Mr. Loring asked no further questions. He felt rebuked and mortified.

Rich as he was, and highly as he valued himself, he felt that the man of

intellect was ranked higher than the man of money. In the small compass

of that steam-vessel were clustered together men of wealth, eminence,

and political distinction. There were few on board whom even Mr. Loring

would think beneath him; and yet he was treated by them with no

particular deference. When he spoke, he was listened to with the

politeness that always accompanies good-breeding; but that was all. None

gathered around him; none sought his company; none treated him as a man

distinguished from the rest. Wealth! that was a common possession; but

strong intellect was the god-like gift of the few; and men bowed before

it and yielded freely their homage.

The proud man was deeply humbled during the brief period occupied in

sweeping across the broad Atlantic, and he felt relieved and breathed

more freely the moment he set his foot on shore at Liverpool. Shame had

kept him from renewing his acquaintance with Benedict, who continued to

be an object of interest to almost every one during the voyage.

In the great world of London, Mr. Loring quickly recovered his balance

of mind. He took letters of introduction to eminent merchants and

bankers there, by whom he was received and treated with the greatest

attention. He was again conscious of the fact, that wealth was power,

and that the possessor of wealth ranked highest of any.

In Paris he did not feel quite so much at ease. He brought letters to

the American Minister, the Hon. Mr. ——, who had represented our

country at the palace of St. Cloud for some five years with honor to

himself and the nation; and was received with the courtesy and attention

which always marked that gentleman’s conduct toward his countrymen. Mr.

Loring had only been in Paris a couple of days when the American

Minister said to him,

“A distinguished countryman of ours is now in Paris. He is to dine with

me day after tomorrow, in company with about fifty of the most

celebrated scientific and literary men in the city. Your arrival is

quite opportune, Mr. Loring, I shall, of course, have the pleasure of

your company.”

Mr. Loring bowed in acquiescence, and then inquired who the

distinguished American was.

“Professor Benedict,” replied the minister. “He is an honor to our

country, and I feel proud of the opportunity I shall have of presenting

him to men of a like spirit with himself, to whom his name has long been

familiar.”

Mr. Loring was confounded.

“He has been for some years a member of the Philosophical Society here,”

continued the minister, “and his communications, published in their

annual report of proceedings, are among the finest papers that emanate

from that body. They cause honorable notice of our countryman to be made

in all the scientific journals of Europe. I need not ask you in what

estimation he is held at home, as I see by Silliman’s Journal, the North

American Review, and the transactions of the various learned societies

there, that his worth is fully known and appreciated. Have you ever had

the pleasure of meeting him?”

“Oh, yes,” was the reply. “He is an old college-mate of mine.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. We were quite intimate as young men; but our pursuits in life were

so different that, in the very nature of things, this intimate

acquaintance could not continue. But I had the pleasure of meeting him

again in crossing the Atlantic. We came over in the same steamer.”

“Did you? That must have been a very pleasant voyage. Fair weather the

whole time, and the company of so many men eminent for their talents.

Mr. Benedict says that the two weeks he spent upon the ocean he shall

number as the most agreeable of his whole life.”

Mr. Loring now felt himself to be in a very awkward position indeed. How

to act he did not know. He had accepted the American Minister’s

invitation to dine with him, and at his table he would meet the man whom

he had for years considered beneath him, and whose very acquaintance he

had dropped as discreditable to one in his position. And this man was to

be the honored guest! Mr. Loring retired to his hotel with his mind

bewildered and his feelings at a lower range in the thermometer of his

self-esteem than they had been for a very long time. If it had not

happened that Benedict came over in the same steamer with him, and that

he had cut his acquaintance before he knew that he had become an

individual of some note, the way would have been plain enough before

him. He could have gone to the dinner and renewed his old friendship,

and felt honored in being his countryman. But this he felt to be out of

the question now. Benedict might refuse to know him, or might treat him

in such a manner as to wound and mortify him severely, and expose him to

the just contempt of men whose good opinion he was the very man to

value.

The exceeding smallness of the foundation upon which he had built a

towering structure of self-importance, was brought, by the circumstances

in which he was placed, with painful clearness to his mind. He saw and

felt, almost for the first time in his life, that money was not every

thing, and that it would not make a man worshiped every where, and by

all classes of men.

For a long time the mind of Mr. Loring was in debate as to the best

course to be pursued. At one time he resolved to send a note to the

American Minister, on the day the dinner was to take place, regretting

his inability to make one of his guests, on account of indisposition.

But this intention was after a while abandoned, and he determined to

leave Paris for Italy on the next day. Like the first resolution, this

was also given up, and his mind was all in confusion again. At length he

decided, though with much reluctance, that he would call upon Mr.

Benedict, and formally renew his acquaintance. There was something, he

felt, humiliating in this; but it was a step greatly to be preferred to

any that he had yet thought of taking. He did not wish to lie direct to

the American Minister, by saying that he was indisposed; nor did he wish

to leave Paris for at least a month.

By little and by little, since the day the steamer left New York, the

man of money had felt increasing respect for the man of mind. He saw

that he was honored by those who were themselves honorable; that he was

known and highly esteemed by distinguished men in Paris and throughout

Europe, while his name had scarcely been heard of beyond his own city.

There was no mistake about this. It was all plain as daylight. The

humble book-keeper was a greater man than the purse-proud merchant.

The severest conflict between pride and necessity that ever took place

in Mr. Loring’s mind, was that which ended in a determination to call

upon Mr. Benedict. What his reception would be he knew not, nor could he

fix upon any mode of address, on meeting him, that was satisfactory.

At length, after hours of hesitation and debate, and a re-consideration

of the whole matter, the merchant left his hotel and proceeded to that

of the old friend whom he had cast off years before as beneath him in

social rank and real worth. Gradually his respect for him had been

rising, until now he rather looked up than down upon him, as the

possessor of something far more intrinsically excellent than any thing

of which he could boast. Known throughout all Europe! The honored guest

of the American Minister! Courted by men of learning and distinction in

Paris! His very name a passport into the first circles, and an

introduction to the most eminent men of the day! What had he been

thinking about? Where were his eyes, that he had not before seen this

rising star, now suddenly revealed to him, shining in beauty and

splendor? Respect was easily changed into a feeling of deference. As

distinctly as he could, Mr. Loring endeavored to recall to his mind the

appearance and manner of Mr. Benedict, during the voyage across the

Atlantic. This he could not do very distinctly, as he had kept out of

his way as much as possible. Still he could recollect that there was

ease, self-possession, dignity of manner, and the consciousness of

power. These were the visible marks of a great man about him—not so

much perceived at the time at recognized, now that they were remembered.

This was the state of mind, and such were the thoughts that oppressed

Mr. Loring, as he started on his humiliating errand. He, of course,

expected to be received with coldness and dignity, if received at all.

It might be that Mr. Benedict would decline renewing the acquaintance

that he had almost rudely dropped, which, under the circumstances, would

be mortifying in the extreme, and compel him to decline the invitation

to dine with the American Minister.

His card sent up, the merchant awaited the return of the porter with

serious misgivings at heart. When that functionary returned, and

signified that Mr. Benedict would be happy to receive him, he proceeded

toward his apartments in a state of mind such as he had never before

experienced, and certainly never wished to experience again. A door was

thrown open by the porter, and a man, in the prime of life, stood near

the centre of the room. His quiet, thoughtful face, and calm, steady

eye, so well remembered, and so little changed by time, was lit up

instantly by a warm, frank smile, so natural and familiar, that it

seemed the smile of years before, when they met as intimate friends. He

stepped forward quickly, and grasped Mr. Loring’s extended hand.

The merchant was subdued and humbled. He could hardly utter the words

that rose to his tongue. He stood in the presence of one who was

superior to himself, and who yet assumed no consequence. The beauty and

true nobility of this he clearly saw, because it affected himself. He

felt that Benedict possessed a generous, manly spirit and a true heart,

of the real worth of which he had never before had any conception.

In the interview that followed this meeting, no allusion was made to the

voyage across the Atlantic by either party. The conversation mostly

referred to former years and events.

When they separated, Mr. Loring was in some doubt as to the real

greatness of his old friend. He saw nothing in him that he had not seen

before. Not a brilliant sentence was uttered; nothing out of the common

order was apparent in his conversation. He even permitted the query to

arise in his mind whether or no he had not been overrated? Whether

distance had not lent enchantment to the view? This was his state of

mind when he met him again at the American Minister’s, surrounded by

some of the most celebrated men of learning in Paris; but it changed

after Benedict had been toasted, and he replied in an address of great

beauty, force, and originality, that enchained the attention of every

one. Loring was lost in astonishment and admiration; nor was he less

surprised at the apparent unconsciousness of being more than an ordinary

man manifested by his every act and word during the five hours that he

observed him in the midst of these eminent men, with the best of whom he

could not but acknowledge him, from what he then saw, to be equal.

The man of money did not again come in contact with the man of mind

during his tour in Europe; nor has he met him since his return home. But

now, and he cannot but wonder why it was not so before, he hears the

name of Professor Benedict frequently mentioned, and often meets with it

in the public journals. Whenever he does so, the feeling of purse-proud

superiority that has grown with his growth, and strengthened with his

strength, has a leaf withered, a flower blighted, or a branch riven from

the stem. But the roots of that feeling are vigorous, and strike deeply

into a rich soil. Although its very luxuriant growth is at times

checked, yet we cannot hope to see the plant destroyed. It is too well

matured, and its aliment too abundant.

* * * * *

A MAY SONG.

BY S. D. ANDERSON.

Hurrah! for sweet May, it is here with its brightness,

The songs of the birds, and the breath of the flowers,

The sighs of the zephyrs, that woo with their lightness,

And hasten the steps of the Summer’s glad hours;

The earth is all gladness—the sky is all beaming

With rose-tinted shadows of beauty and light,

As rich as those insects whose golden wings gleaming

Are twined in the hair of the maidens at night.

The soft balmy air through the casement is singing

In tones of delight to the bud and the bee—

Like the laughter of girlhood in ecstasy ringing,

When the first star of evening has bidden them free—

In the depths of the forest the wild vine is creeping

Around the huge oak with its blossoms of gold—

And, curtained with leafiness, flowerets are sleeping,

Surrounded with perfume and beauty untold.

Come out with the sunrise!—all Nature is glowing—

Each hill-top is bathed in the morn’s early beams;

In the valley the fragrance of spring-time is blowing,

To scatter the mists from the flower-margined streams;

On the greensward the footsteps of children are straying,

As free as the gambols of Summer’s pure air,

As, ladened with health, from the mountain ’tis playing,

And tossing each ringlet of gold-colored hair.

With an echo of music the river is laving

Its white pebbled shore, as it dances along;

Now sunshine, now shade o’er its clear bosom waving,

Like the world’s beaten pathway, half sorrow, half song,

Far, far in the distance, the ocean is lying,

As calm and as tideless as infancy’s breast;

While the last lingering rays of the purple light dying

Is shed on its face ere it sinks into rest.

And then comes the _eve_ with its moonlight and dreaming,

When melody floats on each whisper and sigh.

When eyes are as bright as the stars that are gleaming,

And hearts are as free as the breeze passing by.

In the wildwood the song of the night-bird is blending

With the light tread of dancers, and shoutings of mirth,

Whilst all round are the _rosy boy’s_ arrows descending,

And _love_, like our joys, has a star-lighted birth.

The Summer’s young Ganymede’s cup is o’erflowing

With dew-drops, distilled from the Spring’s early morn,

As pure as the breath of the west wind that’s blowing,

Or wishes deep down in a maiden’s heart born;

Then a health for sweet May! what heart is not swelling

As the mild air of Summer comes soft o’er the brow,

And a thousand bright tokens all round us are telling

That the May-day of _Youth_ and _Affection_ is now.

* * * * *

FIFTY SUGGESTIONS.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

1.

It is observable that, while among all nations the omni-color, white,

has been received as an emblem of the Pure, the no-color, black, has by

no means been generally admitted as _sufficiently_ typical of Impurity.

There are blue devils as well as black; and when we think _very_ ill of

a woman, and wish to _blacken_ her character, we merely call her “a

_blue_-stocking” and advise her to read, in Rabelais’ “_Gargantua_,” the

chapter “_de ce qui est signifié par les couleurs blanc et bleu_.” There

is far more difference between these “_couleurs_,” in fact, than that

which exists between simple _black_ and white. Your “blue,” when we come

to talk of stockings, is black in _issimo_—“_nigrum nigrius

nigro_”—like the matter from which Raymond Lully first manufactured his

alcohol.

2.

Mr. ——, I perceive, has been appointed Librarian to the new ——

Athenæum. To him, the appointment is advantageous in many respects.

Especially:—“_Mon cousin, voici une belle occasion pour apprendre à

lire!_”

3.

As far as I can understand the “loving our enemies,” it implies the

hating our friends.

4.

In commencing our dinners with gravy soup, no doubt we have taken a hint

from Horace.

—— Da, he says, si _grave_ non est,

Quæ prima iratum ventrem placaverit isca.

5.

Of much of our cottage architecture we may safely say, I think,

(admitting the good intention,) that it _would_ have been Gothic if it

had not felt it its duty to be Dutch.

6.

James’s multitudinous novels seem to be written upon the plan of “the

songs of the Bard of Schiraz,” in which, we are assured by Fadladeen,

“the same beautiful thought occurs again and again in every possible

variety of phrase.”

7.

Some of our foreign lions resemble the human brain in one very striking

particular. They are without any sense themselves and yet are the

centres of sensation.

8.

Mirabeau, I fancy, acquired his wonderful tact at foreseeing and meeting

_contingencies_, during his residence in the stronghold of _If_.

9.

Cottle’s “Reminiscences of Coleridge” is just such a book as damns its

perpetrator forever in the opinion of every gentleman who reads it. More

and more every day do we moderns _pavoneggiarsi_ about our Christianity;

yet, so far as the _spirit_ of Christianity is concerned, we are

immeasurably behind the ancients. Mottoes and proverbs are the indices

of national character; and the Anglo-Saxons are disgraced in having no

proverbial equivalent to the “_De mortuis nil nisi bonum._”

Moreover—where, in all statutory Christendom, shall we find a _law_ so

Christian as the “_Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur_” of the Twelve

Tables?

The simple _negative_ injunction of the Latin law and proverb—the

injunction _not to do ill_ to the dead—seems at a first glance,

scarcely susceptible of improvement in the delicate respect of its

terms. I cannot help thinking, however, that the sentiment, if not the

idea intended, is more forcibly conveyed in an apophthegm by one of the

old English moralists, James Puckle. By an ingenious figure of speech he

contrives to imbue the negation of the Roman command with a spirit of

active and positive beneficence. “When speaking of the dead,” he says,

in his “Grey Cap for a Green Head,” “_so fold up your discourse that

their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up

in silence_.”

10.

I have no doubt that the Fourierites honestly fancy “a nasty poet fit

for nothing” to be the true translation of “_poeta nascitur non fit_.”

11.

There surely can_not_ be “more things in Heaven and Earth than are

dreamt of” (oh, Andrew Jackson Davis!) “in _your_ philosophy.”

12.

“It is only as the Bird of Paradise quits us in taking wing,” observes,

or should observe, some poet, “that we obtain a full view of the beauty

of its plumage;” and it is only as the politician is about being “turned

out” that—like the snake of the Irish Chronicle when touched by St.

Patrick—he “awakens to a sense of his _situation_.”

13.

Newspaper editors seem to have constitutions closely similar to those of

the Deities in “Walhalla,” who cut each other to pieces every day, and

yet got up perfectly sound and fresh every morning.

14.

As far as I can comprehend the modern cant in favor of “unadulterated

Saxon,” it is fast leading us to the language of that region where, as

Addison has it, “they sell the best fish and speak the plainest

English.”

15.

The frightfully long money-pouches—“like the Cucumber called the

Gigantic”—which have come in vogue among our belles—are _not_ of

Parisian origin, as many suppose, but are strictly indigenous here. The

fact is, such a fashion would be quite out of place in Paris, where it

is money _only_ that women keep in a purse. The purse of an American

lady, however, must be large enough to carry both her money and the soul

of its owner.

16.

I can see no objection to gentlemen “standing for Congress”—provided

they stand on one side—nor to their “running for Congress”—if they are

in a very great hurry to get there—but it would be a blessing if some

of them could be persuaded into sitting still, for Congress, after they

arrive.

17.

If _Envy_, as Cyprian has it, be “the moth of the soul,” whether shall

we regard _Content_ as its Scotch snuff or its camphor?

18.

M——, having been “used up” in the —— Review, goes about town lauding

his critic—as an epicure lauds the best London mustard—with the tears

in his eyes.

19.

“_Con tal que las costumbres de un autor sean puras y castas_,” says the

Catholic Don Tomas de las Torres, in the Preface to his “Amatory Poems,”

“_importo muy poco qui no sean igualmente severas sus obras_:” meaning,

in plain English, that, provided the personal morals of an author are

pure, it matters little what those of his books are.

For so unprincipled an idea, Don Tomas, no doubt, is still having a hard

time of it in Purgatory; and, by way of most pointedly manifesting their

disgust at his philosophy on the topic in question, many modern

theologians and divines are now busily squaring their conduct by his

proposition exactly _conversed_.

20.

Children are never too tender to be whipped:—like tough beefsteaks, the

more you beat them the more tender they become.

21.

Lucian, in describing the statue “with its surface of Parian marble and

its interior filled with rags,” must have been looking with a prophetic

eye at some of our great “moneyed institutions.”

22.

That poets (using the word comprehensively, as including artists in

general) are a _genus irritabile_, is well understood; but the _why_,

seems not to be commonly seen. An artist is an artist only by dint of

his exquisite sense of Beauty—a sense affording him rapturous

enjoyment, but at the same time implying, or involving, an equally

exquisite sense of Deformity of disproportion. Thus a wrong—an

injustice—done a poet who is really a poet, excites him to a degree

which, to ordinary apprehension, appears disproportionate with the

wrong. Poets _see_ injustice—_never_ where it does not exist—but very

often where the unpoetical see no injustice whatever. Thus the poetical

irritability has no reference to “temper” in the vulgar sense, but

merely to a more than usual clear-sightedness in respect to Wrong:—this

clear-sightedness being nothing more than a corollary from the vivid

perception of Right—of justice—of proportion—in a word, of το καλου.

But one thing is clear—that the man who is _not_ “irritable,” (to the

ordinary apprehension,) is _no poet_.

23.

Let a man succeed ever so evidently—ever so demonstrably—in many

different displays of _genius_, the envy of criticism will agree with

the popular voice in denying him more than _talent_ in any. Thus a poet

who has achieved a great (by which I mean an effective) poem, should be

cautious not to distinguish himself in any other walk of Letters. In

especial—let him make no effort in Science—unless anonymously, or with

the view of waiting patiently the judgment of posterity. Because

universal or even versatile geniuses have rarely or never been known,

_therefore_, thinks the world, none such can ever be. A “therefore” of

this kind is, with the world, conclusive. But what is the _fact_, as

taught us by analysis of mental power? Simply, that the _highest_

genius—that the genius which all men instantaneously acknowledge as

such—which acts upon individuals, as well as upon the mass, by a

species of magnetism incomprehensible but irresistible and _never

resisted_—that this genius which demonstrates itself in the simplest

gesture—or even by the absence of all—this genius which speaks without

a voice and flashes from the unopened eye—is but the result of

generally large mental power existing in a state of _absolute

proportion_—so that no one faculty has undue predominance. _That_

factitious “genius”—that “genius” in the popular sense—which is but

the manifestation of the abnormal predominance of some one faculty over

all the others—and, of course, at the expense and to the detriment, of

all the others—is a result of mental disease or rather, of organic

malformation of mind:—it is this and nothing more. Not only will such

“genius” fail, if turned aside from the path indicated by its

predominant faculty; but, even when pursuing this path—when producing

those works in which, certainly, it is _best_ calculated to

succeed—will give unmistakeable indications of _unsoundness_, in

respect to general intellect. Hence, indeed, arises the just idea that

“Great wit to madness nearly is allied.”

I say “_just_ idea;” for by “great wit,” in this case, the poet intends

precisely the pseudo-genius to which I refer. The true genius, on the

other hand, is necessarily, if not universal in its manifestations, at

least capable of universality; and if, attempting all things, it

succeeds in one rather better than in another, this is merely on account

of a certain bias by which _Taste_ leads it with more earnestness in the

one direction than in the other. With equal zeal, it would succeed

equally in all.

To sum up our results in respect to this very simple, but much _vexata

questio_:—

What the world calls “genius” is the state of mental disease arising

from the undue predominance of some one of the faculties. The works of

such genius are never sound in themselves and, in especial, always

betray the general mental insanity.

The _proportion_ of the mental faculties, in a case where the general

mental power is _not_ inordinate, gives that result which we distinguish

as _talent_:—and the talent is greater or less, first, as the general

mental power is greater or less; and, secondly, as the proportion of the

faculties is more or less absolute.

The proportion of the faculties, in a case where the mental power is

inordinately great, gives that result which _is_ the true _genius_ (but

which, on account of the proportion and seeming simplicity of its works,

is seldom acknowledged to _be_ so;) and the genius is greater or less,

first, as the general mental power is more or less inordinately great;

and, secondly, as the proportion of the faculties is more or less

absolute.

An objection will be made:—that the greatest excess of mental power,

however proportionate, does not seem to satisfy our idea of genius,

unless we have, in addition, sensibility, passion, energy. The reply is,

that the “absolute proportion” spoken of, when applied to inordinate

mental power, gives, as a result, the appreciation of Beauty and horror

of Deformity which we call sensibility, together with that intense

vitality, which is implied when we speak of “Energy” or “Passion.”

24.

“And Beauty draws us by a single hair.”—Capillary attraction, of

course.

25.

It is by no means clear, as regards the present revolutionary spirit of

Europe, that it is a spirit which “moveth altogether if it move at all.”

In Great Britain it may be kept quiet for half a century yet, by placing

at the head of affairs an experienced medical man. He should keep his

forefinger constantly on the pulse of the patient, and exhibit _panem_

in gentle doses, with as much _circenses_ as the stomach can be made to

retain.

[_Conclusion in our next._

* * * * *

HISTORY OF THE COSTUME OF MEN,

DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.

(_Concluded from page 266._)

When Parisian society had passed the dread ordeal which bears the name

of the Reign of Terror, through continual scenes of blood and tears, it

seemed by a strange and almost unaccountable impulse to be impelled to

mirth and festivity. On the day after the disappearance of the

guillotine French frivolity resumed its sway with a thousand whims and

vagaries, to which the stern muse of history would pay no attention, but

to which, in this sketch of the follies of humanity, we may aptly

attend. One of the whimsicalities peculiar to the day is that in memory

of the sad toilette of the guillotine, when the hair was cropped by the

shears of the executioner, a similar _coiffure_ was the _mode_. Women

laid aside their luxuriant locks for a _coiffure à la victime_, and wore

a band of blood-red velvet around the neck, as if in derision of the

fall of the axe. This fashion, emanating in France, where recklessness

had been produced by the constant presence of danger, went the round of

the world, and the _coiffure à la victime_ was worn by both sexes in

quiet neighborhoods, which had learned only by report of the fearful

atrocities committed in the capital of civilization. Balls _à la

victime_ also became the vogue, and none were at first admitted to them

except those who had lost relations on the scaffold. To some of these

balls it was requisite not to have lost collaterals only, but a parent,

or brother, sister, husband or wife. There were exclusives even there,

and a new nobility of the scaffold was created. This was the era of

corsets _à la justice_ and bonnets _à la humanité_.

Away with care! Bring in the violin and minstrels! was the cry. A mania

for the dance pervaded all society. High and low, aristocrats and

people, antiques and moderns all danced. The chapel of the old Carmelite

convent became a ballroom, and the Jesuits’ college a place of

festivity, as did also the convents of _Saint-Sulpice_ of the _Filles de

Saint-Marie_. In the _guinguettes_ and in the most elegant society all

danced. “If the traces of crime and degradation were seen every where

else,” says a writer of that age, “a man of taste had at least the

consolation to find in these brilliant assemblages society not unlike

that which made Paris once the wonder of the world. The winter-balls are

the asylum of good taste, elegance and propriety. In them a young man

may purify himself by the spectacle of triumphant VIRTUE.” Yet the only

requisite to admission to these balls was a subscription of 96 francs,

(about $19.20.) A cotemporary thus describes one of the most celebrated

of these reunions, that at the Hotel Richelieu, in a manner to make us

skeptical about the virtue. “It is,” says he, “an arch of _transparent

robes_ of lace, head-dresses of gold and diamonds. A subscription is

required, and the visiter is ushered into the society of perfumed

goddesses, crowned with flowers, who float about in Athenian robes, and

receive the lisping flattery of the _incroyables_, who prate of their

_parole d’honneur_.” It need not be said this is a mere _phase_ of

Parisian society, fortunately not reflected by the rest of the world.

The ball of the Opera was revived, and to it we must look for the most

striking specimens of costume. The plain black domino exclusively worn

at such places during the monarchy had disappeared, and was replaced by

a similar garment of the most striking colors. Turks, Chinese and the

old traditional characters were exiled to the places of popular

amusement, and the great room of the Opera was filled with Caius Marius,

Dentatus, Cicero, Mutius Scævola, Pericles, Lycurgus, Cymon and

Herodotus. The charm, however, was gone; the new society had no

traditions; the people composing it were almost ignorant of each other,

and the playful badinage of which the old balls had been the scene was

lost forever. The _Jeunesse Dorée_, as the courtiers of the Directory

and Consulate were called, frequented these balls most faithfully, but

the old prestige was destroyed, and families were not seen as they had

been in the days of old.

It is strange with what rapidity from the epoch of the Directory a taste

for luxury and pleasure sprung up in the minds of the people. Music

again resumed its sway, and a hundred places of public amusement were

opened. One of the most significant evidences that the late or present

French Revolution is not yet over, is the fact that as yet public

amusements do not thrive, and that the people look elsewhere for

excitement than to the stage and concert. The most curious of all

spectacles is the stormy deliberation of the Assembly, and the artistes

of the Executive power the most attractive of all performers.

Gradually a disposition _to make a figure_ inoculated society. As the

Revolution became distant luxury increased. Yet it was not the _faste_

of old monarchy, but a new splendor, which the persons left on the

surface of society by the _bouleversement_ of all orders threw around

them. The women in the lowness of the bosoms of their dresses descended

below even the modesty required by the Regency, and the _incroyables_

became more fantastic than the _marquis_. The following was the costume

they adopted, and a more tasteless one can scarcely be conceived:

[Illustration]

They were not so richly dressed as their predecessors, nor were they so

elegant and graceful, but their manners were quite as affected. Then

came again the taste for gallant acrostics and love songs, which caused

the poetry of the Cheniers to be forgotten for _fantasies_ addressed to

the popular actresses. This prodigality was the more criminal because it

had a contrast in alarming want. The Revolution did not make France more

rich, nor did the hecatombs slain in defence of the liberty of the

country make the cornfields and vineyards more fruitful. French

prodigality was imitated everywhere, and to this recklessness may we

attribute the fact of the great increase of the expense of dress in

every grade of society over all the civilized world.

The mode of wearing the hair for men had long become fixed; it was

cropped and _au naturel_, and has thus remained to our own day. The male

costume became every day more and more inelegant. Frocks were worn

short, loose and broad; pantaloons loose as a sailor’s lasted to a late

day of the empire. This costume had but one merit, simplicity, a quality

inspection of the following engraving will show it to have possessed in

a great degree.

[Illustration]

All embroidery was abandoned. In 1803 the coat had taken its definite

form, where there is every prospect that it will remain permanent. It

had an immense collar and was very short before, but it was yet a coat.

Pantaloons were by no means what they are now, yet still the garment is

unchanged. The hat had become round, and the cravat was stationary.

This brings us to the end of our subject. From the doublet of Louis XIV.

costume has been traced to our time, and an impartial observer will be

satisfied we have lost nothing by the change; for none who compare the

garments of the _schneiders_ of our own era with those of the Latours or

Justins of old, will think good taste has retrograded, or dream of

comparing the bucket-like things which once were worn on the head, with

the tasteful and artistic hats of Oakford. Thus ends this disquisition

on dress, which, believe me, is no trifle; and the evidence of it is,

that nothing more ridiculous can be conceived, than would be a

President, a Senate, or a Supreme Court _in puris naturalibus_.

* * * * *

WILD-BIRDS OF AMERICA.

BY PROFESSOR FROST.

[Illustration]

THE CAT-BIRD.

The Cat-Bird is one of our earliest morning songsters, beginning

generally before break of day, and hovering from bush to bush with great

sprightliness when there is scarcely light sufficient to distinguish

him. His favorite note is the one from which he takes his name, and is

known to every farmer’s boy in the United States. It so exactly

resembles the mewing of a kitten as to be invariably taken for it by the

uninitiated; and when a number of these birds get together it is

difficult to resist the impression that all the feline residents of an

entire village are gravely discussing some important subject. But in

addition to this rather singular tone, the Cat-Bird has a variety of

others, made up, it is true, mostly of imitations, but blended together

with considerable strength and melody. The Cat-Bird is indeed no mean

songster, and when listened to attentively is capable of at once

pleasing and interesting. He is one of the most familiar of the

feathered race, seeming to have very little dread of man, and building

his nest in every garden hedge. His confidence is but too often repaid

with death; and notwithstanding his friendly habits he is persecuted

with singular and unrelenting prejudice by every inmate of the

farm-house. It must be acknowledged that he sometimes revenges himself

by drafts upon the strawberry-beds and cherry-trees.

The Cat-Bird is one of the most prolific of the feathered race, and were

he to fly in flocks would darken the air. He probably winters in

Florida, from whence he reaches Georgia early in March. In the following

month he appears in Pennsylvania. His nest is generally finished by the

beginning of May. The place is usually a hawthorn fence, a small tree,

briers, brambles or a thick vine. The female lays four eggs, of a

greenish blue color, and sometimes raises three broods in a season. In

affection and attention to their young the Cat-Bird is unsurpassed. The

cry of man imitating their brood will frequently throw her apparently

into fits; and in their defence both male and female often risk their

lives. He boldly attacks the black-snake, striking him on the head with

his bill, until the baffled reptile is glad to withdraw from the coveted

nest. It is rare that the female forsakes her eggs, even after they have

been handled by man. If one or two be broken she continues to sit upon

the others; and if strange eggs are put in she, with the assistance of

her mate, turns them out. If the nest be removed to another situation

she follows it and continues to sit as before.

The Cat-Bird is nine inches long, of a deep slate color above, which

fades into a lighter tint on the breast and throat. The legs, bill and

tail are black, with some red about the latter. He is sometimes

domesticated, and in the cage will eat fruit, insects, bread, cakes, and

nearly every kind of vegetable. He is fond of the water, and, when wild,

frequently dashes through it with great velocity. The species is said to

reach as far north as Kamschatka.

The author of the American Ornithology thus philosophizes on the

ungrounded antipathy against this harmless and interesting bird:

“Even those by whom it is entertained, can scarcely tell you why; only

they ‘hate Cat-Birds;’ as some persons tell you they hate Frenchmen,

they hate Dutchmen, etc., expressions that bespeak their own narrowness

of understanding and want of liberality. Yet, after ruminating over in

my own mind all the probable causes, I think I have at last hit upon

some of them; the principal of which seems to me to be a certain

similarity of taste, and clashing of interest, between the Cat-Bird and

the farmer.

“The Cat-Bird is fond of large, ripe garden-strawberries; so is the

farmer, for the good price they bring in the market; the Cat-Bird loves

the best and richest early cherries; so does the farmer, for they are

sometimes the most profitable of the early fruit; the Cat-Bird has a

particular partiality for the finest, ripe mellow pears; and these are

also particular favorites with the farmer. But the Cat-Bird has

frequently the advantage of the farmer, by snatching off the first

fruits of these delicious productions; and the farmer takes revenge by

shooting him down with his gun, as he finds old hats, wind-mills, and

scare-crows are no impediments in his way to these forbidden fruits; and

nothing but this resource—the ultimatum of farmers as well as

kings—can restrain his visits. The boys are now set to watch the

cherry-trees with the gun; and thus commences a train of prejudices and

antipathies, that commonly continue through life. Perhaps, too, the

common note of the Cat-Bird, so like the mewing of the animal whose name

it bears, and who itself sustains no small share of prejudice, the

homeliness of its plumage, and even his familiarity, so proverbially

known to beget contempt, may also contribute to this mean, illiberal and

persecuting prejudice; but with the generous and the good, the lovers of

nature and rural charms, the confidence which the familiar bird places

in man, by building in his garden, under his eye, the music of his song,

and the interesting playfulness of his manners, will always be more than

a recompense for all the little stolen morsels he snatches.”

[Illustration]

THE CHICADEE.

This bird is also known as the Black-capt Titmouse. It is an active,

hardy animal, abounding in the Northern and Middle States, Canada, and

as far north as the 60th parallel. It is a familiar and amusing bird,

often making its appearance in our cities in fall or winter, and

approaching near to man, in order to glean from his bounty or

carelessness a supply of food. During the same seasons large flocks

scour the fields and woods in search of insects, larvæ, seeds and

berries. Kernels containing oil, and the fat of animals are greedily

devoured by them. When all these fail, they enter barns, sheds, and the

roofs of houses, clearing them of moths, eggs of insects, spiders and

wood-worms. They appear to be very little affected by extreme cold,

being provided with thick downy feathers, and a constitution naturally

robust. In winter, numbers collect on a snow-bank, and swallow small

pieces, either to slake thirst or for pleasure. On such occasions, and

generally when collecting food, they keep up a continual chattering,

which renders their places of haunt easy of discovery.

The Chicadee builds in the hollows of trees, the nest being constructed

of moss, feathers, and similar soft materials. The eggs are from six to

a dozen in number, white, speckled with red. They rear two broods in a

season. The young are strong and lively, requiring little assistance

from the old ones, but living with them, as one family, through the fall

and winter.

Beside the usual chicking note of this bird, from whence its name, it

has a harsh angry tone, to express anger or fright, and a kind of

melancholy wail, approaching a song. Sometimes its voice is said to

resemble the noise produced by sharpening a saw. “These birds,” says

Wilson, “sometimes fight violently with each other, and are known to

attack young and sickly birds that are incapable of resistance, always

directing their blows against the skull. Being in the woods one day, I

followed a bird for some time, the singularity of whose notes surprised

me. Having shot him from off the top of a very tall tree, I found it to

be the Black-Headed Titmouse, with a long and deep indentation in the

cranium, the skull having been evidently at some former time drove in

and fractured, but was now perfectly healed. Whether or not the change

of voice could be owing to this circumstance, I cannot pretend to

decide.” The unnatural practice of destroying their sick is however

denied of these birds by late writers.

The Chicadee is five and a half inches in length, and six in extent. The

whole upper part of the head and neck is black, and the body a

mouse-color. It has often been confounded with the European Marsh

Titmouse, but there seems good reason to consider this as an error. The

foreign bird is never seen in flocks, frequents streams or

water-courses, and has a note quite different from that of the Chicadee.

It is also an inch shorter.

* * * * *

ARIEL IN THE CLOVEN PINE.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

Now the frosty stars are gone:

I have watched them, one by one,

Fainting on the shores of Dawn.

Round and full the glorious sun

Walks with level step the spray,

Through his vestibule of Day,

While the wolves that howled anon

Slink to dens and coverts foul,

Guarded by the demon owl,

Who, last night, with mocking croon

Wheeled athwart the chilly moon,

And with eyes that blankly glared

On my direful torment stared.

The lark is flickering in the light;

Still the nightingale doth sing—

All the isle, alive with Spring,

Lies, a jewel of delight

On the blue sea’s heaving breast:

Not a breath from out the West,

But some balmy smell doth bring

From the sprouting myrtle buds,

Or from meadows wide, that lie

Each a green and dazzling sky,

Paved with yellow cowslip-stars,

Cloud-like, crossed by roseate bars

Of the bloomy almond woods,

And lit, like heaven, with fairest sheen

Of the sun that hangs between.

All is life that I can spy,

To the farthest sea and sky,

And my own the only pain

Within this ring of Tyrrhene main.

In the gnarled and cloven Pine

Where that hell-born hag did chain me,

All this orb of cloudless shine,

All this youth in Earth’s old veins

Tingling with the Spring’s sweet wine,

With a sharper torment pain me.

Pansies, in soft April rains

And April’s sun, from Thea’s lap

Fill their stalks with honeyed sap,

But the sluggish blood she brings

To the tough Pine’s hundred rings,

Closer locks their cruel hold,

Closer draws the scaly bark

Round my prison, lightning-riven;

So when Winter, wild and dark,

Vexes wave and writhing wold

And with murk vapor swathes the heaven,

I must feel the vile bat creep

In my narrow cleft, to sleep.

By this coarse and alien state

Is my dainty essence wronged;

The fine sense that erst belonged

To my nature, chafes at Fate,

Till the happier elves I hate,

Who in moonlight dances turn

Underneath the palmy fern,

Or in light and twinkling bands

Follow on with linked hands

To the Ocean’s yellow sands.

The primrose-bells each morning ope

In their cool, deep beds of grass;

Violets make the airs that pass

Tell-tales of their fragrant slope.

I can see them where they spring

Never brushed by fairy wing.

All those corners I can spy

In the island’s solitude,

Where the dew is never dry,

Nor the miser bees intrude.

Cups of rarest hue are there,

Full of perfumed wine undrained—

Mushroom banquets, ne’er profaned,

Canopied by maiden-hair.

Pearls I see upon the sands,

Never touched by other hands,

And the rainbow bubbles shine

On the ridged and frothy brine,

Tenantless of voyager

Till they burst in vacant air.

O the songs that sung might be

And the mazy dances woven,

Had that witch ne’er crossed the sea

And the Pine been never cloven!

Many years my direst pain

Has made the wave-rocked isle complain.

Winds, that from the Cyclades

Came, to ruffle with foul riot

Round its shore’s enchanted quiet,

Bore my waitings on the seas;

Sorrowing birds in Autumn went

Through the world with my lament.

Still the bitter fate is mine,

All delight unshared to see,

Smarting in the cloven Pine,

While I wait the tardy axe

Which, perchance, shall set me free

From the damned witch, Sycorax.

* * * * *

REMINISCENCES;

OR AUNT ABBY’S PINCUSHION.

BY EMMA C. EMBURY.

Reader, do you love old houses, old books, old pieces of furniture, old

chairs, in short, all the relics of antiquity which fashionable people

usually discard and despise? If so, there is a bond of sympathy between

us, and I shall not be afraid to rake among the cold ashes of the past

for some unconsumed remnant of other days, even though I find only

trifles to reward my search. The very table on which I write, black with

age, and wearing a polish which nothing but years and years of manual

labor could have given it, owes its peculiar favor in my eyes to the

fact of its being more than a century old. What stories could it not

tell of days gone by; what reminiscences of tea-drinkings, and

christenings, and weddings, and funerals must be imbedded in every pore

of the old mahogany!

But for real hearty enjoyment of such a taste for homely antiquities,

commend me to an old-fashioned secretary, (_that_ is the true

name—_bureau_ is but a modern Gallicism,) with its desk, and

pigeon-holes, and secret-drawers, especially if it have been an heirloom

in possession of a maiden aunt, who died a spinster of seventy-two, or

thereabouts. What stores of relics it contains—locks of hair taken from

the heads of pretty children, whom we only recollect as wrinkled old

bodies that seemed never to have been young; mourning-rings, with

obituary inscriptions of persons whose existence we should never have

known but for this record of their death; golden knee-buckles and

sparkling paste shoe-buckles, reminding us of the days when the dress of

a gentleman was hopelessly inimitable to the rowdies and loafers of the

period; fragments of wedding-gowns, carefully rolled in bits of linen,

yellow with age—preserved in order to impress the next generation with

due respect for some wizened-up, childish old lady, who was once a

belle, and was married in a dress of silver brocade.

Perhaps, too, there are more tender memorials hidden in the secret

drawer. Let us touch the spring, and lo! what trophies of love’s power

are there. Shall we pause to read these verses? The ink is almost faded

out, the paper is falling to pieces in its folds, and he who wrote, and

she who with fluttering heart first read those tender lines, have long

since been dirt and ashes. Here is a quaint old ring—two hands clapped

together, and within the circle an inscription in old English

characters—the single word, “_Forever_.” She who once wore that ring

was an angel upon earth, and he who placed it there, lived and died “as

the beasts that perish;” will their union be, indeed, _forever_? Look at

that bracelet, woven of soft, silken hair, its golden clasps are dimmed

with age, but the hair still wears its rich sunshiny lustre, though she

who bestowed it as a parting gift to a sister, has been long a tenant of

the tomb. What is this, folded so carefully and so closely, like one of

the mummied mysteries of the pyramids? A curl, a thick, dark curl—not

the long flowing tress that might have floated over woman’s graceful

neck; these crisped and glossy tendrils tell of the strength and beauty

of manhood. A faint perfume rises from the inner folds of the

envelope—the ashes of a rose are there enclosed. And this is all! But

what a tale do these scanty memorials of a by-gone love impart to the

beholder! What matters it that the details of the story are forgotten?

What matters it whether the lady or her lover were to blame? It was a

love tender and true, but yet unhappy, else wherefore the curl of raven

hair so carefully cherished, and the dead rose so reverently buried

beside the more life-like memento? The love which brings happiness

becomes diffusive in its expression, and the love-tokens of the youth

and maiden are hidden, in after-days, beneath the accumulation of

affection’s later offerings. But when one flower becomes the treasure of

a life-time; when one lock of hair is guarded like the heart’s pearl of

price, then be sure that the hallowing touch of sorrow has been there.

It is only when grief and love go hand in hand, that trifles become holy

relics wherever they tread. Alas! do we not all wear upon our hearts a

reliquary, in which, impearled with tears, and adorned with the fine

gold of our best affections, we have enshrined some fragment of the

past, whose value we alone can tell?

But I am growing sad, serious, and, of course, dull; yet the object

which led me into this train of thought was certainly not calculated to

inspire any especial exhibition of sentiment. I was rummaging in such a

secretary as I have described, when I accidentally pulled out a round

pincushion, banded with silver about the middle, and attached to a

substantial silver chain, which terminated in a broad hook, for the

purpose of fastening it to the girdle of some thrifty housewife. On the

heavily-wrought circlet which made the equinoctial line of the purple

velvet globes which had been doomed to do duty in so humble a capacity,

were the initials “_A. L._,” and I at once recognized it as the constant

appendage of my respected and venerated relative, Aunt Abby.

I had just been reading a paragraph respecting the female clubs in

Paris, and the sight of this relic of old times, reminded me of the fact

that poor Aunt Abbey had lived just half a century too soon, for to the

day of her death the old lady’s favorite topic of conversation was the

“equality of the sexes.” How would she have rejoiced in the modern

attempts to enfranchise woman from her thraldom! how would she have

gloried in the idea of woman’s equal rights of property! how would she

have delighted in the prospect of political privileges for her sex! how

she would have expatiated upon the benefits of a female House of

Representatives! Aunt Abby (my _great_ aunt, by the by) was emphatically

an advocate for woman’s “_standing alone_,” (I believe that is the

phrase among the reformers,) and certainly, though she had a father,

uncles, cousins, to say nothing of a husband, she succeeded in

“_standing alone_,” to a certain extent, all her life.

But what, you will say, had a disciple of progress, a defender of

woman’s rights, a declaimer against woman’s slavery, to do with a

_pincushion_? Let me sketch her portrait at full length, and then you

will see how curiously she blended the duties and prerogatives of both

sexes in her own proper person.

Abigal, or, as she was usually called, Abby Leyburn, was the only child

of a learned and eccentric clergyman, who, being disappointed in his

hope of exercising his theories of education on a son, chose to educate

his daughter after the manner of a boy. Fortunately for him, the little

girl possessed a singularly strong and quick mind. She grasped at

knowledge as most children would at playthings, and imbibed wisdom with

as much zest as others would have sucked an orange. Latin, Greek and

Hebrew, mathematics, moral philosophy, to say nothing of the lighter

accomplishments of botany, geology, and natural history, were _among_

the young lady’s acquirements. Her father had determined to make her a

second Madame Dacier, and he really seemed likely to find her a sort of

female _Crichton_. Nor were these all her acquisitions. The details of

housekeeping, the thrift, management, and tidiness necessary to the

comfort of American homes, was as easy as the alphabet to Abby. She

could knit, and spin, and sew; she could bake, and brew, and cook; she

could milk, and churn, and make cheese; and nobody could so effectually

and rapidly “set things to rights.”

Beside all this, Abby Leyburn, at twenty years of age, was one of the

handsomest girls in the country. She was like nothing so much as the

effigy of Britannia on an English penny. Don’t laugh, reader, the

comparison is a highly complimentary one, but lest you should not

recollect the stately Mrs. Bull, I will describe my heroine. Abby was

just six feet high, but magnificently proportioned, a perfect Juno in

form, with large black eyes, a high forehead, full red lips, and a chin

as massive and as despotic in its expression as Napoleon’s. Her profile

was superb—bold, strongly-marked, but beautifully classical. Her

abundant hair, usually worn back from her brow, and gathered into a knot

at the back of her head, was black as the crow’s wing. Her teeth were

white, strong, and somewhat pointed in shape, a peculiarity which rather

impaired the softness of her smile, inasmuch as it was always associated

with the beholder’s remembrance of a somewhat similar conformation in

the dental perfections of the only wild animal who has ever been accused

of laughing—I mean the hyena. Not that Abby bore the slightest

resemblance to the disagreeable creature just named. But her smile

certainly lacked that indefinable charm which usually belongs to such

pleasant demonstrations of good humor.

As a specimen of the human animal Abby was perfect. The superb

proportions of her well-rounded figure, her complexion, pure, fresh, and

radiant with health, her firm step, quick, active motions, and great

strength of frame, combined to make her a model of “_le grande et beau

physique_.” Add to these personal attractions, her learning, and her

domestic accomplishments, and one might almost fancy that Aunt Abby, in

her younger days at least, came near being

“That faultless monster which the world ne’er saw.”

What did she lack? you will ask. Certainly not virtues, for she abounded

in them. No; her defects were of a very different character. She had

every thing that one would consider desirable; but Aunt Abby lacked “one

sweet weakness.” There was the difficulty. She had no _weaknesses_. That

magnificent person of hers was brimful of strong, stubborn intellect. If

she had a heart, it was only a piece of mechanism, necessary to the

workings of the human machine. The brain—the strong, massive, abundant

brain, which lay behind that immense forehead, was the only motive power

which she acknowledged. Had she no benevolence, no kindly impulses, no

yearning tenderness of soul, no sentiment? Not an atom of either; yet

she did the most benevolent things in the world, lavished kindness upon

all who deserved it, was full of gentleness toward little children, and,

if judged by her deeds, would have seemed overflowing with the milk of

human kindness. But still it was the dictates of that cold despotic

intellect which she obeyed. “People must be in want, and must be

relieved by those who had means. Humanity was full of suffering—the

healthy must look after the sick. Little children are incipient men and

women, therefore must be taken care of. Sentiment was but the

_penumbra_, the shadow of a shadow as unsubstantial as itself.” Such

were among the apothegms of this singular woman. Reversing the

established axiom, that “there is nothing in the intellect which does

not come by the senses,” she seemed to assert that “there was nothing in

the senses which did not come by the intellect.”

As Mr. Leyburn held the office of president over one of the few

institutions of learning then in America, Abby had ample opportunity for

displaying her talents and beauty to the admiring eyes of sundry young

students. But Abby had no personal vanity; she knew she was handsome,

just as she knew she was strong and robust, and she would have scorned

the idea of being a belle. The young men, although belonging to that

peculiarly inflammable species known by the name of “College Boys,”

would as soon have thought of falling in love with the stone image of

Minerva on the college-green, as with the president’s learned daughter.

There was something in her sturdy good sense which everybody rather

liked, yet the want of softness and pliability in her character excited

a certain dread in all who came near her. Gifted with peculiar powers

both of mind and body, she had no compassion for feebleness of frame or

infirmity of purpose, for she had no clear perception of such things.

Her intellect was like a telescope through which she could examine the

grand and the remote, but she could not use it as a microscope to

examine the littlenesses of humanity. It is only through the sympathies

of the heart that we learn respect for the sufferings, or compassion for

the weaknesses of our fellows—and Abby Leyburn had no sympathies,

except those of the brain.

Perfectly self-possessed, because thoroughly conscious of her own vast

superiority, and utterly indifferent as to the impression she was likely

to make, Abby’s manners in society had all the elegance and nonchalant

ease which fashion tries so hard to teach. She conversed exceedingly

well on all subjects, and possessed the gift (most rare among talented

women) of making herself as agreeable to her own sex, as to the men.

Everybody admired her, yet everybody feared her; everybody acknowledged

her rare powers, yet everybody kept at a certain distance. “He comes too

near who comes to be denied,” so says one of the wits and demi-reps of a

past age; but Abby never suffered any one to reach the confines of

_Love-Land_, and, of course, none ever attained to _Declaration Point_.

It is difficult to imagine a character like that of Aunt Abby. A woman

without softness, and tenderness, and sentiment, seems such an anomaly,

that we are tempted to doubt the probability of her possessing any of

the qualities we seek in woman. But Abby had all the necessary knowledge

of womanly duties, all the considerateness we look for in woman, all the

attention to detail which is a woman’s peculiar province, and withal was

possessed of the most indomitable good humor. She was sententious,

because every truth became, in her mind, an axiom, to be stowed away in

the smallest possible space; she was dogmatic, because her opinions were

made up by her own unaided reflection, and were not to be changed or

modified by words. Her self-esteem was prodigious; it was not the puny

vanity which is so often dignified with such a title, it was rather a

magnificent _Johnsonesque_ self-appreciation, precisely like that which

looms so grandly beside the vain pettinesses of the biographer of the

great lexicographer.

She was certainly a great puzzle to every one. A woman who could quote

Longinus, read Homer, expound a disputed text in the Hebrew Bible, chop

logic with the most caviling acuteness, and talk of the Differential

Calculus as if it were the last new poem, was certainly something of a

wonder; but when that same woman was seen seated on the milking-stool,

or standing at the churn, or presiding over a blazing oven, or, broom in

hand, raising motes in the sunbeams by her vigorous attack upon the

“dust of the schools,” or displaying the beauty of her Juno-like figure,

as she paced to and from the huge spinning-wheel; she was certainly a

_world’s_ wonder. There is a half-remembered story of Aunt Abby’s

spirit, which no one dares to talk of openly; but it is believed that a

certain gentleman, now high in civic honors, received, when a youth of

twenty, a severe _caning_ from the lady, in consequence of some

impertinence, offered when under the influence of a deep potation. But

this may be only a piece of scandal.

The circumstances of Aunt Abby’s marriage were as peculiar as were her

own traits of character. Among the students of the college was a young

gentleman of large fortune and fine talents, who was afflicted with a

constitutional timidity and nervousness that paralyzed all his powers.

He was the only child of a widowed mother, who had foolishly resisted

the boy’s wish to go to school. He had therefore remained at home under

the charge of tutors, and when the death of his mother released him from

her affectionate tyranny, he entered college only to find himself

inferior in attainments to every one else, and a perfect butt, from his

timid shyness. He was full of poetry and sentiment. Among realities he

was lost and bewildered, but in the world of fancy he was a hero even to

himself.

To a gay set of frolicksome students nothing could offer better game

than the mental and personal peculiarities of the rich young Southerner,

who rejoiced in the name of Sampson Terricott, (a name soon transmuted

into Sampson Tear-your-coat) by his companions. Nothing could be more

ludicrous than the association of such a name with such a person. The

redoubtable Sampson was some five feet four inches in height, with an

exceedingly slight figure, small features of the style usually

designated as “_snub-faced_,” with a skim-milk complexion, and hair of

that _sun-burned_ flaxen color, so common among hatless country urchins.

His voice was a piping treble, with an occasional tone in it like that

of a cracked penny-trumpet. His hands and feet were ridiculously small,

and when attired in his college-gown, it required but little

caricaturing to draw his portrait in a style decidedly feminine, yet

decidedly like. He received all kinds of nicknames for his personal

peculiarities, but, perhaps, none annoyed him more than the _soubriquet_

of “Miss Dalilah,” which was generally bestowed upon him. Yet a mind

filled with images of beauty was hidden beneath this unpromising

exterior. He had no force of character, no iron strength of intellect,

but he had an unbounded imagination, and an unlimited reach of vision

into spiritualities. He was a poet, but lacking the key to a poet’s

harmonies of utterance, he expended his strength in the beautiful

cloud-land of metaphysics and became a moral philosopher.

Like all diminutive men Sampson had a decided partiality for large

women. The colossal beauty of Abby Leyburn had struck him when he first

beheld her, and he loved nothing so well as to contemplate her from a

distance, being quite too timid to address himself to her. Now there was

in Abby a certain propensity that might almost be called compassion

toward little people. She regarded them as a huge Newfoundland dog often

looks upon a poodle—their very insignificance and feebleness seemed a

claim upon her protection. It had often been remarked that Miss Leyburn

showed especial favor to those whom she denominated “the _poor little_

fellows,” and no one was surprised, therefore, to find her taking a

great fancy to Sampson Terricott. There was something so appealing in

his manner, such a tacit acknowledgment of inferiority in his humble

demeanor, such an irresistible claim to tender treatment in his timid

little voice and stammering speech, that Abby at once took to him as to

one of those “incurables” for whom the world is a hospital, and every

charitable person ought to be a nurse. To the gentle Sampson the lady

became “like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” She

overshadowed him so completely that he could find repose and refreshment

in her presence. Instead of attempting to be any thing, or do any thing,

or say any thing, he gave himself up to the enjoyment of a consciousness

of perfect insignificance as compared with the splendid creature, who

could excel any and every body. It was a comfort to see everybody look

small in her presence, but to the nervous student it was a positive

luxury to _feel small_, without being mortified and disgraced.

Sampson was not in love with his Minerva, he had no sentiment, no

passionate longings for any thing which the world of reality could

afford. His loves were all idealities, and could not be prisoned in

flesh. But with the same weak fondness that had once tied him to his

mother’s apron-string, he submitted to the guidance of Abby Leyburn.

What were Abby’s motives for troubling herself with little Sampson no

one knew or cared; but when it was known that she was soon to become

Mrs. Terricott, everybody thought that the large fortune of the tiny

lover would account for the whole affair.

As usual, the world was mistaken. Abby was as free from all mercenary

feelings as she was from all other frailties. But she had her own

notions about doing good. She saw in Sampson Terricott a highly

imaginative and gifted man, wasting mental power in immature schemes

which his timidity thwarted in their very outset, and suffering a fine

fortune to be idle in his hands for want of energy to take up his

stewardship. He was weak in health, and subject to attacks of morbid

spirits which sometimes threatened his reason. In a word, Abby saw that

he wanted some one to take care of him, and she fixed upon herself as

the fittest person. She was now nine-and-twenty, in the full bloom of

health and beauty, and, as she argued, “if society provides no other

resource for destitute females than marriage, I must marry, or at my

father’s death find myself a beggar.” Having come to this conclusion,

she decided that, as the giving herself a master was out of the

question, and the idea of possessing a slave in her husband was equally

disagreeable, she had better divide the difference, and unite herself to

one who needed a stronger nature on which to rest.

How the courtship was managed no one ever knew. I am inclined to think

there was not much love-making, and from the kind of dreamy surprise

which Sampson exhibited when questioned about his engagement, it is

presumed he was scarcely conscious of his own happiness. People said

that Miss Leyburn, reversing the usual order of things, had popped the

question to Sampson, who stammered out, “Yes,” through sheer fright. The

probability is that he did exactly as she directed him. She gave him to

understand she meant to marry him, and if he offered no resistance,

feeling rather pleased at being relieved from responsibility for the

rest of his life.

They were married in the chapel of the college, and the half-suppressed

glee of the saucy students may be imagined. All the blank walls about

the college were filled with caricatures, illustrative of the one idea,

“_paired, not matched_.” One of these charcoal libels was particularly

annoying, it represented a nondescript and beautiful winged animal—a

Hippogriff—with the face of a woman, curving her proud neck beneath a

rein held in the hands of Apollo, while directly beneath was a second

representation of the same magnificent creature tamely yoked with an ox

to the plough.

But Abby cared little for these things, and she would not suffer her

husband to pay any attention to them. She made him one of the best wives

in the world, and though she was ten years his elder, and thrice as big

as he, nobody ever believed that he repented the step he had taken.

Their home was at the South, and, during her husband’s lifetime, Abby

never paid a visit to her early friends. But she was visited by her

family connections, and we younger members of the circle were often

entertained in childhood by the accounts of Aunt Abby’s splendid service

of gold-plate, her massive silver ewers and basins in every

dressing-room, her Turkey carpets and rich hangings of Gobelin tapestry,

and all the paraphernalia of great wealth and magnificent tastes.

When Terricott died, she exhibited her peculiarities of character still

more strikingly. She knew people had accused her of marrying for money,

and she therefore induced him to make a will, bestowing all his large

property upon his own relatives, with the exception of a life-annuity of

a thousand dollars to his widow. “I don’t want his money,” she said, “I

took good care of him while he lived, and if he did not become a great

man, it was no fault of mine. He was rich, and I used his money freely,

because he liked to see fine things and good things around him; but now

I have no occupation here, and so I shall go back to my old home, and

‘live along.’ I dare say something will be given me to do.”

So she buried her poor little Sampson, handed over his property to the

heirs, and with the first instalment of her annuity in her pocket, came

to take up her abode in ——. But her father had been dead for many

years, and the place was filled with new people who knew little of her

history or of her character. She soon became disgusted with her new

home, and removing to New York, established herself there for the rest

of her life. In her later years she gave up taking exercise daily, and

in consequence of this she grew immensely large. I have the faintest

shadow of a reminiscence respecting her personal appearance at that

time. I was a child of perhaps five years old, and had a dear old aunt,

who was as little as a fairy, and almost as benevolent. This kind little

old body once took me to see our great Aunt Abby; but my head was

crammed full of fairy legends and nursery tales, and when I saw an

immensely large, fat woman sitting in a chair from which she could not

lift her ponderous form, and met the full stare of her great black eyes,

I thought of the Ogress who always devoured little children, and

immediately set up such a howl of terror that I was sent away in

disgrace. She died not long afterward, having lived to count her

_ninetieth_ birthday. Her disinterestedness left her no fortune to

bestow on her relatives, and but for her profile, (which, cut in black

paper, hangs in an attic room,) her pincushion, and the traditions which

remain in the family respecting her, all trace of her has vanished from

the earth.

Poor Aunt Abby! she used to shock the women of her time by talking of

women’s rights, and was guilty once of the enormity of wishing to be

Pope of Rome, in order to carry out some scheme for the advancement of

woman’s social position. She talked of _freedom_ until some pious prudes

really suspected she meant _license_, and she predicted that the time

would come when the genius of woman would rise superior to the imposed

trammels of sex. She should have lived in the present age, when she

would have seen woman’s struggles for emancipation, as exhibited in the

French female clubs, and the German free associations, to say nothing of

the free inquirers and declaimers against female slavery in this

country. She should have lived till now to exhibit a rare and peculiar

instance of masculine power submitting itself cheerfully to feminine

duties; and perhaps the knowledge that Aunt Abby, with all her mental,

moral, and physical perfections, lived and died unloving and unloved,

might go far toward settling the question of _woman’s rights_, and make

her quite satisfied with her easily accorded _privileges_.

* * * * *

PARTING.

INSCRIBED TO MY SISTER ADELA M. WADSWORTH.

BY MRS. LYDIA JANE PEIRSON.

Parting! Oh, is it not the bitterness

Of life, and death? It were small agony

If we and those we love—heart pressed to heart—

With loving words, and blended prayers, could die.

’Tis not the rending of the strings of life

That makes death terrible. The mental pain

Is parting from our dear and beautiful,

Who weep, and pray—and bid us live in vain.

It is not that we fear to close our eyes,

And rest from life’s long labor, that we cling

To pain and weakness. ’Tis fond human love

Which binds our soul with many a quivering string.

To know that we shall never look again

Into those loving eyes—shall never hear

Again those sweet-toned voices—never clasp

Again those forms, so tender, and so dear.

Yes—parting is the bitterness of death—

And life is full of parting. Day by day

We see the cherished of our homes depart,

As fledglings from the bird-nests flit away.

The cherished ones, whom we have called our own,

And loved so many years, that they have grown

Into our hearts, and so become a part

Of all that we have felt, or done, or known.

The ever-present with us, who were wont

To greet us every morning, with a smile,—

To answer to our voices all day long,—

And cheer us with love’s sunlight all the while.

Each hath a separate mission to fulfill,

And when their path diverges from our own,

And they have said farewell! and turned away

From our embrace—oh, then, we are _alone!_

We miss them in all places, everywhere,

And feel a shadow, and an emptiness

Forever by our side—but most of all

In the departed one’s accustomed place.

We turn to speak to them—they are not there—

The thought we would have uttered curdles back

Upon our heart, a stifling agony—

We turn our tearful gaze along the track

By which the dear one went—’tis desolate—

Our home—our heart—our world is desolate—

In all the places where our joy has been

Dark shades, and weeping memories, congregate.

But when our only one—the dearest, best,

The angel of our household, bids good-bye

And goes forth weeping—then the tortured heart

Reels with the anguish of the broken tie.

Yes—parting is the bitterness of life—

The agony of death—the ban of earth—

The inevitable doom—to love—to part—

Is the condition of our human birth.

Thank God! there is a world where loved ones meet

In perfect beauty, and unclouded joy,

Where all is love—where parting never comes

The everlasting rapture to destroy.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

* * * * *

MONTGOMERY’S HOUSE.

THE HEAD-QUARTERS OF GENERAL JACKSON AT THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

By the courtesy of Mr. J. R. Smith, the artist, we are permitted to

present our readers with another view of a remarkable place. It is

Montgomery’s House, occupied by General Jackson as his headquarters at

the time of the celebrated Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. It is

surrounded by a splendid garden and grounds, and a beautiful grove of

cedars, which in this latitude grow to an immense size. The line of

intrenchments running up the lane by Montgomery’s House back to the

cedar swamp can still be distinctly traced. Farther down on the banks of

the river Mississippi are four live-oak trees, of immense size, forming

a square, and hanging with Spanish moss. Beneath these trees the British

commander, General Packenham, expired and was laid out. The spot is a

favorite resort of curious visiters from the city, who go to examine the

battle-ground. Below this is a splendid building, called the

Battle-Ground Sugar Refinery, on the rear of which is a group of

willows, with a mound in the centre, and surrounded by water. Here are

buried the 2000 British warriors who were slain in the battle of the 8th

of January. A planter’s house near the spot was occupied, previously to

the action, by General Packenham as his head-quarters. All these objects

form very suitable subjects for the pencils of our artists; and we are

only surprised that they have not been drawn, engraved and familiarized

to the public long ago.

* * * * *

EDITOR’S TABLE.

GOING AROUND THE HORN.

[Illustration: THE DIRECT ROAD TO FORTUNE.]

The search after the philosopher’s stone, after having vexed the

crucibles, and puzzled the brains of alchemists for ages, is about to be

rewarded with success. The New Eldorado promises wonders as great, and

riches as abundant, as the most vigilant of dreamers could imagine. The

phrase “untold gold” is meaningless now, for nothing but gold is talked

of, and the wealth, which was significant of immensity, when coupled

with “iron chests,” and “bank vaults,” is sicklied over, and feeble,

when contrasted with the fields of gold which glitter over thousands of

square miles. The very idea of “10,000 a year” has become paltry—it is

but the cost of a dish of bean-soup in California—suggestive of utter

poverty—the daily scrapings of the poorest and most indigent digger,

self-sold into slavery at the mines. The man who owns a square of brick

houses is nobody; an empty braggart, beside him who sits upon golden

rocks, with a cigar in his mouth, overlooking acres of the shining

metal. The very millionaire who used to strut about consequentially,

with his hands thrust into his pockets significantly, may be hooted now

by the veriest sweep in California, as a vulgar ragamuffin, who would

scarce have money enough to pay his board there on Saturday night, and

would be utterly at the mercy of his landlady.

Girard College, as a building, is very well, too, in its way, as

reminding us of an old gentleman who spent half a century in picking up

gold flakes, one at a time, with his fingers; a plodding, careful old

chap, who lacked the creative faculty altogether, and had no idea of

cradles and basins. His school-house on the Ridge Road will do very well

as a specimen of primitive architecture, and might answer very well as a

sort of outhouse to the palaces that we _will have_ in California—a

very good stable for the Master of Hounds to Col. Mason, or some other

grandee—but as it stands, it is _now_ a shocking evidence of parsimony,

utterly disgraceful to the spirit of the age. A sort of lame and

impotent conclusion to a long life foolishly spent.

The far-famed Genoese must have been a dull fellow, or he would have

cast anchor in the Pacific, near San Francisco, instead of sailing about

to no purpose. It is a wonder, too, how he could have been so stupid,

when there are so many routes to this desirable haven. He certainly must

have been a bad navigator, too, or he would have got around the Horn,

some how, at some time. But it was reserved for the adventurous sons of

Jonathan to make the successful voyage, and with _the sword_ to cut the

way to fortune; and instead of diverging like radii from a common

centre, to take the outermost limit, and to claim as his own all that he

walked around and into. Showing conclusively that instead of bothering

one’s brain about getting on the right side of a question, the safest

plan is to get around it, and capture it by force of arms, as the Irish

policeman did with the mob. It saves a vast deal of hair-splitting, in

argument, and of irrelevant discussion, first to knock down your man,

and then pinion him. Or like the Cockney sportsman, who winged the

farmer’s goose, to say that you “only came out for the sport, and now

that you have hit the bird, you have no objection to _buy him_.”

Jonathan in this case, and in this way, seems to have bagged the one

that laid the golden eggs, which we used to read of in the nursery, and

a whole army of his sons are now rifling her nest. She must have left

behind her a prolific brood if she satisfies the whole of them. The

veriest “madness of the moon,” must impart a feeble pulse, compared with

the fever which Jonathan’s lucky hit has created in the whole family.

Homeopathy is totally at fault in this disease. Nothing but very violent

depletion will answer.

The whole body of family physicians, and nurses of the body politic,

have their hands full, and the multifarious practice sets at naught the

popular idea of perfection, as a necessary consequence. It is gratifying

to know, however, that in the absence of consistent and regular

treatment, the popular remedy applied in its early stages is conducive

to longevity and temperance—those who suffer severely from the fever

here, and become exceedingly dry in consequence, are cured effectually

by GOING AROUND THE HORN. Lying water-logged under the

Tropics being rather a different thing from “getting up a breeze” at

home, and being eminently suggestive of sobriety of thought, and of

taking their cue from facts, and not from “Q Brandy” continually. Young

gentlemen whose systems were here so relaxed, that nothing but taking a

horn two or three times before dinner could impart to them sufficient

energy to attend to out-of-door business, go around it, and give it a

wide berth in the hot latitudes—shut their ears to all hints about the

nervous system, and with a hardihood and self command, acquired within

view of sharks and yellow fever, brave danger without stimulus, and

fatigue without “having a gale.”

Under the tropics, too, young men, who have at home found no difficulty

in getting three sheets in the wind, have rather an aerial difficulty in

getting a flowing sail, and with plenty of steam on board, in the

absence of propellers, decline all invitation to steam it, “to drive

dull care away”—the trouble greatest, for the time, being to get away

themselves. The boys who often declared in the hours of midnight that

they were the particular individuals who feared no noise, and who would

not go home till morning, wish themselves very quietly dozing there, and

are perfectly subdued and indolent under the Equator in a three days’

calm, and do not insist upon “three more—and again,” so that they have

an opportunity of candid inquiry and sober reflection, which may be

serviceable—promotive of a thirst for cold water, and an abhorrence of

dark brandy, in a “_sun_ny” clime. We do not see why something cannot be

done for Temperance in this way, as well as not. People talk very

disparagingly about “whipping the devil round the stump,” but so that

the old scoundrel gets soundly thrashed at last, I never could see that

the _modus operandi_ is so particularly important.

Now, without pursuing this question, or glancing at the disappointment

of the adventurer—the long days of toil in unhealthy waters—the

burning heat of the sun—the chilling nights on a dreary soil—the

fevers of the mind as well as of the body—the hope deferred—the horror

of being mixed with such society—the desolation of all good that he

must see around him, mingling with the memory of the calm delights, the

peaceful repose, the joys and purity of home—the glad eyes of sister or

mother left behind, but now seemingly looking out sadly upon the

scene—the longings for that paradise once more, where in boyhood he put

up a prayer at the parental knee:—Without speaking of all this, is the

reward, reader, worthy of your sacrifice or of mine, of present comforts

and present friends. I think not. The road to fortune, to honorable

advancement, is open and plainly marked here, and beaten as it is, with

the tread of many feet, it offers far greater chances of success than

all the sparkling sands of California, mixed as they are with all that

is vile and unworthy. In that immense crowd of adventurers, which is

pouring in from every clime, virtue and goodness will be but as pearls

dropped into the sea—selfishness unmitigated, vice unabashed, and even

red-handed murder, will rear aloft their hideous forms, overawing all

decency, and setting at naught “all law, all precedent, all right.” The

very absence of all female restraint, their tender charities, and gentle

generosities and affections, and noble self sacrifices, which knit the

bands of society together and render man human, will there cause to be

let loose all the savage passions and instincts of our natures, and a

vast army of unprincipled men, fierce in the pursuit of wealth,

unrelenting in their towering selfishness as the grave, will make

California a second Pandemonium. What is all the gold of the earth, in a

land of wrong and violence, and that smells of blood heaven-high, with

the whole atmosphere below tainted with its appalling odor?

No! let _us_ stay at home, and cultivate habits of industry, economy and

temperance. With a vigilant eye and a steady step pursue the path which

has been marked out for us to tread through life—never swerving from

our duty to the allurements of pleasure—or by the discouragements of

defeat—but up and on! fearless, determined, brave; looking all danger

manfully in the face; grappling with all difficulties, if not with the

strength, with the determination of giants to overcome; never growing

faint or weary in well doing—and my life for it, in ten years you will

not exchange places with the proudest aristocrat in California, whose

heart and brain have been seared in the acquisition of wealth. Above all

things, let those of us who stay behind imitate the self command of the

adventurers who have gone, and go boldly and resolutely “AROUND THE

HORN” here, and depend upon it, we shall find that the true

philosopher’s stone—the real Eldorado—the place where we may truly

enjoy the horn of Plenty and the cup of Peace, IS AT HOME—AROUND OUR

OWN HEARTH-STONE—where the light of kind eyes, and the prayers of warm

and true hearts ascend to heaven with our own, for guidance and

protection.

G. R. G.

THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY PRESS.

THE NORTH AMERICAN.—The very head and front of the offending party

journals, oracular, dignified, and eminently solemn. Doctor Bird’s

leaders have a stately look in solid column, and his political articles

read as if they had been subjected to a very patient drill before

showing themselves to the public eye; but his fine genius flashes out

the moment he touches a congenial subject. Of all American writers we

look upon him as the best qualified to conduct a literary journal, or a

monthly review. But, alas! he is a martyr, who must groan under the

daily responsibilities of a party organ, with a hearty disrelish of its

duties. Why should two such men as Bird and Bryant be sold into slavery

in politics, and be thus comparatively lost to the lovers of polite

literature? “Independent,” the Washington correspondent of the journal,

dashes in like Saladin, and wo to the Christian who gets a full stroke

of his scimitar; he is cloven to the chin, or has something to nurse and

to remember. His egotism has been objected to by those who dislike his

slashing style, but that, as much as his correctness of information, has

given his correspondence character. He is at least fearless in the use

of his weapon, and strikes at high and low with equal strength and

temerity. Hennis gives us once in a while his touching little essays,

conceived in the quiet beauty of Mr. Chandler’s style—the Gamaliel at

whose feet he sat and learned. For the rest, we do not like the paper.

It is heavy, cautious, and cruelly cold and selfish.

THE INQUIRER.—The model of a daily family paper, marked by continued

and unwearied industry, and beaming with the kindly nature of its

editor. Its ample pages are crowded with well-chosen selections and

active scissoring of news paragraphs; not, however, always carefully

pruned and clipped down. It is only once in a while that Mr. Morris

shows us that he can write, and his Saturday Readings are full of the

warm impulses and genuine kindness of the man, but are written more for

purposes of good than to display his powers. Occasionally he warms up in

his general articles, and lets out a spark or two, shows us a glimpse of

the wealth he hoards, and causes us to wish for continued examples of

the ability he possesses. In his political leaders he sometimes is

forced by unfair opponents into a little causticity at the opening of

his article, but he relents before he gets through, and will most likely

give his “friend” a chance to back out of his blunder. He has not the

heart, though he possesses the strength, to press his antagonist to the

wall, and to pin him there. Mr. Morris has an agreeable, ready and

devoted coadjutor in Mr. Crump, a man of various learning and diligent

application. This journal is shockingly “made up,” to our taste, and is

all over disfigured with staring black head-lines, which look to our eye

like the sable of a hearse—its “_postscript_” is our particular horror.

THE DAILY NEWS.—The absence of Judge Conrad from the daily press seems

to have reinvigorated his powers, and has given additional force to his

pen, and fire to his thoughts; like an unprisoned eagle, with a spring

he darts to the skies and gazes in the sun. Some of the finest articles

he ever wrote have appeared in the News. Every subject that Judge Conrad

touches, seems to have been fused, as in a furnace, and the metal flies

off in lumps from his gigantic mind. His intellect illumes and pervades

every part of his subject, and when he drops it, there is nothing more

to be said. His compact, all-grasping sentences, may furnish subjects

for whole leaders to others, but the vitality has been extracted, and

any treatment of the topic is tame and impotent in contrast. He does

not, however, always seem to know the power of the words he uses, and

will give a whack with his sledge-hammer with a will at a fly, which

would effectually knock down an ox. Hence he should never write short

paragraphs upon unimportant topics—his style is too ponderous. The

News, as a political sheet, is well managed, barring some desire,

occasionally manifested, to pull, for personal ends, the strings of its

influence; but it is sadly deficient in mercantile news and facts. At

this writing, too, it is shamefully brought out, and is made up as if

the matter had been sifted over the form, and then locked-up and

printed, and very badly printed at that. Mr. Sanderson should look to

this, for the general editing of his News is too good to come before the

public under so great a disadvantage.

THE PUBLIC LEDGER.—Unquestionably the best penny paper that has ever

been established—showing in all its appointments the very perfection of

mechanical execution, and in its news collection and collation,

sleepless enterprise and vigilance, as well as persevering ability. Its

leaders are unequal, for the most part written with great force and

adroitness, upon topics familiar or of practical utility, but

occasionally insufferably stupid and dull. On scientific topics it

affects the _ultra_-learned. We always drop the Ledger when it gets upon

“oligies.” Mr. Lane, whose quiet humor occasionally gleams out in his

short editorial articles, like lightning from the edge of a summer

cloud, is unquestionably the _best_ news man in our daily press; clear

and discriminative, you always find in his columns all that ought to be

said of any and every news fact, and no more. A nicety of judgment very

rarely attained, and never in our experience so fully, as in the case of

the late Mr. Holden of the Courier.

THE SUN.—Graced by a good humor that no annoyance can ruffle, but

occasionally inclined to mischief. Carelessly giving a whack, regardless

of consequences, and forgetting it at the same instant. We regard Mr.

Wallace as a most able man in any paper; enduring, persevering, and

always on the alert. We know of no one in his department of a newspaper

who can for so long a time continue to perform downright hard, honest

good labor. His nerves and his temper are equally enduring. He appears

to have been born where they sing “Old Virginy never tire,” and to have

lived through life, the music, the temper, and the sentiment of the

song. The topmost bubble of his heart always sparkles. He is, too, what

we like, a pretty good hater, though with a good deal more philosophy

than is often practiced, in taking his revenges. With _his_ editorials,

his SON makes a capital newspaper, agreeable, gossipy and gay. The news

is filled in with the coolness of an experienced hand, and with the

uprightness and newspaper devotion of his father, he will one day stand

as _high_.

THE PENNSYLVANIAN.—Col. Forney is the best political editor that his

party has ever had in Philadelphia—discerning, prompt and fearless. He

deals, however, too much in light skirmishing, and pops his enemy off

once in a while from an unsuspected cedar-bush, merely to show the

accuracy of his aim. But he is an able tactician, and when he _does_

close fairly, his opponent finds him a tough and sinewy customer. His

articles seem for the most part to have been dashed off at a heat, and

lack the polishing touch. He often, too, uses a hard word for its sound

where another would be more effective. Occasionally he sits down in

earnest, blocks out his ground, and makes sore and steady advances; and

especially when he has occasion to defend Mr. Buchanan, his intellect is

fully aroused and on the alert—he then writes with his full vigor and

spirit, and writes well. His partner, Mr. Hamilton, is one of the most

capable business printers that we know, and every thing in his

department is marked by exactness and proficiency. The press-work of the

Pennsylvanian, on each issue, is what the magazines would call “a

specimen number.”

THE TIMES.—A jaunty, crotchetty, impudent little sheet, filled with

quibs and quirks, and a sort of laughing philosophy that shouts over

seriousness. Its editor, would, if he could, go to his own funeral

dressed in ribbons, and wearing a look of rejoicing. He has the

happiness of never seeming for a moment anxious; and you might as well

punch at a wreath of smoke with a foil, as attempt to interest him in a

serious controversy. He will answer your arguments with a pun, your

serious reasoning with a laugh, and will set ridiculously on end your

most carefully rounded sentence, and go to hacking at its grammar.

Having got you out of humor, he will decline all controversy with you,

if you cannot observe the decencies and proprieties. So that the man who

urges a controversy with Du Solle, has his anger for his pains, and is

fuming while he is chatting and laughing unconcernedly upon some other

more agreeable topic. Yet the Times has never given him scope to show

the real ability and general information he possesses. He should be in

the Ledger with Lane, he would settle the “ologies” in short metre.

THE BULLETIN.—Our only evening paper, but managed with great enterprise

and vigor. Mr. Peterson’s strong Saxon words and nervous style, combined

with his various and correct learning, make the leading articles of this

journal among the ablest that we read anywhere, and have stamped a high

value upon the leading column. There is a want of editorial tact in its

less imposing, but equally important digest of news and facts. It has

all the news, but it has it in bulk, and looks at times, with its heavy,

solid nonpareil, like a little man covered with black patches, or as if

part of the paper had gone into mourning for the absence of an itemizer.

It is always up, however, to the full requirements of the public in its

telegraphic despatches, and it _had_—what has become of him—the writer

of money articles that was most regarded here. For the rest, it affects

a very nice morality in regard to the theatres, which we do not like,

and do not pretend to understand. It is too deep for us. It _advertises_

for the theatres, but does not _notice_ them. Are they wrong, or right,

or neither? We suppose there _must_ be a nice line, which casuists who

examine morals with a microscope have detected.

G. R. G.

* * * * *

DEAR GRAHAM,—Poor Tom says, “Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the

rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to women: keep thy hand out of

plackets, and thy pen from _lenders’ books_, and defy the foul fiend.”

Without misconstruing this text more than texts are usually

misinterpreted, I opine, that from those same “_lenders’ books_” of past

generations the current literature of our day is being manufactured. The

vast shapes of the Past have overshadowed the Present, and we are in the

umbra of the eclipse. Pray tell me if there is room left in the whole

length and breadth of the world for an epic, without trenching upon the

preëmption rights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso and Milton? Then as

regards dramatic poetry—“ahem! Shakspeare.” Wit and humor? What, after

Chaucer, Rabelais, Ben Jonson, Cervantes, Butler, Swift, Pope, Sterne,

the Spectator writers generally, Fielding and Smollet? Are there any new

Continents to be discovered? Our own Irving, to be sure, has been

cruising among beautiful summer islands, and returned with a wondrous

store of wealth—jewels and gold tissues, fragrant gums, Hesperidean

apples, painted Salvages, flowers and odorous spices, to the world

unknown before. The gentle Elia has embroidered incomparable tapestries,

and formed the school of the age. Scott gathers in his mighty arms the

banners of a hundred conquests, and for melodious versification (after

Spenser) Coleridge, Shelley and Moore, in

“Numbers moving musically,”

have filled the world with harmonies, to which no echoes answer. Who

shall sweep the strings of passion after Byron! Truly, with much

thankfulness for the kind intentions of those who have written for

Posterity, we might add that it is a pity they did not leave Posterity a

little chance to write for himself. But since it is so, let us, with due

credit, make free for a time with some of those same “lenders’ books,”

for as George Wither quaintly says—

“We are neither just nor wise,

If present mercies we despise;

Or mind not how there may be made

A thankful use of what we had.”

Room, then! for one of Dante’s Angels—

“And now there came o’er the perturbed waves,

Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made

Either shore tremble, as if of a wind

Impetuous, from conflicting vapors sprung,

That ’gainst some forest driving all his might.

Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and hurls

Afar; then, onward passing, proudly sweeps

His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.

. . . . . . . .

As frogs

Before their foe, the serpent, through the wave

Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one

Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits

Destroyed, so saw I fleeing before one

Who passed with unwet feet the Stygian sound,

He, _from his face removing the gross air_,

Oft his left hand forth stretched, and seemed alone

Of that annoyance wearied. I perceived

That he was sent from heaven; and to my guide

Turned me, who signal made that I should stand

Quiet and bend to him. Ah me! _how full_

_Of noble anger seemed he_. To the gate

he came, and with his wand touched it, whereat

_Open without impediment it flew_!”

Compare this with Milton’s Raphael—

“Down thither prone in flight

He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky

Sailed between worlds and worlds, with steady wing,

Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan

Winnows the buxom air; till within soar

Of towering eagles, to all fowls he seems

A phœnix, gazed by all, as that sole bird,

When to enshrine his reliques in the sun’s

Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.”

Or the flight of Satan—

“Sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left,

Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars

Up to the fiery concave, towering high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried

Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

Close sailing from Bengula, or the Isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood

Through the wide Ethiopean to the Cape

Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed

Far off the flying fiend.”

Do you not think Dante’s angel the most spiritual? He says,

“he wore

The semblance of a man by other care

Beset, and keenly pressed, than thought of him

Who in his presence stand.”

And Milton—

“——on some great charge employed

He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.”

The thought here is evidently borrowed from the Italian “_lender’s

book_.”

There is a strange propensity to follow these lofty flights; as when in

looking from an eminence we feel a temptation to breast the blue ether

below us. We are fairly in the wake of Satan when he

“_Shaves with level wing the deep_, then soars

UP to the fiery concave—”

And now since we are pinion-mounted, like Icarus or Daniel O’Rourke, let

us select a few more familiar specimens of flying. “Look you,” from

Coleridge—

“Triumphant on the bosom of the storm

Glances the fire-clad eagle’s wheeling form.”

And lo! from Shelly on eagle,

“—— a winged form

On all the winds of heaven approaching ever

_Floated, dilating as it came_: the storm

Pursued it with fierce blasts and lightnings swift and warm.”

The Viking’s war-ship, from Longfellow’s Saga of the Skeleton in Armor

is a brave picture,

“As with his wings aslant,

Sails the fierce cormorant,

Seeking some rocky haunt,

With his prey laden:

So toward the open main,

Beating to sea again

Through the wild hurricane,

Bore I the maiden.”

And Dryden, in his Annus Mirabilis, hath likewise a warship that

_flies_!

“With roomy deck, and guns of mighty strength,

Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,

Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,

She seems a sea-wasp flying o’er the waves.”

But of all winged things the sky-lark is the bird of the poets. Hear

Shakspeare—

“Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,

And Phœbus ’gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chaliced flowers that lies;

And winking May-buds begin

To ope their golden eyes:

With every thing that pretty bin,

My lady sweet, arise.”

Or this from Shelley—

“Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest,

Like a cloud of fire!

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing, still dost soar; and soaring, ever singest.

“In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O’er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an embodied joy, whose race has just begun.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

_From one lonely cloud_

_The moon rains out her beams and heaven it overflowed._”

Coleridge, too, in his Ancient Mariner—

“Sometimes adropping from the sky

I heard the sky-lark sing;

Sometimes all little birds that are,

Now they seemed to fill the sea and air

With their sweet jargoning!

And now ’twas like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel’s song,

That makes the heavens be mute.”

And Wordsworth in that beautiful couplet—

“Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!”

There is a sweet little bird in the description of a Summer’s morning,

by Thomas Miller, which I would fain add to this goodly company—

“A little bird now hops beside the brook,

_Peeping about like an affrighted nun_,

And ever as she drinks _doth upward look_,

Twitters and drinks again; _then seeks her cloistered nook_.”

But alas the prettiest part of it is borrowed from one of those same

“lenders’ books.” John Bunyan’s—no less. The Interpreter takes

Christiana into the “Significant Rooms,” where he shows her that “one of

the chickens went to the trough to drink, _and every time she drank she

lifted up her eyes toward heaven_. ‘See,’ said he, ‘what this little

chick doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by

receiving them with looking up,’” And now, having winged our way from

angels to John Bunyan, let us lay these same lenders’ books upon the

shelves until a future period.

Truly thine,

RICHARD HAYWARDE.

* * * * *

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

_The Salamander: Found amongst the Papers of the late Ernest

Helfenstein. Edited by E. Oakes Smith. Second Edition. New York:

George P. Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._

Mrs. Smith has written nothing so well calculated to convey to the

majority of readers a clear sense of the richness, originality, and

elevation of her genius, as this wonderful little story. It evinces a

high degree of creative power, being an organic product of the mind,

with a central principle of life, and vital in every part. The scenery,

events and characters have all a living connection with the leading idea

of the work, and illustrate each other. The form is the ever facile and

yielding instrument of the plastic spirit within, and varies with the

variations in the story and the changes in the thought or feeling

expressed. By a felicity of nature, Mrs. Smith appears instinctively to

subordinate the material to the spiritual; and thus by making the former

simply the symbol by which she expresses the latter, she spiritualizes

matter, and makes it the living body of the soul. She vivifies and

vitalizes the form until it becomes o’er informed with spirit. Natural

objects as used by the poet, derive all their effect from being the

pictorial language of impassioned thought, the visible image being but

the embodiment to the eye of the viewless force which penetrates and

animates it; and fitly to employ objects as exponents of thoughts, a

firm, decisive grasp of spiritual realities, of something lying back of

all expression, is necessary. The moment the material predominates over

or precedes the spiritual, it becomes so much dead matter, without

significance, because without life. A great excellence of the present

story is the constant dominion exercised by the soul over or through its

forms of expression, and the physiognomical character of the style and

imagery. When we thus speak of it as pre-eminently spiritual, we of

course imply that it is thoroughly alive.

But the wonder of the book, and the quality which will give it a

permanent place in American literature, is the sure and fine audacity

with which it brings the supernaturally beautiful and the supernaturally

terrible into vital relations with human life, without any shock or jar

of the unnatural to disturb the exquisiteness of the combination; and

this is done in a manner purely original, awakening no reminiscences of

German or English supernaturalism, and giving unmistakable evidence of

being drawn from the writer’s own life and mental experience. Indeed, by

the very constitution of her mind, Mrs. Smith seems to see things in

their spiritual relations; consequently she not only looks at things and

into things, but she looks through them, and discerns the supernatural

region from which they proceed and on which they depend. This vision

into a sphere _above_ sense, is accompanied by an imagination of

sufficient force to shape what she sees into a form palpable _to_ sense,

and thus to reach the mystical elements in other minds through their

sensuous imagination. This vision and this faculty are possessed by all

high and powerful natures, and the test of the reality of the powers is

in the originality of the products. Similarity, even when it does not

approach plagiarism, indicates the intervention of another mind, and by

suggesting spectacles casts ominous conjecture on the soundness or reach

of the eyes. Now the supernatural, as it appears in this volume, is

strictly individual and peculiar, evidencing that the authoress has

herself contemplated, face to face, the spiritual truths she has

embodied.

While the present story is thus eminently a work of creative

imagination, working in the region of the supernatural, and ranking

“strange combinations out of common things,” it is at the same time

intensely human, touching at every step on some affection or aspiration

of the human heart, and full of the glee and gloom of our common life.

As every thing is realized to the eye and imagination, and the vital

relation between the natural feeling and the preternatural agencies is

clearly represented, the reader is conscious of no unharmoniousness in

the general impression left on his mind by the whole work, but simply

feels as though he had been brought nearer to the life of things, and

discerned evil and good in their spiritual natures. With a power of

thought, as felicitous in its delicacy as in its strength, moral beauty

and moral deformity are both seized in their intrinsic principles, and

embodied in such a manner that the material form ceases to be the veil

and becomes the vehicle of the nature it encloses.

To the shaping imagination which this work indicates, we must add that

form or expression of the imaginative faculty, by which things

inexpressible in images are suggested by cunning verbal combinations, or

which escape in the peculiar turn of a period, or which are breathed to

the inner ear of the mind in the rhythm of a sentence. This mystical

charm, this elusive, dreamy, ever vanishing and yet ever appearing

grace, gives to the whole work a character of strangeness almost

bewitching, and produces that fine and faint intoxication of the

imagination which makes it ready to receive and accredit wonders with as

much faith as it commonly awards to possibilities. It is this quality

also which makes it impossible to convey the moral of the story in any

didactic proposition. It has a profound moral, but it is a moral which

refuses to be comprehended in an ethical axiom, being felt in the brain

and “felt along the heart.”

We have been so much engrossed by the merits of this story that we have

little space left to notice some faults. The notes should not be

retained at the bottom of the page, but should be transferred to an

appendix. Occasionally the imagination of the authoress stutters in its

sublime talk, and gives fragments of gigantic images instead of wholes.

Here and there the philosophic prevails over the imaginative, and

discourse monopolizes a sentence which should be strictly sacred to

representation. But the sweetness, the tenderness, the beauty, purity

and majesty, with which the work is so replete, hardly allow even the

critical reader to be captious; and to the uncritical, the absorbing

interest of the story would be sufficient to hide even prominent

defects.

* * * * *

_Poems. By James F. Fields. Boston: Wm. D. Ticknor & Co. 1 vol.

16mo._

Book-writing and book-publishing, according to the most approved

doctrines of the division of labor, are to be kept strictly apart, and

commonly there yawns a natural gulf between the two, as wide and deep as

that which separated Lazarus and Dives. The present volume, however,

illustrates this seemingly impossible combination, the author being also

one of the publishers, and it must be confessed that the intellectual

and mechanical execution reflect credit on each other. Mr. Fields has a

mind of great flexibility and fertility, and occasionally he has

compressed within the limit of this volume a large variety of matter,

answering to the mirthful, the pathetic, the satirical, the tender, and

the impassioned. He not only does not repeat himself, but the work is

too small adequately to express the whole range of his poetic faculty.

The two longest poems in the collection are the “Post of Honor” and

“Commerce,” both of them originally pronounced before the Boston

Mercantile Library Association, and each including many topics under the

general subject. These evince a keen, shrewd eye for practical life and

character, and the satirical portions are characterized by a mingled wit

and humor unexcelled for general sharpness. “The Post of Honor” is by

far the best, and its pictures of life, both serious and mirthful, are

exceedingly vivid and true. The versification evinces a complete mastery

of the heroic couplet, in all its ease, energy and harmony of flow, and

it is spangled with fine felicities of fancy and original verbal

combinations. The passages relating to Lamb and Grey, are replete with a

quiet searching pathos, which touches the inmost nerve of sensibility.

Many of the shorter poems have already had a wide circulation through

the newspapers. “Fair Wind,” originally published in “Graham,” and “The

Dirge,” we have seen in the poetical corner of at least a hundred

journals. The new ballads and lyrics, now first published, are among the

best in the whole collection. “The Ballad of the Tempest,” the “Pair of

Antlers,” and “Common Sense,” are very brilliant and beautiful. “Life at

Niagara,” and the “Alarmed Skipper,” are good specimens of mirthful

poetry as distinguished from versified mirth. “Children in Exile,” and

“A Bridal Melody,” have an intensity of deep and sweet feeling, which

wins its way into the very core of the heart. We might refer to others

as worthy of notice as these, but we must be content with quoting one

instead of naming many, and we accordingly present our readers with a

most beautiful specimen of blank verse, addressed to Rogers:

ON A BOOK OF SEA-MOSSES,

SENT TO AN EMINENT ENGLISH POET.

To him who sang of Venice, and revealed

How Wealth and Glory clustered in her streets,

And poised her marble domes with wondrous skill,

We send these tributes, plundered from the sea.

These many-colored, variegated forms

Sail to our rougher shores, and rise and fall

To the deep music of the Atlantic wave.

Such spoils we capture where the rainbows drop,

Melting in ocean. Here are broideries strange,

Wrought by the sea-nymphs from their golden hair,

And wove by moonlight. Gently turn the leaf.

From narrow cells, scooped in the rocks, we take

These fairy textures, lightly moored at morn.

Down sunny slopes, outstretching to the deep,

We roam at noon, and gather shapes like these.

Note now the painted webs from verdurous isles,

Festooned and spangled in sea-caves, and say

What hues of land can rival tints like those,

Torn from the scarfs and gonfalons of kings

Who dwell beneath the waters.

Such our gift,

Culled from a margin of the western world,

And offered unto Genius in the old.

* * * * *

_Raphael; or Pages from the Book of Life at Twenty. By Alphonse

de Lamartine. New York: Harper & Brothers._

Lamartine, with many of the high qualities of genius, is deficient in

one of the most important—Common Sense. He is a fine and eloquent

singer of his own idealized and idolized self, but is gifted with very

imperfect powers of objective perception. He sees nothing as it is, but

every object is more or less a mirror of self. This is equally true

whether the object be Mont Blanc or a Paris mob. All his descriptions of

scenery, though often rising to a strain of rapturous eloquence and

beauty, are never accurate, even in an elevated poetical signification

of accuracy. Different scenes, in different climes, are all enveloped in

one atmosphere, and all stand for one tyrannizing class of emotions.

Lamartine is a sentimentalist, and no sentimentalist can celebrate any

nature but his own, or consider the universe as worth any thing in

itself. The excellence of the present volume consists in its subject

admitting of a strictly lyrical treatment, and it accordingly is full to

running over of Lamartine’s strong but narrow genius, and is resplendent

with glittering sentiment and decorative imagery. The work is not long

enough to tire by its egotism and fine writing, and is closed before

admiration has subsided from the interjection into the yawn of

satisfaction. A nature so rich as Lamartine’s might fill even a larger

book without exhausting its wealth of sentiment or thought.

* * * * *

_The Moral, Social, and Professional Duties of Attorneys and

Solicitors. By Samuel Warren, F. R. S. New York: Harper &

Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

Mr. Warren’s works on Law are almost as entertaining as his novels. The

present book is full of matter important to the young lawyer, and

interesting to the general reader. All who are accustomed to have

dealings with the profession, can obtain from this little volume many

useful and some lucrative hints. The two points on which Mr. Warren

expends his sense and his eloquence are knavery and incapacity, as those

qualities exist among lawyers. As many lives and more fortunes depend on

the existence of the opposite qualities in the profession, this volume

will be equally valuable if it succeed either in expelling rogues and

dunces from the law, or in enabling clients to detect them.

* * * * *

_Aurifodina; or Adventures in the Gold Region. By Cantell A.

Bigby. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 16mo._

The author of this little volume has availed himself of the interest

excited by the late disclosures in California, to construct a story of

marvelous adventures in that region. In regard to probability the work

is half way between Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights. As every

thing wonderful relating to California is greedily devoured, the

disclosures of this work will undoubtedly receive their due attention.

They are nearly as much entitled to belief as many of the newspaper

accounts.

* * * * *

_A New Spanish Reader: Consisting of Passages from the Most

Approved Authors, in Prose and Verse. By Mariana Velasquez de la

Cadena. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._

The editor of this volume is Professor of the Spanish Language and

Literature in Columbia College. He has so arranged his matter as to

remove all possible obstacles in the way of the learner, and to conduct

him, step by step, into the heart of the noble language of Castile. The

selections are admirably made. The volume is not only well adapted for

schools and colleges, but for the private student, and we trust it will

induce many to study a language which will give them a key to the

versatile and fertile genius of Lope de Vega, the mystical beauty of

Calderon, and the profound and genial humor of Cervantes.

* * * * *

_Essay on the Union of Church and State. By Baptist W. Noel, M.

A. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._

This work has produced a considerable sensation in England, being a

well-written protest against the Church Establishment, supported by a

long array of facts and arguments. The author was for twenty-two years

an Episcopal clergyman, and was at last forced by his reason and

conscience into his present position. Mr. Noel does not attack the

doctrines of the Church, but its union with the State, and he attempts

to prove that this union is condemned by the letter and spirit of the

Bible, is unjust, inexpedient, and productive of a host of evils, from

which free churches are exempt.

* * * * *

_History of Hannibal the Carthagenian. By Jacob Abbott. With

Engravings. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._

This is one of a series of historical books for the people, prepared by

Mr. Abbott with his usual felicity of condensation and simplification.

The series so far includes the Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, Alexander

the Great, Charles I. and the present volume, and others are to follow.

The author manages his matter with much art, and while few can read his

volumes without an addition to their information, they must be

invaluable to a large class of minds almost altogether deficient in

historical knowledge.

* * * * *

_A Catechism of the Steam Engine, Illustrative of the Scientific

Principles on which Its Operation Depends, etc. By John Bourne,

C. E. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 16mo._

Here, in the space of one small volume, is condensed a large amount of

available information on the steam engine, its principles, the practical

details of its structure, and its application to mines and mills, as

well as steam navigation and railways. The author evinces an intimate

practical acquaintance with his subject, and his work, while it is

invaluable to the engineer, possesses great interest to every reader

desirous of fathoming the mystery of the structure and operation of the

steam engine.

* * * * *

VIRTUE’S EVERGREEN.

POETRY BY THEODORE A. GOULD.

MUSIC COMPOSED BY THEODORE VON LA HACHE.

[Illustration]

The ilied brow, the rosy cheek,

Where beaming smiles of beauty play,

Are transient things, they but beguile,

As April’s bland and fickle smile,

They charm us with their light awhile,

Then

[Illustration]

fade, then fade at last away,

They charm us with their light awhile,

Then fade, then fade at last away.

’Tis Virtue’s Virtue’s evergreen.

SECOND VERSE.

They fade at last away! the form

So beautiful in youth’s gay prime,

Must shrivel up—the hair turn grey,

The eye abate its lustrous ray,

The smooth and pearly teeth decay,

Beneath the touch of Time.

THIRD VERSE.

Beneath the touch of Time! a price

There is he cannot touch, I ween;

It bloometh always fair and bright

Through springs warm day or winter’s night,

A plant his hand can never blight;

’Tis Virtue’s Evergreen,

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained as well as some

spellings peculiar to Graham’s. Punctuation has been corrected without

note. Other errors have been corrected as noted below. For

illustrations, some caption text may be missing or incomplete due to

condition of the originals used for preparation of the ebook.

page 278, put into envelops with ==> put into envelopes with

page 279, Nous verrons, se que ==> Nous verrons, ce que

page 282, crop of whispers. ==> crop of whiskers.

page 291, most beautiful, all of the ==> most beautiful of all, the

page 291, many claim upon his ==> many claims upon his

page 292, drowned in the privater, ==> drowned in the privateer,

page 299, Orthrography, Etymology and ==> Orthography, Etymology and

page 306, of our benificent Father ==> of our beneficent Father

page 306, interrogatories to day pass ==> interrogatories to-day pass

page 307, widow from Manheim ==> widow from Mannheim

page 317, in all statutary Christendom ==> in all statutory Christendom

page 317, an apopthegm by one of ==> an apophthegm by one of

page 326, grande e beau physique ==> grande et beau physique

page 332, of his scimiter; ==> of his scimitar;

page 333, solid nonpariel, like ==> solid nonpareil, like

page 335, in images are sugguested ==> in images are suggested