brilliant genius. As a poet, in high-wrought and vivid imagery, he
resembles Shelley, whose likeness he personally resembles; and as an
orator, there is not a speaker of his years in our country who has
made a greater impression than he made in two extemporaneous efforts
before the Irish Association. Bold, eloquent, and manly, he dashes
into his subject with his whole soul, while comprehensiveness,
energy, and point characterize every thing he says.
Certain persons, forgetting the decencies of life, have abused
and calumniated Mr. Robert Tyler in the most gross and libellous
manner. It is therefore due to him to say, that a kinder son, a
more devoted husband and father, or a firmer friend, those who know
him have never known. Magnanimous and chivalrous, he throws no veil
over either his actions or opinions; and his frank and high bearing
wins the regard of all those who come in personal contact with him,
however much they may have been before prejudiced against him.
The lady of Mr. Robert Tyler does the honors of the White House.
She is the grand-daughter of the late Major Fairlie, of New-York,
a soldier of the revolution, and a distinguished citizen, who was
well known to many of the oldest inhabitants of that city. Her
mother was a celebrated belle, whom our present minister to Spain,
Washington Irving, remembers vividly as his friend, and one of the
most brilliant women of the day; a fair and witty and most worthy
lady, who might well have inspired the author of the 'Sketch Book'
with those exalted perceptions of female character which glow so
brilliantly in his portraits of the sex.
Mr. COOPER, the celebrated tragedian, married this lady, and Mrs.
Tyler is their eldest daughter. Three years since Miss Cooper
married Mr. Robert Tyler. Dickens says when he visited the White
House, that Mrs. Tyler 'acted as the lady of the mansion, and a very
interesting, graceful, and accomplished lady too.'
The just perception of Dickens understood at once the character of
Mrs. Tyler. She does the duties of the White House with a graceful
naturalness that is remarked by every one, and she combines with a
keen perception of character, an acute sense of the ridiculous and
a ready wit, the most feminine gentleness of manner and deportment;
qualities which are rarely found in combination. Mrs. Tyler is
devoted to her children, and she dresses them as plainly as if
they were dwellers on a retired estate in Virginia. Her own attire
is simple, and she never departs from this simplicity except when
state occasions demand some little ornament. The greatest sense of
propriety marks her whole deportment in every relation of life.
Mrs. Robert Tyler is now on a visit to a married sister in Alabama;
for another beautiful trait of her character is her devotion to her
sisters and brother. The only inmates of the White House at present
(May first) are the President with his three sons, and Mrs. Jones,
his eldest daughter. Mrs. Semple, the President's second daughter,
is living in Virginia, and is a lady of great beauty, and in the
bloom of health.
The fine features of Mrs. Jones are wan with long illness. She
never leaves her room except on some balmy day, to take a short
ride. The President always accompanies her, supporting her in his
arms to and from her chamber to the carriage, with a tenderness as
gentle and as watchful as her own to her babe. The President, unlike
some distinguished statesmen of other as well as of our times, is
remarkable for his high estimate of female character. He receives
the lady visiters of the White House with a deference and respect
which has been much noticed, and which is not the manner of a
worldling and a courtier, compliment and hollowness, but the impulse
of a lofty and holy sentiment. When a lad at school, he prepared as
a theme for declamation an essay upon female education, in which the
boy expressed those opinions which have ever since been entertained
by the man.
The President is a man of the strongest sympathies. There is not a
human being about him, from his servants to his children, of whose
feelings he is not regardful, and in whose welfare he does not feel
a daily and living interest. If the day be cool, he will ask his
coachman why he has not his overcoat. If his servant happens not
to be cheerful, he will ask him, in the kindest manner, what's the
matter with him. And the complaint, if the servant have one, is
made without the least hesitation, and with the certainty that he
will meet at the President's hands both sympathy and justice. In
his intercourse with his servants he is always kind, and frequently
jocular, for he is a great lover of a harmless jest.
A few weeks since, the Irishmen of the Capitol waited on the
President in a body, and through Mr. Hobson, their orator, expressed
their gratitude for the interest he had taken in them, and their
profound respect for his character, to which the President made a
most eloquent reply.
It was amusing to watch the interest which the President's servants,
all of whom belong to him, except Wilkins, the butler of the
establishment, and his son, felt in his speech. They modestly took
their station by the door, to listen to their master's reply, for
they are devotedly attached to him.
'Short,' asked a gentleman, of one of these humble listeners, 'how
did you like the President's speech?'
'I always likes the President's speeches, Sir, but I don't think
this one of his happiest efforts. I prefers him, Sir, before a jury.
He can beat any man in Virginia, before a jury,' was the reply.
The President's love for Virginia is truly worthy of a mother, whose
'jewels are her children.' He delights in telling anecdotes of his
early days, in Virginia; and he always has the most cordial greeting
for his old Virginia friends, however humble they may be, when they
call to see him. How is such and such a one? he will inquire, from
the humblest laborer on a farm, up to the highest dignitary of the
State.
President Tyler is a man of very unsuspicious nature, and there is
no morbidity of feeling in him. He is always cheerful and natural.
In the midst of great difficulties of state, when the Cabinet
have held protracted meetings, and when, doubtless, there were
differences of opinion among them; when the Secretary of State,
with his beetling brows and cavernous eyes, passed by alone,
absorbed in his own thoughts; when Mr. Spencer's quick step lost
some of its elasticity, and the frank and firm Kentuckian, at the
head of the Post Office Department, wore an anxious look; and the
Attorney-General forgot, for a moment, his courteous salutation to
a friendly passer-by; when that true statesman of the old Virginia
school, Judge Upshur, seemed involved in what those who have not the
mind to comprehend him, call 'abstractions;' and when Mr. Forward
looked as if the cares of the Church, as well as those of the
Treasury were resting on his shoulders; the President would pass
from their midst to his family circle, assembled for dinner, greet
most cordially, and apparently without a care, whatever person might
chance to be their guest, and mix in the cheerful chat around him,
as if he had no thought but the wish to promote it.
The President is a statesman with no secret opinions. He speaks
out plainly whatever he thinks; and he listens respectfully, nay,
kindly, to the adverse opinions of others, without the least spirit
of dictation.
He is not the least of a formalist. If he has a guest, whom he asks
to take a glass of wine with him, he will himself search for the
keys of the side-board, if the servant happens to be absent, produce
the decanters and glasses himself, and tell some pleasant story the
while. When he talks of men, he speaks of their worth, and seldom
of their wealth. With his purse he is too open, and too often he
bestows more than his means warrant, upon some needy applicant, for
whom he can find no office, or whom he may think unfitted for one.
For the President his family have the most unbounded love. The only
restraint they know, is what they think he would not approve; and
their familiar talk among themselves is never checked, in the least,
by his entrance; it is, on the contrary, promoted.
These little personal traits of President Tyler and his family,
which might be easily extended into a volume, are offered to the
readers of the KNICKERBOCKER as being not without interest, since
they illustrate the private character of the Chief Magistrate of our
great Republic, and with the assurance that they are strictly true.
F.
A CONTRASTED PICTURE.
FROM 'PASSION ODE,' AN UNPUBLISHED POEM BY J. RHEYN PIKSOHN
I.
IT was a glorious day
When, on the winding way
That led to Salem's towers and temple high,
From the assembled throng
Loud burst the choral song:
'Hosanna in the highest!' rang the cry;
While shouting thousands lined the road,
And boughs of palm before triumphant JESUS strowed.
II.
'Tis morning: and again
The mighty crowds of men
Tread Salem's streets and throng her towers high;
Their many-voiced roar
Swells louder than before,
But 'crucify him!' is the savage cry;
The furious curse the welkin tore,
'His blood be on us and our children ever more!'
III.
In vain false Pilate stands;
No washing of the hands
Clears from the heart the tinct of innocent blood.
The crowd, with cruel care,
Load his shoulders bare,
Like Isaac's, with the sacrificial wood:
And the red lash, with many a blow,
Scourges his faltering steps along the road of wo.
IV.
Nor stripes, nor mockery,
Nor heaped-up agony,
Can wring from infinite Love one vengeful word:
While suffering JESUS stands
Amidst your pagan bands,
And ye laugh round, ye cruel hearts abhorred,
Hear the LORD'S dying prayer for you:
'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do!'
V.
Through the city doors
The shouting tumult pours,
And up the steep of Calvary they wind;
Golgotha! on thee
They plant the accursed tree;
No pity can the God of pity find.
Pierced were the hands that gave them bread.
And fast 'the beauteous feet that brought good tidings' bled!
THE MAIL ROBBER.
NUMBER TWO.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'KNICKERBOCKER.'
'SIR: At a prayer-meeting held in the house of a friend of mine,
in Bleecker-street, one of our most respectable and talented
financiers, and who was connected with myself in the late
Post-office transaction, of which I have favored you with a
development, I was thunder-struck at being shown the last number of
your somewhat amusing but reckless Magazine.
'My friend is a subscriber of yours, and was of course greatly
agitated and offended at the unexpected and astounding disclosure
of the private affair which you have so unwarrantably dished up for
the public. As was very natural, he charged me with the authorship
of that communication; and as a man of conscientious principle and
high moral sense, I was of course unable to deny it. By this time
the other gentlemen, our colleagues in said Post-office business,
one of whom is in Bangor, the other in Texas, have probably seen
the article in question; and you will perceive that I am thus made,
through your violation of the sanctity of correspondence, to stand
with them in the odious light of an informer.
'Sir, I supposed that your common perception of what is due to
the ordinary courtesies of epistolary intercourse rendered it
unnecessary for me to desire you not to publish any thing of a
personal nature. What is to become of our '_areas_ and _focus_,'
of our altars and fires? what is to become of the bonds of social
faith, the cherished sentiments of domestic communion, the implicit
confidence between man and man, if delicate matters of peculiar and
single interest are thus to be blurted by an unreflecting conductor
of a journal into the face of all mankind and half New-York? To
use the emphatic expression of the western settler, who returned
from hunting to find his house and family rifled, (rifled in both
senses,) and the walls of his cabin plastered with the brains of his
wife and children, it is 'a little too ridiculous.'
'The mischief, however, is done, and is past recall. The least you
can do is to make what pecuniary compensation you consider due to my
outraged sensibilities. Your Magazine is reputed to be profitable,
and for the pile of correspondence which I have placed at your
disposal the remuneration ought to be generous. I am no judge of
poetry, but the quality of the article which I have sent you I have
several times heard spoken of as _first-rate_.
'If you will enclose a draft through the post to the address of
'A. B. C. D. E. F.,' a portion of the fund shall go to soothe the
lacerated feelings of my friend in Bleecker-street, and the rest
shall be devoted to charitable purposes, or to the temperance cause.
'I had intended to write more fully upon this very vexatious
subject, but as the ladies are waiting for me to attend a revival at
the Tabernacle this evening, you must allow me to subscribe myself,
'Yours, truly mortified, ---- ----.'
* * * * *
FEARLESS in the discharge of our duties to the public, as an
'able editor,' we have no hesitation in following the example
of all able editors, and give to our readers whatever we think
will be considered as a fair part of their money's worth. It is
very odd that our sensitive correspondent, so keenly alive to the
sufferings of his friend, the talented but lacerated financier
of Bleecker-street, does not see that the same sympathy which he
insists upon would equally apply to the persons abroad, whose
letters he has 'so unwarrantably' made public. This, however, is in
the true spirit of the age, which is so remarkably obtuse to that
proverbial fact in natural history, that the same sauce which suits
the female gander is equally adapted to the male goose.
LETTER SECOND.
TO THOMAS CARLYLE, ESQUIRE, LONDON.
HEREWITH a box, a fragrant casket, goes,
Of that loved herb which best in Cuba grows;
You had my promise, Thomas, you remember,
In Fraser's shop, one morning last November,
Of, now and then, a letter from the land
Which cocknies write of ere they understand.
Pick then the choicest of the weeds I send,
(The Custom House will give them to my friend,)
There having paid the duties that accrue,
Permit me thus to pay mine own to you.
And oh! how difficult each London wight
Finds the more Christian duty--_not_ to write;
For John is reckoned taciturn and shy,
Slow of address and sullen in reply;
Bacchus or Ceres, burgundy or ale,
To rouse his fancies are of no avail;
But would you force the fellow's mettle forth,
And of his genius know the pith and worth,
In vain you ply him with inspiring drink,
Give him a bottle, not of beer, but _ink_:
However tongue-tied, asinine, or dull,
A quill ay proves a cork-screw to his skull.
Hence this poor land so scribbled o'er has been,
'Tis like a window in some country inn,
Where every dolt has chronicled his folly,
His fit of belly-ache or melancholy;
With memorandums of his mutton oft,
And how his bed was hard, his butter soft;
How some John Thompson, on a rainy day,
Found nought to eat, but very much to pay,
And how said Thompson wished himself away.
Ye reverend gods, who guard the household flame,
Lares, Penates, whatsoe'er your name,
What dire subversion of your sway divine
Lets loose all cockneydom to tempt the brine?
Why from the counter and the club-room so
Flock the spruce trader and the Bond-street beau?
Why should the lordling[A] and the Marquis come?
And many a snug possessor of a plum,
Quitting his burrow on the 'Ampstead road,
With wife and trunks be flying all abroad?
Is it in rivers and in rocks to find
Some new sensation for a barren mind?
To mark how Albion's little nook has grown
To kiss the limits of the roasted zone?
From kindred manners, doctrines, men, and sects
To learn a lesson of their own defects?
Or with rapt eye on cataracts to look?
No, their sole passion is--to spawn a book.
From the cold Caspian to the Volga thus
The sturgeons pour pell-mell--a mighty muss![B]
Eager with annual industry to strow
The slimy bottom with whole heaps of roe;
Scarce less I say the multitudinous fry
Each season brings to keep a diary;
Which oft, to give my simile more truth,
Proves 'caviare' to the general tooth.
Ere yet my glance anatomized aright
The insect race that fluttered in my sight,
Oft as the mote-like myriads of Broadway
I scanned, their trim and bearing to survey,
At each third passenger I could not choose
But curl my lip, with frequent _pshas!_ and _poohs!_
To mark the vanity, the coarse conceit,
That showed the creature's genus to the street.
'Was ever nation like Sienna's vain?'[C]
Says father Dante, in sarcastic strain;
And in my book-learned ignorance I quoted
The line, to fit the follies which I noted.
Surely, quoth I, could emptiness and froth
And the poor pride of superfinest cloth
To more excess be carried than by these
Pert, whiskered, insolent Manhattanese?
But soon I found how poor a patriot I,
'Twas _mine own countrymen_ I saw go by!
Pride in their port, defiance in their gait,
I saw these lords of human kind with hate.
O, altered race! with hair upon your chins,
In your strut Spaniards, Frenchmen in your grins;
The 'snob' and shop-keeper but ill concealed
By boots of Paris, bright and brazen-heeled,
Newmarket coats, and Cashmere's flowery vests,
And half Potosi blazing on your breasts,
Made up of coxcomb, pugilist, and sot--
Are ye true Englishmen? I know ye not!
With what fierce air, how lion-like a swell,
They pace the pavement of the grand hotel;
On each new guest with regal stare look down,
Or strike him dead with a victorious frown;[D]
These are the fools whom I for natives took,
Ere I could read their nation in their look;
Now wiser grown, I recognize each ass
For a true bit of Birmingham's best brass.
In Astor's mansion, where the rich resort,
And exiled Britons toss their daily port,
And sometimes angels condescend to sip
Their balmy hyson with benignant lip,
A nook there is to thirsty pilgrims known,
But sacred to male animals alone,
Where foreign blades receive their morning's whet,
As deep almost in juleps as in debt.
There from the throng it pleases me at times
To pick out subjects for a few odd rhymes.
And who could guess, amid this cloud of smoke,
That yonder things were hearts of British oak;
Or who that knew the country of their birth,
Could by the gilding guess the fabric's worth?
Come, let us dare these lions to attack,
And hang a calf-skin on each recreant back.
Some are third cousins of the penny press,
Skilful a piquant paragraph to dress;
Some in their veins a dash patrician boast--
Them Stülz has banished from their natal coast:
Here sits a lecturer, bearing in his mien
More glories than he bought at Aberdeen.
These are tragedians--wandering stars--and those
Some little nobodies no body knows,
Manchester men, deep read in calicoes.
Thomas, your soul abominates a quack,
Great, small, high, low--the universal pack.
And sure our London is a proper place
Wherein to study and detest the race.
But O, consider in a land like this,
Which owns but one distinction, aim, and bliss;
One only difference, by all confessed,
Betwixt earth's vilest offspring and her best;
One sole ambition for the young and old,
Divine, omnipotent, eternal gold;
Where genius, goodness, head and heart are weighed
By the false balance of delusive Trade,
How small, how impotent is Truth's defence }
Against the strides of that arch-fiend, Pretence, }
The time's worst poison, blight, and pestilence! }
Here, only here, a bold and honest lie
Its full allowance of success will buy.
No sanctity of station, age, or name,
Can check the Charlatan's audacious aim;
'A self-made man' is here a fav'rite phrase,
So self-made talents earn their self-made praise.
Whate'er a freeman claims to be, he is;
He knows all magic and all mysteries;
No matter in what sphere the scoundrel shine,
He made himself, and that's a right divine.
Come, then, ye mountebanks of all degrees,
New Cagliostros! fly beyond the seas;
Fiddlers from Rome, philanthropists from France,
Lords of the lyre, the lancet, and the dance;
Hydropathists, and mesmerisers, come;
Ye who Cremonas and Clementis thrum,
Here build your altars, hang your banners out,
Laurel yourselves, and your own pæan shout;
Assume what little, take what coin you will,
Profess all science, arrogate all skill:
What though no university enroll
Your name and honors on a Latin scroll?
Sure each may constitute himself a college,
And be himself the warrant of his knowledge.
Then at small cost in some gazette obtain
Alike an apotheösis and fane:
Amid its hallowed columns once enshrined,
Converts and worshippers you soon shall find,
Buy of the editor--'tis cheap enough--
The sacred incense of his potent puff;
The public nose will catch the sweet aroma,
Tut! they who advertise need no diploma.
'Good heavens!' methinks I hear my Thomas cry,
'With what a low, derogatory eye
You view the beautiful, primeval shore
Where first-born forests guard the torrent's roar.
What! is there nothing in that lovely land
Mid all that's fair, and excellent, and grand,
Nothing more worthy of a poet's pen
Than sots and rogues and bastard Englishmen?'
Patience! philosopher: as yet I dwell
In the dull echoes of a tavern-bell;
My inspiration is not born of rocks,
Nor meads, nor mountains white with snowy flocks;
Streets and their sights are all that fire me now
To tap the bump ideal of my brow;
Mine ears are thrilled not by Niagara's noise,
But that of drays and cabs and bawling boys;
And scarce the day one quiet hour affords
To fit my fancies with harmonious words;
Yet oft at evening, when the moon is up,
When trees on dew and men on slumber sup,
Along the gas-lit rampart of the bay
In rhymeful mood as undisturbed I stray,
Awhile my present 'whereabout' I lose,
And on my loved ones o'er the water muse.
Sometimes lulled ocean heaves an orient sigh,
Which brings our terrace and its roses nigh;
While each Æolian murmur of the sea
Seems whispering fragrantly of home and thee;
But something soon dispels the pleasing dream,
The fire-fly's flash, the night-hawk's whistling scream,
Or katydid, complaining in the dark,
Or other sound unheard in Regent's Park.
For wheresoe'er by night or noon I tread,
Thought guides me still, like Ariadne's thread,
Through shops and crowds and placard-pasted walls
Till on my brain Sleep's filmy finger falls
And cuts the filament, with gentle knife,
That leads me through this labyrinth of life.
I feel it now, the power of the dull god;
The verse imperfect halts--Thomas, I nod;
'Tis late--o'er Caurus hangs the northern car;
My page is out--and so is your cigar.
T.W.P.
[A] See New-York Police Reports.
[B] Moss. We had always taken this word, so common in New-York, to
be pure and choice Manhattanese, and thought our cockney friend
was at fault: but on looking up the authorities, we find that one
SHAKSPERE, a person of quondam reputation, has used the same word in
the same way.
ED. KNICKERBOCKER.
[C] 'Or fu mai Gente si vana come la Sanese?'--DANTE.
[D] A modest line borrowed from Doctor JOHNSON'S 'Irene.'
MEMORIALS.
WHO that surveys this span of earth we press,
This speck of life in Time's great wilderness,
This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
The past, the future--two eternities,
Would sully the bright spot, or leave it bare,
When he might build him a proud temple there;
A name that long shall hallow all its space,
And be each purer soul's high resting-place?
LITERARY NOTICES
TRAVELS IN EGYPT, ARABIA PETREA, AND THE HOLY LAND. By Rev.
STEPHEN OLIN, D. D., President of the Wesleyan University. With
twelve Illustrations, on Steel. New-York: HARPER AND BROTHERS.