once for all, and _to_ all, that we cannot permit this Magazine to
be made the medium of theological controversy. Several pamphlets,
letters, tracts, etc., have been sent us for examination, connected
with '_Puseyism and Anti-Puseyism_;' themes also which give the
title to a long communication before us, from some one who seems,
in 'cramming' for his article, to have gone through a course of the
fathers; poured over the canonists, and searched all the schoolmen;
for he brings forward a very formidable array of authorities to
prove something or other, yet _what_, we cannot justly make out. But
if the case be not quite clear, then have TERTULLIAN, CHRYSOSTOM,
AUSTIN, JEROME, and the rest, been summoned in vain; in vain the
citations from famous high churchmen; archbishops, bishops, deans,
and doctors; from WHITGIFT to WATERLAND, from ROGERS to RUTHERFORTH,
'marshalled in dread array, a host invincible.' Then again we have
'_A Dialogue between a Puseyite and an Anti-Puseyite_,' which we
came near sending to an esteemed friend and correspondent, as
an illustration of a recent comment of his upon this species of
antagonism; a dialogue in which one speaker does all the talking;
here ingeniously sinking a truth, and there raising a swelling
fiction, and all with such an air of fairness, and 'triumph through
the right!' 'Have you not been amused sometimes,' says our friend,
'to see a reverend disputant set up a little man of straw on the
opposite side, and making him support positions he would never take,
by arguments he would never use, trip him up with an adroit catch,
or knock him down with an annihilating blow; and continue this
diverting process of setting up and knocking down, till all sensible
people were convinced that he was a mighty cudgeller as well as a
sound believer, and his opponent a fool as well as a heretic?' But,
'something too much of this.' We took up our pen merely to say,
that while we reverence that true religion which is 'first _pure_,
then _peaceable_,' we hold in no respect sectarian quarrels, and
especially the 'family cat-fights' in which the _Puseyites_ and
their opponents are at present so vindictively engaged. Of all
employments, quarrelling about religion is the worst; and he that
_does_ quarrel about it, can have none worth quarrelling about, in
our humble opinion. 'The man who committed the fatal presumption
of first saying to his fellow man, 'You shall think as I do,' is
responsible for by far the greater part of all the wretchedness
and injustice of this world.'... WE shall not invite the reader's
attention to '_The Innocence of a Galley-Slave_,' the first of two
parts of which will be found in preceding pages, simply because it
requires no such incentive to perusal. But we cannot forego the
satisfaction of assuring the translator that so long as we have been
connected with this Magazine, we have never read _any thing_ that
impressed itself so forcibly upon our imagination. The faithful
yet most dramatic portraiture of character; the deep interest
excited by the incidents of the story, which proceed by a natural
convergence to the _dénouement_; the felicitous management of the
dialogue, and the grouping of the scenes and _dramatis personæ_,
have never been equalled, to our conception, by any previous writer
in the KNICKERBOCKER. Being what is termed 'an old stager,' in a
literary sense, we are not wont to be deeply affected by narratives
of this sort; but we are bound to state, that after reading 'The
Galley-Slave' at night, we retired to rest, but not to sleep. Its
scenes, its characters, were before us during the night-watches,
and until the morning dawned; with such variations only as were
produced by the vagaries of half-waking dreams. If there be a reader
of the KNICKERBOCKER who shall disagree with us in opinion, after
the perusal of the conclusion of the story in our October number,
why we should like to see him--'some day when he is passing.' * *
* THE following was found upon the body of a suicide, taken from
the Thames in London. It was well pronounced 'an act of attainder
against the whole community, in the infamy of which each man of
means had his share. It is irresistible in its truth and pathos:
'THIS body, if ever this body should be found, was once a thing
which moved about the earth, despised and unnoticed, and died
indigent and unlamented. It could hear, see, feel, smell, and
taste, with as much quickness, delicacy, and force as other
bodies. It had desires and passions like other bodies, but was
denied the use of them by such as had the power and the will to
engross the good things of this world to themselves. The doors
of the great were shut upon it; not because it was infected
with disease or contaminated with infamy, but on account of the
fashion of the garments with which it was clothed, and the name
it derived from its forefathers; and because it had not the
habit of bending its knee where its heart owed no respect, nor
the power of moving its tongue to gloze the crimes or flatter
the follies of men. It was excluded the fellowship of such as
heap up gold and silver; not because it did, but for fear it
might, ask a small portion of their beloved wealth. It shrunk
with pain and pity from the haunts of ignorance which the
knowledge it possessed could not enlighten, and guilt that its
sensations were obliged to abhor. There was but one class of men
with whom it was permitted to associate, and those were such as
had feelings and misfortunes like its own; among whom it was its
hard fate frequently to suffer imposition, from assumed worth
and fictitious distress. Beings of supposed benevolence, capable
of perceiving, loving, and promoting merit and virtue, have now
and then seemed to flit and glide before it. But the visions
were deceitful. Ere they were distinctly seen, the phantoms
vanished. Or, if such beings do exist, it has experienced the
peculiar hardship of never having met with any, in whom both
the purpose and the power were fully united. Therefore, with
hands wearied with labor, eyes dim with watchfulness, veins
but half nourished, and a mind at length subdued by intense
study and a reiteration of unaccomplished hopes, it was driven
by irresistible impulse to end at once such a complication of
evils.'
* * * * *
'_A Temperance Story_' relies mainly for its 'fun, which the Editor
seems to enjoy,' upon an ancient JOSEPHUS MILLERIUS. The collateral
anecdote, however, toward its close, is not so much amiss. Two young
men, 'with a humming in their heads,' retire late at night to their
room in a crowded inn; in which, as they enter, are revealed two
beds; but the wind extinguishing the light, they both, instead of
taking, as they supposed, a bed apiece, get back-to-back into _one_
bed, which begins to sink under them, and come around at intervals,
in a manner very circumambient, but quite impossible of explication.
Presently one observes to the other: 'I say, TOM, somebody's in my
bed.' 'Is there?' says the other; 'so there is in mine, d--n him!
Let's kick 'em out!' The _next_ remark was: 'TOM, I've kicked _my_
man overboard.' 'Good!' says his fellow-toper; 'better luck than
I; my man has kicked _me_ out--d--d if he hasn't--right on the
floor!' Their 'relative positions' were not apparent until the next
morning. * * * WHAT a personal presence was that of the FATHER OF
HIS COUNTRY! All accounts agree in this. We heard an old gentleman
say, not long ago, that when a clerk in Philadelphia, he used to
walk two or three squares every morning, to meet WASHINGTON as he
came down Market-street to his quarters. 'The dignity,' said he, 'of
his movements, the grace of his salutation, and the calm sweetness
of his smile, were beyond description or comparison.' Sitting the
other day on a log, scarcely a stone's throw from where ANDRE was
captured, and not far from the little Sleepy-Hollow church, we
conversed for an hour with a revolutionary patriot, tremulous with
the palsy of age, who pointed out to us the spot, over the Tappan
Sea which lay before us, where ANDRE was hung, and where on that
day the troops 'spread out thick and black a long way from the
gallows.' He lived at VERPLANCK'S Point, close by, when ARNOLD
came down in his barge, and went on board the Vulture, all which
he himself saw. 'They fired two cannon at the barge,' said he,
from this side: having got news of the treason by express; but the
gun burst at the second discharge, and took off the legs, to the
thighs, of one poor fellow, who was brought to our house, but he
died in two hours. The army then lay at Bedford,' continued the old
veteran; 'and I saw General WASHINGTON almost every day. He was a
noble-looking man; his countenance was terribly pleasant. He did
not talk much; but even the little children fairly loved him; and
they used to gather about the door of his marquée every morning,
to see him; and he used to pat their heads and smile on them: it
was beautiful to see.' How uniform and universal is this 'testimony
of the eye' in the recollections of WASHINGTON! * * * WE know not
_why_ it is, but the fact is so, that many affected persons are
prone to interpolate superfluous letters into a certain class of
words, apparently to make them more high-sounding than they would
otherwise be. 'Ordure! ordure! gentlemen!' exclaimed a court-crier
to a noisy audience the other day, in our hearing. 'That is a fine
burst!--what a calm, beautiful forward!' said a lisping young lady,
one evening at the National Academy, as she called the attention
of her cavalier to LAUNITZ's lovely 'Rose of the Alhambra,' in
breathing marble. These are vulgarisms of the baser sort, and
require the lash. * * * RIGHT glad are we that 'our contemporary'
the KNICKERBOCKER steamer, that _Palace of the Hudson_, sustains so
well the honor of her name. The metropolitan journals are full of
her praises; pronouncing her, in speed, in richness and splendor of
decoration, in symmetry of form, and in sumptuousness of convenience
and luxury, unequalled by any boat that floats on our waters. It is
even so; and what is especially pleasant to observe, is the fact,
that there is so much resemblance between the ornamental externals
of the 'OLD KNICK.,' with whom she shares her name, and the 'palace'
in question. Our vignettes and title are enlarged in colors upon
her sides, and multiplied in exquisite stained glass and other
transparencies, in divers quarters; indeed MAGA triumphs in all her
borders. And among all the superb state-rooms, there is not one
more gorgeously furnished and decorated than that which bears the
silver-plate of 'KNICKERBOCKER;' and which, thanks to the admiral!
is subject to our order, 'when we sail.' SHAKSPEARE was right; it
_is_ a good thing to have a good name. May the KNICKERBOCKER steamer
be as cordially cherished as her namesake; and may she labor as
unceasingly, and as successfully, to unite the suffrages of the
'universal public.' That she _will_ do so, few who know her own
qualities, or those of her justly popular commander, Captain St.
JOHN, can for a moment doubt. * * * OUR Heavenly FATHER 'does not
willingly grieve nor afflict the children of men;' yet sometimes we
encounter examples of the chastenings of His rod, which 'give us
pause,' and almost lead us to ask, in the spirit of sympathy with
suffering, '_Why_ hath the ALMIGHTY done this?' Such for a moment
were our thoughts the other day, in returning from an excursion by
water to the charming retreat of Flushing. Among the passengers
who were drinking in the bland airs of the day, and regarding with
delight the verdant villa-sprinkled shores, was a man of imposing
presence, with a fine intellectual head and face, and with one
exception, 'a man altogether pleasant to behold.' He was constantly
engaged, however, in that involuntary exercise known as '_St.
Vitus's Dance_.' It was very painful to look upon, nor did we permit
the afflicted man to know that we were regarding his contortions;
but so inexpressibly ludicrous were some of his movements, that a
strong sense of the ridiculous was mingled with pity, and it was
impossible to conjecture which had the ascendancy. Motions there
were in plenty, that no skill of the RAVELS could imitate. In legs
and feet, arms, hands, and fingers, there was not a muscle that was
not 'unexpectedly called upon' to illustrate the composite style of
the saltatory saint. In one instance, the breeze slightly lifted the
gentleman's hat; and in raising his hand, quite miscellaneously, to
secure it, his fingers were arrested opposite his nose, and forced
into a species of gyratory motion, not unfrequently adopted to give
force to the phrase, 'Don't you wish you may get it?' Oh! it would
have made a Quaker laugh in meeting, to have seen that movement! The
poor gentleman now sat down, but not to rest; his feet still kept up
an alternate single and double shuffle; his arms dangled down behind
him, where one twitched up and down, as if working a fancy-pestle
in an imaginary mortar; while his head seemed struggling to look
over first one shoulder and then the other, to see what they were
doing. But with all this physical affliction, there was peace in
that man's bosom. He was a Christian, a minister of the cross of
CHRIST. That 'thorn in the flesh had been given him to buffet
him,' and no doubt often pierced him sorely; 'yet,' said a friend
at our side, 'he can even 'glory in his infirmity;' for looking
beyond the fleeting present, he awaits with patience the time when
he may 'finish his course with joy, and the ministry which he has
received of the LORD JESUS, to testify the gospel of the grace of
GOD;' and leaving behind him the shattered tenement in which for a
little while he lived--perhaps at times complainingly, yet as in a
home--be 'clothed upon with immortality,' and walk in white with
the shining ones around the eternal throne!' * * * '_Evening in
the City_' is inadmissible. We coincide entirely with the writer
in a humble opinion of his literary acquirements. It is quite
true, nevertheless, that there _are_ not a few bardlings who job
occasionally in the Balaam line for the inferior magazines, who are
no whit superior to our correspondent. Let us not however condemn
him without a hearing. Listen:
'ANON the poor mechanic comes staggering by;
Bearing aloft upon his shoulders a huge pile of wood.
Which, mindful of his good spouse wants, throughout the day
He has with care and patience culled from out
The refuse wood which has been thrown aside as useless:
With weary and unsteady gait he creeps along.
Anxious too to gaze upon his wife, and rest his weary limbs.
By high command, by the sweat of his brow
Has he won his bread; and if perfect else, has done his duty.
And acted the good part, as well as he
Who bears upon his shoulders the weight of empires;
And legislates for his fellow man; alas! too often
Ignorant of his wants, too often careless and uncaring.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Then come the various men of business, exhibiting at once
The lowly, the wretched, the rich man, the proud and haughty,
And all the different degrees of life that mark the creature man.
All hastening, each intent upon his calling,
Some to follow Pleasure's giddy path, and to tread
The ways of folly, reckless, and unmindful of the duty
Which they owe unto their MAKER, and their fellow man.'
Now the _feeling_, the moral, of this, is quite creditable to the
writer's heart; but the _poetry_! 'beg you wouldn't mention it!' *
* * THANKS to Hon. Chief Justice GIBSON of Pennsylvania, and his
brother of the bench, Mr. Justice ROGERS, for the honor they have
done to the memory of that glorious comedian, 'OLD JEFFERSON!'
We cannot quote the inscription upon his new monument, without
rendering our own feeble tribute to his genius. The best idea that
we have ever seen given of his style is by a writer in the '_Spirit
of the Times_,' who remarks that 'he was in broad English comedy
what POWER was in his Irish parts.' This is exactly the comparison.
Who that has once seen JEFFERSON'S _Dogberry_, can ever forget
it? _What_ a look he had for the 'malefactors,' when he left 'the
bench' to 'examination those plaintiffs' more nearly!--with his
white hair, his long nose, and that incomparable eye-brow of his,
retreating up his forehead! Why, we are guffawing this moment at the
very _recollection_ of the picture! He used to have a part also in
a play called '_Who's the Dupe?_' if we remember rightly, which was
irresistibly comic. A learned student, in love with his daughter, is
pitted against a dashing but uneducated young blood, in a recitation
in different languages; in which the composite lingo of the latter,
in the eyes of the old gentleman, bears away the palm altogether.
The old ignoramus's enthusiasm, as the 'words of learned length and
thundering sound' come pouring forth, was only eclipsed in humor by
the gratification of his antiquarian propensities, in the possession
of an old rusty hand-saw, a pair of skeleton tongs, and a rickety
gridiron, which he bears triumphantly upon the stage, all having
their 'precious past,' and the latter especially venerable for
having been employed as a model of the Escurial, by the architect of
that edifice! Mr. WASHINGTON IRVING once remarked to us, in reply
to an inquiry whether he had ever seen 'OLD JEFFERSON,' that he
had seen him often; and that he had scarcely ever seen his equal,
for naturalness of manner and quiet humor, and never his superior
in the perfect manner in which he _dressed_ his characters. But we
are keeping the reader from the inscription upon his tomb in the
Episcopal cemetery at Harrisburg, on the banks of the Susquehannah;
'as beautiful a spot as the god of day ever shone upon:' 'Beneath
this marble are deposited the ashes of JOSEPH JEFFERSON; an actor
whose unrivalled powers took in the whole extent of comic character,
from Pathos to heart-shaking Mirth. His coloring was that of Nature;
warm, fresh, and enriched with the finest conceptions of genius.
He was a member of the Chestnut-street Theatre, Philadelphia, in
its high and palmy days; and the compeer of COOPER, WOOD, WARREN,
FRANCIS, and a host of worthies, who like himself are remembered
with admiration and praise. He died at Harrisburg, on the fourth of
August, 1832, in the sixty-second year of his age.
'I knew him well, HORATIO:
A fellow of infinite jest and most excellent fancy.'
* * * * *
WE had the wish strong at our heart to oblige our young
correspondent at Macon, Georgia. His poetry _is_ 'tolerable,'
certainly; but did he ever eat a 'tolerable egg?' There is some
analogy in the 'articles.' * * * THE stanzas entitled '_The
Printer_,' in preceding pages, have recalled to mind a few remarks
of OLLAPOD upon '_Newspapers_,' which we shall venture to quote
in this connection: 'COMMEND me to a newspaper. COWPER had never
seen one of our big sheets, when he called such four-paged folios
'_maps_ of busy life.' They are more; they are life itself. Its
ever sounding and resistless _vox populi_ thunders through their
columns, to cheer or to subdue, to elevate or to destroy. Let a man
do a dirty action, and get his name and deed into the papers, and
then go into the street, Broadway for example, and you will see his
reception. Why is he shunned as if a noisome pestilence breathed
around him? Why does each passer-by curl his lip, and regard him
with scorn? Because _they have seen the newspaper_, and they know
him. So, in a contrary degree, is it with honorable and gifted men.
The news-prints keep their works and worth before the public eye,
and when themselves appear, they are the observed of all observers.
Hats are lifted at their approach, and strangers to whom they are
pointed out gaze after them with reverence. Success to newspapers!
They are liable, it is true, to abuse--as what blessing is not?--but
they are noble benefits nevertheless. I have a strong attachment to
them, because I deem them a kind of moral _batteaux de plaisance_,
or rail-cars mayhap, wherein you can embark before breakfast, or
after dinner, and survey the world and the kingdoms thereof. It is
a cheap and right wholesome way of journeying.' * * * WHAT curious
things are the fictions of law! Did JOHN DOE or RICHARD ROE ever
make their personal appearance in any court? Were they ever once
met in any house, street, or field, public or private? Nay, had
they ever the good luck to be born? Who ever encountered STILES or
JACKSON, those litigious rascals, who have been playing plaintiff
and defendant for so many years, in processes of ejectment? Look too
at the gross fibs in all indictments for assault and battery, to say
nothing of their tautology. 'Do us the favor to observe:'
'FOR that the said defendant, on the first day of September, in
the year of our Lord 1843, assaulted the said plaintiff, to wit,
at New-York, in the county and state of New-York, and then and
there spit in the face of the said plaintiff, and with great
force and violence seized and laid hold of the said plaintiff
by his nose, and greatly squeezed and pulled the same; and then
and there plucked, pulled, and tore divers large quantities of
hair from and off the head of the said plaintiff; and then and
there, with a certain stick and with his fists gave and struck
the said plaintiff a great many violent blows and strokes on
and about divers parts of his body; and also then and there,
with great force and violence, shook and pulled about the said
plaintiff, and cast and threw the said plaintiff down to and
upon the ground, and then and there violently kicked the said
plaintiff, and gave and struck him a great many other blows and
strokes; and also then and there, with great force and violence,
rent, tore, and damaged the clothes and wearing apparel, to
wit, one coat, one waistcoat, one pair of breeches, one cravat,
one shirt, one pair of stockings, and one hat, of the said
plaintiff, of great value, to wit, of the value of one hundred
dollars, which the said plaintiff then and there wore, and was
clothed with. By means of which said several premises, the
said plaintiff was then and there greatly hurt, bruised, and
wounded, and became and was sick, sore, lame, and disordered,
and so remained and continued for a long space of time, to wit,
for the space of three weeks, then next following; during all
which time the said plaintiff thereby suffered and underwent
great pain, and was hindered and prevented from performing and
transacting his necessary affairs and business, by him during
that time to be performed and transacted, and also thereby the
said plaintiff was forced and obliged to, and did necessarily
pay, lay out, and expend a large sum of money, to wit, the sum
of fifty dollars, lawful money of the United States of America,
in and about endeavoring to be cured of the bruises, wounds,
sickness, soreness, lameness, and disorder aforesaid, occasioned
as aforesaid.'