EDITORS' TABLE.

A Glance at By-gone Times.—Commend us to an old newspaper! Well does Cowper term it a 'happy work,' that 'folio of four pages.' In what a faithful and striking spirit of delineation are the features of the hallowed years behind the mountains called up, as one pores desultorily over a file of time-worn gazettes! It is exploring a Herculaneum of history, and ferretting out the minuter fragments which lie buried beneath the rubbish of old days, and which are fertile in materials for reflection, instruction, and amusement. A kind female friend (God bless the women! they are always devising some good or kind action,) has sent us an old volume of the Boston Centinel, the most ancient newspaper of which the Union can boast. Greatly have we fructified by the contents thereof; and at the risk, perhaps, of beguiling some reader, who may prefer neoterics before ancients, of a hearty yawn or two, we propose to devote a couple of pages, or more, to a notice of the dingy folio-tome in question.

After all, Solomon was right, when he said, 'The thing that hath been, is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done;' there are few 'new things under the sun.' In glancing over these abstract and brief chronicles of the olden time, we find many points of resemblance between the past and the present. Then, as now, metaphysical adepts imagined they were invigorating their intellects, in the same manner as archers strengthen their arms, by shooting into the air; political wranglers were 'blowing the bellows of party, until the whole furnace of politics was red-hot with sparks and cinders;' popular fallacies were flourishing, and wonderful seemed the vigor of their constitutions; commentators were elucidating old authors into obscurity, quite after the manner of the present era; many of the religii seem to have had religion enough to make them hate, but not enough to love, their brethren; officious meddlers were looking over other people's affairs, and overlooking their own; tragedians were strutting on public boards, 'with tin pots on their heads, for so much a night;' and small comedians, with brass enough to set up a dozen braziers, were quarrelling among themselves, and parading their importance and grievances before a public who cared nothing for either; there were public fêtes, frequent clamors of rejoicing communities, and occasional violent effervescence of popular transport. In short, to draw a long summary to a close, we have come to the conclusion, that notwithstanding the gradual desuetude of many old customs and observances, we have a great deal, at this much-boasted epoch, in common with the vanished generation. But gone are their eternally repeated sorrows and joys, the vain delusions, and transient struggles. Time has thrown his all-concealing veil over them. The bigotted polemic has found that men may journey heavenward by different roads, and that charity covereth many sins; ultra metaphysicians have learned, that there are realities enough to be sought after in life, and that a morbid yearning for the shadowy and intangible cannot come to good; and the actor, a forked shade, stripped of his regalities, and 'ferried over in a crazy Stygian wherry,' has entered upon a new theatre of action, where, unlike the one he has left behind him, the scenes and actors know no change. But let us turn over the ancient daily budgets to which we have alluded, and from which we are keeping the reader, who we will suppose looking over our shoulder, quite familiarly, and asking a great many questions.

'What is that long 'by authority' article, on the first page?' It is a congressional enactment, 'That a District of Territory, not exceeding ten miles square, to be located, as hereafter directed, on the river Potomack, at some place between the mouths of the Eastern branch and Conogocheque, be, and the same is hereby accepted for the Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States.' What a thriving town the 'City of Washington' must have been at this period! Here is an important postscript. It contains intelligence received at Boston from Philadelphia, in the short space of seven days—(they travel the distance now in eighteen hours!)—that a French frigate had arrived in the Delaware, supposed to have been despatched by the National Convention. Close beside this paragraph, is a very reasonable complaint, that those Americans who, despising to be copyists, call for 'Yankee-Doodle' at the play-house, can't be accommodated with their old favorite, because of the uproarious opposition of a tory faction. ''Most Horrid!' What is that under your thumb?' 'A son of Mr. Cox, the celebrated architect, in viewing a wild Panther, which a shew-man had in his possession, in Medford, was suddenly seized by the voracious animal, and his head and face torn in so shocking a manner, that his death would be a consolation to his desponding relatives. The strength of the animal was so great, that five persons could hardly disengage its teeth and claws from the unhappy victim of its rage. It is hoped the Legislature will provide by law for the security of the lives of people, that if persons will endeavor to obtain money, by the shew of wild beasts, that they be properly confined in cages.' 'Shew!' This corruption is still extant in New-England. 'He shew me a book he had purchased,' etc.

'We find a great deal said about 'Mr. Priestly' here. He has fled to the United States 'for freedom from the rod of lawless power, and the arm of violence.' He is every where received with marked honor, his whereabout regularly recorded, and eminent individuals and public institutions are emulous to make their attentions acceptable to him. In juxtaposition with this, is one of the bloody Robespierre's plausible reports, just promulgated. We will not pause to read that. 'Stay! Let us see what all this theatrical display is about, before you turn the leaf.' The manager is going to give a 'Benefit' for the suffering Americans in the prisons of Algiers. Good! 'I wonder if that Jefferson, who is to be one of the attractions, was the father of our Philadelphia favorite, whylear?' This interrogation lights up Memory, with the suddenness of a 'loco-foco' match. The image is evoked; and that prince of comedians is before us. A very clever theatrical performance is now going on in the 'Dome of Thought.' Ah, 'Old Jefferson!' When shall we look upon his like again? For years, we could never meet him, in ever so retired a lane of the city, without being presently seated in the play-house, devouring, with lively gusto, his inimitable comicalities. We had spirited performance going on, with nothing to pay. 'Where he walked, sate, or stood still, there was the theatre. He carried about with him pit, boxes, and galleries, and set up his portable play-house at corners of streets, and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pavement, he trod the boards still.' ''Well, vot of it?' Turn over.'

That long original poem is by Peter Pindar. He is ridiculing the monarchical notions of the opposition, and the folly of paying court to mere outward form and show. His illustration is homely, but forcible. 'Who,' says he,

In reading Pindar, as has been observed of some other obsolete author, you may find fault with the antique setting, but intellectual jewels of truth are there, which can never grow out of date.

'Melancholy Event!' Skip that. A laugh is worth a hundred groans, in any state of the market. Read the 'Anecdote,' if it be good, under the song, 'God save great Washington,' at your right hand, third column: 'Anecdote—Recent.—A certain newly-created Justice of the Peace, rather too much elated with the dignity of his office, riding out one day with his attendant, met a clergyman, finely mounted on a handsome gelding, richly caparisoned. When he first saw him, he desired his attendant to take notice how he would smoak the Parson. He accordingly rode up to him, and accosted him as follows: 'Sir your servant: I think, Sir, you are mounted on a very handsome horse.' 'Yes, Sir, I thank you, tolerably fleshy.' 'But what is the reason,' says the Justice, 'you do not follow the example of your worthy Master, who was humble enough to ride to Jerusalem on an Ass?' 'Why, to tell you the truth,' says the Clergyman, 'Government have made so many Asses Justices, lately, that an honest Clergyman can't find one to ride on.'

'Well said of the Dominie! There must have been more of Sterne than Sternhold about him. He evidently loved a joke, as well as old Pater Abraham à Sancta Clara.'

''Blanchard's Balloon.' An ascension, I suppose.' No; it is a political squib. Mr. Blanchard has given out, that his gas, owing to an unfortunate accident, has also 'given out,' and that on account of the great expense, he is compelled to forego a second ascension. A wag advises him, as a cheap and expeditious method of obtaining an ample supply of gas, to place his balloon over the chimney of a house in which the 'Democratic Society' are to meet, in the evening, the members of which are expected to be highly inflated with a kind of light, combustible air, which will escape into his vessel, and answer his purpose admirably!

In these days of 'wars and rumors of wars' between the whites and Florida Indians, these twin poetical epistles will be apropos. The writer says, under date of Pittsburgh, 10th June,

Two days after, he adds the following, by way of postscript:

In Animal Magnetism parlance, we 'will' the reader from off our shoulder, and close the book. It is matter-full, however, and peradventure we may open it yet again, anon.

Music—Mr. Russell.—Our theatrical reporters have left us but brief space wherein to reply to a correspondent of the Philadelphia 'National Gazette,' who, in a long communication bearing the signature of 'Honestus,' censures the tone of our remarks in relation to Mr. Henry Russell, the popular vocalist, and the peculiar style of his performances. Both the writer alluded to, and the editor who publishes and endorses his strictures, 'trust that the Knickerbocker will not maintain a dignified silence' under their remarks, since, originating in a work supposed to be influential in leading public opinion, the observations complained of 'have inflicted deep injury on the profession of music, taking away incentive to honest professional toil, close study, and real science,' by elevating a false standard of musical excellence. The writer denies, in so many words, that Mr. Russell ever received the honors in Italy, to which he lays claim; doubts his having been 'a pupil for three years under Rossini,' or that he studied under Generali, Mayerbeer, and other masters; affirms that 'The Brave Old Oak' is transposed, without acknowledgment, from Loder, save a few trifling alterations for the worse; that 'Some Love to Roam' does not bear the real composer's name; and that five-sixths of the 'Treatise on Singing,' recently issued, with Mr. Russell's name as author, are plagiarized from a work on singing by Rodolph, who has been dead these thirty years.

We depart for once from our uniform practice of silence, in relation to newspaper comments upon articles which appear in the Knickerbocker, to correct one or two errors of the correspondent in question. In regard to the honors received, and the studies pursued by Mr. Russell, 'Honestus' will perceive, by reference to the article in our last number, that the entire paragraph touching his personal and musical history, is quoted from an article in the 'New-York Mirror,' far more laudatory and elaborate than the one which embodied it, as an extract. The onus, therefore, in so far as these statements and the remarks which they elicited are concerned, rests not with this Magazine. As to the remaining charges of 'Honestus,' if established, we shall be found not less ready than himself to counsel one capable of such deception, to lose no time in bringing down his pretensions to the level of his talents; and farther, commend him to a serious reflex upon the folly of a course so unworthy of his reputation. In the mean time, however, let it not be forgotten, that there are two sides to this matter, and that Mr. Russell is extant, to reply for himself to these anonymous accusations.[17]

The opinions we expressed of Mr. Russell's singing, are entertained by the great majority of those who have heard him; and our remarks in regard to the musical affectations of the day were not lightly hazarded, nor did they fail, as we have good reason to know, to strike an answering chord in the hearts of our readers. Italian effeminacy, elaborate ornament, (often known in musical parlance by the term 'difficult execution,') interpolated upon the simplest airs, demanded reprehension. It was ridiculous imitation, pressed by Fashion into the service, and was lamentably infectious, from the prima donna, down to the tawdry damsels who flirt at the tail of a chorus, and the piano-strumming miss, redolent of bread-and-butter. It would have irked even Aristophanes, the quintessential, to have heard, as we have heard, some such melody as 'John Anderson my Joe' garnished with attenuated and circumfused skeletons or shades of notes, in endless progression and recurrence, by your 'difficult execution'-er, bent on wreaking all the tones of his voice upon a single word. Bells jangled out of tune, and harsh, or 'the spheres touched by a raw angel,' would have the advantage, in comparative execrability, over such refined tinkerings of simple melody. It was this misplaced ornament, (rendered for a period fashionable, by the affected ecstasies of 'genteel' young men without brains, and small travelled amateurs, who voted it 'the thing,') that we condemned, and not music, cultivated and improved by the great masters of the art.

Letters and Life of Charles Lamb.—There is at the 'Merchants' Exchange' in this city, the model of a machine for re-pressing cotton-bales. Would that some ingenious person would invent a similar process, by which much of the matter of such a work as Talfourd's 'Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life'—now lying damp before us, in all the luxury of London typography—could be re-pressed into these pages, for the gratification of our readers! In the absence, howbeit, of so desirable a power, we may present such condensed portions as can be subdued 'by hand,' withal. The letters in these volumes are connected by a 'thread of narrative,' which evinces a kindred spirit between Lamb and his biographer. The author of 'Ion' was an old and familiar friend of 'Elia's; hence he every where exhibits a thorough knowledge of his character, not less than a perfect appreciation of his originality of thought, the delicacy and refinement of his taste, and the fascination of his language. These familiar epistles set before us the man, as he lived, moved, and acted. We have here, too, the first germs of those delicate children of his brain, which have rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. We see the sources whence sprang the dainty thought, the charming image; and we may mark the daily creation and circumfusion of those felicitous conceits with which the name of 'Elia' is inseparably associated. What a reader was he; and how the ferreted beauties of the old worthies 'slid into his soul!' Upon the fertile suggestions of a creative, observant spirit, were inoculated and grafted the rich treasures of the elder intellects. But as our associate, in 'Brotherly Love,' (in a double sense,) has, since the above was penned, spoken elsewhere in this Magazine of these distinctive endowments and graces, we forbear farther comment. 'Revenons à Mouton.' Return we to Lamb:

As the volumes will hereafter be issued from the press of the Brothers Harper, we shall postpone a 'prepared report' upon them, until another number; contenting ourselves, in the mean time, with a few selections, in the perusal of which we have had especial delight. The annexed—to plunge at once, in medias res, into the work—was addressed to a friend who was about to depart for the East, being haunted with the idea of oriental adventure:

"My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people! Some say, they are Cannibals; and then, conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar! * * * The Tartars, really, are a cold, insipid, smouchey set. You'll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. Pray try, and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the counsel is Horace's, 'twas none of my thought originally.) Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow. Pray, to avoid the fiend. Eat nothing that gives the heart-burn. Shave the upper lip. Go about like an European. Read no books of voyages (they are nothing but lies,) only now and then a romance, to keep the fancy under. Above all, don't go to any sights of wild beasts. That has been your ruin. Accustom yourself to write familiar letters, on common subjects, to your friends in England, such as are of a moderate understanding. And think about common things more. I supped last night with Rickman, and met a merry natural captain, who pleases himself vastly with once having made a pun at Otaheite in the O. language. 'Tis the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so much of the gentleman. Rickman is a man 'absolute in all numbers.' I think I may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for you'll never come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi! their stomachs are always craving. 'Tis terrible to be weighed out at five-pence a-pound. To sit at table (the reverse of fishes in Holland,) not as a guest, but as a meat."

The attractions which a New-York 'May Day' would have had for one whose horror of 'moving' is thus naturally accounted for, may be readily conceived:

"What a dislocation of comfort is comprised in that word moving! Such a heap of little nasty things, after you think all is got into the cart; old dredging-boxes, worn-out brushes, gallipots, vials, things that it is impossible the most necessitous person can ever want, but which the women, who preside on these occasions, will not leave behind, if it was to save your soul; they'd keep the cart ten minutes to stow in dirty pipes and broken matches, to show their economy. Then you can find nothing you want for many days after you get into your new lodgings. You must comb your hair with your fingers, wash your hands without soap, go about in dirty gaiters. Was I Diogenes, I would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret. Our place of final destination—I don't mean the grave, but No. 4, Inner Temple-lane—looks out upon a gloomy church yard-like court, called Hare-court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do you know it? I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years old."

A clever artist might readily transfer the following picture to the canvass, though his imagination were naught. It describes the misfortune of a 'cisled' fellow-clerk in the East India House, akin to one whom he elsewhere mentions, as 'pouring down goblet after goblet, the second to see where the first is gone, the third to see no harm happens to the second, a fourth to say there is another coming, and a fifth to say he is not sure he is the last:'

"The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the strange phenomenon of poor —— —— whom I have known man and madman twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap; a little too fond of the creature; who isn't at times? but —— had not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and, unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning, drunk with last night, and with a superfœtation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came staggering under his double burthen, like trees in Java, bearing at once blossom, fruit, and falling fruit, as I have heard you or some other traveller tell, with his face literally as blue as the bluest firmament; some wretched calico that he had moped his poor oozy front with had rendered up its native dye, and the devil a bit would he consent to wash it, but swore it was characteristic, for he was going to the sale of indigo, and set up a laugh which I did not think the lungs of mortal man were competent to. It was like a thousand people laughing, or the Goblin Page. He imagined afterward that the whole office had been laughing at him, so strange did his own sounds strike upon his nonsensorium. But —— has laugh'd his last laugh, and awoke the next day to find himself reduced from an abused income of £600 per annum to one-sixth of the sum, after thirty-six years' tolerably good service. The quality of mercy was not strained in his behalf; the gentle dews dropped not on him from heaven."

Lamb was a creature of ardent sympathies. His social affections were as fresh and tender as those of childhood; and in the subjoined extract from a letter to Wordsworth, these characteristics are admirably portrayed:

"Deaths overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died within this last two twelvemonths, and so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in preference to every other: the person is gone whom it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's Capt. Burney gone! What fun has whist now?—what matters it what you lead, if you can not fancy him looking over you? One never hears any thing, but the image of the particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to share the intelligence: thus one distributes oneself about—and now for so many parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice me. Good people, as they are called, won't serve. I want individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I want so many answering needles. The going away of friend does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A., but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables."

But gentle-spirited as he was, Lamb knew how to use the polished weapon of satire. Witness his 'Letter to Southey,' and the following keen sonnet upon the editor of the Quarterly Review. It is a revenge for the severely-expressed 'distaste of a small though acute mind, for an original power which it could not appreciate, and which disturbed the conventional associations of which it was master.' Gifford was originally a shoe-maker. The sonnet is entitled, 'Saint Crispin to Mr. Gifford,' and dated 'Saint Crispin's Eve':

The annexed ludicrous account of a temporary indisposition, was addressed to Bernard Barton, the well-known Quaker poet. It breathes the very spirit of 'Elia:'

"Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare—'a whoreson lethargy,' Falstaff call it—an indisposition to do any thing—a total deadness and distaste—a suspension of vitality—an indifference to locality—a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness—an ossification all over—an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events—a mind stupor—a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience? Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes? This has been for many weeks my lot, and my excuse; my fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it's three-and-twenty furlongs from hence to the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say; nothing is of more importance than another; I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge ——'s wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it; a cipher, an 0! I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world, and the world is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. My wick hath a thief in it, but I can't muster courage to snuff it. I inhale suffocation; I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. 'Tis twelve o'clock, and Thurtell is just now coming out upon the New Drop, Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection. If you told me the world will be at an end to-morrow, I should just say, 'will it?' I have not volition enough left to dot my i's, much less to comb my eyebrows; my eyes are set in my head; my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they'd come back again; my skull is a Grub-street attic to let—not so much as a joint-stool left in it; my hand writes, not I; just as chickens run about a little, when their heads are off. O for a vigorous fit of gout, of cholic, tooth-ache—an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life—the sharper, the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold—a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill, and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and every thing? Yet do I try all I can to cure it; I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities, but they all only seem to make me worse instead of better. I sleep in a damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o' nights, but do not find any visible amendment!

"It is just fifteen minutes after twelve; Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps; Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat; the Jew demurs at first at three half-crowns, but, on consideration that he may get somewhat by showing 'em in the town, finally closes."

In the same vein is the following, written under similar circumstances:

"I have had my head and ears stuffed up with the east winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or the spheres touched by some raw angel. Is it not George the Third tuning the Hundredth Psalm? I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge, writing to me a week or two since, began his note: 'Summer has set in with his usual severity.' A cold summer is all I know disagreeable in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real winter, but these smiling hypocritical Mays wither me to death. My head has been ringing chaos, like the day the winds were made, before they submitted to the discipline of a weather-cock, before the quarters were made. In the street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my head is lightened; but in a room, the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls, 'Very deaf indeed?' It is of a good-natured, stupid-looking old gentleman, whom a foot-pad has stopped, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants. The unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I choose a very little bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch of returning zephyr, my head will melt."

It is in a letter to the same staid correspondent, that we find the following reflections on the fate of Fauntleroy, who was executed many years since in London. It is 'a strange mingling of humor and solemn truth:'

"And now, my dear Sir, trifling apart, the gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast reflecting eyes around on such of my friends as, by a parity of situation, are exposed to a similarity of temptation. My very style seems to myself to become more impressive than usual, with the charge of them. Who that standeth, knoweth but he may yet fall? Your hands as yet, I am most willing to believe, have never deviated into other's property. You think it impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence; but so thought Fauntleroy once; so have thought many beside him, who at last have expiated as he hath done. You are as yet upright; but you are a banker, or at least the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the subject; but cash must pass through your hands, sometimes to a great amount. If in an unguarded hour——but I will hope better. Consider the scandal it will bring upon those of your persuasion. Thousands would go to see a Quaker hanged, that would be indifferent to the fate of a Presbyterian or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the sale of your poems alone, not to mention higher considerations! I tremble, I am sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of the law, at one time of their life, made as sure of never being hanged, as I, in my own presumption, am ready, too ready, to do myself. What are we better than they? Do we come into the world with different necks? Is there any distinctive mark under our left ears? Are we unstrangulable, I ask you? Think on these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my own fingers, not for their resemblance to the ape tribe, (which is something,) but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, fingering, etc."

Here is a capital programme for those losel scouts whose 'tales of the crusades' which are waged against the canine species, generally fill our newspapers in the dog-days. We have no doubt that similar suggestions to those here thrown out, have been acted upon by many a dog-hater, in the fervid summer solstice, what time a worse virus than the hydrophobic was raging in his brain. Lamb is inquiring after his adopted dog, 'Dash:'

"Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him. All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water: if he won't lick it up, it is a sign—he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased—for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in Hyder-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth, (if he would let you,) and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a bedlamite."

There is an adroit satire upon epitaphs—certificates of good character given to persons on going to a new place, who oftentimes had none in the places they left—in the annexed fragment from a letter enclosing an acrostic:

"I am afraid I shall sicken you of acrostics, but this last was written to order. I beg you to have inserted in your country paper, something like this advertisement: 'To the nobility, gentry, and others about Bury:—C. Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line. Rebuses and charades done as usual, and upon the old terms. Also, epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased.'"

A few original anecdotes of Lamb must close our notice for the present. The first dry specimen was doubtless suggested by the closing couplet of a London street-ballad, wherein is set forth the ultra fickleness of a female 'lovyer:'

"One day, at the exhibition of the Royal Academy, I was sitting on a form, looking at the catalogue, and answering some young people about me who had none, or spared themselves the trouble of consulting it. There was a large picture of Prospero and Miranda; and I had just said, 'It is by Shee;' when a voice near me said, 'Would it not be more grammatical to say by her?' I looked, it was Mr. Lamb.

"He went with a party down to my brother Charles's ship, in which the officers gave a ball to their friends. My brother hired a vessel to take us down to it, and some one of the company asked its name. On hearing it was the Antelope, Mr. Lamb cried out, 'Don't name it; I have such a respect for my aunt, I cannot bear to think of her doing such a foolish action!'

"A widow-friend of Lamb having opened a preparatory school for children at Camden Town, said to him, 'I live so far from town I must have a sign, I think you call it, to show that I teach children.' 'Well,' he replied, 'you can have nothing better than 'The Murder of the Innocents!'

"A constable in Salisbury Cathedral was telling him that eight people dined at the top of the spire of that edifice; upon which he remarked, that they must be very 'sharp set!'

"An old woman, on a cold, bleak day, begged of him for charity: 'Ah! Sir,' said she, 'I have seen better days.' 'So have I,' said Lamb; meaning literally one not so rainy and overcast as the one on which she begged.

"Mrs. H—— was sitting on a sofa one day, between Mr. Montague and Mr. Lamb. The latter spoke to her, but all her attention was given to the other party. At last they ceased talking, and turning round to Mr. Lamb, she asked what it was he had been saying? He replied, 'Ask Mr. Montague, for it went in at one ear and out at another.'

"Coleridge one day said to him: 'Charles, did you ever hear me preach?' 'I never heard you do any thing else,' said Lamb."

We shall discuss anew these teeming volumes, when the American edition (which it is to be hoped will possess the portraits of the English) shall have appeared.

Bristol Academy, Taunton, (Mass.)—A catalogue of the officers, teachers, and pupils of this institution, now before us, affords very favorable evidence of the prosperity which it enjoys, under the supervision of its able preceptor, J. N. Bellows, Esq. It already numbers nearly an hundred pupils, in the male and female departments, embracing residents in various quarters of the country. The plan of instruction, set forth in the appendix, is an excellent one; 'uniting, as far as practicable, pleasure with study, yet not to the neglect of strictness of discipline, and thoroughness in the business of instruction,' in which the art of teaching, as a profession, is included, in a separate department.