; 
his mother, a woman of superior mind and of genial character, to whom 
in her old age Madam de Stael paid a visit of homage, and who enjoyed 
the pleasure of introducing herself to her distinguished visiter with 
the words,--"I am the mother of Goethe." Under the guidance of such 
parents was Goethe's boyhood passed in the old free city of Frankfort, 
ever a place of various activity, where he witnessed when a child the 
coronation of an emperor of Germany, and the stir of a battle, fought 
in the neighborhood between Frederick the Great and the French--events 
of rare interest to any boy, and of deep import to one in whose 
unfolding a great poet was to become manifest. In due season he was 
sent to the university of Leipsic, famous then by the lectures of 
Gottsched, Gellert, Ernesti, and others. To the young Frankfort 
student the admired discourses of these sages of the time were but 
lessons in skepticism; their magisterial dicta and hollow dogmas being 
quickly dissolved in the fire of a mind, already in its youth 
competent to self-defence against error, though with vision too 
untried yet to pierce to the truth. From Leipsic he went to Strasburg, 
to complete his studies in the law, his father having destined him for 
a lawyer. A more imperious parent, however, had laid other commands on 
him, and while the words of law-professors were falling upon his 
outward ear, the inward mind was revolving the deeds of _Goetz von 
Berlichingen_, and shaping the vast fragments of which in after years 
was built the wondrous world of _Faust_.

In his twenty-third year appeared _Goetz von Berlichingen_, the 
firstling of a pen, which, in the following sixty years, filled as 
many volumes with works of almost every form wherein literature 
embodies itself, a series of boundless wealth and unequalled 
excellence, to gain access to which, a year were well spent in daily 
labor to master the fine language it enriches. Two years later, 
appeared _Werter_, an agonizing picture of passion, which, like the 
first crude outburst of Schiller's genius, shot a thrill through the 
then agitated mind of Germany, and which Goethe afterwards, in the 
tranquillity of his purified faculties, looked back upon as a curious 
literary phenomenon. This work has never been directly translated into 
English (and a good translation of it were no easy achievement,) the 
book called "The Sorrows of Werter" being a translation of a French 
version, that does not give even the title of the original, which is, 
"The Sufferings of the Young Werther." And yet, by this doubly 
distorted image of a youthful ebullition, was the Protean giant for a 
long while measured in England, and through England, in America.

Soon after the publication of Werter, Goethe was invited to Weimar, 
where, honored and conferring honor, he lived the rest of his long and 
fruitful life. Appointed at once a member, he in a few years became 
president of the Council of State; and finally, after his return from 
Italy, at about the age of forty he was made one of the Grand Duke's 
Ministers, a post he for many years held. Directing the establishment 
and arrangement of museums, libraries, art-exhibitions, and theatrical 
representations, he contributed directly by practical labors, as well 
as by the brilliancy which the products of his pen shed upon his place 
of abode, to the fame and prosperity of Weimar.

In the poems of Shakspeare, is disclosed a mind, wherein capaciousness 
and subtlety, vigor and grace, clearness and depth, versatility and 
justness, combine and co-operate with such shifting ease and 
impressive effect, that ordinary human faculties are vainly tasked to 
embrace its perfectness and its immensity. Contemplating it, the 
keenest intelligence exhausts itself in analysis, and the most refined 
admiration ends in wonder. Inferior only to this consummation of human 
capabilities is the mind of Goethe, akin to Shakspeare's in the 
breadth and variety and subtlety of its powers. In comprehensiveness 
of grasp and ideal harmony in conceiving a poetic whole, the German 
approaches the mighty Englishman, and displays also in the 
delineation, or, more properly, the creation of characters, that 
instinctive insight and startling revelation of the human heart, which 
in Shakspeare almost at times make us think he were privy to the 
mystery of its structure. The same calmness and serene 
self-possession--a sign of supreme mental power--are characteristic of 
both. Like Shakspeare, Goethe never intrudes his personal 
individuality to mar the proportions of a work of art.

To pour out the wealth of a mind, which ranges over every province of 
human thought and action, Goethe adopts all the various forms in which 
poetry, according to its mood and object, moulds itself. In his 
epigrams, elegies, songs and ballads, he embodies the highest 
excellences of the _lyrical_. In _Egmont_, you have a bold {380} 
specimen of the romantic _tragedy_; in _Iphygenia_, a beautiful 
reproduction of the classical Greek; while _Torquato Tasso_, a drama 
of the most exquisite grace and refinement, occupies a middle ground 
between the two. To pass from this to _Faust_, is to be suddenly borne 
away from a quiet scene of rural beauty to a rugged mountain peak, 
whence, through a tempest, you catch glimpses of the distant sunny 
earth, and mid the elemental strife, beautiful in its terrors, hear 
sounds as though a heaven-strung æolian harp snatched music from the 
blast. In _Herman and Dorothea_, executed with matchless felicity, 
reigns the pure _epic_ spirit. This one poem were enough to make a 
reputation. But the highest exhibition of Goethe's manifold powers is 
_Wilhelm Meister_, in which a mixed assemblage of fictitious 
personages, each one possessing the vital individuality and yet 
generic breadth of Falstaff and of Juliet, bound together in a vast 
circle of the most natural and complex relations, presents so truthful 
and significant and art-beautified a picture of the struggles and 
attainments, the joys and griefs, the labors and recreations, the 
capacities and failings of mortal men, that from its study we rise 
with strength freshened and feelings purified, and our vision of all 
earthly things brightened. Unhesitatingly characterizing this work as 
the greatest prose fiction ever produced, I close this brief notice of 
its wonderful author.

The writers I have named are they who have given existence and 
character to modern German literature. Yet, to omit all mention of a 
number of others, would be not only unjust to them, but an 
imperfection even in so rapid a sketch as this.

By the side of Lessing, I should have placed Winkelman, born in the 
beginning of the last century, whose history of ancient art is 
esteemed the best of all works in this department of criticism. It had 
great influence upon German literature. Among the poets who, next to 
the brilliant series already described, hold high places, are, Bürger, 
Koerner, (both known to English readers through translations), 
Voss--to whom, and to their own copious, flexible language, the 
Germans are indebted for the most perfect translations of Homer 
possessed by any people--Tieck, Novalis, Grilpazer. Besides these may 
be mentioned the Stolbergs, Hoelty, Tidge, Leisewits, Mülner, Collin, 
Mathison, Uland. Among a crowd of novelists, distinguished are the 
names of Engel, Fouquet, Lafontaine, and Hoffman, and Thummel, whose 
satirical novels have a high reputation. Of miscellaneous writers 
there is a host, among whom should be particularized, Mendelsohn, 
Jacobi, Lichtenberg. In historians Germany is especially rich. Johan 
von Müller, Heeren, Niebuhr, Raumer, O. Müller, are writers whose 
merits are acknowledged throughout Europe, and acquaintance with whose 
works is indispensable to the scholar who would have wide views and 
accurate knowledge of the spirit of history. In criticism the two 
Schlegels have a European reputation. The "Lectures on the Drama" of 
Augustus William Schlegel constitute the finest critical work extant. 
Of the well known learning, profoundness, and acuteness of the German 
philologists, theologians and metaphysicians, it were superfluous here 
to speak. In short, to conclude, the Germans, endowed by nature with 
mental capabilities inferior to those of no people of the earth, and 
enjoying for the last half century a more general as well as a higher 
degree of education than any other, and thus combining talent and 
genius with wide learning and laborious culture, possess a vast and 
various accumulation of productions, wherein are to be found in every 
province of letters works of highest excellence, which to the literary 
or scientific student, whatever be his native tongue, are 
inexhaustible sources of mental enjoyment and improvement.




LINES.

The following lines were composed in January 1830, while passing the 
night in the wilderness before a huntsman's fire, in company with a 
party of friends engaged in a hunting expedition.


  Above, the starry dome;
    Beneath, the frozen ground;
  And the flickering blaze that breaks the gloom,
    And my comrades sleeping sound.

  Well may they sleep; their sportive toil
    Has found a mirthful close,
  And dreams of home, of love's sweet smile,
  And prattling childhood void of guile,
    Invite them to repose.

  O! never more on me,
    Such dear illusions e'en in sleep can fall;
  Scared by the frown of stern reality
    The forms my yearning spirit would recall.

  The dead! the dead! The ne'er forgotten dead,
    In slumber's shadowy realm so vainly sought,
  Yet haunt my path, and hover round my bed,
    Unseen, unheard, but present still to thought.

  Breathe not their voices in the linnet's strain?
    Glow not their beauties in the opening flower?
  Fond fantasies of grief! alas! how vain,
    While cruel memory tells "they are no more."

  But this spangled roof is their mansion bright,
    Though the icy earth is their lowly tomb;
  And this mounting flame is their spirit's light,
    That seeks its native home.

  And that oak that frowns o'er the desolate waste,
    While its withered arms are tossing wide,
  As if to screen from the whirling blast
    The scattered wreck of its summer pride--

  'Tis I: thus left alone on earth,
    Thus fixed in my spirit's lonely mood,
  Mid the strifes of men, in the halls of mirth,
    Or the desart's solitude.

  For never can I stoop
    To bandy malice with the base and vile;
  And in the grave is quenched the cherished hope,
    Kindled and fed by Beauty's favoring smile.

  The grave! the grave! It will not restore
    The victims to its hunger given;
  And this weary spirit can rest no more,
    Till it sleep with them to wake in heaven.




ALLITERATION.


"Pierce Plowman's Vision," by William Langlande, in the reign of 
Edward III, is the longest specimen extant of alliterative poetry. It 
proceeds in this manner without rhyme, and with few pretensions to 
metre--

  It befell on a Friday two friars I mette
  Maisters of the minours, men of great wytte.


{381}


READINGS WITH MY PENCIL.

NO. IV.

  Legere sine calamo est dormire.--_Quintilian_.


26. "There should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy 
fabric: and pure invention is but the talent of a liar."--_Byron, by 
Moore_.

This seems harsh judgment--but is it so, in reality? Ethically, as 
well as in a mere worldly view, I think it is. "There is nothing new 
under the sun," and he who tells what is not, lies--under a mistake, 
or otherwise. All fiction is woven on a web of fact, except the liar's 
fiction, which is all woof and no web, and so must soon fall to pieces 
from its own want of consistency. _Apropos!_ I saw a play advertised, 
within the week, which was announced by the author, as founded neither 
in fact, fancy, or imagination!

27. "The piety implanted in Byron's nature--as it is, deeply, in all 
poetic natures," &c.--_Moore's Byron_.

Devotion arises very naturally from viewing the works of God with 
seriousness. If Byron had not some holy stirrings of devotion within 
him, when painting his loveliest pictures, I greatly err in my 
estimate of human nature. These remained, perhaps, to show him how 
much he had lost in his misanthropic musings over the dark and gloomy 
past: and had he followed gently those motions, with which, in 
thinking of the sublime and beautiful of nature, his mind was visited, 
it would have but been a compliance with a call from heaven, guiding 
him to true happiness.

28. "Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth, asleep,
     Unconscious lies--effuse your mildest beams!
     Ye constellations!--while the angels strike,
     Amid the spangled sky, their silver lyres!"
                                               _Thomson_.

How vividly does this bold but beautiful figure at times come back 
upon me, when I have been walking at deep midnight--when the stillness 
that pervaded all around me was so deep and intense as to make me, for 
very fear of breaking it, restrain my breath: while the fine array of 
stars was gloriously marshalled in high heaven: the belted Orion--the 
Serpent showing its every fold between the Bears. Lyra had not set, 
the Eagle was just on the western edge, and the Dolphin's cluster near 
its precursor. The Canès, Major and Minor, were bright in the east; 
nearly over head was Capella, and the Gemini as bright as the prince 
of the Hyades, Aldebaran. Jupiter lighted his gas-like flame, eastward 
of Castor and Pollux, and meteors were flitting in various lines 
across the whole western sky. And again, on some still, clear, fair 
night--when the blood-red planet, Mars, was high in heaven, and the 
brighter and purer Jupiter, and the Dogstar were fading in the 
horizon--how have I stood, listening to nothing, while the hum of the 
fairies was melting in my ears! For what else can I call that 
deception of the fancy, or perhaps that real sound from an unknown 
source, which, in the most profound silence, is still sweetly rising 
up around us?

29. "Do not we all know that the whig laureate, _Tom Moore_, actually 
published in the Morning Chronicle, the substance of conversations 
which had occurred at the royal table itself, to which he had been 
incautiously admitted? And that the most pungent and piquant things in 
* * the Twopenny Post Bag, and the Fudge Family * * *, are derived 
from information picked up in the progress of social intercourse?"

_Blackwood's Magazine for Nov., 1823_.

I believe these inuendoes are now beyond all cavil. The excuse of Tom 
was, that George deserted his party, and that all's fair in politics. 
Whether or not this were reasonable excuse, casuists may settle; but 
there is one reflection incident to the anecdote, to which the years 
1835-6 has given rise; and this is, how ungracefully looks the Irish 
Anacreon, after such a well-authenticated charge, in raising a breeze 
against poor Willis, for repeating what himself had said about 
O'Connell, as a public speaker merely, at a large dinner party of Lady 
Blessington's! The mote and the beam!

J. F. O.




AMERICAN SOCIAL ELEVATION.

The Spartan knew no other stimulus to exertion than the shining 
glories of war. From infancy to old age he was ever learning the skill 
and daring which belong to the battle field. His every mental 
development was martial in its tendency. He saw in every feature of 
his country's institutions an appeal to his warrior spirit. Imagine a 
band of young ambitious minds circled around some aged patriot, who, 
in the all-glowing language of arms, is describing the daring, the 
glorious achievement which had immortalized the _Spartan_ character. 
Listen to him as he portrays the bravery unrivalled, the death 
unequalled, of those who fell at Thermopylæ or Leuctra; as he calls 
upon their mighty shades to witness his words--and mark the youth how 
intent, how all-intent they grow as he proceeds; their eyes flashing 
with fire; their hands clenched; their teeth set. Do this, and you 
have a faint idea of that kind of influence which moulded and directed 
the mind of the Spartan. Is it wonderful that Sparta became the 
military school of antiquity? Thus taught, the highest worship of her 
youth was offered on the altars of war. Thus taught, their imagination 
was ever picturing the fierce onset, the high conflict, the battle 
won, and the laurel immortal which graced the victor's brow. Thus 
taught, they were ever ready to seize the sword and shield and rush to 
meet the invader. Thus taught, they served well their country and went 
to their fancied home in the distant _Elysia_, to join the heroes whom 
they had learned to admire, mourned and remembered by their 
countrymen.

We propose to point out those objects which actuate the American mind; 
to show their inadequacy to produce the general elevation of society, 
and humbly to suggest what should be the controlling stimulus. Need we 
ask what are the chief motives which influence our national mind? Need 
it be told that our young growing mind is fast becoming a money 
making, political mind? The most casual observer has only to glance at 
the state of things, to feel sensibly its truth. Observe that man of 
quick step and active air, as he moves through the street of the 
commercial city; how, all absorbed in himself, he passes heedlessly 
on, as if he were the only being in society: his mind is intensely 
bent on making a few dollars; and he is but one among the thousands. 
Observe the throngs of men who have met to-day on public exchange, to 
transact the business of thousands and millions. Mark this one in deep 
meditation; that one lively with a face brilliant with joy; here one 
telling in whispers some long expected news to one all attention; 
there one earnest in persuasion with one {382} feignedly reluctant. 
There is a variety of mental exercise, of thought, of emotion; but the 
desire of gain, the secret spring of action, is the chief mental 
development. Go into the extensive manufactory, and while with 
delighted mind you admire the beauties and power of invention, and 
believe the veil of the Holy of Holies of Science's temple to be 
lifted, and her mysteries revealed, reflect to what end these fruits 
of inventive genius are applied. Go upon the hill-top, and looking 
down upon the verdant meadow, the rich fields of grain, the orchard 
and vine-clad arbors, all in luxuriant growth, ask yourself, why so 
much industry in bringing forth the products of the soil. There is but 
one answer--the desire of gain. Nor are the manifestations of this 
desire seen only in the outward world; it is the deity of the fireside 
circle. It moulds the earliest thought, and directs its action. Around 
it bow in low submission the powers and affections of mind. For it, 
all, all which belongs to the man, mentally and physically, is offered 
a willing sacrifice.

Now, it may be asked, are the fruits of this desire the elevation of 
society, the full developments of the mind's faculties, the beautiful, 
the active, the useful, the noble? Being the controlling power which 
influences every thought and feeling, it becomes the sole arbiter of 
every action. Self-emolument being its highest aim, it shapes every 
exertion to this end. It requires activity, unrelaxing activity--but 
it is not an activity for the promotion of general good. It requires 
sleepless attention, even such as belonged to the virgins who tended 
the sacred fires of Vesta's temple. But it is a watching which takes 
care of self. It requires the exertion of the intellectual powers, but 
only so far as to bemean them to its purposes. In fine, it 
concentrates the whole soul, its entire thoughts and feelings on a 
single point. And whatever attractions there may be around, however 
glorious or grand, it never turns from this point. This point is self.

Now, where in this system is that cultivation of mind, which lifts 
society from the depths of barbarism to the mountain heights of power 
and civilization? Where those brilliances and glories of intellect, 
which die not with nations but live in the admiration of all coming 
time? Where that eloquence of the heart which flows from the deep well 
of the affections? That eloquence which strengthens and chastens the 
social relations; which, silent, unobserved, connects men together by 
chains of sympathetic love and benevolence? Or where in this system, 
is that love of country, that lofty patriotism, which is the 
foundation of national character? What is patriotism? It is a love of 
ancestry; a love, the very antithesis of self; a love, which like the 
Christian's love, beautifies and elevates society. Can it exist in 
this money-getting age? As well might you bid yonder queen river of 
the west to roll backwards. Does it exist? Who can doubt that this is 
an age of degenerate patriotism? Patriotism! that which holds a nation 
up, which forgotten lets her fall into the common sepulchre of 
departed empires. Patriotism! alas! that the signs of the times are 
ominous that this people are fast bidding you a long, long farewell.

But the fruits, say the advocates of this money-seeking desire, are 
industry and wealth. We grant wealth as its result, and that it is not 
an effect of enchantment; but as there must be much labor, chiselling 
and hammering, before the edifice can rise in beauty and magnificence, 
so in its acquisition there must be inflexible industry. But is it 
that kind of industry which unfolds and invigorates the mind, thereby 
producing social elevation and refinement? History informs us how some 
of the mighty cities of the east, by industry, rose to opulence, but 
laments over their low state of society, and as a consequence, their 
fall, like Lucifer from the halls of heaven, never to rise again. This 
industry, so beloved, so enticing in the view of the many, is directed 
to one end--individual gain. Considered in reference to the well-being 
of communities as a whole, it is a gilded fatality. It explores the 
deep centres of the earth, and brings forth its long buried riches; 
covers every river, sea, and lake with commerce; ransacks all nature, 
animate and inanimate. But what is all this, without a fully developed 
mind to direct, to manage, to enjoy? What would it avail us, though 
industry should roof our houses with diamonds, if there was not within 
a virtuous feeling, an elevation of thought? Does this money-loving 
industry purify and ennoble the social relations--show their nature 
and point out how they should be observed?--or, does it lift the mind 
to the contemplation of the ineffable glories and majesties of the 
eternal King of worlds?

We have said we grant wealth as the result of this desire, but it is 
not general wealth. All may strive, all may labor with intense anxiety 
and assiduity, but all will not gain the mountain's summit; a great 
majority must ever be at its base. Speculation, which is the mean of 
immense fortunes, bankrupts more than it enriches. The follies of 
mankind, their diversity of thought and feeling, their ignorance, 
their mistaken notions of pride, render it impossible for all to be 
alike successful. The result is obvious. The few, the mighty few, are 
the wealthy. Now, wealth in the present state of things is power; for 
the sicklied conception of the age has thrown around it all that is 
great or glorious. And it is a well founded principle that power, 
whatever its nature, will govern. Who can picture that state of 
society, governed by aristocratic wealth, untempered by the virtues of 
the heart and intellect?

Further; it is not only by the sacrifice of its mind that this age 
will acquire its wealth, but by the sacrifice of that of posterity. 
One generation stamps a character upon another. Whatever this age 
thinks and does, will more or less characterize the thoughts and 
actions of the succeeding.

Nor is this all. This, with coming generations, by their industry, by 
the stimulus of an unquenchable thirst for wealth, will, in all 
probability, accumulate countless riches--will, if we may speak thus 
figuratively, erect in our land immense moneyed houses filled with 
gold and silver, the reward of their desire. But these generations, 
like all things below, must pass away, and sink into the common tomb 
of the dead. Then these moneyed houses, though locked and barred, and 
ironed, will be burst open, and their gold and silver, amassed with 
miserly care, be made to flow in streams to slake the thirst of a 
debased posterity. And the result is beyond the power of human 
imagination. Having the wealth of their ancestors in their hands, and 
being, as man is, naturally prone to idleness, they will forget the 
industry of their fathers, and only think how they may live most 
lavishly, most splendidly. The gratification of the senses, attended 
{383} by its concomitants, vice and degradation, will be the sole 
desire of all human aspiration. Society--its beautiful dependences and 
proportions destroyed--will fall into fragments and return to original 
anarchy. Mind uncultivated, will shed no illuminations, but, like 
"expression's last receding ray," will be lost in the universal 
midnight of heart and intellect. For to this idol of their worship, 
sensual pleasure, they will bring as daily offerings the lovely and 
beautiful in the heart, the noble and sublime in the intellect. But 
amid all their dissipation, like the revellers at Belshazzar's feast, 
surrounded by the luxuries and glittering splendors of earth, 
unsuspecting, the thunderbolt of their destruction will come upon 
them--fearfully, suddenly, to their annihilation.

We have now briefly shown the nature of this money-getting desire, and 
its inadequacy, from its total neglect of all mental cultivation, to 
promote the general elevation of society. There is another stimulus of 
American mind which sometimes combines with the desire of 
wealth--occasionally acts alone. It is an aspirancy for political 
fame.

Bear with us while we attempt very concisely to show its nature and 
effects. No one who looks abroad upon the present aspect of society 
can doubt the existence of such a desire. It is the controlling 
stimulus of our young educated mind. It has its origin in our nature, 
for man is naturally fond of distinction, fond of wielding the sceptre 
of governing power. Our institutions in their high and impartial 
wisdom have said, that all men possess equal rights; and upon this 
declaration rest the pillars which support the sky-dome of our 
national temple. But the mind of this age has perverted its original 
intent, and made it the all-stimulating cause of a thirst for 
political elevation. The state of society, its love of political 
excitement, its seeming willingness to reward political effort, 
likewise awaken and nourish this thirst.

What is its nature? It does not develope the various mental powers. It 
does not strengthen the affections or awaken their inborn eloquence. 
It does not teach us the nature of that great chain of relations which 
holds society in union. Being common to the many, and attainable but 
by the few, it creates an ungenerous rivalry among its votaries. All 
in fancy gaze upon the shining halo of greatness which encircles the 
rulers, and beholding the unbounded adoration paid it by the ruled, 
each resolves, in newness of purpose and strength, to gratify his 
selfish aim, though at the expense of the best hopes of society.

What is its effect? All the faculties of mind are applied and made 
subservient to one end--individual elevation. A fondness for 
excitement is created, and the mind is ever longing and panting for 
this excitement. Parties start up, and society is engrossed and 
agitated by party dissensions--dissensions which awaken and cherish 
old prejudices and sectional feelings, to the smothering of those 
which are purer and nobler; dissensions, which combine bad ambition 
and immature intellect; dissensions, which elicit cunning and 
chicanery, instead of throwing out the brilliant thought or touching 
the chord of high affection; dissensions, in which that calm serenity 
which chastens the powers, passions, and emotions which unfold the 
higher graces and charities of our nature, is unknown; dissensions in 
which _patriotism_, which is a love as universal, as it is noble and 
inspiriting, is forgotten; dissensions, which terminate in the 
elevation of some ambitious leader to the high throne of power; who, 
having reached the summit of his wishes, looks down upon the servile 
mass, and with the utmost complacency throws upon their bended necks 
the yoke of their bondage. Where is here the elevation of society, 
pure feeling, pure thoughts?

The same train of thought may be exemplified by a reference to those 
nations of antiquity, where now the "spirit of decay" has its abiding 
place. The history of ancient republics is familiar to every one; 
their unequalled greatness, their decline and fall are the schoolboy's 
tale. And what does this history tell him? That in times of great 
political excitement there was less virtue, less elevation of mind, 
less real patriotism; that what is noble or excellent in our nature, 
was lost amid the whirl of party dissensions; as in the times of the 
_Gracchi_ when the first seed was sown which led to the fall of the 
"seven-hilled city"--or still later, when the mighty _Cæsar_ rose, and 
the elements of old parties were stirred up and new ones created, 
until the imperial mistress of the world reeled and fell to the dust. 
This history likewise tells him that the same is true of the democracy 
of Athens--that in periods of high party contention the excellences 
and glories of mind, so congenial to that "bright clime of battle and 
of song," were unknown, as in the ages of Aristides and Socrates, or 
of Demosthenes and Æschines, when the gold of the Macedonian bought 
their purest patriots.

We come now to the last point which we proposed to set forth. What is 
essential to the elevation of society? Before proceeding in its 
investigation, we would correct all misapprehensions. We would not 
have this age unmindful of the importance of wealth, but would have it 
exert due energy in its acquisition. Wealth, in the hands of 
enlightened mind, is a powerful mean in the improvement of morals and 
intellect, adorns the social structure by its offerings of the 
beauties and elegances of _art_ and nature, dispenses far and near the 
comforts and blessings of life--and is one of the great levers by 
which society is raised to its highest elevation. Nor would we have 
this age unmindful of political interests. Politics, from the nature 
of the social organization, enter into and necessarily become an 
inherent characteristic of all society. There must be a government of 
laws; and whether the people or their representatives legislate, it is 
necessary that the people understand the nature and effect of 
legislation. Without such knowledge, the maxim, that power is ever 
stealing from the many to the few, would be too truly, fatally, 
verified; for the power-loving nature of man would be enabled, first, 
to throw around the mass an illusive gilded snare--afterwards, to 
crush it in its iron despotic grasp. There must then be both wealth 
and politics. But we would not have either wealth or politics the 
controlling desire of the mind; thus considered, they debase and 
destroy this mind. We would have them as subordinate instruments to 
one grand desire, the elevation of society. We would have them as the 
satellites which revolve in glorious harmony around the great _sun_; 
and we would not have them take the place of the sun, for then the 
system would be broken, the music of the spheres hushed, and all 
nature return to primeval chaos.

The promotion of the general well-being of society by a cultivation of 
the heart and intellect, is impliedly required of Americans, from the 
nature and structure of {384} our government. It was not reared by the 
gold of the conquered, or on the bones of the subject. It rose into 
being all glorious, the creation of free minds enlightened by the 
reason and experience of centuries. Being the opposite of despotism, 
it does not chain down the powers of mind or shrivel away their 
existence. Nor does it like Sparta, unchain the mind, only to 
stimulate its martial character; for the rainbow of peace is the 
circling arch of our national fabric. Founded in morals and intellect, 
it appeals to their cultivation as the means of its prosperity and 
perpetuity. It says to the mind, be free!--free, to expand in full 
bloom and vigor--free, to be noble--free, to rise and soar with the 
strength and majesty of the eagle! And it attaches a meaning to 
freedom of mind. That mind is free which is not bound to the will of 
party; which is not the slave of any imperious passion or desire. That 
mind is free which can love and rejoice over the prosperity of the 
Union. That mind is free which does not allow the still current of the 
soul's affections to be chilled by impure passion or feeling, but 
increases its onward flow in warmth and strength. That mind is free 
which thinks and acts as becomes the "noblest work" of Deity. That 
mind is free which enjoys a full and chaste development of all its 
powers, passions and emotions; which knows and observes its relations; 
which can concentrate its thoughts on a single point; which, when it 
looks abroad upon nature's works, beholds the reflected power and 
wisdom of a _God_; or, which, as it gazes upon the azure sky, the 
verdant forest, the beautiful river, the sparkling lake, the 
storm-rolling ocean, feels inexpressible delight and reverence. Such 
is the meaning which our government attaches to the phrase "freedom of 
mind." What in the nature of things can be clearer? Does it not 
require of this people a general cultivation of mind?

Consistency then with the objects of our government requires, that the 
great pervading desire of society should be its elevation by its 
universal mental cultivation. Such a desire is opposed to the selfish 
system--is the protecting angel of patriotism. It combines the 
excellences of intellect and pure ambition. It lifts the mind from low 
and grovelling objects to the contemplation of those which are purer 
and higher, delighting in the good, the exalted. In it is concentrated 
whatever is noble in morals, whatever is sublime and unanswerable in 
truth.

What is meant by universal mental cultivation? We find it not in the 
history of nations. The history of the world is no more than a record 
of human usurpations based on human ignorance. A powerful few have 
ever moulded and wielded the destinies of mankind. Learning has shone 
only to render more brilliant some kingly reign. Unlike the great 
luminary of day, which it should resemble, its beams have ever been 
confined within the compass of a court or palace. The mountain peaks 
only of society have felt its light, while at the base, where the 
great mass congregate, there has been utter darkness. True, we are 
told of remarkable eras in the history of learning--of the Augustan 
age, when all that was beautiful and powerful in thought, all that was 
magic in conception or grand in imagery, shone forth in the most 
attractive forms; of the reigns of queens Anne and Elizabeth, when the 
graces and elegances of English literature were unrivalled, as they 
appeared in the majestic imaginings of Shakspeare, the nervous beauty 
and simplicity of Addison, and other master minds; of periods in the 
learning of Italy, when Dante, Tasso, Petrarch, gave a new name and a 
new being to Italian intellect. But was the state of society, as a 
whole, refined and elevated in any of these remarkable eras? The 
lights were chiefly intellectual, and belonged to the higher grades of 
society; besides, they shone but for a short time and departed, 
leaving the deeper darkness. Moreover, they were purely literary, and 
pure literature never reaches the mass of mind. True, it is perpetual, 
and shines down from age to age, as do the lights of those eras which 
now illumine in some degree the mind of the present; but it is only a 
reflection from eminence to eminence--the people see it, feel it not. 
We repeat it, learning has ever been confined to the few; the many 
have never known its invigorating influence.

Now, mind is the moving and guiding principle of all human action. 
Mind teaches the nature of the delicate and momentous relations which 
unite society, preserves their beauty and uniformity, developes their 
power and usefulness. This mind dwells with the mass of mankind. We 
would then, that society may be elevated, have the rays of knowledge 
penetrate and expand this mind. We would have the genius of learning 
courted and wooed from her mountain residence, that literature and 
science might come down, and walk radiant with truth and loveliness 
through every grade of the community. We would have the bright light 
struck out from the mind of the mass, and its illuminations reach the 
uttermost boundaries of the land, as extensive as the circling canopy 
of the sky. So speaks the voice of humanity, even as the voice of an 
angel.

Again: What is meant by universal mental cultivation? It is not the 
expansion of any single mental power or susceptibility. There should 
be no brilliancy of intellect unmellowed by the radiancy of moral 
feeling--no strength of passion or sentiment uninfluenced by other of 
the mind's faculties. There must be a mental balance, which is the 
great secret of all education. From the want of such balance, 
Ignorance, with her offspring, Superstition and Prejudice, has ever 
weighed down the intellectual scale and destroyed the noblest results 
of mental effort. That system should be discarded which developes only 
the powers of intellect. Variety, the high thought, the virtuous 
sentiment, the beautiful and sublime emotion, the chaste passion, all, 
in happy union, raise communities to power and happiness.

Surely, it is not illogical to maintain, that an endowment of 
diversified powers and affections of mind, impliedly requires their 
cultivation. Why the gift of reason, of memory, of imagination? Why 
the gift of moral and religious feeling, of love, of sympathy--or of 
any faculty? It would be absurd to say that they are mere trifles, 
mere butterfly appendages, to gratify taste or pleasure. Further, this 
diversity of mind, entering into, necessarily creates the numerous 
individual fibres which are the sources of the vigor and strength of 
the social frame. Is it not then evident, that the expansion of any 
one mental power to the neglect of all, or of some to the neglect of 
others, would take away more or less of this vigor and strength; would 
disfigure the social frame and destroy its beauty and harmony of 
proportion? Here, the mind suggests {385} an analogical argument. Look 
abroad over the material world. Is there sameness? Is there the 
exclusive development of any single feature? Is the earth's surface 
one barren, limitless plain? or its soil of one kind? or its deep 
mines all gold, or silver, or iron? Or do we behold a world of water, 
of inconceivable sublimity? No! There is the mountain, bold and 
rugged, bleak, or crowned with magnificent foliage, to awaken the 
emotions and give wings to the imagination; the valley of varied soil 
suited to the production of the comforts of life; the vein of gold, of 
silver, of iron, each and all, in happy effect, increasing the 
embellishments and blessings of society; and there are the river, the 
lake, and still worlds of water. What is there useful or harmonious, 
or ornamental, or enlivening, or grand, unseen in this, the Deity's 
material creation? Now, observe the mental world. There is reason, 
producing the solid and beneficial; memory and imagination, her 
handmaids, assisting her vigor and research, and robing her in 
loveliness and brightness; the affections, diffusing through all and 
throwing over all a glow of love, beauty, and peace; thus, preserving 
the necessary relations, and showing their glorious influences when 
developed and joined in union in this the _Deity's_ mental creation. 
Should you take from the material world one of its parts, you would 
destroy its harmony and uniformity. A similar result would follow, 
should you take from the mental world one of its parts. Let there, 
then, be no single mental development since it destroys the other 
powers and their relations, but let there be a full growth of all to 
their greatest, their proudest stature. Let the systems of the past be 
forgotten, and in contemplation of the future, let us resolve that no 
one passion or desire of mind, shall erect its tyrant throne on the 
prostration of other nobler powers. For the mind fully cultivated is a 
"museum of knowledge," lives forever "serene in youthful beauty."

The principle of universal mental cultivation being set forth, its 
bearing and effect will be seen in its application to the various 
classes of society. First, in the professions, that of the law being 
the one of our adoption, and therefore most congenial to our thoughts, 
we select for illustration. The science of law considered strictly, 
only in reference to rules, forms, and the gathered opinions of 
centuries, may be styled an isolated system in character, cold and 
forbidding. But construed liberally, in all its relations and 
bearings, it embraces within its circle all that belongs to human 
action. It appeals to, and acts upon the good sense and good feeling 
of mankind. It is the protector of morals, and may be the defender of 
religion. It is the guardian and dispenser of social rights, and their 
invincible champion with power. It combats vice and ignorance, 
unravels the cunning and chicanery of men, and brings forth truth all 
beautiful and overwhelming. In short, founded in justice and the good 
of society, it becomes the conservator of religion, morals, and 
intellect. What should be the qualifications of the high priests who 
administer around the sacred altars of the judicial temple? They 
should sound deep the wells of knowledge, and be familiar with nice 
and subtle distinctions. They should know every motive of human 
conduct, from that which causes the most delicate to that which causes 
the most stupendous movements in society. They should examine well the 
passions, their sources and effect upon the mind. They should look 
abroad upon society, understand its origin, the nature of its 
relations, their beautiful adaptations, their harmonious influences, 
and love to increase its glory and happiness by the cultivation of 
fresh virtues and excellences. They should, for this end, unlock the 
store-houses of wisdom and knowledge for original and sound 
principles, for apt illustration. They should be thoroughly 
indoctrinated in a spirit of true philosophy--of that philosophy which 
teaches the intimate nature of the transactions and interests of 
men--of that philosophy which teaches what should characterize every 
action whether in the family or in the outward world. They should be 
old acquaintances with the master spirits of literature and science, 
both in ancient and modern times; that "halo" of mingled character, of 
light, grace and magic, which encircles the Muses, should likewise be 
to them a fount of inspiration. Now, such a preparation presupposes a 
full development of minds--of minds, not only powerful in stern 
reason, but rich and dazzling in imagination, and useful in the 
exercise of all other powers; of minds, not only great in some one of 
the affections, but deeply imbued in all the higher and sympathetic 
feelings of the heart. Such being the case, these minds, which we may 
call by their prototypes, Marshalls and Wirts, will raise the 
profession to the loftiest pinnacle of eminence, will stamp its 
character for moral and intellectual power and usefulness. The same 
remarks apply to the other professions, and the same train of cause 
and effect will raise them to a similar eminence.

But is the elevation of the professions the elevation of society? So 
has thought the world, and generation after generation has passed 
away, and others and others have followed, and still it is thus 
thought. But it is time that this fatal delusion, which has hung like 
an incubus over society, blasting its bloom and vigor, should be 
dispelled--that all grades may rise to their rightful station. Never 
was suggested to mortal mind a fairer scheme, or one of more moral 
grandeur. The mechanic possessing the same mental gifts, enjoying the 
same rights, holding the same momentous relations to society as the 
professional man, should likewise have his heart and intellect fully 
developed. It is not sufficient that he be a mere mechanic. A mere 
mechanic is a child in the world of knowledge. It is not sufficient 
that he be a good workman, though he be as skilful and precise in the 
use of his instrument, as was the Moorish king Saladin, in Scott's 
story of the Talisman. In mere workmanship there is no illumination of 
intellect, no awakening of emotion, no refinement of passion. The 
principles of science are closely interwoven in every piece of 
mechanism. He should master well these principles, the effect of their 
application, consider them as the solid basis of the comforts and 
conveniences of life, and not the least among the means of human power 
and enjoyment. He should love his trade because of the science 
engrafted in it, because of its usefulness, because of its affording 
him an enduring place in Fame's temple. For this purpose, he should go 
back to the earliest, feeblest dawn of science, when first Israel's 
shepherds gazed upon the star-gemmed firmament, and mark its gradual 
but onward progress; how, at one period, it shone all luminous; how, 
at another, it went down in universal midnight; how again it revived 
under the touch of a few mighty geniuses, and rose {386} clustered 
with new principles and discoveries, with the glory and splendor of 
the sun itself. The productions of Newton and Franklin, and other 
great lights both of the past and present, should be the aliment of 
his mind; their thoughts, which when sought, come clear and 
inspiriting from the living page, should be familiar to him as 
household words; and how they studied and thought, he should learn to 
study and think. And like them, whatever is important in the material 
world, above or below, he should make the playthings of his inquiring 
mind. And like them, he should not be ignorant of whatever is 
excellent in religion, useful in philosophy, enrapturing in song, or 
thrilling in eloquence. He will thus exhibit a mind not stinted in its 
growth, not controlled by any one desire, but a mind, like Milton's 
tree of paradise, weighed down with rich and delicious fruits--a mind, 
elevated, useful and polished. He will thus exalt his trade, and add 
to it new and brighter glories. But the elevation of professions and 
mechanical trades is not sufficient to produce the general elevation 
of society. They compose no more than half of the great mass of mind. 
There are yet the _merchant_ and the _farmer_, who should be raised to 
a like eminence. Commerce, viewed in reference to buying and selling, 
retards the moral and intellectual improvement of mankind. Thus 
viewed, and connected with avarice for money, it would create a nation 
of pedlars. But, considered in its widest sense, as influencing the 
business and interests of men, and thus acting on thought and feeling, 
as entering into every social relation, as drawing on the resources of 
the earth, the air, and the water, as connected with foreign climes, 
and uniting nations by golden links of sympathy and interest, it is by 
far the most comprehensive and important of all life's vocations. The 
merchant then should possess a mind sure, deep and searching; nor 
should he be a novice in knowledge of any kind. What is peculiar to 
variety of soil and climate, what to the habits and feelings of 
countries, what to their wants and desires, should be fully known to 
him. What are the duties and obligations, arising from the many and 
weighty relations which his calling creates, should likewise be fully 
known to him. He should therefore be a historian, a philosopher, a 
scholar, and a Christian. Commerce will then rise to the highest 
degree of perfection and usefulness.

And is the mind of the farmer, amid all this moral and intellectual 
illumination, to remain uncultivated? Is he an isolated being, 
unconnected by any relations with society? or has he no obligations to 
perform in common with his fellow men? Has he not those varied mental 
endowments, which are the glory of his species, which exalt, adorn, 
bless, and refine? Or is he incapable of feeling the poetry of the 
emotions, delight, beauty, and sublimity? or of that warmth and 
exaltedness of sympathetic virtue, which stimulate and invigorate the 
spirit of love and benevolence? Is there no knowledge or science in 
agriculture? Agriculture is closely allied to commerce, and has a 
bearing greater or less on every pursuit in life. It may be called an 
unfailing source of national wealth and prosperity, supplying the 
wants of man, and imparting new life, and stirring, ceaseless activity 
to trade of every kind. Besides, its followers--uninfluenced by the 
vanities and vices of the world, so effeminating, so debasing to the 
mind--are the repositories of the integrity and patriotism of society. 
Indeed, we may say that the farmer is the guardian of government, 
rights and laws; the watchman, sleeping neither by day nor by night, 
on the outposts of defence. We would then have his mind cultivated 
both morally and intellectually, that he may know and observe the 
duties imposed upon him by society--by Heaven. We would then have him 
conversant with all that is noble or mighty, with all that is 
inspiriting or strengthening in literature, science, and philosophy, 
both in the ancient and modern world, for then agriculture shall 
become a fountain of power and usefulness, and a "wall of fire" around 
society.

And what is the effect of this principle thus applied to the various 
classes of society? Heretofore, and at present, to a certain extent, 
as we have before remarked, learning has ever belonged to a few, 
constituting a single class of society, and of course, the 
repositories of all moral and intellectual power and wisdom. And 
these, having the power in their own grasp, and standing on lofty 
stations and surrounded by a false show of glory and goodness, the 
result of admiring ignorance, mould and wield the destinies of 
society. To them the mass of mind looks up, as to oracular deities, 
with much the same faith and confidence as the ancient pagan, when 
consulting the Pytho of the Delphian shrine. Thus, the elevation of 
society has ever been characterized by the moral and intellectual 
education of a single class; and as this class has been cultivated, 
communities have risen or fallen. Thus, the history of society has 
ever been, like the waves of a rolling sea, a series of fluctuations. 
Now, this principle of universal mental cultivation, as above applied, 
destroys this usurping, tyrannizing system. It takes from the few the 
power of holding and disposing of the rights of the many, giving to 
the many the same mental superiority and knowledge. It presents not an 
isolated point, but raises all grades to the same glorious, elevated 
level.

The mind of society is composed, to a greater or less degree, by the 
mingling of purity and pollution. As the pure rivers of intellect and 
affection flow on, they are met by counter streams deeper and broader, 
emanating from the sources of evil and ignorance. Thus, good is 
counteracted, and its tendency destroyed by evil; thus, society is 
full of bitter animosities and contentions, and kept in a deleterious, 
feverish excitement, destructive of all noble effort. By the 
introduction of this principle, peace, active and beauteous, will calm 
the angry waters, and the countless currents of thought and feeling 
which sweep society, will only tend to the magnifying of one grand 
current flowing to universal good. Moreover, at the approach of this 
light, struck out of the mind of the mass, ignorance, though sitting 
upon her throne of centuries, shall find her throne to crumble from 
under her, and her reign over mankind to depart forever. Superstition, 
too, which has ever chained down the soaring spirit of mind, and 
destroyed the harmony and independence of society, shall find her 
power vanish--her altars prostrate--"her spell over the minds of men 
broken, never to unite again." In their place, whatever is glorious, 
noble, and sublime in mind, will reign supreme. And instead of any one 
desire giving tone productive of sordid selfishness to the thought and 
action of society; or instead of that levelling spirit, originating in 
lawless passion, which tramples upon and bids defiance to all law and 
good order--which marches {387} through society with the terror and 
fatality of a thousand plagues--from a union of the virtues of the 
heart and intellect, a spirit of high-mindedness will arise, full of 
nobleness and power, to guarantee the force of law, to strengthen the 
social ties, and, like the star of the east, which marked the coming 
of the Saviour, ensure to the world universal happiness.

Are the effects of this principle sufficient to create a motive 
conducive to the universal cultivation of mind--or is something more 
required? As an effect creative of a motive, we would merely refer to 
the immortality of mental achievement. It is a fact, known to every 
one of common observation, that a virtuous mind dies not with the 
clayey tenement, but lives forever in its hallowed results. It is 
founded in reason and philosophy. The mind of the past is not 
different in its essential characteristics from the mind of the 
present; and therefore, the thoughts and feelings of the past are in a 
measure congenial with our thoughts and feelings; and from this 
kindred sympathy, it is, that the intellect of the remotest antiquity 
lives in the intellect of the most distant future. Are Homer, or 
Cicero, or any of that galaxy of mind which casts so brilliant, so 
undying a lustre over the ancient world, forgotten? Are Milton and 
Shakspeare, or Newton and Franklin, or any of the illustrious moderns, 
whatever their sphere of action, forgotten? The beautiful fanes and 
consecrated groves, where genius was wont to shine in her full power 
and brightness; the elegances of art, her towering domes and her 
magnificent columns, once the centre of admiration; the luxuries and 
splendors of opulence, once affording rich continued 
gratification--where are they? They have passed away, like "shadows 
over a rock," and are lost in the dust. But the mind which created 
them, admired them, enjoyed them, lives, will live, shall live, 
forever, forever.

H. J. G.

_Cincinnati_.




DYING MEDITATIONS

OF A NEW YORK ALDERMAN.


  Let me review the glories that are past,
  And nobly dine, in fancy, to the last;
  Since here an end of all my feasts I see,
  And death will soon make turtle soup of me!
  Full soon the tyrant's jaws will stop my jaw,
  A _bonne bouche_ I, for his insatiate maw;
  My tongue, whose taste in venison was supreme,
  Whose bouncing blunders Gotham's daily theme,
  In far less pleasant _fix_ will shortly be
  Than when it smack'd the luscious callipee.
  Oh would the gourmand his stern claim give o'er,
  And bid me eat my way through life once more!
  And might (my pray'rs were then not spent in vain,)
  A hundred civic feasts roll round again,
  As sound experience makes all men more wise,
  How great th' improvement from my own would rise!
  What matchless flavor I would give each dish,
  Whether of venison, soup, or fowl, or fish!
  In this more spice--in that more gen'rous wine,
  Gods, what ecstatic pleasure would be mine!
  But no--ungratified my palate burns,
  Departed joy to me no more returns;
  And vainly fancy strives my death to sweeten,
  With dreams of dinners never to be eaten.
  The dawning of my youth gave promise bright
  Of vict'ry in the gastronomic fight:
  "Turtle!" I cried, when at the nurse's breast,
  My cries for turtle broke her midnight rest;
  Such pleasure in the darling word I found,
  That turtle! turtle! made the house resound.
  When, after years of thankless toil and pains,
  The pedant spic'd with A B C my brains,
  My cranium teem'd, like Peter's heav'nly sheet,
  With thoughts of fish and flesh and fowls to eat;
  The turtle's natural hist'ry charm'd my sense--
  Adieu, forever, syntax, mood and tense!
  And when in zoologic books I read,
  That once a turtle liv'd without his head,
  To emulate this feat I soon began,
  And so became a Gotham Alderman.
  A civic soldier, I no dangers fear'd,
  Save indigestion or a greasy beard;
  _Forced balls_ were shot, I fac'd with hearty thanks,
  And in the _attack on Turkey_ led the ranks,
  The fork my bayonet--the knife my sword,
  And mastication victory secur'd.
  Alas! that kill'd and eat'n foes should plague us,
  And puke their way back through the œsophagus!
  Ye murder'd tribes of earth and air and sea,
  Dyspepsia hath reveng'd your deaths on me!
  Ah! what is life? A glass of ginger beer,
  Racy and sparkling, bubbling, foaming, clear;
  But when its carbonated gas is gone,
  What matter where the vapid lees are thrown?
  In this eternal world to which I go,
  I wonder whether people eat or no!
  If so, I trust that I shall get a chair,
  Since all my life I've striv'n but to prepare.
  And holy writ--unless our preachers lie--
  Says, "Eat and drink, to-morrow we must die."
  My faith was firm as ardent zeal could wish,
  From Noah's ark full down to Jonah's fish.
  Then may the pow'rs but give a starving sinner,
  A _bid_ to that eternal turtle dinner!

E. M.




IRENE.


  I stand beneath the soaring moon
  At midnight in the month of June.
  An influence dewy, drowsy, dim,
  Is dripping from yon golden rim.
  Grey towers are mouldering into rest,
  Wrapping the fog around their breast.
  Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
  A conscious slumber seems to take,
  And would not for the world awake.
  The rosemary sleeps upon the grave,
  The lily lolls upon the wave,
  And million cedars to and fro
  Are rocking lullabies as they go
  To the lone oak that nodding hangs
  Above yon cataract of Serangs.

  All Beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies
  With casement open to the skies
  Irene with her destinies!
  And hark the sounds so low yet clear,
  (Like music of another sphere)
  Which steal within the slumberer's ear,  {388}
  Or so appear--or so appear!
  "O lady sweet, how camest thou here?
  "Strange are thine eyelids! strange thy dress!
  "And strange thy glorious length of tress!
  "Sure thou art come o'er far off seas
  "A wonder to our desert trees!
  "Some gentle wind hath thought it right
  "To open thy window to the night,
  "And wanton airs from the tree-top
  "Laughingly through the lattice drop,
  "And wave this crimson canopy,
  "So fitfully, so fearfully,
  "As a banner o'er thy dreaming eye
  "That o'er the floor, and down the wall,
  "Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall--
  "Then, for thine own all radiant sake,
  "Lady, awake! awake! awake!

  The lady sleeps!--oh, may her sleep
  As it is lasting, so be deep,
  No icy worms about her creep!
  I pray to God that she may lie
  Forever with as calm an eye--
  That chamber changed for one more holy,
  That bed for one more melancholy!
  Far in the forest dim and old,
  For her may some tall vault unfold,
  Against whose sounding door she hath thrown
  In childhood many an idle stone--
  Some tomb which oft hath flung its black
  And vampire-wing-like pannels back,
  Fluttering triumphant o'er the palls
  Of her old family funerals.

E. A. P.




VERBAL CRITICISMS.


_Guessing and Reckoning_. Right merry have the people of England made 
themselves at the expense of us their younger brethren of this side of 
the Atlantic, for the manner in which we are wont to use the verbs, to 
guess and to reckon. But they have unjustly chided us therefor, since 
it would not be difficult to find in many of the British Classics of 
more than a century's standing, instances of the use of these words 
precisely in the American manner. In the perusal of Locke's Essay on 
Education a short time since, I noticed the word guess made use of 
three times in _our_ way. In section 28 he says, "Once in four and 
twenty hours is enough, and no body, _I guess_, will think it too 
much;" again, in section 167, "But yet, _I guess_, this is not to be 
done with children whilst very young, nor at their entrance upon any 
sort of knowledge;" and again, in section 174, "And he whose design it 
is to excel in English poetry, would not, _I guess_, think the way to 
it was to make his first essay in Latin verses."

Was John Locke a Yankee? Or have the people of the United States 
preserved one of the meanings of the verb _to guess_ which has become 
obsolete in England?

In several passages of the English version of the New Testament the 
word _reckon_ is used as the people in many parts of the United States 
are in the habit of using it. In the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 8, 
verse 18, is an instance, "For _I reckon_ that the sufferings of this 
present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall 
be revealed to us."

"_Take and tell_." "If you do so I will _take and tell_ father," such 
is the constant language of children. What will they take? Is the 
expression a contraction of some obsolete phrase? Who can tell me if 
it is to be met with in print?

_Had have_. I have for some time noticed this corruption in 
conversation. It has lately crept into print. Here are instances of 
it, "Had I have gone, I should not have met her," "If I had have been 
at the sale I would not have bought it at that price." I have a 
suspicion that a rapid pronunciation of "would have," "should have," 
and "could have," has given rise to this. "I'd have gone," "I'd have 
come," and similar phrases have probably introduced it, the 
contraction answering as well for _had_ as _would_, _could_, and 
_should_. It is very awkward and incorrect.

_Fully equal_. This is a tautologous expression in constant use. "This 
work is _fully equal_ to its predecessor." The writer means to say 
that the last work is equal to the first; but what is the use of the 
_fully_, unless there can be an equality which is _not full_ and 
perfect?

_Eventuate_. The editor of Coleridge's Table Talk, very justly 
denounces this Americanism. He says it is to be met with in Washington 
Irving's Tour to the Prairies. If so, so much the worse for the book. 
It is a barbarism, "I pray you avoid it." We do not need the word, so 
that it cannot be sneaked in, under the plea of necessity. The English 
verb, _to result_, means all, I presume, that the fathers of 
_eventuate_ design that it shall mean. If we may coin _eventuate_ from 
event, why not _processiate_ from process, _contemptiate_ from 
contempt, _excessiate_ from excess, and a hundred more, all as useful 
and elegant as _eventuate_?

_Directly_. Many of the English writers of the present day, use this 
word in a manner inelegant and unsanctioned, I am convinced, by any 
standard author. They appear to think that it has the same meaning as 
the phrase "as soon as." For instance: "The troops were dismissed 
_directly_ the general had reviewed them." "The House of Lords 
adjourned _directly_ this important bill had passed." I am happy to 
find that the writers in this country have not fallen into it.

_Mutual_. When persons speak of an individual's being _a mutual 
friend_ of two others, who perhaps may not know each other, they 
attach a meaning to the word mutual which does not belong to it. A and 
B may be mutual friends, but how C can be the mutual friend of A and B 
it is difficult to comprehend. Where is the mutuality in this case? We 
should say, C is the _common_ friend of A and B. Several of the 
associations for interment which have lately been instituted, have 
seized upon the word _mutual_ and used it very absurdly. They style 
themselves "Mutual Burial Societies." How can two individuals _bury 
each other_? and yet this is implied by the term "_mutual_."

Is not the familiar phrase, "now-a-days," a corruption of "in our 
days?"

"_If I am not mistaken_." This is evidently wrong. If what I say to 
another is misunderstood, I am _mistaken_, but if I misunderstand what 
is said to me, I am _mistaking_, and so we should speak and write.

_Degrees of perfection_. "The army," says president Monroe, in one of 
his messages, "has arrived at _a high degree of perfection_." There 
can be no degrees of perfection. Any thing which is _perfect_ cannot 
become _more_ {389} _perfect_, and any thing which falls short of 
perfection is in _a degree of imperfection_.

"_Is being built_." This form of expression has met with many and 
zealous advocates. It is an error almost exclusively confined to 
print. In conversation we would say, "the house is _getting_ built," 
and no one would be in doubt as to our meaning. _Being built_ is the 
past or perfect participle, which according to Lindley Murray, 
signifies action perfected or finished. How then can prefixing the 
word _is_ or _are_, words in the present tense, before it, convert 
this meaning into another signifying the continuation of the building 
at this moment? We say, "the house _being built_ the family moved in," 
and imply absolute completion by the phrase _being built_, as people 
are not in the habit of moving into unfinished houses. To say that the 
house is being built, is no more than saying that the house is built, 
and by this we understand that the building is completely finished, 
not that the work is still going on.

I do not know that any of Shakspeare's hundred and one commentators 
has noticed the pun in Hamlet's address to his father's ghost, "Thou 
comest to me in such a _questionable_ shape, that I will _speak_ to 
thee." Perhaps the great bard meant to exhibit the coolness of his 
hero by placing a jest in his mouth. Hamlet immediately after proceeds 
to _question_ the spirit.




_Editorial_.




LYNCH'S LAW.


Frequent inquiry has been made within the last year as to the origin 
of Lynch's law. This subject now possesses historical interest. It 
will be perceived from the annexed paper, that the law, so called, 
originated in 1780, in Pittsylvania, Virginia. Colonel William Lynch, 
of that county, was its author; and we are informed by a resident, who 
was a member of a body formed for the purpose of carrying it into 
effect, that the efforts of the association were wholly successful. A 
trained band of villains, whose operations extended from North to 
South, whose well concerted schemes had bidden defiance to the 
ordinary laws of the land, and whose success encouraged them to 
persevere in depredations upon an unoffending community, was dispersed 
and laid prostrate under the infliction of Lynch's law. Of how many 
terrible, and deeply to be lamented consequences--of how great an 
amount of permanent evil--has the partial and temporary good been 
productive!

"Whereas, many of the inhabitants of the county of Pittsylvania, as 
well as elsewhere, have sustained great and intolerable losses by a 
set of lawless men who have banded themselves together to deprive 
honest men of their just rights and property, by stealing their 
horses, counterfeiting, and passing paper currency, and committing 
many other species of villainy, too tedious to mention, and that those 
vile miscreants do still persist in their diabolical practices, and 
have hitherto escaped the civil power with impunity, it being almost 
useless and unnecessary to have recourse to our laws to suppress and 
punish those freebooters, they having it in their power to extricate 
themselves when brought to justice by suborning witnesses who do swear 
them clear--we, the subscribers, being determined to put a stop to the 
iniquitous practices of those unlawful and abandoned wretches, do 
enter into the following association, to wit: that next to our 
consciences, soul and body, we hold our rights and property, sacred 
and inviolable. We solemnly protest before God and the world, that 
(for the future) upon hearing or having sufficient reason to believe, 
that any villainy or species of villainy having been committed within 
our neighborhood, we will forthwith embody ourselves, and repair 
immediately to the person or persons suspected, or those under 
suspicious characters, harboring, aiding, or assisting those villains, 
and if they will not desist from their evil practices, we will inflict 
such corporeal punishment on him or them, as to us shall seem adequate 
to the crime committed or the damage sustained; that we will protect 
and defend each and every one of us, the subscribers, as well jointly 
as severally, from the insults and assaults offered by any other 
person in their behalf: and further, we do bind ourselves jointly and 
severally, our joint and several heirs &c. to pay or cause to be paid, 
all damages that shall or may accrue in consequence of this our 
laudable undertaking, and will pay an equal proportion according to 
our several abilities; and we, after having a sufficient number of 
subscribers to this association, will convene ourselves to some 
convenient place, and will make choice of our body five of the best 
and most discreet men belonging to our body, to direct and govern the 
whole, and we will strictly adhere to their determinations in all 
cases whatsoever relative to the above undertaking; and if any of our 
body summoned to attend the execution of this our plan, and fail so to 
do without a reasonable excuse, they shall forfeit and pay the sum of 
one hundred pounds current money of Virginia, to be appropriated 
towards defraying the contingent expenses of this our undertaking. In 
witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands, this 22d day September 
1780."




CRITICAL NOTICES.


SPAIN REVISITED.

_Spain Revisited. By the author of "A Year in Spain." New York: Harper 
and Brothers._

Some three months since we had occasion to express our high admiration 
of Lieutenant Slidell's _American in England_. The work now before us 
presents to the eye of the critical reader many if not all of those 
peculiarities which distinguished its predecessor. We find the same 
force and freedom. We recognize the same artist-like way of depicting 
persons, scenery, or manners, by a succession of minute and 
well-managed details. We perceive also the same terseness and 
originality of expression. Still we must be pardoned for saying that 
many of the same _niaiseries_ are also apparent, and most especially 
an abundance of very bad grammar and a superabundance of gross errors 
in syntatical arrangement.

With the _Dedicatory Letter_ prefixed to _Spain Revisited_, we have no 
patience whatever. It does great credit to the kind and gentlemanly 
feelings of Lieutenant Slidell, but it forms no inconsiderable 
drawback upon {390} our previously entertained opinions of his good 
taste. We can at no time, and under no circumstances, see either 
meaning or delicacy in parading the sacred relations of personal 
friendship before the unscrupulous eyes of the public. And even when 
these things are well done and briefly done, we do believe them to be 
in the estimation of all persons of nice feeling a nuisance and an 
abomination. But it very rarely happens that the closest scrutiny can 
discover in the least offensive of these dedications any thing better 
than extravagance, affectation or incongruity. We are not sure that it 
would be impossible, in the present instance, to designate gross 
examples of all three. What connection has the name of Lieutenant 
Upshur with the present Spanish Adventures of Lieutenant Slidell? 
None. Then why insist upon a connection which the world cannot 
perceive? The Dedicatory letter, in the present instance, is either a 
_bona fide_ epistle actually addressed before publication to 
Lieutenant Upshur, intended strictly as a memorial of friendship, and 
published because no good reasons could be found for the 
non-publication--or its plentiful professions are all hollowness and 
falsity, and it was never meant to be any thing more than a very 
customary public compliment.

Our first supposition is negatived by the stiff and highly constrained 
character of the _style_, totally distinct from the usual, and we will 
suppose the less carefully arranged composition of the author. What 
man in his senses ever wrote as follows, from the simple impulses of 
gratitude or friendship?


In times past, a dedication, paid for by a great literary patron, 
furnished the author at once with the means of parading his own 
servility, and ascribing to his idol virtues which had no real 
existence. Though this custom be condemned by the better taste of the 
age in which we live, friendship may yet claim the privilege of 
eulogizing virtues which really exist; if so, I might here draw the 
portrait of a rare combination of them; I might describe a courage, a 
benevolence, a love of justice coupled with an honest indignation at 
whatever outrages it, a devotion to others and forgetfulness of self, 
such as are not often found blended in one character, were I not 
deterred by the consideration that when I should have completed my 
task, the eulogy, which would seem feeble to those who knew the 
original, might be condemned as extravagant by those who do not.


Can there be any thing more palpably artificial than all this? The 
writer commences by informing his bosom friend that whereas in times 
past men were given up to fulsome flattery in their dedications, not 
scrupling to endow their patrons with virtues they never possessed, 
he, the Lieutenant, intends to be especially delicate and original in 
his own peculiar method of applying the panegyrical plaster, and to 
confine himself to qualities which have a real existence. Now this is 
the very sentiment, if sentiment it may be called, with which all the 
toad-eaters since the flood have introduced their dedicatory letters. 
What immediately follows is in the same vein, and is worthy of the 
ingenious Don Puffando himself. All the good qualities in the world 
are first enumerated--Lieutenant Upshur is then informed, by the most 
approved rules of circumbendibus, that he possesses them, one and 
each, in the highest degree, but that his friend the author of "_Spain 
Revisited_" is too much of a man of tact to tell him any thing about 
it.

If on the other hand it is admitted that the whole epistle is a mere 
matter of form, and intended simply as a public compliment to a 
personal friend, we feel, at once, a degree of righteous indignation 
at the profanation to so hollow a purpose, of the most sacred epithets 
and phrases of friendship--a degree, too, of serious doubt whether the 
gentleman panegyrized will receive as a compliment, or rather resent 
as an insult, the being taxed to his teeth, and in the face of the 
whole community, with nothing less than all the possible 
accomplishments and graces, together with the entire stock of cardinal 
and other virtues.

_Spain Revisited_, although we cannot think it at all equal to the 
_American in England_ for picturesque and vigorous description (which 
we suppose to be the forte of Lieutenant Slidell) yet greatly 
surpasses in this respect most of the books of modern travels with 
which we now usually meet. A moderate interest is sustained 
throughout--aided no doubt by our feelings of indignation at the 
tyranny which would debar so accomplished a traveller as our 
countryman from visiting at his leisure and in full security a region 
so well worth visiting as Spain. It appears that Ferdinand on the 20th 
August, 1832, taking it into his head that the Lieutenant's former 
work "A Year in Spain" (esta indigesta produccion) esta llena de 
falsedades y de groceras calumnias contra el Rey N. S. y su augusta 
familia, thought proper to issue a royal order in which the book 
called _un ano en Espana_ was doomed to seizure wherever it might be 
found, and the clever author himself, under the appellation of the 
Signor Ridell, to a dismissal from the nearest frontier in the event 
of his anticipated return to the country. Notwithstanding this order, 
the Lieutenant, as he himself informs us, did not hesitate to 
undertake the journey, knowing that, subsequently to the edict in 
question, the whole machinery of the government had undergone a 
change, having passed into liberal hands. But although the danger of 
actual arrest on the above-mentioned grounds was thus rendered 
comparatively trivial, there were many other serious difficulties to 
be apprehended. In the Basque Provinces and in Navarre the civil war 
was at its height. The diligences, as a necessary consequence, had 
ceased to run; and the insurgents rendered the means of progressing 
through the country exceedingly precarious, by their endeavors to cut 
off all communications through which the government could be informed 
of their manœuvres. The post-horses had been seized by the Carlist 
cavalry to supply their deficiencies, "and only a few mules remained 
at some of the post-houses between Bayonne and Vitoria."

The following sketch of an ass-market at Tordesillas seems to embody 
in a small compass specimens of nearly all the excellences as well as 
nearly all the faults of the author.


By far the most curious part of the fair, however, was the ass-market, 
held by a gay fraternity of gipsies. There were about a dozen of 
these, for the most part of middle stature, beautifully formed, with 
very regular features of an Asiatic cast, and having a copper tinge; 
their hands were very small, as of a race long unaccustomed to severe 
toil, with quantities of silver rings strung on the fingers. They had 
very white and regular teeth, and their black eyes were uncommonly 
large, round-orbed, projecting, and expressive; habitually languid and 
melancholy in moments of listlessness, they kindled into wonderful 
brightness when engaged in commending their asses, or in bartering 
with a purchaser. Their jet-black hair hung in long curls down their 
back, and they were nearly all dressed in velvet, as Andalusian majos, 
with quantities of buttons made from pesetas and half {391} pesetas 
covering their jackets and breeches, as many as three or four hanging 
frequently from the same eyelet-hole. Some of them wore the Andalusian 
leggjn and shoe of brown leather, others the footless stocking and 
sandal of Valencia; in general their dress, which had nothing in 
common with the country they were then in, seemed calculated to unite 
ease of movement and freedom from embarrassment to jauntiness of 
effect. All of them had a profusion of trinkets and amulets, intended 
to testily their devotion to that religion which, according to the 
popular belief, they were suspected of doubting, and one of them 
displayed his excessive zeal in wearing conspicuously from his neck a 
silver case, twice the size of a dollar, containing a picture of the 
Virgin Mary holding the infant Saviour in her arms.

Four or five females accompanied this party, and came and went from 
the square and back, with baskets and other trifles, as if engaged at 
their separate branch of trade. They had beautiful oval faces, with 
fine eyes and teeth, and rich olive complexions. Their costume was 
different from any other I had seen in Spain, its greatest peculiarity 
consisting in a coarse outer petticoat, which was drawn over the head 
at pleasure instead of the mantilla, and which reminded me of the 
manta of Peru, concealing, as it did, the whole of the face, except 
only a single eye.

I asked a dozen people where these strange beings were from, not 
liking to speer the question at themselves; but not one could tell me, 
and all seemed to treat the question as no less difficult of solution 
than one which might concern the origin of the wind. One person, 
indeed, barely hinted the possibility of their being from Zamora, 
where one of the faubourgs has a colony of these vermin, for so they 
are esteemed. He added, moreover, that a late law required that every 
gipsy in Spain should have a fixed domicil, but that they still 
managed, in the face of it, to gratify their hereditary taste for an 
unsettled and wandering life. He spoke of them as a pack of gay rogues 
and petty robbers, yet did not seem to hold them in any particular 
horror. The asses which they were selling they had probably collected 
in the pueblos with a view to this fair, trading from place to place 
as they journeyed, and not a few they had perhaps kidnapped and coaxed 
away, taking care, by shaving and other embellishments, to modify and 
render them unknown.

I was greatly amused in observing the ingenious mode in which they 
kept their beasts together in the midst of such a crowd and so much 
confusion, or separated them for the purpose of making a sale. They 
were strung at the side of the parapet wall, overlooking the river, 
with their heads towards it and pressing against it, as if anxious to 
push it over, but in reality out of sedulousness to avoid the frequent 
showers of blows which were distributed from time to time, without 
motive or warning, on their unoffending hinder parts, and withdraw 
them as far as possible from the direction whence they were inflicted. 
As they were very much crowded together, there was quite scuffling 
work for an ass to get in when brought back from an unsuccessful 
effort to trade, or when newly bought, for these fellows, in the true 
spirit of barter, were equally ready to buy or sell. The gipsy's 
staff, distributing blows on the rumps of two adjoining beasts, would 
throw open a slight aperture, into which the nose of the intruding ass 
would be made to enter, when a plentiful encouragement of blows would 
force him in, like a wedge into a riven tree. The mode of extracting 
an ass was equally ingenious, and, if any thing, more singular; 
continually pressing their heads against the wall with all their 
energy, it would have required immense strength, with the chance of 
pulling off the tail if it were not a strong one, to drag them 
forcibly out; a gipsy, taking the tail of the required animal in one 
hand, would stretch his staff forward so as to tap him on the nose, 
and, thus encouraged, gently draw him out.

The ingenuity of these gipsies in getting up a bargain, trusting to be 
able to turn it to their own account, was marvellous. Mingling among 
the farmers, and engaging them in conversation on indifferent 
subjects, they would at length bring them back to the favorite theme 
of asses, and eventually persuade them to take a look at theirs. "Here 
is one," measuring the height of an individual with his staff, "which 
will just suit you;--what will you give for him? Come, you shall have 
him for half his worth, for one hundred reals--only five dollars for 
an ass like this," looking at him with the admiration of a connoisseur 
in the presence of the Apollo; "truly, an animal of much merit and the 
greatest promise--_de mucho merito y encarecimiento_--he has the 
shoulders and breast of an ox; let me show you the richness of his 
paces," said the gipsy, his whole figure and attitude partaking of his 
earnestness, and his eye dilating and glowing with excitement. He had 
brought the unwary and bewildered countryman, like a charmed bird, to 
the same point as the eloquent shopkeeper does his doubting customer 
when he craves permission to take down his wares, and does not wait to 
be denied. Vaulting to the back of the animal, he flourished his staff 
about its head, and rode it up and down furiously, to the terror of 
the by-standers' toes, pricking it on the spine with his iron-pointed 
staff to make it frisky, and pronouncing the while, in the midst of 
frantic gesticulations an eloquent eulogium on its performances and 
character, giving it credit, among other things, for sobriety, 
moderation, long suffering, and the most un-asslike qualification of 
chastity. To add to the picturesque oddity of the scene, an old monk 
stood hard by, an interested spectator of some chaffering between a 
young woman and a seller of charms and trinkets stationed beneath an 
awning, and no accessory was wanting to render the quaint little 
picture complete.


In our notice of the _American in England_, we found much fault with 
the _style_--that is to say, with the mere English of Lieutenant 
Slidell. We are not sure whether the volumes now before us were 
written previously or subsequently to that very excellent work--but 
certain it is that they are much less abundant than it, in simple 
errors of grammar and ambiguities of construction. We must be 
pardoned, however, for thinking that even now the English of our 
traveller is more obviously defective than is becoming in any well 
educated American--more especially in any well educated American who 
is an aspirant for the honors of authorship. To quote individual 
sentences in support of an assertion of this nature, might bear with 
it an air of injustice--since there are few of the best writers of any 
language in whose works single faulty passages may not readily be 
discovered. We will therefore take the liberty of commenting in detail 
upon the English of an entire page of _Spain Revisited_.--See page 
188, vol. i.


Carts and wagons, caravans of mules, and files of humbler asses came 
pouring, by various roads, into the great vomitory by which we were 
entering, laden with the various commodities, the luxuries as well as 
the necessaries of life, brought from foreign countries or from remote 
provinces, to sustain the unnatural existence of a capital which is so 
remote from all its resources, and which produces scarce any thing 
that it consumes.


This sentence, although it would not be too long, if properly managed, 
is too long as it stands. The ear repeatedly seeks, and expects the 
conclusion, and is repeatedly disappointed. It expects the close at 
the word "_entering_"--at the word "_life_"--at the word 
"_provinces_"--and at the word "_resources_." Each additional portion 
of the sentence after each of the words just designated by inverted 
commas, has the air of an after-thought engrafted upon the original 
idea. The use of the word "_vomitory_" in the present instance is 
injudicious. Strictly speaking, a road which serves as a vomitory, or 
means of egress, for a population, serves also as a means of ingress. 
A good writer, however, will consider not only whether, in all 
strictness, his words will admit of the meaning he attaches to them, 
but whether in their implied, their original, or other collateral 
meanings, they may not be at variance with some portion of his 
sentence. When we hear of "a _vomitory_ by which we were _entering_," 
not all the rigor of the most exact construction will reconcile us to 
the phrase--since we are accustomed to connect with the word 
_vomitory_, notions precisely the reverse of those allied to the 
subsequent word "_entering_." Between the participle "_laden_" and the 
nouns to which it refers (carts, {392} wagons, caravans and asses) two 
other nouns and one pronoun are suffered to intervene--a grammatical 
arrangement which when admitted in any degree, never fails to 
introduce more or less obscurity in every sentence where it is so 
admitted. Strict syntatical order would require (the pronoun "we" 
being followed immediately by "laden") that--not the asses--but 
Lieutenant Slidell and his companions should be laden with the various 
commodities.


And now, too, we began to see horsemen jantily dressed in slouched 
hat, embroidered jacket, and worked spatterdashes, reining fiery 
Andalusian coursers, each having the Moorish carbine hung at hand 
beside him.


Were horsemen, in this instance, a _generic_ term--that is, did the 
word allude to horsemen generally, the use of the "_slouched hat_" and 
"_embroidered jacket_" in the singular, would be justifiable--but it 
is not so in speaking of individual horsemen, where the plural is 
required. The participle "_reining_" properly refers to 
"_spatterdashes_," although of course intended to agree with 
"_horsemen_." The word "_each_," also meant to refer to the 
"_horsemen_," belongs, strictly speaking, to the "_coursers_." The 
whole, if construed by the rigid rules of grammar, would imply that 
the horsemen were dressed in spatterdashes--which spatterdashes reined 
the coursers--and which coursers had each a carbine.


Perhaps these were farmers of the better order; but they had not the 
air of men accustomed to labor; they were rather, perhaps, Andalusian 
horse-dealers, or, maybe, robbers, of those who so greatly abound 
about the capital, who for the moment, had laid aside their 
professional character.


This is an exceedingly awkward sentence. The word "_maybe_" is, we 
think, objectionable. The repetition of the relative "_who_" in the 
phrases "_who so greatly abound_" and "_who for the moment had laid 
aside_," is the less to be justified, as each "_who_" has a different 
antecedent--the one referring to "_those_" (the robbers, generally, 
who abound about the capital) and the other to the suspected 
"_robbers_" then present. But the whole is exceeding ambiguous, and 
leaves a doubt of the author's true meaning. For, the words 
"_Andalusian horse-dealers, or, maybe, robbers of those who abound 
about the capital_," may either imply that the men in question were 
some of a class of robbers who abounded, &c. or that they were men who 
robbed (that is, robbers of) the Andalusian horse-dealers who 
abounded, &c. or that they were either Andalusian horse-dealers, or 
robbers of those who abound about the capital--i.e. of the inhabitants 
of the suburbs. Whether the last "_who_" has reference to _the 
robbers_, or to _those who abound_, it is impossible to learn from any 
thing in the sentence itself--which, taken altogether, is unworthy of 
the merest tyro in the rules of composition.


At the inn of the Holy Ghost, was drawn up a highly gilded carriage, 
hung very low, and drawn by five gaily decorated mules, while two 
Andalusians sat on the large wooden platform, planted, without the 
intervention of springs, upon the fore-wheels, which served for a 
coach-box.


This sentence is intelligible enough, but still badly constructed. 
There is by far too great an interval between the antecedent 
"_platform_" and its relative "_which_," and upon a cursory perusal 
any reader would be led to suppose (what indeed the whole actually 
implies) that the coach-box in question consisted not of the platform, 
but actually of the fore-wheels of the carriage. Altogether, it may 
safely be asserted, that an entire page containing as many grammatical 
errors and inaccuracies of arrangement as the one we have just 
examined, will with difficulty be discovered in any English or 
American writer of even moderate reputation. These things, however, 
can hardly be considered as more than inadvertences, and will be 
avoided by Lieutenant Slidell as soon as he shall feel convinced 
(through his own experience or through the suggestions of his friends) 
how absolutely necessary to final success in any undertaking is a 
scrupulous attention to even the merest _minutiæ_ of the task.


ANTHON'S SALLUST.

_Sallust's Jugurthine War, and Conspiracy of Catiline, with an English 
Commentary, and Historical Indexes. By Charles Anthon, L.L.D. 
Jay-Professor of Ancient Literature in Columbia College, and Rector of 
the Grammar School. Sixth edition, corrected and enlarged. New York: 
Harper and Brothers._

In respect to external appearance this is an exceedingly beautiful 
book, whether we look to the quality of its paper, the clearness, 
uniform color, and great accuracy of its typography,[1] or the 
neatness and durability of its covering. In this latter point 
especially the Harpers and other publishers would do well, we think, 
to follow up the style of the present edition of Sallust--dropping at 
once and forever that flimsy and unsatisfactory method of binding so 
universally prevalent just now, and whose sole recommendation is its 
cheapness--if indeed it be cheaper at all. These are things of which 
we seldom speak--but venture to mention them in the present instance 
with a view of seizing a good opportunity. No man of taste--certainly 
no lover of books and owner of a library--would hesitate at paying 
twice as much for a book worth preservation, and which there is some 
possibility of preserving, as for one of these fragile ephemera which 
it is now the fashion to do up in muslin. We think in short the 
interest of publishers as well as the taste of the public would be 
consulted to some purpose in paying more attention to the mechanics of 
book making.

[Footnote 1: In the course of a very attentive perusal we have 
observed only one typographical error. On page 130, near the top, we 
see _Fatigatus a fatre_ in place of _fratre_.]

That Mr. Anthon has done more for our classical literature than any 
man in the country will hardly be denied. His Lempriere, to speak of 
nothing else, is a monument of talent, erudition, indefatigable 
research, and well organized method, of which we have the greatest 
reason to be proud, but which is perhaps more fully and more properly 
appreciated in any other climate than our own. Of a former edition of 
his Sallust, two separate reprints, by different editors, total 
strangers to the author, have appeared in England, without any effort 
on his part, as we are very willing to believe, for procuring a 
republication of his labors. The correct and truly beautiful edition 
now before us, leaves nothing to be desired. The most striking 
emendation is the placing the narrative of the Jugurthine war before 
the conspiracy of Catiline. This arrangement, however, as Mr. Anthon 
we believe admits, has the merit of novelty in America alone. At least 
we understand him to make this admission in saying that the order he 
has {393} observed is no novelty on the continent of Europe, as may be 
discovered from the works of the President De Brosses, the Abbé 
Cassagne, and M. Du Rozoir. At all events we have repeatedly seen in 
England editions of Sallust, (and we suppose them to have been English 
editions,) in which the Jugurthine war preceded the Conspiracy. Of the 
propriety of this order there can be no doubt whatever, and it is 
quite certain to meet with the approbation of all who give themselves 
even a moment's reflection on the subject. There is an obvious 
anachronism in the usual arrangement--for the rebellion of Catiline 
was nearly fifty years subsequent to the war with Jugurtha. "The 
impression produced, therefore, on the mind of the student," (we here 
use the words of our author,) "must necessarily be a confused one when 
he is required to read the two works in an inverted order. In the 
account of Catiline's conspiracy, for example, he will find frequent 
allusions to the calamitous consequences of Sylla's strife with 
Marius; and will see many of the profligate partizans of the former 
rallying around the standard of Catiline; while in the history of the 
Jugurthine war, if he be made to peruse it after the other, in the 
ordinary routine of school reading, he will be introduced to the same 
Sylla just entering on a public career, and standing high in the favor 
and confidence of Marius. How too will he be able to appreciate, in 
their full force, the remarks of Sallust relative to the successive 
changes in the Roman form of government, and the alternate ascendency 
of the aristocratic and popular parties, if he be called upon to 
direct his attention to results before he is made acquainted with the 
causes that produced them?"

The only reason assigned for the usual arrangement is founded upon the 
order of composition--Sallust having written the narrative of the 
Conspiracy before the account of the Jugurthine war. All the MS.S. 
too, have followed this order. Mr. Anthon, however, justly remarks 
that such an argument should weigh but little when positive utility is 
placed in the opposite scale.

An enlarged commentary on the Jugurthine War, is another improvement 
in the present edition. There can be no doubt that the notes usually 
appended to this portion of Sallust were insufficient for the younger, 
if not for all classes of pupils, and when this deficiency is 
remedied, as in the present instance, by the labors of a man not only 
of sound scholarship, but of great critical and general acumen, we 
know how to value the services thus rendered to the student and to the 
classical public at large. We subjoin one or two specimens of the 
additional notes.


Page 122. "_Ingenii egregia facinora_." "_The splendid exertions of 
intellect._" _Facinus_ denotes a bold or daring action, and unless it 
be joined with a favorable epithet, or the action be previously 
described as commendable, the term is always to be understood in a 
vituperative sense. In the present passage, the epithet _egregius_ 
marks the character of the action as praiseworthy.

Page 122. "_Quippe probitatem, &c._" "Since it (i.e. fortune) can 
neither give, nor take away integrity, activity, nor other 
praiseworthy qualities." _Industria_ here means an active exercise of 
our abilities.


We might add (with deference) to this note of Professor Anthon's, that 
_industria_, generally, has a more variable meaning than is usually 
given it, and that the word, in a great multiplicity of instances, 
where ambiguities in translation have arisen, has allusion to mental 
rather than to physical exertion. We have frequently, moreover, 
remarked its connection with that idea which the moderns attach to the 
term _genius_. _Incredibili industriâ_, _industriâ singulari_, are 
phrases almost invariably used in the sense we speak of, and refer to 
great mental power. Apropos, to this subject--it is remarkable that 
both Buffon and Hogarth directly assert that "genius is nothing but 
labor and diligence."


Page 133. "_Vos in mea injuria_," _&c._ "_You are treated with 
contempt in the injustice which is done me._" _Despicere_ always 
implies that the person despising thinks meanly of the person 
despised, as compared with himself. _Contemnere_ denotes the absolute 
vileness of an object.


We may here observe that we have no English equivalent to _despicere_.


Page 135. "_Quod utinam_," _&c._ "_But would that I may see._" The use 
of _quod_ before many conjunctions, &c. merely as a copulative, 
appears to have arisen from the fondness of the Latin writers for the 
connexion by means of relatives.

Page 135. "_Emori_." "_A speedy death_." The infinitive here supplies 
the place of a noun, or more correctly speaking, is employed in its 
true character. For this mood, partaking of the nature of a noun, has 
been called by grammarians "the verb's noun" (_ονομα ρηματος_.) The 
reason of this appellation is more apparent, however, in Greek, from 
its taking the prepositive article before it in all cases; as _το 
γραφειν_, _τον γραφειν_, _τω γραφειν_. The same construction is not 
unknown in English. Thus Spencer--

  For not to have been dipped in Lethe lake,
  Could save the son of Thetis from to die.


Besides the new arrangement of matter, and the additional notes on the 
Jugurthine war, the principal changes in the present edition are to be 
found in two convenient Indexes--the one Geographical, the other 
Historical. We are told by Mr. Anthon that his object in preparing 
them was to relieve the Annotations from what might have proved too 
heavy a pressure of materials, and have deterred from, rather than 
have invited, a perusal. The geographical and historical matter is now 
made to stand by itself.

The account of Sallust himself, and especially the critical 
examination of his writings, which appeared in the ordinary way in 
previous editions, is now resolved into the form of a dialogue, and 
has gained by the change much force and vivacity, without being at all 
deteriorated in other respects. Upon the whole, any farther real 
improvement in the manner of editing, printing, or publishing a 
Sallust would seem to be an impossibility.


PARIS AND THE PARISIANS.

_Paris and the Parisians in 1835. By Frances Trollope, Author of 
"Domestic Manners of the Americans," "The Refugee in America," &c. New 
York: Published by Harper and Brothers._

We have no patience with that atra-bilious set of hyper-patriots, who 
find fault with Mrs. Trollope's book of _flumflummery_ about the good 
people of the Union. We can neither tolerate nor comprehend them. The 
work appeared to us (we speak in all candor, and in sober earnest) an 
unusually well-written performance, in which, upon a basis of 
downright and positive truth, was erected, after the fashion of a 
porcelain pagoda, a very brilliant, although a very brittle fabric of 
mingled banter, philosophy, and spleen. Her mere political {394} 
opinions are, we suppose, of very little consequence to any person 
other than Mrs. Trollope; and being especially sure that they are of 
no consequence to ourselves we shall have nothing farther to do with 
them. We do not hesitate to say, however, that she ridiculed our 
innumerable moral, physical, and social absurdities with equal 
impartiality, true humor and discrimination, and that the old joke 
about her _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ being nothing more than 
the _Manners of the American Domestics_, is like most other very good 
jokes, excessively untrue.

That our national soreness of feeling prevented us, in the case of her 
work on America, from appreciating the real merits of the book, will 
be rendered evident by the high praise we find no difficulty in 
bestowing upon her _Paris and the Parisians_--a production, in 
whatever light we regard it, precisely similar to the one with which 
we were so irreparably offended. It has every characteristic of the 
_Domestic Manners of the Americans_--from the spirit of which work, if 
it differs at all, the difference lies in the inferior quantity of the 
fine wit she has thought proper to throw away upon our Parisian 
friends.

The volume now issued by the Harpers, is a large octavo of 410 pages, 
and is embellished with eleven most admirable copperplate engravings, 
exclusive of the frontispiece. These designs are drawn by A. Hervieu, 
and engraved by S. H. Gimber. We will give a brief account of them 
all, as the most effectual method of imparting to our readers (those 
who have not seen the work and for whom this notice is especially 
intended) a just conception of the work itself.

Plate 1 is the "_Louvre_." A picture gallery is seen crowded with a 
motley assemblage of all classes, in every description of French 
costume. The occasion is an exhibition of living artists, as the world 
chooses to call the exhibition of their works. Poussin, (consequently) 
Raphael, Titian, Correggio and Rubens, are hidden beneath the efforts 
of more modern pencils. In the habiliments of the company who lounge 
through the gallery, the result of newly acquired rights is 
ludicrously visible. One of the most remarkable of these, says our 
authoress, is the privilege enjoyed by the rabble of presenting 
themselves dirty instead of clean before the eyes of the magnates. 
Accordingly, the plate shows, among a variety of pretty _toques_, 
_cauchoises_, _chaussures_, and other more imperial equipments, a 
sprinkling of round-eared caps, awkward _casquettes_, filthy 
_blouses_, and dingy and ragged jackets.

Plate 2 is "_Morning at the Tuileries_." It represents that portion of 
the garden of "trim alleys" which lies in front of the group of Petus 
and Aria. In the distance are seen various figures. In the foreground 
we descry three singular-looking personages, who may be best described 
in the words of Mrs. Trollope herself.


It was the hour when all the newspapers are in the greatest 
requisition; and we had the satisfaction of watching the studies of 
three individuals, each of whom might have sat as a model for an 
artist who wished to give an idea of their several peculiarities. We 
saw, in short, beyond the possibility of doubt, a royalist, a 
doctrinaire, and a republican, during the half hour we remained there, 
all soothing their feelings by indulging in two sous' worth of 
politics, each in his own line.

A stiff but gentlemanlike old man first came, and having taken a 
journal from the little octagon stand--which journal we felt quite 
sure, was either 'La France' or 'La Quotidienne'--he established 
himself at no great distance from us. Why it was that we all felt so 
certain of his being a legitimatist I can hardly tell you, but not one 
of the party had the least doubt about it. There was a quiet, 
half-proud, half-melancholy air of keeping himself apart; an 
aristocratical cast of features; a pale, care-worn complexion; and a 
style of dress which no vulgar man ever wore, but which no rich one 
would be likely to wear to-day. This is all I can record of him: but 
there was something pervading his whole person too essentially loyal 
to be misunderstood, yet too delicate in its tone to be coarsely 
painted. Such as it was, however, we felt it quite enough to make the 
matter sure; and if I could find out that old gentleman to be either 
doctrinaire or republican, I never would look on a human countenance 
again, in order to discover what was passing within.

The next who approached us we were equally sure was a republican: but 
here the discovery did little honor to our discernment; for these 
gentry choose to leave no doubt upon the subject of their _clique_, 
but contrive that every article contributing to the appearance of the 
outward man shall become a symbol and a sign, a token and a stigma of 
the madness that possesses them. He too held a paper in his hand, and 
without venturing to approach too nearly to so alarming a personage, 
we scrupled not to assure each other, that the journal he was so 
assiduously perusing was 'Le Réformateur.'

Just as we had decided what manner of man it was who was stalking so 
majestically past us, a comfortable looking citizen approached in the 
uniform of the National Guard, who sat himself down to his daily 
allowance of politics with the air of a person expecting to be well 
pleased with what he finds, but, nevertheless, too well contented with 
himself and all things about him to care overmuch about it. Every line 
of this man's jocund face, every curve of his portly figure, spoke 
contentment and well being. He was probably one of that very new race 
in France, a tradesman making a rapid fortune. Was it possible to 
doubt that the paper in his hand was 'Le Journal des Debats?' Was it 
possible to believe that this man was other than a prosperous 
doctrinaire?


Plate 3 is "_Pro patria_"--and represents two uniformed soldiers in a 
guard-room of the National Guard.

Plate 4 is entitled "'_Ce soir, à la Porte St. Martin_'--'_J'y 
serâi_,'" and is full of humor. Two conspirator-like republicans stand 
in the gardens of the Luxembourg, with short staffs, conical hats, 
dark bushy eyebrows, fierce mustaches, and countenances full of fate. 
The hand of the one is clasped in the hand of the other with a 
vice-like impressiveness and energy, while the taller, looking 
furtively around him, lays his hand upon the shoulder of his 
associate, and is whispering some most momentous intelligence in his 
ear. This plate is explained thus in the words of Mrs. T.


It seems, that ever since the trials began, the chief duty of the 
gendarmes (I beg pardon, I should say of La Garde de Paris) has been 
to prevent any assembling together of the people in knots for 
conversation and gossippings in the courts and gardens of the 
Luxembourg. No sooner are two or three persons observed standing 
together, than a policeman approaches, and with a tone of command 
pronounces "Circulez Messieurs!--circulez s'il vous plaît." The reason 
for this precaution is, that nightly at the Porte St. Martin a few 
score of _jeunes gens_ assemble to make a very idle and unmeaning 
noise, the echo of which regularly runs from street to street, till 
the reiterated report amounts to the announcement of an _émeute_. We 
are all now so used to these harmless little _émeutes_ at the Porte 
St. Martin, that we mind them no more than General Lobau himself: 
nevertheless it is deemed proper, trumpery {395} as the cause may be, 
to prevent any thing like a gathering together of the mob in the 
vicinity of the Luxembourg, lest the same hundred-tongued lady, who 
constantly magnifies the hootings of a few idle mechanics into an 
_émeute_, should spread a report throughout France that the Luxembourg 
was beseiged by the people. The noise which had disturbed us was 
occasioned by the gathering together of about a dozen persons; but a 
policeman was in the midst of the group, and we heard rumors of an 
_arrestation_. In less than five minutes, however, every thing was 
quiet again: but we marked two figures so picturesque in their 
republicanism, that we resumed our seats while a sketch was made from 
them, and amused ourselves the while in fancying what the ominous 
words could be that were so cautiously exchanged between them. M. de 
L---- said there could be no doubt they ran thus:

  'Ce soir à la Porte St. Martin!'
  _Answer_--'J'y serai!'


Plate 5 is the "_Tuileries Gardens on Sunday_," in which the prominent 
and characteristic group is a "_chère maman_" in half toilet, and 
seated beneath a tree reading, or attempting to read, while her 
children, attended by their _bonne_, are frolicking about her knees.

Plate 6 is "_Porte St. Martin_," and commemorative of one of the 
thousand and one little _émeutes_ which have now become too much a 
matter of course at Paris to excite very serious attention, and which 
are frequently (so we are assured by Mrs. Trollope) quieted by no more 
effective artillery than that of a slight shower of rain. The 
prominent figures in the plate, are two gentlemen of the National 
Guard, who are vehemently struggling to secure a desperate and 
mustached republican, equipped _cap à pie_ à la Robespierre, and whose 
countenance is indicative of deadly resolve, while a little urchin in 
a striped jacket, not having before his eyes the horrors of an 
_arrestation_, and being probably body squire to the republican, 
shoulders manfully a banner somewhat larger than himself, and, 
standing upon tiptoe, amuses himself with bellowing _Vive la 
République!_

Plate 7 is a "_Soiree_," in which the peculiarities of Parisian 
sociability are humorously sketched. All the countenances are 
especially French. The prominent group is that of two little 
awkward-looking specimens of imperial noblesse who are making love 
upon a _chaise-longue_. The opinions of Mrs. Trollope are quite 
orthodox in the matter of hereditary grace. Some of her good things 
upon this topic we must be allowed to quote, for the sake of their 
point, without being responsible for their philosophy.


I have heard that it requires three generations to make a gentleman. 
Those created by Napoleon have not yet fairly reached a second; and 
with all respect for talent, industry, and valor, be it spoken, the 
necessity of the slow process very frequently forces itself upon one's 
conviction at Paris.

It is probable that the great refinement of the post-imperial 
aristocracy of France may be one reason why the deficiences of those 
now often found mixed up with them is so remarkable. It would be 
difficult to imagine a contrast in manner more striking than that of a 
lady who would be a fair specimen of the old Bourbon _noblesse_, and a 
bouncing _marechale_ of imperial creation. It seems as if every 
particle of the whole material of which each is formed, gave evidence 
of the different birth of the spirit that dwells within. The sound of 
the voice is a contrast; the glance of the eye is a contrast; the step 
is a contrast. Were every feature of a _dame de l'Empire_ and a _femme 
noble_ formed precisely in the same mould, I am quite sure that the 
two would look no more alike than Queen Constance and Nell Gwyn.

Nor is there at all less difference in the two races of gentlemen. I 
speak not of the men of science or of art; their rank is of another 
kind: but there are still left here and there specimens of decorated 
greatness, which look as if they must have been dragged out of the 
guard-room by main force; huge mustached militaries, who look, at 
every slight rebuff, as if they were ready to exclaim, 'Sacré nom de 
D----! Je suis un héros, moi! vive l'Empereur!'

And again. My parvenue duchess _is_ very remarkable indeed. She steps 
out like a corporal carrying a message. Her voice is the first, the 
last, and almost the only thing heard in the salon that she honors 
with her presence--except it chance indeed, that she lower her tone 
occasionally to favor with a whisper some gallant _décoré_ military, 
scientific, or artistic, of the same standing as herself; and, 
moreover, she promenades her eyes over the company as if she had a 
right to bring them all to roll-call.

Notwithstanding all this, the lady is certainly a person of talent; 
and had she happily remained in the station in which both herself and 
her husband were born, she might not, perhaps, have thought it 
necessary to speak quite so loud, and her _bons mots_ would have 
produced infinitely greater effect. But she is so thoroughly out of 
place in the grade to which she has been unkindly elevated, that it 
seems as if Napoleon had decided on her fate in a humor as spiteful as 
that of Monsieur Jourdain, when he said--'Your daughter shall be a 
Marchioness in spite of all the world; and if you provoke me I'll make 
her a Duchess.'


Plate 8 is "_Le roi citoyen_." He is represented as a well-looking, 
portly, middle-aged man, of somewhat dignified appearance. His dress 
differs from that of any common citizen only by a small tri-colored 
cockade in the hat, and he walks quite at his leisure with one hand 
clenching a rough-looking stick, and the other thrust in his 
breeches-pocket. A republican, habited in full Robespierrian costume, 
is advancing towards him with a very deliberate air, and eyeing him 
nonchalantly through a _lorgnon_.

Plate 9 is entitled "_Prêtres de la Jeune France_." The flowing curls, 
the simple round hat, the pantaloons, &c. give them the appearance of 
a race of men as unlike as possible to their stiff and primitive 
predecessors. They look flourishing, and well pleased with themselves 
and the world about them: but little of mortification or abstinence 
can be traced on their countenances; and if they do fast for some 
portion of every week, they may certainly say with Father Philip, that 
'what they take prospers with them marvellously.'

Plate 10 is the "_Boulevard des Italiens_," with a view of 
_Tortoni's_. The main group is "a very pretty woman and a very pretty 
man," who are seated on two chairs close together and flirting much to 
their own satisfaction, as well as to the utter amazement and 
admiration of a young urchin of a Savoyard, or professor of the _gaie 
science_, who, forgetting the use of his mandoline, gazes with open 
mouth and eyes at the enamored pair. To the right is seen an exquisite 
of the first water promenading with an air of ineffable grace, and 
deliberately occupied in combing his luxuriant tresses.

Plate 11 is called "_V'la les restes de notre revolution de Juillet!_" 
and like all the other engravings in the volume is admirable in its 
design, and especially in its expression. In the back ground are seen 
the monuments erected at the _Marché des Innocens_ over some 
revolutionary heroes, who fell here and were buried near the {396} 
fountain, on the 29th July 1830. A mechanic leans against a rail and 
is haranguing with great energy a young girl and a little boy, who 
listen to him with profound attention. His theme is evidently the 
treatment of the prisoners at the Luxembourg. We cannot too highly 
praise the exquisite piquancy of the whole of these designs.

In conclusion, we recommend _Paris and the Parisians_ to all lovers of 
fine writing, and vivacious humor. It is impossible not to be highly 
amused with the book--and there is by no means any necessity for 
giving a second thought to the _political_ philosophies of Madame 
Trollope.


PAULDING'S WASHINGTON.

_A Life of Washington. By James K. Paulding. New York: Harper and 
Brothers._

We have read Mr. Paulding's Life of Washington with a degree of 
interest seldom excited in us by the perusal of any book whatever. We 
are convinced by a deliberate examination of the design, manner, and 
rich material of the work, that, as it grows in age, it will grow in 
the estimation of our countrymen, and, finally, will not fail to take 
a deeper hold upon the public mind, and upon the public affections, 
than any work upon the same subject, or of a similar nature, which has 
been yet written--or, possibly, which may be written hereafter. 
Indeed, we cannot perceive the necessity of any thing farther upon the 
great theme of Washington. Mr. Paulding has completely and most 
beautifully filled the _vacuum_ which the works of Marshall and Sparks 
have left open. He has painted the boy, the man, the husband, and the 
Christian. He has introduced us to the private affections, 
aspirations, and charities of that hero whose affections of all 
affections were the most serene, whose aspirations the most God-like, 
and whose charities the most gentle and pure. He has taken us abroad 
with the patriot-farmer in his rambles about his homestead. He has 
seated us in his study and shown us the warrior-Christian in 
unobtrusive communion with his God. He has done all this too, and 
more, in a simple and quiet manner, in a manner peculiarly his own, 
and which mainly because it is his own, cannot fail to be exceedingly 
effective. Yet it is very possible that the public may, for many years 
to come, overlook the rare merits of a work whose want of arrogant 
assumption is so little in keeping with the usages of the day, and 
whose striking simplicity and _naiveté_ of manner give, to a cursory 
examination, so little evidence of the labor of composition. We have 
no fears, however, for the future. Such books as these before us, go 
down to posterity like rich wines, with a certainty of being more 
valued as they go. They force themselves with the gradual but rapidly 
accumulating power of strong wedges into the hearts and understandings 
of a community.

From the preface we learn, that shortly after the conclusion of the 
late war, Mr. Paulding resided for several years in the city of 
Washington, and that his situation bringing him into familiar 
intercourse with "many respectable and some distinguished persons" who 
had been associated with the Father of his Country, the idea was then 
first conceived of writing a Life of that great man which should more 
directly appeal to the popular feeling of the land, than any one 
previously attempted. With this intent, he lost no opportunity of 
acquiring information, from all authentic sources within his reach, of 
the private life, habits and peculiarities of his subject. We learn 
too that the work thus early proposed was never banished from the mind 
of the author. The original intention, however, was subsequently 
modified, with a view of adapting the book to the use of schools, and 
"generally to that class of readers who have neither the means of 
purchasing, nor the leisure to read a larger and more expensive 
publication." Much of the information concerning the domestic life of 
Washington was derived immediately from his cotemporaries, and from 
the "present most estimable lady who is now in possession of Mount 
Vernon." In detailing the events of the Revolution, the author has 
principally consulted the public and private letters of Washington.

The rich abundance of those delightful anecdotes and memorials of the 
private man which render a book of this nature invaluable--an 
abundance which has hardly more delighted than astonished us--is the 
prevailing feature of Mr. Paulding's Washington. We proceed, without 
apology, to copy for the benefit of our readers such as most 
immediately present themselves.


Although it is of little consequence who were the distant ancestors of 
a man who, by common consent, is hailed as the Father of his Country, 
yet any particulars concerning his family cannot but be a subject of 
curiosity. In all my general reading I have only chanced to meet with 
the name of Washington three or four times in the early history and 
literature of England. In the diary of Elias Ashmole, founder of the 
Ashmolean Museum, are the following entries:--

"_June 12th, 1645_. I entered on my command as comptroller of the 
ordnance."

"_June 18th_. I received my commission from Colonel Washington."

Hume, in his account of the siege of Bristol, has the following 
passage:--"One party led by Lord Grandison was beaten off and its 
commander himself mortally wounded. Another, conducted by Colonel 
Bellasis, met with a like fate. But Washington, with a less party, 
finding a place in the curtain weaker than the rest, broke in, and 
quickly made room for the horse to follow." This was in 1643. Five 
years afterwards, that deluded monarch, Charles I., suffered the just 
consequences of his offences against the majesty of the people of 
England, and from that time the cause of royalty appeared desperate. 
The more distinguished and obnoxious adherents of the Stuarts exiled 
themselves in foreign lands, and the date of the supposed arrival of 
the first Washington in Virginia, accords well with the supposition 
that he may have been the same person mentioned by Ashmole and Hume. 
In an old collection of poetry, by Sir John Menzies[2] and others, 
there is a fine copy of verses to the memory of Mr. Washington, page 
to the king, who died in Spain. In the year 1640, William Legge, Earl 
of Dartmouth, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Washington. 
But the name and family of Washington are now extinct in the land of 
our forefathers. When General Washington was about making his will, he 
caused inquiries to be instituted, being desirous to leave some 
memorial to all his relations. The result was a conviction that none 
of the family existed in that country. But the topic is rather curious 
than important. The subject of this biography could receive little 
additional dignity through a descent from the most illustrious 
families of Christendom. He stands alone in the pure atmosphere of his 
own glory. He derived no title to honors from his ancestry, and left 
no child but his country to inherit his fame.

[Footnote 2: Perhaps _Mennes_--Ed.]

The house in which Washington was born stood about half a mile from 
the junction of Pope's Creek with the Potomac, and was either burned 
or pulled down long previous to the revolution. A few scanty relics 
alone remain to mark the spot which will ever be sacred in the eyes of 
posterity. A clump of old decayed {397} fig trees, probably coeval 
with the mansion, yet exists; a number of vines, and shrubs, and 
flowers still reproduce themselves every year as if to mark its site, 
and flourish among the hallowed ruins; and a stone, placed there by 
Mr. George Washington Custis, bears the simple inscription, "Here, on 
the 11th of February," (O.S.) "1732, George Washington was born."

The spot is of the deepest interest, not only from its associations, 
but its natural beauties. It commands a view of the Maryland shore of 
the Potomac, one of the most majestic of rivers, and of its course for 
many miles towards Chesapeake Bay. An aged gentleman, still living in 
the neighborhood, remembers the house in which Washington was born. It 
was a low pitched, single-storied, frame building, with four rooms on 
the first floor and an enormous chimney at each end on the outside. 
This was the style of the better sort of houses in those days, and 
they are still occasionally seen in the old settlements of Virginia.


On page 106, vol. i., we find the following interesting particulars:


It has been related to me by one whose authority I cannot doubt, that 
the first meeting of Colonel Washington with his future wife was 
entirely accidental, and took place at the house of Mr. Chamberlayne, 
who resided on the Pamunkey, one of the branches of York River. 
Washington was on his way to Williamsburg, on somewhat pressing 
business, when he met Mr. Chamberlayne, who, according to the good old 
Virginia custom, which forbids a traveller to pass the door without 
doing homage at the fireside of hospitality, insisted on his stopping 
an hour or two at his mansion. Washington complied unwillingly, for 
his business was urgent. But it is said that he was in no haste to 
depart, for he had met the lady of his fate in the person of Mrs. 
Martha Custis, of the White House, county of New Kent, in Virginia.

I have now before me a copy of an original picture of this lady, taken 
about the time of which I am treating, when she captivated the 
affections of Washington. It represents a figure rather below the 
middle size, with hazel eyes, and hair of the same colour, finely 
rounded arms, a beautiful chest and taper waist, dressed in a blue 
silk robe of the fashion of the times, and altogether furnishing a 
very sufficient apology to a young gentleman of seven and twenty for 
delaying his journey, and perhaps forgetting his errand for a time. 
The sun went down and rose again before Washington departed for 
Williamsburg, leaving his heart behind him, and, perhaps, carrying 
another away in exchange. Having completed his business at the seat of 
government, he soon after visited the White House, and being 
accustomed, as my informant says, to energetic and persevering action, 
won the lady and carried her off from a crowd of rivals.

The marriage look place in the winter of 1759, but at what precise 
date is not to be found in any record, nor is it, I believe, within 
the recollection of any person living. I have in my possession a 
manuscript containing the particulars of various conversations with 
old Jeremy, Washington's black servant, who was with him at Braddock's 
defeat, and accompanied him on his wedding expedition to the White 
House. Old Jeremy is still living while I am now writing, and in full 
possession of his faculties. His memory is most especially preserved, 
and, as might be expected, he delights to talk of Massa George. The 
whole series of conversations was taken down verbatim, in the peculiar 
phraseology of the old man, and it is quite impossible to read the 
record of this living chronicle of the early days of Washington, 
without receiving the full conviction of its perfect truth.


The following account of his last illness is copied, we are told, from 
a memorandum in the handwriting of Tobias Lear, his private secretary 
and confidential friend, who attended him from first to last.


On Thursday, Dec. 12, the general rode out to his farms at about ten 
o'clock, and did not return home till past three. Soon after he went 
out the weather became very bad; rain, hail, and snow falling 
alternately, with a cold wind. When he came in, I carried some letters 
to him to frank, intending to send them to the post-office. He franked 
the letters, but said the weather was too bad to send a servant to the 
office that evening. I observed to him that I was afraid he had got 
wet; he said, no; his great coat had kept him dry: but his neck 
appeared to be wet--the snow was hanging on his hair.

He came to dinner without changing his dress. In the evening he 
appeared as well as usual. A heavy fall of snow took place on Friday, 
which prevented the general from riding out as usual. He had taken 
cold (undoubtedly from being so much exposed the day before,) and 
complained of having a sore throat; he had a hoarseness, which 
increased in the evening, but he made light of it, as he would never 
take any thing to carry off a cold,--always observing, 'Let it go as 
it came.' In the evening, the papers having come from the post office, 
he sat in the room with Mrs. Washington and myself, reading them till 
about nine o'clock; and when he met with any thing which he thought 
diverting or interesting, he would read it aloud. He desired me to 
read to him the debates of the Virginia Assembly on the election of a 
senator and governor, which I did. On his retiring to bed he appeared 
to be in perfect health, except the cold, which he considered as 
trifling--he had been remarkably cheerful all the evening.

About two or three o'clock on Saturday morning he awoke Mrs. 
Washington, and informed her that he felt very unwell, and had an 
ague. She observed that he could scarcely speak, and breathed with 
difficulty, and she wished to get up and call a servant; but the 
general would not permit her, lest she should take cold. As soon as 
the day appeared, the woman Caroline went into the room to make a 
fire, and the general desired that Mr. Rawlins, one of the overseers, 
who was used to bleeding the people, might be sent for to bleed him 
before the doctor could arrive. I was sent for--went to the general's 
chamber, where Mrs. Washington was up, and related to me his being 
taken ill between two and three o'clock, as before stated. I found him 
breathing with difficulty, and hardly able to utter a word 
intelligibly. I went out instantly, and wrote a line to Dr. Plask, and 
sent it with all speed. Immediately I returned to the general's 
chamber, where I found him in the same situation I had left him. A 
mixture of molasses, vinegar, and butter was prepared, but he could 
not swallow a drop; whenever he attempted he was distressed, 
convulsed, and almost suffocated.

Mr. Rawlins came in soon after sunrise and prepared to bleed him; when 
the arm was ready, the general, observing Rawlins appeared agitated, 
said, with difficulty, 'Don't be afraid;' and after the incision was 
made, he observed the orifice was not large enough: however, the blood 
ran pretty freely. Mrs. Washington, not knowing whether bleeding was 
proper in the general's situation, begged that much might not be taken 
from him, and desired me to stop it. When I was about to untie the 
string, the general put up his hand to prevent it, and, as soon as he 
could speak, said, 'More.'

Mrs. Washington still uneasy lest too much blood should be drawn, it 
was stopped after about half a pint had been taken. Finding that no 
relief was obtained from bleeding, and that nothing could be 
swallowed, I proposed bathing the throat externally with sal volatile, 
which was done; a piece of flannel was then put round his neck. His 
feet were also soaked in warm water, but this gave no relief. By Mrs. 
Washington's request, I despatched a messenger for Doctor Brown at 
Port Tobacco. About nine o'clock, Dr. Craik arrived, and put a blister 
of cantharides on the throat of the general, and took more blood, and 
had some vinegar and hot water set in a teapot, for him to draw in the 
stream from the spout.

He also had sage-tea and vinegar mixed and used as a gargle, but when 
he held back his head to let it run down, it almost produced 
suffocation. When the mixture came out of his mouth some phlegm 
followed it, and he would attempt to cough, which the doctor 
encouraged, but without effect. About eleven o'clock, Dr. Dick was 
sent for. Dr. Craik bled the general again; no effect was produced, 
and he continued in the same state, unable to swallow any thing. Dr. 
Dick came in about three o'clock, and Dr. Brown arrived soon after; 
when, after consultation, the general was bled again: the blood ran 
slowly, appeared very thick, and did not produce any symptoms of 
fainting. At four o'clock the general could swallow a little. Calomel 
and tartar emetic were administered without effect. About half past 
four o'clock he requested me to ask Mrs. Washington to come to his 
bedside, when he desired her to go down to his room, and take from his 
desk two wills which she would find there, and bring them to him, 
which she did. Upon looking at one, which he observed was useless, he 
desired her to burn it, which she did; and then took the other and put 
it away. After this was done, I returned again to his bedside and took 
his hand. He said to me, 'I find I am going--my breath cannot continue 
long--I believed from the first attack it would be fatal. Do you 
arrange and {398} record all my military letters and papers; arrange 
my accounts and settle my books, as you know more about them than any 
one else; and let Mr. Rawlins finish recording my other letters, which 
he has begun.' He asked when Mr. Lewis and Washington would return? I 
told him that I believed about the twentieth of the month. He made no 
reply.

The physicians arrived between five and six o'clock, and when they 
came to his bedside, Dr. Craik asked him if he would sit up in the 
bed: he held out his hand to me and was raised up, when he said to the 
physician--'I feel myself going; you had better not take any more 
trouble about me, but let me go off quietly; I cannot last long.' They 
found what had been done was without effect; he laid down again, and 
they retired, excepting Dr. Craik. He then said to him--'Doctor, I die 
hard, but I am not afraid to go; I believed from my first attack I 
should not survive it; my breath cannot last long.' The doctor pressed 
his hand, but could not utter a word; he retired from the bedside and 
sat by the fire, absorbed in grief. About eight o'clock, the 
physicians again came into the room, and applied blisters to his legs, 
but went out without a ray of hope. From this time he appeared to 
breathe with less difficulty than he had done, but was very restless, 
continually changing his position, to endeavor to get ease. I aided 
him all in my power, and was gratified in believing he felt it, for he 
would look upon me with eyes speaking gratitude, but unable to utter a 
word without great distress. About ten o'clock he made several 
attempts to speak to me before he could effect it; at length he said, 
'I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be 
put into the vault in less than two days after I am dead.' I bowed 
assent. He looked at me again and said, 'Do you understand me?' I 
replied, 'Yes, sir.' ''Tis well,' said he. About ten minutes before he 
expired, his breathing became much easier: he lay quietly: he withdrew 
his hand from mine, and felt his own pulse. I spoke to Dr. Craik, who 
sat by the fire; he came to the bedside. The general's hand fell from 
his wrist; I took it in mine, and placed it on my breast. Dr. Craik 
placed his hands over his eyes; and he expired without a struggle or a 
sigh.


We proceed with some farther extracts of a like kind taken at random 
from the book.


His manly disinterestedness appeared, not only in thus divesting 
himself of the means of acquiring glory, perhaps of the power of 
avoiding defeat and disgrace, but in a private act which deserves 
equally to be remembered. While the British fleet was lying in the 
Potomac, in the vicinity of Mount Vernon, a message was sent to the 
overseer, demanding a supply of fresh provisions. The usual penalty of 
a refusal was setting fire to the house and barns of the owner. To 
prevent this destruction of property, the overseer, on receipt of the 
message, gathered a supply of provisions, and went himself on board 
with a flag, accompanying the present with a request that the property 
of the general might be spared.

Washington was exceedingly indignant at this proceeding, as will 
appear by the following extract of a letter to his overseer.

"It would," he writes, "have been a less painful circumstance to me to 
have heard that, in consequence of your noncompliance with the request 
of the British, they had burned my house, and laid my plantation in 
ruins. You ought to have considered yourself as my representative, and 
should have reflected on the bad example of communicating with the 
enemy, and making a voluntary offer of refreshment to them with a view 
to prevent a conflagration."

       *       *       *       *       *

And here I will take what seems to me a proper opportunity of refuting 
a false insinuation. In the edition of Plutarch's Lives, translated by 
John and William Langhorne, and revised by the Reverend Francis 
Wrangham, M.A., F.R.S., there is the following note appended to the 
biography of Cato the Censor, whose kindness is said to have extended 
to his cattle and sheep: "_Yet Washington, the Tertius Cato of these 
latter times, is said to have sold his old charger!_"

On first seeing this insinuation of a calumny founded on hearsay, I 
applied to Colonel Lear, who resided at Mount Vernon, and acted as the 
private secretary of Washington at the time of his death, and many 
years previously, to learn whether there was any foundation for the 
report. His denial was positive and unequivocal. The horse of 
Washington, sold, not by him, but one of his heirs, after his death, 
was that which he was accustomed to ride about his plantation after 
his retirement from public life. The aged war-horse was placed under 
the special care of the old black servant who had served the same 
campaigns with him; was never rode after the conclusion of the war, 
and died long before his illustrious master.

       *       *       *       *       *

As illustrating his character and affording an example of his great 
self-command, the following anecdote is appropriate to my purpose. It 
is derived from Judge Breckenridge[3] himself, who used often to tell 
the story. The judge was an inimitable humorist, and, on a particular 
occasion, fell in with Washington at a public house. They supped at 
the same table, and Mr. Breckenridge essayed all his powers of humor 
to divert the general; but in vain. He seemed aware of his purpose, 
and listened without a smile. However, it so happened that the 
chambers of Washington and Breckenridge adjoined, and were only 
separated from each other by a thin partition of pine boards. The 
general had retired first, and when the judge entered his own room, he 
was delighted to hear Washington, who was already in bed, laughing to 
himself with infinite glee, no doubt at the recollection of his 
stories.

[Footnote 3: Author of Modern Chivalry.]

       *       *       *       *       *

He was accustomed sometimes to tell the following story:--On one 
occasion, during a visit he paid to Mount Vernon while president, he 
had invited the company of two distinguished lawyers, each of whom 
afterwards attained to the highest judicial situations in this 
country. They came on horseback, and, for convenience, or some other 
purpose, had bestowed their wardrobe in the same pair of saddle-bags, 
each one occupying his side. On their arrival, wet to the skin by a 
shower of rain, they were shown into a chamber to change their 
garments. One unlocked his side of the bag, and the first thing he 
drew forth was a black bottle of whiskey. He insisted that this was 
his companion's repository; but on unlocking the other, there was 
found a huge twist of tobacco, a few pieces of corn-bread, and the 
complete equipment of a wagoner's pack-saddle. They had exchanged 
saddle-bags with some traveller on the way, and finally made their 
appearance in borrowed clothes that fitted them most ludicrously. The 
general was highly diverted, and amused himself with anticipating the 
dismay of the wagoner when he discovered this oversight of the men of 
law. It was during this visit that Washington prevailed on one of his 
guests to enter into public life, and thus secured to his country the 
services of one of the most distinguished magistrates of this or any 
other age.

Another anecdote of a more touching character is derived from a source 
which, if I were permitted to mention, would not only vouch for its 
truth, but give it additional value and interest. When Washington 
retired from public life, his name and fame excited in the hearts of 
the people at large, and most especially the more youthful portion, a 
degree of reverence which, by checking their vivacity or awing them 
into silence, often gave him great pain. Being once on a visit to 
Colonel Blackburn, ancestor to the exemplary matron who now possesses 
Mount Vernon, a large company of young people were assembled to 
welcome his arrival, or on some other festive occasion. The general 
was unusually cheerful and animated, but he observed that whenever he 
made his appearance, the dance lost its vivacity, the little 
gossipings in corners ceased, and a solemn silence prevailed, as at 
the presence of one they either feared or reverenced too much to 
permit them to enjoy themselves. He strove to remove this restraint by 
mixing familiarly among them and chatting with unaffected hilarity. 
But it was all in vain; there was a spell on the little circle, and he 
retired among the elders in an adjoining room, appearing to be much 
pained at the restraint his presence inspired. When, however the young 
people had again become animated, he arose cautiously from his seat, 
walked on tiptoe to the door, which was ajar, and stood contemplating 
the scene for nearly a quarter of an hour, with a look of genuine and 
benevolent pleasure that went to the very hearts of the parents who 
were observing him.


In regard to the style of Mr. Paulding's Washington, it would scarcely 
be doing it justice to speak of it merely as well adapted to its 
subject, and to its immediate design. Perhaps a rigorous examination 
would detect an occasional want of euphony, and some inaccuracies of 
syntatical arrangement. But nothing could be more out {399} of place 
than any such examination in respect to a book whose forcible, rich, 
vivid, and comprehensive English, might advantageously be held up, as 
a model for the young writers of the land. There is no better literary 
manner than the manner of Mr. Paulding. Certainly no American, and 
possibly no living writer of England, has more of those numerous 
peculiarities which go to the formation of a happy style. It is 
questionable, we think, whether any writer of any country combines as 
many of these peculiarities with as much of that essential negative 
virtue, the absence of affectation. We repeat, as our confident 
opinion, that it would be difficult, even with great care and labor, 
to improve upon the general manner of the volumes now before us, and 
that they contain many long individual passages of a force and beauty 
not to be surpassed by the finest passages of the finest writers in 
any time or country. It is this striking character in the _Washington_ 
of Mr. Paulding--striking and peculiar indeed at a season when we are 
so culpably inattentive to all matters of this nature, as to mistake 
for style the fine airs at second hand of the silliest romancers--it 
is this character we say, which should insure the fulfilment of the 
writer's principal design, in the immediate introduction of his book 
into every respectable academy in the land.


WALSH'S DIDACTICS.

_Didactics--Social, Literary, and Political. By Robert Walsh. 
Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard._

Having read these volumes with much attention and pleasure, we are 
prepared to admit that their author is one of the finest writers, one 
of the most accomplished scholars, and when not in too great a hurry, 
one of the most accurate thinkers in the country. Yet had we never 
seen this collection of _Didactics_, we should never have entertained 
these opinions. Mr. Walsh has been peculiarly an anonymous writer, and 
has thus been instrumental in cheating himself of a great portion of 
that literary renown which is most unequivocally his due. We have been 
not unfrequently astonished in the perusal of the book now before us, 
at meeting with a variety of well known and highly esteemed 
acquaintances, for whose paternity we had been accustomed to give 
credit where we now find it should not have been given. Among these we 
may mention in especial the very excellent Essay on the acting of 
Kean, entitled "_Notices of Kean's principal performances during his 
first season in Philadelphia_," to be found at page 146, volume i. We 
have often thought of the unknown author of this Essay, as of one to 
whom we might speak, if occasion should at any time be granted us, 
with a perfect certainty of being understood. We have looked to the 
article itself as to a fair oasis in the general blankness and 
futility of our customary theatrical notices. We read it with that 
thrill of pleasure with which we always welcome our own long-cherished 
opinions, when we meet them unexpectedly in the language of another. 
How absolute is the necessity now daily growing, of rescuing our stage 
criticism from the control of illiterate mountebanks, and placing it 
in the hands of gentlemen and scholars!

The paper on _Collegiate Education_, beginning at page 165, volume ii, 
is much more than a sufficient reply to that Essay in the _Old 
Bachelor_ of Mr. Wirt, in which the attempt is made to argue down 
colleges as seminaries for the young. Mr. Walsh's article does not 
uphold Mr. Barlow's plan of a National University--a plan which is 
assailed by the Attorney General--but comments upon some errors in 
point of fact, and enters into a brief but comprehensive examination 
of the general subject. He maintains with undeniable truth, that it is 
illogical to deduce arguments against universities which are to exist 
at the present day, from the inconveniences found to be connected with 
institutions formed in the dark ages--institutions similar to our own 
in but few respects, modelled upon the principles and prejudices of 
the times, organized with a view to particular ecclesiastical 
purposes, and confined in their operations by an infinity of Gothic 
and perplexing regulations. He thinks, (and we believe he thinks with 
a great majority of our well educated fellow citizens) that in the 
case either of a great national institute or of State universities, 
nearly all the difficulties so much insisted upon will prove a series 
of mere chimeras--that the evils apprehended might be readily 
obviated, and the acknowledged benefits uninterruptedly secured. He 
denies, very justly, the assertion of the _Old Bachelor_--that, in the 
progress of society, funds for collegiate establishments will no doubt 
be accumulated, independently of government, when their benefits are 
evident, and a necessity for them felt--and that the rich who have 
funds will, whenever strongly impressed with the necessity of so 
doing, provide, either by associations or otherwise, proper seminaries 
for the education of their children. He shows that these assertions 
are contradictory to experience, and more particularly to the 
experience of the State of Virginia, where, notwithstanding the extent 
of private opulence, and the disadvantages under which the community 
so long labored from a want of regular and systematic instruction, it 
was the government which was finally compelled, and not private 
societies which were induced, to provide establishments for effecting 
the great end. He says (and therein we must all fully agree with him) 
that Virginia may consider herself fortunate in following the example 
of all the enlightened nations of modern times rather than in 
hearkening to the counsels of the Old Bachelor. He dissents (and who 
would not?) from the allegation, that "the most eminent men in Europe, 
particularly in England, have received their education neither at 
public schools or universities," and shows that the very reverse may 
be affirmed--that on the continent of Europe by far the greater number 
of its great names have been attached to the rolls of its 
universities--and that in England a vast majority of those minds which 
we have reverenced so long--the Bacons, the Newtons, the Barrows, the 
Clarkes, the Spencers, the Miltons, the Drydens, the Addisons, the 
Temples, the Hales, the Clarendons, the Mansfields, Chatham, Pitt, 
Fox, Wyndham, &c. were educated among the venerable cloisters of 
Oxford or of Cambridge. He cites the Oxford Prize Essays, so well 
known even in America, as direct evidence of the energetic ardor in 
acquiring knowledge brought about through the means of British 
Universities, and maintains that "when attention is given to the 
subsequent public stations and labors of most of the writers of these 
Essays, it will be found that they prove also the ultimate practical 
utility of the literary discipline of the {400} colleges for the 
students and the nation." He argues, that were it even true that the 
greatest men have not been educated in public schools, the fact would 
have little to do with the question of their efficacy in the 
instruction of the mass of mankind. Great men cannot be _created_--and 
are usually independent of all particular schemes of education. Public 
seminaries are best adapted to the generality of cases. He concludes 
with observing that the course of study pursued at English 
Universities, is more liberal by far than we are willing to suppose 
it--that it is, demonstrably, the best, inasmuch as regards the 
preference given to classical and mathematical knowledge--and that 
upon the whole it would be an easy matter, in transferring to America 
the general principles of those institutions, to leave them their 
obvious errors, while we avail ourselves as we best may, of their 
still more obvious virtues and advantages.

We must take the liberty of copying an interesting paper on the 
subject of Oxford.


The impression made on my mind by the first aspect of Paris was 
scarcely more lively or profound, than that which I experienced on 
entering Oxford. Great towns were already familiar to my eye, but a 
whole city sacred to the cultivation of science, composed of edifices 
no less venerable for their antiquity than magnificent in their 
structure, was a novelty which at once delighted and overpowered my 
imagination. The entire population is in some degree appended and 
ministerial to the colleges. They comprise nearly the whole town, and 
are so noble and imposing, although entirely Gothic, that I was 
inclined to apply to the architecture of Oxford what has been said of 
the schools of Athens;

  "The Muse alone unequal dealt her rage,
   And graced with noblest pomp her earliest stage."

Spacious gardens laid out with taste and skill are annexed to each 
college, and appropriated to the exercises and meditations of the 
students. The adjacent country is in the highest state of cultivation, 
and watered by a beautiful stream, which bears the name of Isis, the 
divinity of the Nile and the Ceres of the Egyptians. To you who know 
my attachment to letters, and my veneration for the great men whom 
this university has produced, it will not appear affectation, when I 
say that I was most powerfully affected by this scene, that my eyes 
filled with tears, that all the enthusiasm of a student burst forth.

After resting, I delivered next morning, my letter of introduction to 
one of the professors, Mr. V----, and who undertook to serve as my 
_cicerone_ through the university. The whole day was consumed in 
wandering over the various colleges and their libraries, in 
discoursing on their organization, and in admiring the Gothic chapels, 
the splendid prospects from their domes, the collection of books, of 
paintings, and of statuary, and the portraits of the great men who 
were nursed in this seat of learning. Both here and at Cambridge, 
accurate likenesses of such as have by their political or literary 
elevation, ennobled their _alma mater_, are hung up in the great 
halls, in order to excite the emulation of their successors, and 
perpetuate the fame of the institution. I do not wish to fatigue you 
by making you the associate of all my wanderings and reflections, but 
only beg you to follow me rapidly through the picture-gallery attached 
to the celebrated Bodleian library. It is long indeed, and covered 
with a multitude of original portraits, but from them I shall merely 
select a few, in which your knowledge of history will lead you to take 
a lively interest.

I was struck with the face of Martin Luther the reformer. It was not 
necessary to have studied Lavater to collect from it, the character of 
his mind. His features were excessively harsh though regular, his eye 
intelligent but sullen and scowling, and the whole expression of his 
countenance, that of a sour, intemperate, overbearing 
controversialist. Near him were placed likenesses of Locke, Butler, 
and Charles II., painted by Sir Peter Lely; with the countenance of 
Locke you are well acquainted, that of Butler has nothing sportive in 
it--does not betray a particle of humor, but is, on the contrary, 
grave, solemn, and didactic in the extreme, and must have been taken 
in one of his splenetic moods, when brooding over the neglect of 
Charles, rather than in one of those moments of inspiration, as they 
may be styled, in which he narrated the achievements of Hudibras. The 
physiognomy of Charles is, I presume, familiar to you, lively but not 
"spiritual." Lord North is among the number of heads, and I was caught 
by his strong resemblance to the present king; so strong as to remind 
one of the scandalous chronicles of times past.

The face of Mary queen of Scots next attracted my notice. It was taken 
in her own time, and amply justifies what historians have written, or 
poets have sung, concerning her incomparable beauty. If ever there was 
a countenance meriting the epithet of lovely in its most comprehensive 
signification, it was this, which truly "vindicated the veracity of 
Fame," and in which I needed not the aid of imagination to trace the 
virtues of her heart. In reading Hume and Whitaker I have often wept 
over her misfortunes, and now turned with increased disgust from an 
original portrait of Elizabeth, her rival and assassin, which was 
placed immediately above, and contributed to heighten the captivations 
of the other by the effect of contrast. The features of Elizabeth are 
harsh and irregular, her eye severe, her complexion bad, her whole 
face, in short, just such as you would naturally attach to such a 
mind.

Among the curiosities of the gallery may be ranked a likeness of Sir 
Phillip Sydney, done with _a red hot poker_, on wood, by a person of 
the name of Griffith, belonging to one of the colleges. It is really a 
monument of human patience and ingenuity, and has the appearance of a 
good painting. I cannot describe to you without admiration another 
most extraordinary _freak_ of genius exhibited here, and altogether 
_unique_ in its kind. It is a portrait of Isaac Tuller, a celebrated 
painter in the reign of Charles II., executed by _himself when drunk_. 
Tradition represents it as an admirable likeness, and of inebriety in 
the abstract, there never was a more faithful or perfect delineation. 
This anecdote is authentic, and must amuse the fancy, if we picture to 
ourselves the artist completely intoxicated, inspecting his own 
features in a mirror, and hitting off, with complete success, not only 
the general character, but the peculiar stamp, which such a state must 
have impressed upon them. His conception was as full of humor as of 
originality, and well adapted to the system of manners which the 
reigning monarch introduced and patronized. As I am on the subject of 
portraits, permit me to mention three to which my attention was 
particularly called on my visit to the University of Dublin. They were 
those of Burke, Swift, and Bishop Berkeley, done by the ablest 
masters. The latter must have had one of the most impressive 
physiognomies ever given to man, "_the human face divine_." That of 
Burke is far inferior, but strongly marked by an indignant smile; a 
proper expression for the feelings by which his mind was constantly 
agitated towards the close of his life. The face of Swift from which 
you would expect every thing, is dull, heavy and unmeaning.

Portrait painting is the _forte_, as it has always been the passion of 
this country. Happily for the inquisitive stranger, every rich man has 
all his progenitors and relatives on canvass. The walls of every 
public institution are crowded with benefactors and pupils, and no 
town hall is left without the heads of the corporation, or the 
representatives of the borough. The same impulse that prompts us to 
gaze with avidity on the persons of our cotemporaries, if there be any 
thing prominent in their character, or peculiar in their history, 
leads us to turn a curious and attentive eye on the likenesses of the 
{401} "mighty dead," whose souls as well as faces are thus in some 
degree transmitted to posterity. Next to my association with the 
living men of genius who render illustrious the names of Englishmen, 
no more sensible gratification has accrued to me from my residence in 
this country, than that of studying the countenances of their 
predecessors; no employment has tended more efficaciously to improve 
my acquaintance with the history of the nation, to animate research, 
and to quicken the spirit of competition.

I quitted Oxford with a fervent wish that such an establishment might 
one day grace our own country. I have uttered an ejaculation to the 
same effect whenever the great monuments of industry and refinement 
which Europe displays exclusively, have fallen under my observation. 
We have indeed just grounds to hope that we shall one day eclipse the 
old world.

  "Each rising art by just gradation moves,
   Toil builds on toil, and age on age improves."


The only paper in the _Didactics_, to which we have any decided 
objection, is a tolerably long article on the subject of _Phrenology_, 
entitled "Memorial of the Phrenological Society of ---- to the 
Honorable the Congress of ---- sitting at ----." Considered as a 
specimen of mere burlesque the _Memorial_ is well enough--but we are 
sorry to see the energies of a scholar and an editor (who should be, 
if he be not, a man of metaphysical science) so wickedly employed as 
in any attempt to throw ridicule upon a question, (however much 
maligned, or however apparently ridiculous) whose merits he has never 
examined, and of whose very nature, history, and assumptions, he is 
most evidently ignorant. Mr. Walsh is either ashamed of this article 
now, or he will have plentiful reason to be ashamed of it hereafter.


COOPER'S SWITZERLAND.

_Sketches of Switzerland. By an American. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and 
Blanchard._

These very interesting sketches are merely selections from a work of 
much larger extent, originally intended for publication, but which, as 
a whole, is, for private reasons, suppressed. There is consequently on 
this account, and on some others, several _vacuums_ in the narrative. 
Mr. Cooper commenced the year 1828 in Paris, whence, after a short 
stay, he paid a visit to England. In June he returned to France by the 
way of Holland and Belgium. The narrative embraced in vol. i commences 
at Paris after his return from England, and terminates at Milan. The 
remainder of the year 1828, and the years 1829, 1830, and 1831, with 
part of 1832, were passed between Italy, Germany, France and Belgium. 
Volume ii recommences at Paris, and a great portion of it is occupied 
with matters relating to other countries than that which gives a title 
to the book.

We either see, or fancy we see, in these volumes, and more 
particularly in the Preface affixed to them, a degree of splenetic ill 
humor with both himself and his countrymen, quite different from the 
usual manner of the novelist, and evincing something akin to 
resentment for real or imaginary ill usage. He frankly tells us among 
other things, that had the whole of his intended publication seen the 
light, it is probable their writer would not have escaped some 
imputations on his patriotism--for in making the comparisons that 
naturally arose from his subject, he has spoken in favor of American 
principles much oftener than in favor of American things. He then 
proceeds with a sneer at a "numerous class of native critics," and 
expresses a hope that he may be permitted at least to assert, that "a 
mountain fifteen thousand feet high is more lofty than one of fifteen 
hundred, and that Mont Blanc is a more sublime object than Butter 
Hill." We quote a specimen of the general tone of this Preface.


The writer does not expect much favor for the political opinions that 
occasionally appear in these letters. He has the misfortune to belong 
to neither of the two great parties that divide the country, and 
which, though so bitterly hostile and distrustful of each other, will 
admit of no neutrality. It is a menacing symptom that there is a 
disposition to seek for a base motive, whenever a citizen may not 
choose to plunge into the extremes that characterize the movements of 
political factions. This besetting vice is accompanied by another 
feeling, that is so singularly opposed to that which every body is 
ready to affirm is the governing principle of the institutions, that 
it may do no harm slightly to advert to it. Any one who may choose to 
set up a semi-official organ of public opinion, called a newspaper, 
however illiterate, base, flagrantly corrupt, and absolutely destitute 
of the confidence and respect of every man in the community, may daily 
pour out upon the public his falsehoods, his contradictions, his 
ignorance, and his corruption, treating the national interests as 
familiarly as "household terms," and all because he is acting in an 
admitted vocation; the public servant, commissioned to execute the 
public will, may even turn upon his masters, and tell them not only in 
what light they are to view him and his conduct, but in what light 
they are also to view the conduct of his associates in trust; in 
short, tell them how to make up their judgments on himself and others; 
and all because he is a public servant, and the public is his master: 
but the private citizen, who merely forms a part of that public, is 
denounced for his presumption, should he dare to speak of matters of 
general concernment, except under such high sanction, or as the organ 
of party.

It may be well to say at once, that this peculiar feeling has not been 
permitted to influence the tone of these letters, which have been 
written, in all respects, as if the republic did not contain one of 
those privileged persons, honored as "patriots" and "godlikes," but as 
if both classes were as actually unknown to the country as they are 
certainly unknown to the spirit and letter of its institutions.


The spirit of these observations seems to be carried out (we cannot 
say with what degree of justice,) in many other portions of the book. 
On page 71, vol. i, we observe what follows.


Among other books, I have laid my hands, by accident, on the work of a 
recent French traveller in the United States. We read little other 
than English books at home, and are much given to declaiming against 
English travellers for their unfairness; but, judging from this 
specimen of Gallic opinion, our ancient allies rate us quite as low as 
our quondam fellow subjects. A perusal of the work in question has led 
me to inquire further into the matter, and I am now studying one or 
two German writers on the same interesting subject. I must say that 
thus far, I find little to feed national vanity, and I begin to fear 
(what I have suspected ever since the first six months in Europe) that 
we are under an awkward delusion respecting the manner in which the 
rest of Christendom regards that civilization touching which we are so 
sensitive. It is some time since I have made the discovery, that 'the 
name of an American is not a passport all over Europe,' but on the 
other hand, that where it conveys any very distinct notions at all, it 
usually conveys such as are any thing but flattering or agreeable.... 
I shall pursue the _trail_ on which I have fallen, and you will 
probably hear more of this, before these letters are brought to a 
close.


{402} At page 113 of the same volume we have something of the same 
nature, and which we confess astonished us in no little degree.


We have just had a visit from two old acquaintances--Manhattanese. 
They tell me a good many of our people are wandering among the 
mountains, though they are the first we have seen. There is a list of 
arrivals published daily in Berne; and in one of them I found the name 
of Captain C----, of the Navy; and that of Mr. O., an old and intimate 
friend, whom it was vexatious to miss in a strange land. Mr. and Mrs. 
G----, of New York, are also somewhere in the cantons. Our numbers 
increase, and with them our abuse; for it is not an uncommon thing to 
see, written in English in the travellers' books kept by law at all 
the inns, pasquinades on America, opposite the American names. What a 
state of feeling it betrays, when a traveller cannot write his name, 
in compliance with a law of the country in which he happens to be, 
without calling down upon himself anathemas of this kind! I have a 
register of twenty-three of these gratuitous injuries. What renders 
them less excusable, is the fact, that they who are guilty of the 
impropriety would probably think twice before they performed the act 
in the presence of the party wronged. These intended insults are, 
consequently, so many registers of their own meanness. Let the truth 
be said; I have never seen one, unless in the case of an American, or 
one that was not written in English! Straws show which way the wind 
blows. This disposition, in our kinsmen, to deride and abuse America, 
is observed and freely commented on by the people of the continent, 
who are far from holding us themselves in the highest respect.


And again, on page 327, vol. ii.


I have made this comparison as the last means I know of to arouse you 
from your American complacency on the subject of the adjectives 
_grand_, _majestic_, _elegant_ and _splendid_, in connection with our 
architecture. The latter word, in particular, is coming to be used 
like a household term; while there is not, probably, a single work of 
art, from Georgia to Maine, to which it can with propriety be applied. 
I do not know a single edifice in the Union that can be considered 
more than third rate by its size and ornaments, nor more than one or 
two that ought to be ranked even so high. When it comes to capitals, 
and the use of the adjectives I have just quoted, it may be well to 
remember, that there is no city in the Republic that has not decidedly 
the air and the habits of a provincial town, and this too, usually 
without possessing the works of art that are quite commonly found in 
this hemisphere, even in places of that rank, or a single public 
building to which the term _magnificent_ can with any fitness be 
adjudged.


We can only say, that if the suppressed portions of Mr. Cooper's 
intended publication embraced any thing more likely than these 
assertions and opinions to prove unacceptable to American readers at 
large, it is perhaps better, both for his own reputation, and for the 
interest of his publishers, that he finally decided upon the 
suppression. Yet Mr. Cooper may be right, and not having the fear of 
punishment sufficiently before our eyes, we, for ourselves, frankly 
confess that we believe him to be right. The passages which remain of 
a similar nature to those we have quoted, will only serve we hope, to 
give additional piquancy to these admirable Sketches. As a work 
affording extensive and valuable information on the subject of 
Switzerland, we have seen nothing in any shape, at all equal to the 
volumes before us.

The extract we now subjoin, will prove beyond doubt, that the fine 
descriptive powers of the author of the Prairie, are in as full vigor 
as ever.


It is at all times a very difficult thing to convey vivid and, at the 
same time, accurate impressions of grand scenery by the use of words. 
When the person to whom the communication is made has seen objects 
that have a general similarity to those described, the task certainly 
becomes less difficult, for he who speaks or writes may illustrate his 
meaning by familiar comparisons; but who in America, that has never 
left America, can have a just idea of the scenery of this region? A 
Swiss would readily comprehend a description of vast masses of granite 
capped with eternal snow, for such objects are constantly before his 
eyes; but to those who have never looked upon such a magnificent 
spectacle, written accounts, when they come near their climax, fall as 
much short of the intention, as words are less substantial than 
things. With a full consciousness of this deficiency in my craft, I 
shall attempt to give you some notion of the two grandest aspects that 
the Alps, when seen from this place, assume; for it seems a species of 
poetical treason to write of Switzerland and be silent on what are 
certainly two of its most decided sublimities.

One of these appearances is often alluded to, but I do not remember to 
have ever heard the other mentioned. The first is produced by the 
setting sun, whose rays of a cloudless evening, are the parents of 
hues and changes of a singularly lovely character. For many minutes 
the lustre of the glacier slowly retires, and is gradually succeeded 
by a tint of rose color, which, falling on so luminous a body, 
produces a sort of "roseate light;" the whole of the vast range 
becoming mellowed and subdued to indescribable softness. This 
appearance gradually increases in intensity, varying on different 
evenings, however, according to the state of the atmosphere. At the 
very moment, perhaps, when the eye is resting most eagerly on this 
extraordinary view, the light vanishes. No scenic change is more 
sudden than that which follows. All the forms remain unaltered, but so 
varied in hue, as to look like the ghosts of mountains. You see the 
same vast range of eternal snow, but you see it ghastly and spectral. 
You fancy that the spirits of the Alps are ranging themselves before 
you. Watching the peaks for a few minutes longer, the light slowly 
departs. The spectres, like the magnified images of the 
phantasmagoria, grow more and more faint, less and less material, 
until swallowed in the firmament. What renders all this more 
thrillingly exquisite is, the circumstance that these changes do not 
occur until after evening has fallen on the lower world, giving to the 
whole the air of nature sporting in the upper regions, with some of 
her spare and detached materials.

This sight is far from uncommon. It is seen during the summer, at 
least, in greater or less perfection, as often as twice or thrice a 
week. The other is much less frequent; for, though a constant 
spectator when the atmosphere was favorable, it was never my fortune 
to witness it but twice; and even on these occasions, only one of them 
is entitled to come within the description I am about to attempt.

It is necessary to tell you that the Aar flows toward Berne in a 
north-west direction, through a valley of some width, and several 
leagues in length. To this fact the Bernese are indebted for their 
view of the Oberland Alps, which stretch themselves exactly across the 
mouth of the gorge, at the distance of forty miles in an air line. 
These giants are supported by a row of outposts, any one of which, of 
itself, would be a spectacle in another country. One in particular, is 
distinguished by its form, which is that of a cone. It is nearly in a 
line with the Jung Frau,[4] the virgin queen of the Oberland. This 
mountain is called the Niesen. It stands some eight or ten miles in 
advance of the mighty range, though to the eye, at Berne, all these 
accessories appear to be tumbled without order at the very feet of 
their principals. The height of the Niesen is given by Ebel at 5584 
French, or nearly 6000 English feet, above the {403} lake of Thun, on 
whose margin it stands; and at 7340 French, or nearly 8000 English 
feet above the sea. In short, it is rather higher than the highest 
peak of our own White Mountains. The Jung Frau rises directly behind 
this mass, rather more than a mile nearer to heaven.

[Footnote 4: Jung Frau, or the virgin; (pronounced Yoong Frow.) The 
mountain is thus called, because it has never been scaled.]

The day, on the occasion to which I allude, was clouded, and as a 
great deal of mist was clinging to all the smaller mountains, the 
lower atmosphere was much charged with vapor. The cap of the Niesen 
was quite hid, and a wide streak of watery clouds lay along the whole 
of the summits of the nearer range, leaving, however, their brown 
sides misty but visible. In short the Niesen and its immediate 
neighbors looked like any other range of noble mountains, whose heads 
were hid in the clouds. I think the vapor must have caused a good deal 
of refraction, for above these clouds rose the whole of the Oberland 
Alps to an altitude which certainly seemed even greater than usual. 
Every peak and all the majestic formation was perfectly visible, 
though the whole range appeared to be severed from the earth, and to 
float in air. The line of communication was veiled, and while all 
below was watery, or enfeebled by mist, the glaciers threw back the 
fierce light of the sun with powerful splendor. The separation from 
the lower world was made the more complete, from the contrast between 
the sombre hues beneath and the calm but bright magnificence above. 
One had some difficulty in imagining that the two could be parts of 
the same orb. The effect of the whole was to create a picture of which 
I can give no other idea, than by saying it resembled a glimpse, 
through the windows of heaven, at such a gorgeous but chastened 
grandeur, as the imagination might conceive to suit the place. There 
were moments when the spectral aspect just mentioned, dimmed the 
lustre of the snows, without injuring their forms, and no language can 
do justice to the sublimity of the effect. It was impossible to look 
at them without religious awe; and, irreverent though it may seem, I 
could hardly persuade myself I was not gazing at some of the sublime 
mysteries that lie beyond the grave.

A fortnight passed in contemplating such spectacles at the distance of 
sixteen leagues, has increased the desire to penetrate nearer to the 
wonders; and it has been determined that as many of our party who are 
of an age to enjoy the excursion, shall quit this place in a day or 
two for the Oberland.


MELLEN'S POEMS.[5]

[Footnote 5: We have received this notice of Mellen's Poems from a 
personal friend, in whose judgment we have implicit reliance--of 
course we cannot deviate from our rules by adopting the criticism as 
Editorial.]

_The Martyr's Triumph; Buried Valley; and other Poems. By Grenville 
Mellen. Boston, 300 pp._

We took up this book with the conviction that we should be pleased 
with its contents, and our highly wrought expectations have not in any 
degree been disappointed. It is as high praise as we are able to 
bestow upon it, that we have read most of its contents with the very 
associations around us, which are required for the perfect production 
of the impressions intended to be produced by the poet--and that we 
have, in each and all, still found those impressions strengthening and 
deepening upon our minds, as we perused the pages before us. "The 
Buried Valley," in which is portrayed the well remembered tragedy of 
the avalanche, which, in 1826, buried a peaceful cottage situated at 
the foot of the White Mountains, with all its inhabitants, at 
midnight, is not perhaps the best, though a most deeply interesting 
part of the volume. It is too unequal in its style, and at times too 
highly wrought, perhaps, as a picture. But the idea which it gives the 
reader of the wild and magnificent spot upon which this terrible 
catastrophe occurred is perfect, and the description of the 
circumstances and incidents of the scene most faithful.

The Scenery of the White Mountains of New Hampshire forms the 
inspiration of another poem also in this collection, which we boldly 
place beside any emanation from the most gifted of our poets. We 
allude to "Lines on an Eagle," on pp. 130 and 131. We must be chary of 
our space, and can therefore give but a single stanza, in 
corroboration of our opinion.

  Sail on, thou lone imperial bird,
  Of quenchless eye and tireless wing;
  How is thy distant coming heard,
  As the night-breezes round thee ring!
  Thy course was 'gainst the burning sun,
  In his extremest glory--how!
  Is thy unequall'd daring done,
  Thou stoop'st to earth so lowly now!

The "Martyr's Triumph" is a most splendid poem, and deserves all the 
praise it has received from reader and critic. What can be more 
beautiful than the exordium?

    Voice of the viewless spirit! that hast rung
    Through the still chambers of the human heart,
    Since our first parents in sweet Eden sung
    Their low lament in tears--thou voice, that art
    Around us and above us, sounding on
    With a perpetual echo, 'tis on thee,
    The ministry sublime to wake and warn!--
    Full of that high and wondrous Deity,
  That call'd existence out from Chaos' lonely sea!

And what more purely inspired than the following?

  Thou wast from God when the green earth was young,
  And man enchanted rov'd amid its flowers,
  When faultless woman to his bosom clung,
  Or led him through her paradise of bowers;
  Where love's low whispers from the Garden rose,
  And both amid its bloom and beauty bent,
  In the long luxury of their first repose!
  When the whole earth was incense, and there went
  Perpetual praise from altars to the firmament.

And these are but single "bricks from Babel." Specimens, only, of the 
beauty and grace with which the poem abounds.

Were we looking for faults, doubtless we should be able to find them, 
for who is faultless? But that is not our aim. Yet would we suggest to 
the author that the use of the word _dulce_ in stanza six, is somewhat 
forced,--and though a sweet word in itself, is yet "like sweet bells 
jangled, harsh, and out of tune," on account of its rarity, which 
induces the reader to note its strangeness rather than to admire its 
application. The whole book abounds with proofs of _Mellen's_ fine 
musical ear, and therefore does it seem to us a fault that he should 
have suffered the compositor to do him the injustice of printing such 
a line as this.

  "Before ill-starr'd Dunsinane's waving wood!"

But it is for the minor, or shorter pieces which the volume contains, 
that it is most highly to be valued. _Mellen_ is delightful in his 
"occasional poems." Take the following, addressed to one of the 
sweetest singers, whose strains, like angel-harmonies from heaven, 
ever floated upon the rapt ear of the poet, as a proof.

TO HELEN.

  Music came down from Heaven to thee,
    A spirit of repose--
  A fine, mysterious melody,    {404}
    That ceaseless round thee flows;
  Should Joy's fast waves dash o'er thy soul,
    In free and reckless throng,
  What Music answers from the whole,
    In thy resistless song!

  Oh! Music came a boon to thee,
    From yon harmonious spheres;
  An influence from eternity,
    To charm us from our tears!
  Should Grief's dim phantoms then conspire
    To tread thy heart along,
  Thou shalt but seize thy wavy lyre,
    And whelm them all in song!

  Yes, thine's a blest inheritance,
    Since to thy lips 'tis given,
  To lure from its long sorrows hence
    The spirit pall'd and riven!
  Go, unto none on earth but thee
    Such angel tones belong;
  For thou wert born of melody,
    Thy soul was bath'd in song!

There are many such, as, for instance, "To Sub Rosa," "Death of 
Julia," "The Eagle," "The Bugle," "_To Gabriella R----, of Richmond_," 
&c. &c.

Mellen is distinguished for his lyric powers. His Odes are all very 
fine. That "To Music," in the volume before us, is deserving of 
particular mention, as indeed are those "To Shakspeare," "To Byron," 
"To Lafayette," and others, written on several public occasions.

The volume has but one general fault, and that is, its deficiency in 
the lighter and gayer strain, in which we have private proofs that 
Mellen certainly excels. It were to be regretted that the poet did not 
throw into his collection some touches of that delicate and graceful 
humor, which none can more happily hit off than himself. The general 
tone of the volume is grave, if not indeed severe--though relieved by 
many exquisite verses like those already alluded to, and of which the 
following may serve as another specimen.

TO SUB ROSA.

  Lady, if while that chord of thine,
    So beautifully strung
  To music that seem'd just divine,
    Still sweetly round me rung,
  I should essay a higher song
    Than humblest minstrel may,
  Shame o'er my lyre would breathe the wrong,
    And lure my hand away.

  Forgive me then if I forbear,
    Where thou hast done so well,
  Nor o'er my harp strings idly dare
    What I should feebly tell.
  'Tis woman that alone can breathe
    These holier fancies free--
  Ah, then, be thine the fadeless wreath
    I proudly yield to thee.

O.


We may add to the critique of our friend O. that in looking over 
cursorily the poems of Mellen, we have been especially taken with the 
following spirited lyric.

STANZAS,

_Sung at Plymouth, on the Anniversary of the landing of our Fathers, 
22d Dec. 1820._

  Wake your harp's music!--louder--higher,
  And pour your strains along,
  And smite again each quiv'ring wire,
  In all the pride of Song!
  Shout like those godlike men of old,
  Who daring storm and foe,
  On this bless'd soil their anthem roll'd,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  From native shores by tempests driven,
  They sought a purer sky,
  And found beneath a wilder heaven,
  The home of liberty!
  An altar rose--and prayers--a ray
  Broke on their night of wo--
  The harbinger of Freedom's day,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  They clung around that symbol too,
  Their refuge and their all;
  And swore while skies and waves were blue,
  That altar should not fall.
  They stood upon the red man's sod,
  'Neath heaven's unpillar'd bow,
  With home--a country--and a God,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  Oh! 'twas a hard unyielding fate
  That drove them to the seas,
  And Persecution strove with Hate,
  To darken her decrees:
  But safe above each coral grave,
  Each booming ship did go--
  A God was on the western wave,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  They knelt them on the desert sand,
  By waters cold and rude,
  Alone upon the dreary strand
  Of Ocean'd solitude!
  They look'd upon the high blue air,
  And felt their spirits glow,
  Resolved to live or perish there,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  The Warrior's red right arm was bar'd,
  His eye flash'd deep and wild;
  Was there a foreign footstep dar'd
  To seek his home and child?
  The dark chiefs yell'd alarm--and swore
  The white man's blood should flow,
  And his hewn bones should bleach their shore,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  But lo! the warrior's eye grew dim,
  His arm was left alone;
  The still black wilds which shelter'd him,
  No longer were his own!
  Time fled--and on this hallow'd ground
  His highest pine lies low,
  And cities swell where forests frown'd,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  Oh! stay not to recount the tale,
  Twas bloody--and 'tis past;
  The firmest cheek might well grow pale,
  To hear it to the last.
  The God of Heaven, who prospers us,
  Could bid a nation grow,
  And shield us from the red man's curse,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  Come then great shades of glorious men,
  From your still glorious grave;
  Look on your own proud land again,
  Oh! bravest of the brave!
  We call ye from each mould'ring tomb,
  And each blue wave below,
  To bless the world ye snatch'd from doom,
  _Two hundred years ago!_

  Then to your harps--yet louder--higher--
  And pour your strains along,
  And smite again each quiv'ring wire,
  In all the pride of song!
  Shout _for_ those godlike men of old,
  Who daring storm and foe,
  On this bless'd soil their anthem roll'd,
  TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO!


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