EDITOR'S TABLE.

Jeffrey and Gifford versus Shakspeare and Milton.—An acute and comprehensive mind, an intelligence superior to prejudice, and an undeviating conscientious spirit of rectitude, are among the necessary endowments of true criticism. But how rare has been this combination, even in the examples of those who have been admitted to be the most distinguished critics of their time! Let the whole history of literature furnish the answer; while we direct the reader to an amusing commentary upon this general theme, which we find in the last number of Frazer's Magazine, under the title of 'Jeffrey and Gifford versus Shakspeare and Milton.' 'We have often amused ourselves,' says the writer, 'by imagining how Shakspeare and Milton would have fared at the hands of these illustrious reviewers had the paramount pair of immortals and the two clever party writers been contemporaries. Let us follow out this curious speculation. To make our suppositions quite plain, we will imagine that the Edinburgh Review existed at the time of Shakspeare; that the disgust which is expressed for the tribunes, or the opposition, and the ministerial contempt of the people, shown forth in 'Coriolanus,' were disagreeable to the Whig party of that day; that Shakspeare's high Tory principles; the admiration which he appears to have felt for kings and princes, and the favor in which he may be fairly supposed to have stood at court; were unpalatable to the Liberals of the day. In such case we may be pretty sure he would have been given over for critical dissection to Mr. Jeffrey, who would probably have chosen the 'Tempest' as the subject of his subacid jocularity. Let us now suppose that the Quarterly Review was established at the Restoration; that Milton's 'Paradise Lost' had just been published by any bookseller but the Murray of those days; that Milton had been placed, a short time previous (as in fact he was) in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms; that his pamphlets for the liberty of the press, and against the prelates, had enraged the opponents of liberal principles and lovers of high-church politics; and it is easy to conclude that these persons would have infallibly consigned him to the secular arm of Mr. Gifford. Both of the worthy gentlemen we have named would, no doubt, have performed their functions to the entire satisfaction of their respective parties; Mr. Jeffrey with the lightness and liveliness which distinguish all he writes; Mr. Gifford with his usual strength and acuteness, mingled with his customary allusions to the personal history of the author whom he is reviewing. But the malice prepense—the intention to murder—would be equally apparent in both cases, though each would have his peculiar method of destroying.' The former editor of the Quarterly would be, like 'Tristan l'Hermite,' flinging his coarse and scurrilous jests upon the unfortunate person about whose neck he was fastening the rope, while his northern rival would rather resemble those eastern mutes who despatch you, with every appearance of respect for your person, with a silken cord.

With this preamble, Mr. Jeffrey is introduced to the reader, in a critique upon 'The Tempest, by William Shakspeare: 4to. London: 1612.' After the dissertation upon 'matters and things in general' with which it is customary to open the labored papers of quarterly journals, the reviewer reaches at length the work which he is to criticise, and upon which he pounces 'in manner following, to wit:'

'The present play forms a sort of connecting link between the ancient mysteries and the modern drama, and, disregarding equally with these venerable monstrosities all rules of probability and taste, merely changes the abstractions into persons as shadowy, and their miracles into marvels altogether as amazing and edifying. In other respects, we are rather inclined to think that Mr. Shakspeare has outdone the native absurdity of the originals.

'The play opens with a conversation among some sailors in a ship sinking at sea, which is quite in the taste of these refined persons; others come in wet, which is at least as new on the stage as a ship foundering; then a confused noise is heard within:

'The author has here most happily expressed confusion, by not indicating to whom these separate speeches are to be given.

'The next scene is on an enchanted island, where a young lady called Miranda is entreating her father, Prospero, to allay the storm, of which she gives this splendid description:

Prospero replies:

'To this consolatory piece of intelligence Miranda most singularly answers, 'O wo the day!' and Prospero rejoins, 'No harm; wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.' From all which it would appear that Miranda was crying because nobody had been drowned. Prospero then bids her 'obey, and be attentive.' He relates that, just twelve years before, he was the Duke of Milan, but that his brother had usurped his dignity; and that himself and his daughter, having been put into a 'rotten carcass of a boat,' arrived safely at the island. But this interesting story is by no means so briefly told in the play, and is, moreover, perpetually interrupted in its course, after this fashion:

But, all this having nothing to do with the storm, Miranda very properly puts the question:

To which Prospero returns the following very clear and intelligible answer:

He seems well convinced, however, of the natural effect of this kind of poetry, for he adds:

In which opinion all Mr. Shakspeare's readers will readily concur.

We could wish that we had space for the equally interesting and refreshing satire upon 'a spirit called Ariel,' the dialogue between whom and Prospero is turned into ridicule. We must pass on, however, to the assassination of the character of Caliban, that wonderful creation of the great bard. Does the reader remember any thing more thoroughly 'tortured from its sense' by any ancient or modern Aristarchus, than the scene in question here:

'We are now introduced to a new personage called Caliban, the son of a certain witch, whose services Prospero thus recounteth:

'It would seem, however, that fetching in wood was his principal occupation, for, without asking what his master wanted, he replies:

'Yet it turns out that it is none other than this very business on which he was to be employed:

'Ferdinand, the son of the king of Naples, who had been just 'cooling the air with sighs' for his father, whom he supposed to be drowned, now enters, accompanied by Ariel, invisible, who sings a charming song of his own composition, of which we can only afford to give the conclusion:

'Ferdinand calls this a 'sweet air!' * * * 'The second act introduces us to the king of Naples and his lords, who have escaped from drowning; but his majesty, happening to miss his son, is very naturally made to express a strong curiosity to know what kind of fish had eaten him:

'After some farther conversation, Mr. S., not knowing what to do with the personages he has brought on the stage, devises the notable expedient of making them all fall suddenly asleep:

'The invention of that author who bethought him of sending his characters off kneeling was great, but it was nothing to this. It is evidently a favorite contrivance of the author for terminating a scene, and is here employed in order to introduce Caliban at his everlasting work of fetching in wood.

'Enter Caliban with a bundle of wood. He sees a sailor:

'Supposing every body to be as fond of wood as Prospero, he adds:

'The act ends with this seducing person getting drunk and singing this delicious lay:

'The third act represents Ferdinand at the eternal employment of fetching in wood. Then follows a love-scene, which we omit.'

How many petty enemies had the 'myriad-minded Shakspeare,' who would have chuckled over this criticism, had it actually appeared in his day! What nuts it would have been for that feeble reviler and feebler rival of his, 'one Hill!' The summing up of the reviewer is quite in keeping with the fine fancy and striking acumen displayed in the detail of his criticism. 'The Tempest,' he says, 'shows us how ridiculous are those rules, to which writers have hitherto subjected themselves, for the purpose, as they fondly imagined, of giving interest to their dramas. It is to be hoped that Mr. Shakspeare's example will release them, in future, from all obligation to pay any regard to probability in their incidents, or to nature in their characters. It is evidently much more easy to invent a jargon for witches, demons, and spirits, than to deal with human passions and human affections; and it is clearly quite unnecessary to diversify a play with pathetic incidents, when the sleep which has hitherto been confined to the spectators is here transferred to the persons of the drama. Writers need no longer search for lofty subjects, which have been so absurdly deemed requisite to tragedy, when every one can readily find a storm either at sea or on shore. Many improvements will no doubt be made upon the new system, and we may shortly expect to see tragedies upon a fall of snow or a heavy shower of rain. 'The Tempest' fairly entitles Mr. Shakespeare to the honors due to a reformer of our poetry, and if it produces as much profit as some of those plays in which he has praised princes and traduced the people, we shall be convinced that there are other persons beside Lapland conjurors who can make a comfortable living upon contrary winds and wrecked vessels.'

Turn we now to Gifford's review of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' in which the cut-and-slash style of that great critic, which was 'nothing if not personal,' is very faithfully portrayed. It opens as follows:

'A considerable part, of this poem, we understand, was written in gaol; and, though the knowledge of such a fact is by no means likely to prejudice us in favor of the author or his work, we can assure our readers that we have come to the examination of Paradise Lost without any personal feelings toward Mr. Milton, though we believe he is the same person who, after canting about liberty, sold his flattery to a tyrant and usurper; that he is the author of various seditious pamphlets, of which we have never read a line, and of a book on divorce, so infamous as to have been deemed by the bench of bishops worthy of being burned by the common hangman. A poem founded on a fact recorded in Scripture by a person notorious for his hatred to the church was of itself sufficiently curious to justify us in taking an early notice of it; but we found it at once so extravagant and so unreadable, that we should not have troubled the public with any account of its demerits, had not the author, in a most affected preface, announced certain new notions about rhyme, and laid claim to the merit of setting an admirable example to the writers of all future epics. The subject of Mr. M.'s poem would appear from the title to be the Fall of Adam; but what will our readers think when we assure them that almost the whole of the poem is made up of the disputes, adventures, battles, and defeats of devils, who make war upon their Creator; a monstrous fiction, founded upon the apocryphal book of Enoch? There is only one book out of the twelve (the ninth) in which there is any thing about the loss of Paradise. Throughout the whole poem the author seems always glad to quit our first parents to get back to the devil, who is by far the most brilliant and interesting character of his pages, and on whose feats, indeed, he reposes with a delight not unworthy of a Manichee. All the lofty enterprises of this amiable personage are related with a feeling of partiality for their hero, which would be amusing were they not told in a singularly involved, obscure, and affected diction. Mr. Milton's idiom is generally Hebrew or Greek; but, when he condescends to be familiar, the structure of his sentences is modelled upon the Latin. He never condescends to use a plain term when there is a scientific one, an English word when he can find a foreign one, nor an old word when he can coin a new one. Dry with him is adust; a close vest is a habit succinct; starry is stellar; flag is gonfalon; four is quaternion; powerful is pleni-potent; and mingled is interfused. To tell us that war is at hand, he says that it is in precinct; and, to tell us something else, he makes God address this line to the angels, counting, no doubt, upon their power of divining what is quite unintelligible to mere mortals:

'Meanwhile, inhabit lax, ye powers of heaven!'

'A learned angel, who gives Adam the history of the creation, illustrates his meaning by such terms as quadrate, cycle, and epicycle, centric and eccentric, nocturnal and diurnal rhomb, etc.; and the same personage is so unacquainted with the language of this earth as to form such nouns and adjectives as hosting, battalions, aspect, solstitial, vacuous, opacous, etc.

'We have a proper sense of the obligation our language has to Mr. Milton for these splendid additions; our only fear is that it will sink under them. Mr. Milton was some time at the University, and there, perhaps, became so enamored of the ancients. Had his college residence not been so abruptly terminated, perhaps he might have learned that the language of poetry, in order to be delightful, should be intelligible, and that Homer and Virgil never attempted to engraft foreign words upon the languages which were spoken and understood in the age and country in which their immortal poems were written.'

After a querulous consideration of his preface, and an examination of what Milton calls 'English heroic verse without rhyme,' Gifford enters upon the work:

The first book opens with a description of hell, of which the flames give 'no light, but darkness visible;' and then follows a dialogue between Satan and Beelzebub, on their fall from heaven, in the course of which Satan thus speaks:

'Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering; but of this be sure, to do aught good will never be our task, but ever to do ill our sole delight, as being the contrary to His high will we resist. If then His Providence out of our evil seek to bring forth good, our labor must be to prevent that end, and out of good still to find means of evil, which ofttimes may succeed, so as, perhaps, shall grieve him.'

'This speech, though printed in the poem as verse, we have reduced to its proper state of prose for the purpose of exemplifying Mr. Milton's notions of musical delight,' his 'apt numbers,' and 'the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.'

'We have next a biographical catalogue of devils, imitated from Homer's catalogue of ships. How much finer the imitation is than the original may be seen from the following specimen:

'Satan now tries to address a speech to his followers, but is seized with a fit of crying, which hinders him from proceeding. At last, he succeeds in delivering his harangue, in which he proposes to call an infernal council, and has a palace built for the speakers, though lie had just finished addressing his followers to as much purpose in the open space. Mr. Milton minutely describes the whole operation of 'scumming the bullion dross' to adorn the edifice, and kindly informs us that the pillars were of the Doric order. The higher orders of devils get into the hall 'in their own dimensions like themselves,' but the poor devils are obliged to reduce themselves 'to smaller shapes,' in order to find room. With this clumsy contrivance the first book closes: and the second contains a report of the debate.

'War is declared, and the council breaks up. Some of the devils amuse themselves with horse-races, others sing songs, with a harp accompaniment.

'Satan then goes to find out this world, and, after passing 'many a fiery Alp,' arrives at the gates of hell, where he encounters Sin and Death, about whom there is a most disgusting allegory.

'The third book shows us Satan flying between earth and heaven, and God the Father is represented as pointing him out to His Son. A long dialogue, in the taste of the dullest Puritanical eloquence, ensues on the causes and consequences of the fall of man; towards the end of which Satan, having safely arrived at the sun, in the disguise of an inferior angel, requests the Archangel Uriel to direct him to the new-created world. The archangel, with the utmost politeness, shows him the way to the earth, just as any mortal might direct another to a new street, which Satan very properly acknowledges with a low bow. Then we have a history of Adam and Eve, and their embraces, which we dare not quote. The happiest circumstance, however, in the situation of our first parents, appears, in the opinion of Mr. Milton, to have been their nakedness; for they

'In the mean time, Uriel, 'the sharpest-sighted spirit of all in heaven,' is convinced that Satan has deceived him; he accordingly warns Gabriel, 'chief of the angelic guards,' who immediately orders half a company to 'draw off',' and search for the intruder. They find him in the captivating disguise of a toad at the ear of Eve; but he springs up at their approach, 'as when the smutty grain, with sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air;' which means, being interpreted, like a spark of gunpowder. He is then brought before Gabriel, who calls him a spy, a liar, a hypocrite, and various other polite names. Satan only replies by a lofty defiance; but the Deity hangs out a pair of scales:

'And Satan, knowing 'his mounted scale aloft,' flies from Paradise.

'In the fifth book, Raphael is sent down from heaven to warn Adam of Satan's devices; he 'with quick fan winnows the buxom air,' and alights in Eden just at the hour of dinner:

'Adam goes to meet the angel, and

'Adam having expressed some fears lest his repast should be 'unsavory food to spiritual natures,' the angel assures him that spirits require food as well as man; that even the sun receives

'Therefore,' saith he, 'think not I shall be nice. So down they sat, and to their viands fell.'

'After dinner, Adam requests Raphael to relate the history of the rebellion in heaven, which he does at no small length, for the sixth book finds him only at the beginning of the first battle. He describes the arming of angels on foot, and angels on horseback, and gives them swords to fight with, though they could not be wounded. We are told, indeed, that Michael's sword met Satan's, and, that some of his followers, 'though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed,' were 'down cloven to the waist;' but then 'the ethereal substance closed, not long divisible,' and these worthy personages recover all their infernal powers. At last the evil spirits invent cannon and gunpowder, for which they find materials in heaven.

'The battle, though waged against the Almighty, is represented as being doubtful for some time; but at last the Son of God drives the rebels from heaven, and we are told, in mellifluous verse,

'The angel here concludes his account of the celestial rebellion: but Adam's curiosity is not yet satisfied, and he entreats to be told about the creation of the world. The angel kindly complies in the seventh book, which is merely an amplification of the first chapter of Genesis.

'In the tenth book we find Death 'drawing a scent of carnage,' and 'tasting the savor of death,' though mortality was as yet unknown; and he and Sin set about building a chain-bridge from hell to this world, which they at last happily accomplish:

'In the meantime the Creator

[** noind] 'an operation which, we think, must have a little deranged the plan of the bridge which had just been built. Adam and Eve feel the change of climate, and the scolding dialogue which was begun in the ninth book is continued here. In the eleventh book the archangel Michael is sent down to banish Adam and Eve from Eden, and arrives there clothed 'in a purple vest, as man clad to meet man,' though man was not yet clad. Adam, at his approach, 'heart-struck with chilling gripe of sorrows stood,' but the angel, after a few words, carries him up to a mountain, from which Mr. Milton says he might have seen all the kingdoms of the earth but for one trifling reason, viz. that they did not yet exist:

'Astolf sees many kingdoms as he is hurried through the air; and this is the fiction of Ariosto, which Mr. Milton here has borrowed only to spoil. The angel first shows Adam an hospital, the diseases of whose inmates are described in a page taken from the Nosology:

'After this brilliant and agreeable spectacle, the angel displays to Adam a kind of panoramic sketch of universal history, from Cain to the Apostles, to whom Mr. Milton only alludes for the sake of showing his malignity to the church in a passage too long for quotation. The vision which we have noticed thus briefly extends through the eleventh and twelfth books. At its close the angel hurries our first parents out of Paradise, and then leaves them:

'Such is the termination of this 'example of heroic poem,' which is completely destitute of human interest from the nature of the subject, and derives none from the comparisons and illustration which are so profusely introduced. Classical names and fables are strewn about with prodigality; but they are always produced not to show how like, but how unlike they are to the personages and actions described in the poem.'... 'In order to make out his 'apt number and fit quantity of syllables,' Mr. M. frequently employs the Procrustean method of lengthening the short and shortening the long. Hermit is eremite, mortal is unimmortal, survive is over-live, marsh is marish, etc. In like manner, malignant, ungrateful, magnificent, interrupted, are docked into malign, ingrate, magnific, interrupt; and we have 'dark with excessive bright' for brightness. Yet, in spite of the ample use of this liberty, the verse often halts for want of feet.'

A capital specimen of verbal criticism, involving comments upon the 'jingling-sounds,' and 'perpetual bulls' of the author, closes the critique and the article. Although these pseudo reviews are intended merely to form a light, amusing paper, they have yet to our conception a deeper meaning; and as valuable lessons in literature, are well worthy of perusal and preservation.

A Night Adventure in England: the Mystery of Style.—We scarcely know why it was, that a perusal of the remarkable adventure which ensues should so forcibly have struck the electric chain of memory, and carried us back to early childhood, and the book which was its especial delight, the 'Pilgrim's Progress' of Bunyan. If the reader will turn with us, however, to the scene in that most felicitous of narratives, where Christian and Hopeful find their way into the dungeons of 'Doubting Castle,' they will be able perhaps to discover the secret of the association. Let us condense therefore a passage of that scene, in illustration of these remarks. 'Now I saw in my dream,' says Bunyan, 'that the pilgrims went on their way to a pleasant river, and their path lay just upon the bank; and here Christian and his companion walked with great delight. On either side of the river was a beautiful meadow, curiously beautified with lilies; and it was green all the year long. Now I beheld in my dream that they had not journeyed far, when the river and the way for a time parted; at which they were not a little sorry; yet they durst not go out of the way. Now the way from the river was rough, and their feet tender by reason of their travels: so the souls of the pilgrims were much discouraged because of the way. Now a little before them, there was on the left hand of the road a meadow, and a stile to go over into it; and behold a path lay along by the way on the other side of the fence; so they went over the stile; and when they were gone over, and were got into the path, they found it very easy for their feet; and withal, looking before them, they espied a man walking as they did, whose name was Vain Confidence. So they followed; and he went before them. But behold, the night came on, and it grew very dark; so that they that were behind lost the sight of him that went before; who, not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit, and was dashed in pieces with his fall. Now Christian and Hopeful heard him fall; so they called to know the matter; but there was none to answer; only they heard a groaning. And now it began to rain, and thunder and lighten in a most dreadful manner; and the waters rose amain! Then said Christian, 'Who would have thought that this path should have led us astray? Oh, that we had kept on our way!' But now, for their encouragement, they heard the voice of one saying: 'Let thine heart be toward the highway; even the way that thou wentest, turn again!' But by this time the waters were greatly risen; by reason of which the way of going back was very dangerous. Yet they adventured to go back; but it was so dark, and the flood so high, that in their going back they had like to have been drowned nine or ten times. Neither could they, with all the skill they had, get again to the stile that night; wherefore, at last lighting under a little shelter, they sat down there till the day-break; but being weary, they fell asleep.' Here it was, it will be remembered, that Giant Despair found them sleeping in his grounds, and with his 'grievous crab-tree cudgel' drove them before him into 'a very dark dungeon' of Doubting-Castle.

But let us come to the adventure to which we have alluded. Perhaps some of our readers will remember a work published in England a half century or more ago, entitled 'The Adventures of Hugh Trevor,' written by Thomas Holcraft. At the recommendation of a friend, on whose literary opinion we place the firmest reliance, we obtained the volumes; and not without difficulty, there not being a copy of the work to be found in any of the metropolitan libraries, nor indeed any where short of that unequalled omnium gatherum, 'Burnham's,' of the modern Athens. From this work, of which we may have more to say hereafter, we condense the following striking scene. It should be premised that Trevor and his companion, a man named Clarke, after a variety of reverses of fortune, are on their way on foot from a town in one of the retired shires of England to the great metropolis. At nightfall they find themselves on the borders of a forest. As they proceed, they meet with a countryman, who learning their destination, informs them that by striking a little out of the road they may save themselves much travel; that he is going part of the way himself, and that the remainder is too plain to be mistaken. Accordingly they place themselves under his guidance. But suppose we now permit the narrator to tell the story in his own words:

'The sun had been down by this time nearly an hour and a half. The moon gave some light; but the wind was rising, she was continually obscured by thick, swift-flying clouds, and our conductor advised us to push on, for it was likely to be a very bad night. In less than a quarter of an hour his prophecy began to be fulfilled. The rain fell, and at intervals the opposing clouds and currents of air, aided by the impediments of hills and trees, gave us a full variety of that whistling, roaring, and howling, which is heard in high winds. The darkness thickened upon us, and I was about to request the countryman to lead us to some village, or even barn, for shelter, when he suddenly struck into another path; and bidding us good night, again told us 'we could not miss our road.' We could not see where he was gone to; and though we repeatedly called, we called in vain; he was too anxious to get shelter himself to heed our anxiety, and was soon out of hearing.

'So long as we could discern, the path we were in appeared to be tolerably beaten; but we now could no longer trace any path; for it was too dark for the ground to have any distinct color. We had skirted the forest, and our only remaining guide was a hedge on our left. In this hedge we placed our hopes. We followed its direction, I know not how long, till it suddenly turned off at an angle; and we found ourselves, as far as we could conjecture, from the intervening lights and the strenuous efforts we made to discover the objects around us, on the edge of some wild place, probably a heath, with hills, and consequently deep valleys, perhaps streams of water, and precipices. We paused; we knelt down, examined with our eyes, and felt about with our hands, to discover whether we yet were in a path; but could find none. We continued our consultation, till we had begun to think it advisable to return, once more guided by the hedge. Yet this was not only very uncertain, but the idea of a retrograde motion was by no means pleasant.

'While we were in this irresolute dilemma, we thought we saw a light, that glimmered for a moment, and as suddenly disappeared. We watched, I know not how long, and again saw it twinkle, though, as we thought, in something of a different direction. Clarke said it was a will-o'the-wisp. I replied it might be one, but as it seemed the only chance we had, my advice was to continue our walk in that direction; in hopes that if it were a light proceeding from any house or village, it would become more visible as we approached. We walked on, I know not how far, and then paused; but discovered no more of the light. We walked on again; again stood still, and looked on every side of us, either for the light or any other object; but we could see nothing distinctly. The obscure forms around us had varied their appearance; and whether they were hills, or clouds, or what they were, we could not possibly discover; though the first we still thought was the most probable. By this time we had no certain recollection of which way we had come, or to what point we were directing our course. We were continually in doubt; now pausing, now conjecturing, now proceeding. We continued to wander, we knew not whither. Sometimes it appeared we went up hill, and sometimes down. We had stepped very cautiously, and therefore very slowly; had warned each other continually to be careful; and had not dared to take twenty steps at a time, without mutually enquiring to know if all were safe. We continued, environed as it were by the objects which most powerfully inspire fear; by the darkness of night, the tumult of the elements, the utter ignorance of where we were or by what objects surrounded, and the dejectedness which our situation inspired. Thieves and assassins might be at our back, and we could not hear them; gulfs, rocks, or rivers, in our front, or on either side, and we could not see them. The next step might plunge us, headlong, we knew not whither.

'These fears were not all imaginary. Finding the ground very uneven on a sudden, and stumbling dangerously myself, I stood still. I did not hear my companion! I called—I received no answer! I repeated, in a louder tone, 'Clarke! where are you?' Still no answer! I then shouted, with all the fear that I felt, and heard a faint response, that seemed to be beneath me, and at a prodigious distance. It terrified, yet it relieved. We had spoken not three minutes before. I stood silent, in hopes he would speak again; but my fears were too violent to remain so long. I once more called; and he replied, with rather a louder voice, which lessened the apparent distance, 'Take care! You'll dash yourself to pieces!'

Reader, isn't this very graphic description? Yet what could be more straight-forward and simple? But to proceed: Trevor ascertains from his companion that he is not seriously injured, and avows his own determination at once to get to him; but the other exclaims: 'For God in heaven's sake don't! I suppose I am in a chalk-pit, or at the bottom of a steep crag.' Trevor however proceeds to crawl on his hands and knees in the direction of his voice, determined if possible to reach him:

'I found the rough impediments around me increase; till presently I came to one that was ruder than the rest. I crawled upon it, sustained by my knees and right hand, and stretching forward with my left. I groped, but felt nothing. I cautiously laid my belly to the ground and stretched out my other arm. Still it was vacancy. I stretched a little more violently; feeling forward and on each side; and I seemed to be projected upon a point, my head and shoulders inclining over a dark abyss, which the imagination left unfathomable. I own I felt terror; and the sensation certainly was not lessened, when, making an attempt to recover my position and go back, my support began to give way. My effort to retreat was as violent as my terror; but it was too late. The ground shook, loosened, and, with the struggle I made carrying me with it, toppled headlong down. What the height that I fell was, I have no means of ascertaining; for the heath on which we were wandering abounds with quarries and precipices; but either it was in fact, or my fears made it, prodigious.'

Recovering from the violent shock of his fall, he replies to the vehement questions of his companion, who had heard his perilous descent. After mutual inquiries, it is found that both are on their legs, and that although violently wrenched, no bones are broken. But where were they? and how were they to discover their whereabout? Perhaps in a stone-quarry, or lime-pit; perhaps at the edge of waters. It might be, too, that they had fallen down only on the first bank or ridge of a quarry, and had a precipice ten-fold more dreadful before them:

'While we were conjecturing, the stroke of a large clock, brought whizzing in the wind, struck full upon our ear. We listened with the most anxious ardor. The next stroke was very, very faint; a different current had carried it a different way; and with all our eager attention, we could not be certain that we heard any more. Yet, though we had lost much time, and our progress had been excessively tedious, it could not be two o'clock in the morning. It might indeed very probably be twelve. The first stroke of the clock made us conjecture it came from some steeple, or hall tower, at no very great distance. The second carried our imaginations we knew not whither. We had not yet recovered courage enough to take more steps than were necessary to come to each other; and while we were considering, during an intermitting pause of the roaring of the wind, we distinctly heard a cur yelp. Encouraged by this, we immediately hallooed with all our might. The wind again began to chafe, and swell, and seemed to mock at our distress. Still we repeated our efforts, whenever the wind paused; but, instead of voices intending to answer our calls, we heard shrill whistlings, which certainly were produced by men. Could it be by good men? By any but night marauders; intent on mischief, but disturbed and alarmed? They were signals indubitably: for we shouted again, they were again given, and were then repeated from another quarter; at least if they were not, they were miraculously imitated, by the dying away of the wind. In a little while we again heard the cur yelp; and immediately afterward a howling, which was so mingled with the blast that we could not tell whether it were the wind itself, the yelling of a dog, or the agonizing cries of a human voice; but it was a dreadfully dismal sound. We listened with perturbed and deep attention; and it was several times repeated, with increasing uncertainty, confusion, and terror.

'What was to be done? My patience was exhausted. Danger itself could no longer detain me; and I told Clarke I was determined to make toward the village, or whatever the place was, from whence, dangerous and doubtful as they were, these various sounds proceeded. Finding me resolute, he was very earnest to have led the way; and when I would not permit him, he grasped me by the hand, and told me that if there were pitfalls and gulfs, and if I did go down, unless he should have strength enough to save me, we would go down together.'

Cautiously and slowly, step by step, they pursue their way, alternately catching and losing a dancing light in the distance, which they imagine to proceed from some mansion, apparently a large one, which they at length reach, only to find it dark, still, and closed. Searching on the outside, however, they come to a large open gate, which they enter, and after feeling their way for a short distance, arrive at a door that evidently belongs to an out-house or detached building. It is shut, but the key has been inadvertently left in the lock. Fatigued, shelterless, and bruised, they have little hesitation in profiting by the accident. A noisome effluvia assails them on entering, which at first almost drives them back; but growing less the longer they continue, they accept the shelter, and grope their way behind some barrels and lumber, where they find straw, upon which they rest their drenched and weary limbs. They are scarcely nestled together, before they again hear the yelping of a cur, and the same dismal howls and shrill whistling signals, by which their imaginations had previously been wrought up; together with the voices of men, in coarse, rude and savage words, denoting anger and anxiety for the perpetration of some dark purpose, in keeping with the fierce and threatening sounds: 'They approached. One of them had a lantern. He came up to the door; and finding it open, boisterously shut it; with a broad and bitter curse against the carelessness of some man, whose name he pronounced, for leaving it open; and eternally damning others for being so long in doing their business. We were now locked in; and we soon heard no more of the voices.' In spite of these alarms, however, fear at length gives place to fatigue; but their rest is of short duration. Trevor's brief slumber is disturbed by his companion, whom he finds 'shaking in the most violent agitation he ever beheld in any human being,' and who only replies with a groan to his question of 'What is the matter?' Awakened from his own wild slumbers, and strongly partaking of his companion's sensations, Trevor yet endeavors to rouse him to speech and recollection, by asking again: 'What have you heard?—what ails you?' 'It was some time before he could utter an articulate sound. At last, shaking more violently as he spoke, and with inexpressible horror in his voice, he gasping said: 'A dead hand!' 'Where?' 'I felt it—I had hold of it—it is now at my neck!' Trevor, trembling in sympathy with his companion, hardly dares to stretch out his arm to examine. At length he ventures: 'Never shall I forget the sensation I experienced, when to my full conviction I actually felt a cold, dead hand between my fingers! I was suffocated with horror! I struggled to overcome it, but it again seized me, and I sank half entranced!' At this instant the shrill sound of the whistle rings piercing through the dismal place in which they are confined. It is answered; and the same hoarse voices are once more heard. The prisoners lie silent, not daring to breathe, when they hear the door unlock; and with a dialogue of mingled oaths and reproaches, at the want of care in leaving the door unlocked, and the prospect of being 'smoked' and 'blown,' two men enter with a lantern, bearing a sack, one of whom exclaims: 'Lift the sack on end! Why the h—ll don't you lend a hand and keep it steady, while I untie it? Do you think a dead man can stand on his legs?' After much colloquy of this sort, the men quit the place, leaving the two travellers not only with the dead body, but with bones and human skeletons, revealed by the light of the lantern, on every side! The dancing lights they had seen, the shrill signals, and the dreadful howls they had heard, are no longer mysterious. It was no ignis fatuus, but the lantern of those assassins; no dog or wolf baying the moon, but the agonizing yells of murder! After the departure of the desperadoes, they hear various noises in the adjoining house; among others, the occasional ringing of a chamber-bell. Soon other sounds approach more nearly; and presently the inner door once more opens, and a livery servant, bearing two lighted candles, comes in, followed by a man with an apron tied round him, having a kind of bib up to his chin, and linen sleeves drawn over his coat. The master (for such he evidently is) has a meagre, wan countenance; and the servant seems in great trepidation; to whom the gentleman observes: 'Don't be afraid, Matthew; you will soon be accustomed to it, and you will then laugh at your present timidity. Unless you conquer your fears, you will not be able to obey my directions in assisting me; consequently, you will not be fit for your place; and you know you cannot get so good wages in any other.' To all this the prisoners are not inattentive listeners; and as the servant turns round, he beholds Trevor standing with his eyes fixed, watchful for the interpretation of these enigmas. The man stares, gasps, turns pale, and at last drops down, overcome with terror; while the master, whose attention is thus directed to the apparition of Trevor, stands motionless, his face assuming a death-like hue, and the power of utterance apparently lost. This incident hastens the éclaircissement. In their benighted wanderings, they had at last found a refuge in the dissecting-room of an anatomist, who had risen before day to operate upon the subject which had been secured for him in the course of the night by the desperadoes before mentioned.

The picture, it will be perceived, was reflected through the medium of consternation and terror. The imaginations of the travellers had been strongly preyed upon by their distress, by the accident of falling, and by the mingled noises they had heard; proceeding from the church-yard robbers, the village dogs disturbed by them, and the whistling, roaring, and howling so common to high gusts of wind; all which was sufficient to distract minds already in a state of visionary deception and alarm. Being engaged in a desperate deed, for selfish purposes, the 'body-snatchers' had the manners of murderers, which the more effectually deceived the terrified travellers. Add to this the spectacle of a dissecting-room; here preparations of arms, pendent in rows, with the vessels injected; and there legs, feet, and other limbs; and a satisfactory catalogue raisonné will have been established. For the rest, the anatomist subsequently explains to his unexpected auditors, that finding his health such as to compel him to forego the winter lectures of able surgeons in London, he had continued his practical studies in the country, by the means which they had discovered, and the necessity of procuring which he defended, on the ground that a surgeon must be acquainted with the direction, site, and properties of the muscles, arteries, ligaments, nerves, and other parts, before he can cut the living body with the least possible injury; and that a dead body, being no longer subject to pain, could no more be disgraced by the knife of a surgeon than by the gnawing of the worm. Rather specious reasoning, it strikes us; at least an argument not likely to be particularly convincing to surviving relatives and friends. Hood's soliloquy of an exhumed 'subject' comes also in aid of the other side of the question:

Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—We must beg leave to say, 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:

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.

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.'

Quære? would the 'waistcoats,' 'breeches,' etc., be numbered, in the case of an old-fashioned Dutchman, wearing eight or ten of each? How are 'precedents' and the 'old English law' on this point? * * * The 'Meadow-Farm Papers' are brought to a conclusion in the present number. The reader will have been struck with the excellent inculcations of the writer, the evident honesty of his purpose, and the simple energy of his style. We thought of him, and the 'Association' he has described, while looking recently at an effective painting of the 'Sylvania Association' in Pike county, Pennsylvania. Whatever the reality may be, the sketch itself of the divided labors of the associated, in the picturesque region they have secured, is beautiful exceedingly. For a moment it rolled back the tide of time, and brought up anew those scenes of nature, the love of which was implanted in us in our youth. Oh! it is an incalculable, sacred blessing, to have lived in the country in boyhood; if for nothing else, that in after years glimpses of its soft green meadows, its breezy hills and leafy woods, may visit the eyes of the imagination, amidst the smoke and dust and din of the city! * * * 'High and Low Coachmen' has a good deal of humor, but we are sorry to say, a good deal also of irreverence for sacred things. We do not wish to speak with lightness of religion, although it would perhaps be 'doing evil that good might come,' in a clever satire like this upon sectarian controversy. It would seem, that at a meeting for granting licenses to several drivers, two old coachmen rise and protest against the admission of two candidates into the ranks of the 'Moral United Hackmen,' on the ground that they hold opinions in relation to coaches, and the driving of the same, which are entirely heretical, and contrary to the canons of the hackney fathers, 'from Jehu and the artist who drove the chariot and horses of Elisha, down to the most eminent coachmen of the present day.' For this charge, the 'Low Coachmen' 'fault' their opponents, (to use the pellucid grammar of modern controversialists,) but they won't be 'faulted' in that manner; and the whole 'establishment' is thus thrown into 'most admired disorder.' * * * A good deal of criticism has lately been expended upon the form and aspect of several of our public and private fountains; and especially upon that bit of 'chaste practice,' the big stone-heap in the Bowling-Green. Chantrey, in a letter to Sir Howard Douglas, has one or two thoughts, from which our Croton engineers, and those whose money employs them, may perhaps derive some hints worthy of consideration: 'I am not aware of any subject on which art has been employed that has given rise to so much costly nonsense and bad taste as fountains. Your idea of water spouting from holes and crevices in the rock-work is pleasing enough; but then rock-work is not fit for a pedestal; and I warn you against adopting the vulgar and disgusting notion of making animals spew water, or the more natural one of the little fountain at Brussels and Carrara. Avoid all these beastly things, whether natural or unnatural, and adopt the more classic and pleasing notion of the ancient river-god with his overflowing urn, the best emblem of abundance.' * * * Well-applied ridicule of that which is in itself ridiculous, and which 'will not, cannot come to good,' is we think justifiable; the end to be obtained sanctifies the means; and it was to such an end, no doubt, that the following rhapsody of strange but impressive vulgar eloquence was noted down by an auditor of a Methodist divine from Shropshire, preaching near Oxford, England, 'to an assembly of the profane.' In the midst of an illustration of 'mysteries suddenly unfolded, descending like lightning by the inspiration of the spirit, and illuminating the darkened soul; moaning old women, watchful with sobs and groans at every divine ejaculation to aid the heaving motions of the spirit, and take heaven by storm;' the minister bursts out into the following sentences: 'I am not one of your fashionable, fine-spoken, mealy-mouthed preachers; I tell you the plain truth. What are your pastimes? Cards and dice, fiddling and dancing, guzzling and guttling! Can you be saved by dice? No! Will the four knaves give you a passport to heaven? No! Can you fiddle yourselves into a good birth among the sheep? No! You will dance yourselves to damnation among the goats! You may guzzle wine here, but you'll want a drop of water to cool your tongues hereafter! Will the prophets say, 'Come here, gamester, and teach us the long odds?' 'Tis odds if they do! Will the martyrs rant and swear, and shuffle and cut with you? No! the martyrs are no shufflers. You will be cut in a way you little expect. Lucifer will come with his reapers and his sickles and forks, and you will be cut down and bound and pitched and carted and housed in hell! I will not oil my lips with lies to please you. I tell you the plain truth. Ammon and Mammon and Moloch are making Bethoron hot for you! Profane wretches! I have heard you wrangle and brawl, and tell one another before me, 'I'll see you d—d first!' But I tell you the day will come, when you will pray to Beelzebub to let you escape his clutches. And what will be his answer? 'I'll see you d—d first!' * * * The 'Evening Reveries of a Book-worm' we desired to publish, for the thoughts which the paper contains; but the style is too 'rambling and desultory;' it is confused. Take the last two pages, for example; the reflections upon 'those who have thought, written, printed, and died,' and see how inferior they are to the reflections contained in Southey's lines 'To my Library,' in an early number of the Knickerbocker:

We have already solved several weighty mathematical problems in this department of the Knickerbocker; and are glad of an opportunity farther to enlighten our readers with a passage from a 'Lecture on Mechanics' in a late number of the 'London Charivari:' 'If certain weighty things are put upon a body, they will turn the scale, and elevate another body. Thus, if several thousand pounds be added to the weight of an electioneering agent, it will elevate the candidate; though this experiment sometimes fails; which shows us that these grand results are not brought about by any fixed principles!' Under the head of 'Forces applied to a Point,' we have this luminous illustration: 'It sometimes happens that force is applied to produce a point; but all the straining in the world will not obtain the point that is desired. Thus, if you take an ordinary hammer and hammer away at a joke, the result of the experiment will illustrate the position!' * * * Whew! ninety-eight mortal pages, received in the dog-days, containing a 'nouvelette' for the Knickerbocker! 'Somebody take this man away!' The story is in very fine hand-writing, too! 'All things must have an end; even so contemptible a thing as a sausage has two,' says 'The Bedlamite;' yet we have been unable to find but one end to this tale, and that was not the last one. 'Print it?' Couldn't, really! 'C.' holds it for the author, and says he shall charge storage. Apropos: it should be observed, that 'nouvelettes' are generally boreish in their character. Long-winded pen-and-ink writers inflict them upon the public usually, we have remarked. They are a cross between the novel proper and a newspaper tale, requiring little invention, and no talent, to speak of; and are the result of the decadence into which two-volumed romances have fallen. Avoid a 'nouvelette!' * * * We cannot better reply to 'G.,' who complains of 'an excuse' for rejecting a communication of his, than by quoting the words of a time-honored novelist and rare critic: 'There is one best and clearest way of stating a proposition, and that alone ought to be chosen; yet how often do we find the same argument repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variety except in the phraseology? In developing any thought, we ought not to encumber it by trivial circumstances; we ought to say all that is necessary, and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and that concluded, to begin another. We certainly write to be understood, and should therefore never write in a language that is unknown to a majority of our readers. The rule will apply as well to the living languages as to the dead, and its infringement is but in general a display of the author's vanity. Epithets, unless they increase the strength of thought or elucidate the argument, ought not to be admitted. Of similes, metaphors, and figures of every kind, the same may be affirmed; whatever does not enlighten confuses. The difficulties of composition resemble those of geometry; they are the recollection of things so simple and convincing that we imagine we never can forget them; yet they are frequently forgotten at every step and in every sentence.' If these remarks do not confirm the validity of our 'excuse,' we are no judge. * * * Here is a sharp thrust at 'Fashionable Boarding-Schools,' which is all that we can appropriate of the letter of our Cincinnati friend: 'A modern boarding-school is a place where every thing is taught, and nothing understood; where airs, graces, mouth-primming, shoulder-setting, and elbow-holding are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are acquired; and where children the most promising are presently transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to jerk up their heads, turn out their toes, and dance and waltz well, is the summit of human perfection.' What a satirical wretch it is! * * * Alison, in his fine description of the French army on the morning before the battle of Waterloo, alludes to the effect of the martial airs upon the soldiers; the 'Marsellois,' the 'Chant du Depart,' etc. This latter we have recently encountered for the first time, in a superbly-illustrated work, entitled 'Chants and Chansons of France.' It is a very stirring effusion; as a few of its opening lines will sufficiently evince:

The comparison between 'New-England Men and Scotchmen' is in many respects a correct one, but not in all. 'We are not a nation of gentlemen, thank God!' says a plain-speaking Scottish writer, 'but the greater part of our population is vulgar, intelligent, high-cheeked, raw-boned, and religious.' The article, however, will appear so soon as we can find space for it. * * * We are bound to accept the apology of 'M.,' whose 'curt notelet' we adverted to in our last. He trusts that after his explanation we shall 'not think hard of him.' We do not; on the contrary, we think very soft of him. Don't do so again—that's all. * * * The lamented Ollapod, in one of his admirable salmagundis in these pages, once endeavored to represent the sound of a kiss; and it was conceded, we remember, that he was successful in the attempt. Next to that effort, we have seen nothing better than the following transcript of fire-works, by a London wag: 'First of all, the rockets go up. Then something is lighted, and turns slowly round with a whisk!-ish-ish-ish; this increases its time, and changes to oosh-sh-sh; gives a bang, and goes round another way, with an ash-sh-sh! till squibs open all round it in a prolonged phiz-iz-iz-iz! and then it concludes with a phit! crack! bang-bang! bang! and the incandescent centre of the wheel is all that remains, revolving in a dull circle of light upon its axis.' If this be not 'speaking description,' we know not what is. * * * Reader, when in the providence of God it shall be your fate to stand by the cold form of one whom you have loved; to gaze upon lips, oh! how pale and motionless; upon hands thin and wasted, crossed upon the silent breast; upon eye-lids dropped upon cheeks of clay, never to be lifted again; then haply you may think of these beautiful lines of the good Wesley. Amidst remembered hopes that vanished and fears that distracted, weeping in unknown tumults, 'like soft streamings of celestial music' comes to your aching heart this serene Evangel!

There lives a man in this metropolis of Gotham, who is esteemed by his fellow-citizens, among whom he has honestly acquired an ample fortune, for the strict integrity which characterizes his dealings in trade, and his unexceptionable private life. On one occasion he was asked at his barber's, on which side of two political parties he was going to vote, at an election to be holden that day. He replied, with something of a flush on his countenance, that he believed he should avoid voting on either side; such had hitherto been his practice. 'Yes, I guess it has!' whispered a man in the chair, as he arrested the barber's hand, and wiped the soap-foam from his lips; 'fact is, he can't vote. He was three years in the state-prison!' Now this was the fact. He had been three years immured in the penitentiary of a neighboring State, for a crime committed in the heat of passion, and he has to many friends given an account of the mental agony which he endured on first entering the institution. It was not so much the physical suffering; the tedious, sleepless nights in his narrow cell; the sorrowful silence in which he plied his incessant and thankless labor; his coarse and scanty food; not so much these, as the companionship of the hardened wretches around him, whose crimes he could only imagine from the character of their faces, as he caught glimpses of their features in the turning of a gang in marching, or in the chapel on the Sabbath. The degradation of spirit it was that almost broke his heart. 'It mattered little,' he thought, 'how much he might be abused, what insolence of office he might suffer, or how deeply the iron in the dungeon might enter into his soul. Who would care for the unhappy convict? If he should repent and become a reformed man, no one would believe him, no one would employ him; and he would be compelled to give proof of his moral improvement by suffering starvation unto death.' For the first two or three weeks, he was almost mad with the intensity of his mental suffering; and he remained in this state until one Sabbath morning, when the keeper, who was a Churchman by persuasion, permitted the Episcopal service to be read to the prisoners, at the request of a young relation, who was a student at a neighboring theological seminary. 'Never,' has our informant often heard the ci-devant state-prisoner say, 'never shall I forget the effect of one of those blessed prayers upon my mind. It taught me that I was not utterly forgotten and cast away, in my desolate abode.' The prayer runs as follows: 'O God, who sparest when we deserve punishment, and in thy wrath rememberest mercy, we humbly beseech thee of thy goodness to comfort and succor all those who are under reproach and misery in the house of bondage: correct them not in thine anger, neither chasten them in thy sore displeasure. Give them a right understanding of themselves, and of thy threats and promises; that they may neither cast away their confidence in thee, nor place it any where but in Thee. Relieve the distressed, protect the innocent, and awaken the guilty; and forasmuch as thou alone bringest light out of darkness and good out of evil, grant that the pains and punishments which these thy servants endure, through their bodily confinement, may tend to setting free their souls from the chains of sin; through Jesus Christ our Lord.' * * * The 'Pinch for Snuffers' was long ago anticipated by the lamented Ollapod, in an article on 'American Ptyalism.' There are 'statistics' in the present paper, however, which we do not remember to have encountered before; for example: 'If the practice of moderate snuff-taking be persisted in for forty years, it has been correctly ascertained that two entire years of the snuff-taker's life will be dedicated to tickling his nose, and two more to blowing it! If time is money, therefore, isn't snuff-taking a habit which costs more than it comes to?' Perhaps so; but for all that, we say, let the devotees of the dust enjoy their 'sneezin', as it is termed in Scotland; for to them its titillations are most delici-ishi-ishi-ishious! * * * We are sorry to be compelled to decline the elaborate article of our Charleston correspondent, who desires an allusion to his paper in this department of our Magazine. It has been well said, by one whom we are sure our contributor would consider authority, that the wisdom as well as the common feelings that belong to such subjects, lie upon the surface in a few plain and broad lines. There is a want of genius in being very ingenious about them; and it belongs to talents of the second order to proceed with a great apparatus of reasoning. We may be wrong; but it has occurred to us, that the great defect in the written efforts of many clever newspaper and magazine essayists of the South, consists in their being 'elaborated to tenuity, or argued to confusion.' * * * Among the publications received too late for notice in the present number, are 'Geological Cosmogony; or an examination of the geological theory of the origin and antiquity of the earth, and of the causes and object of the changes it has undergone; by a Layman: Mr. Robert Carter, at 58 Canal-street, publisher; the 'Spanish Guide for Conversation and Commerce, in two parts; being a Sequel to the author's Spanish Grammar and Translator: by Julio Soler, one of our most successful and popular Spanish teachers; a prospectus of a work entitled 'Annals and Occurrences of New-York City and State in the Olden Time;' being a collection of memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents, concerning the city, country, and inhabitants, from the days of the founders; intended to exhibit society in its changes of manners and customs, and the city and country in their local changes and improvements; with pictorial illustrations; Mrs. Child's 'Letters from New-York;' and Dr. Pereira's new work on food and diet, with observations on the dietetical regimen, suited for disordered states of the digestive organs; and an account of the dietaries of some of the principal metropolitan and other establishments for paupers, lunatics, children, the sick, etc., etc. We have heard this work highly commended by competent judges; but to our humble conception, there is something very auldwifeish in publishing a book to tell people how to devour their food. There is no mystery in the matter. Hunger and thirst are simple, strait-forward instincts, not likely to be much improved by artificial erudition. We have late numbers of the 'Rivista Ligure,' of Genoa, for which we are indebted to the courtesy of our consul at that capital. Brief notices of the following works are in type: 'Usury;' Thomson's 'Day's Algebra,' 'The New Purchase,' 'The Karen Apostle,' etc. * * * Our readers have lately had an opportunity of enjoying several of the early prose-papers of the gifted Sands. Here are a few pleasant poetical extracts from a New Year's Address, written seventeen years ago, touching among other things upon Adams's election, the great Erie Canal celebration, Kean's reception at Boston, hard times, broken banks, etc.: