I. Scene 2. New York, towards the end of the summer of 1780 (part 3 of 3)

I. Scene 2. New York, towards the end of the summer of 1780 (part 3 of 3)

In determining on the proper course of Education for our children, is it not of the highest importance, first to decide in regard to the situations in which they will probably be placed, and the circumstances under which they are most likely to spend their lives, that all the instruction given may have some bearing on such destination--some peculiar aptitude to fit them for the particular stations which they will fill? Until society is organized differently from what it is, all the various honest trades, professions and callings into which it is divided, must have persons specially educated for them. But how can this all essential plan be accomplished, if our children are made too proud for any thing but playing ladies and gentlemen, or following some two or three professional pursuits, distinguished from the rest by the dignified title--"liberal?" Ought it to suffice with people in their sober senses, to hear it urged in opposition to so reasonable a scheme as that of adapting early Education to the probable destiny of each individual in after life, that in our country every child ought to be educated for all imaginable conditions in what is called high life, because any, possibly, may be attained by any? Surely this would be the perfection of folly, unless it amounted almost to certainty that a very large majority of our youth of both sexes would reach such elevated situations. But it so happens that there is a moral certainty the other way, and that an infinitely larger portion of mankind will live and die in obscurity, than can ever become conspicuous for the possession of wealth, extraordinary talent, or official station. This obscurity however, would be no bar to the enjoyment of great happiness, provided half the pains were taken to inculcate principles, tastes and habits suitable to the future circumstances in which they would probably be placed, that are very frequently taken to impress their minds with insatiate cravings after all the highest conditions of society. This world, and this alone, with all its vanities, follies, and seductive vices, is made the God of their idolatry; and every thing in future life which is calculated to impede their worship, becomes a source of unavailing discontent, if not of actual and lasting misery. To pursue such a course with children is little short of real madness, even on the supposition that there is no other state of existence but the present; unless indeed, this life had been made a scene of uninterrupted enjoyment, instead of one abounding with much unavoidable suffering--a scene in which to escape sickness, pain, and poverty, is among our greatest blessings--a scene whose modicum of happiness consists not in any of those merely selfish, sensual pursuits, so generally deemed the chief good of life, but in the diligent culture and exercise of all the powers of our mind--of all the best affections of our hearts. How is this to be done, especially in our female schools, which in fact are the great laboratories for forming elementary teachers for our whole population,--if nearly, or quite half the time of the pupils be taken up in learning to dance, to draw, to play on musical instruments, and to acquire polite manners, by going at stated times to private assemblies, to plays, and operas, as we have heard is the practice in some city schools. One of two things invariably follows from this course; either the whole stock of accomplishments, (as they are called,) however costly it may have been, is entirely abandoned the moment the girls get married, because the acquisition has always been to them a kind of up-hill work, for which they had not the smallest taste--or, such a passionate fondness is contracted for them, that they can find pleasure in no other occupation. The fatal disease of discontent is the result in both those cases. But suppose the last {733} to be the most common. Are domestic habits, so indispensable to the comfort and happiness of married life, to be formed by acquiring a passion for public spectacles, for company-keeping, and for all the preparatory equipments of costly apparel, and other personal decorations? Can the tranquil pleasures of retirement, the occupations of housekeeping, the necessary management of all the domiciliary concerns of which the mistresses of families must always take cognizance, have any charms for ladies educated in what is called the fashionable style? Will not all such things rather be insupportably irksome, if not actually disgusting? How will such ladies be prepared to meet the numerous inconveniences and troubles, the many unpleasant, and often painful occurrences that take place, sometimes even in the happiest families? How can they bear all the fatigues, the various trials of temper, the actual labors incident to domestic life, if the sole object of the chief lessons which they have received at school, has been to attract attention and admiration to themselves? What, but the most inordinate selfishness and vanity can be the fruit of such training? Will such preparatory studies teach them how to keep their houses and families in order--to train their offspring in the paths of knowledge and virtue--to administer consolation to the sick and the dying--in a word, to turn all the numerous incidents of domestic life to the moral and religious improvement of those over whom it is their business and sacred duty to exercise a constant and parental supervision? Alas! my friends, there is scarcely any thing in all nature so illy qualified to fulfil these momentous obligations, as a young lady educated in what is called the fashionable style--unless, by the providence of God, she may have been first imbued under the parental roof, with moral and religious principles too strong to be overcome by such powerful engines of destruction as are constantly at work to destroy them, in what are called, by way of pre-eminence, "fashionable schools." I do not mean to say that the extirpation of moral and religious principle is really the object there aimed at. No, far from it; for I dare affirm that many of the persons thus busily engaged, perhaps the whole of them, really believe that they are fast accomplishing a very great and good work. But the sum and substance of it, when stript of all its vain illusions, is nothing more nor less, in fact, than a very laborious and excessively expensive process to unfit the unfortunate subjects of it for every kind of life but such as they are taught to lead at school; and that is, to value all merely external acquirements far above every moral qualification, and to seek their chief happiness in the amount of admiration they can procure for these very superficial and comparatively worthless attainments. They come forth admirably prepared for a life of alternate excitement and gratification; but for the real Christian life of self-control, self-denial, and humble righteousness, they probably have not so much as heard of it, unless perchance when they have gone to church. They can use their hands, feet and eyes most exquisitely in attracting admiration; but when compelled to apply themselves to any of the homely, but really essential purposes of life, they find themselves most sadly embarrassed, if not utterly at a loss how to proceed. Are the poor girls to blame for all this? Far from it; they must have been something more or less than human beings to turn out differently. The fault--nay, I must call it the crime--if such misapplication of the talents which God has given them for far different purposes be criminal, lies chiefly at the parent's door. But for them there would be no such course of Education in the world. It is indeed a course which prepares them admirably for what may truly be called public life; instead of qualifying them to adorn that which is almost entirely private and domestic--that in which an immense majority of females are destined to live and to die. What is the consequence of this incongruity--this manifest disagreement between the matters taught, and the ends to which they must generally be applied? What is the aptitude of the means to the great purposes which parents should aim to accomplish? Are they favorable or not to domestic happiness? If music, drawing, dressing, and dancing, with a smattering of some living foreign language, garnished with a few beggarly elements of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Geology, and Botany, are the principal ingredients in this happiness, then are the chief pursuits of fashionable female Education eminently calculated to promote it. But if the following view from one of our most distinguished moral and religious writers of what female Education should be, has any truth or justice in it, our prevalent systems of fashionable Education exhibit a most lamentable deficiency in almost all essential points. This admirable writer says, in the form of advice to a young man--"For my own part, I call Education--not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character--that which tends to form a friend, a companion, a wife. I call Education, not that which is made of the shreds and patches of useless arts, but that which inculcates principles, polishes taste, regulates temper, cultivates reason, subdues the passions, directs the feelings, habituates to reflection, trains to self-denial, and more especially, that which refers all actions, feelings, sentiments, tastes, and passions to the love and fear of God." Elsewhere the same author remarks--"In character as in architecture, just proportion is beauty. The ornaments which decorate, do not support the edifice." Again it is said--"A man of sense who loves home, and lives {734} at home, requires a wife who can and will be at half the expense of mind necessary for keeping up the cheerful, animating, elegant intercourse which forms so great a part of the bond of union between intellectual and well bred persons. The exhibiting, the displaying wife may entertain your company; but it is only the informed, the refined, the cultivated woman, who can entertain yourself; and I presume whenever you marry, you will marry primarily for yourself, and not for your friends; you will want a companion--an artist you may hire."

Should any person doubt the preference usually given to what are called accomplishments, over matters of infinitely higher real value, let them ask as many pupils as they please, "what inquiries do your parents, guardians, and friends most frequently make relative to your studies and progress at school?" The answers will furnish undeniable proof; for a very large proportion will be found to have been substantially like the following: "How do you come on in your Music, your Dancing, your Drawing, or your French?" according as they have been striving to acquire one or more of these inestimable outfits for their progress through Time to the realms of Eternity. It is pitiable, most pitiable, to see the thousands of innocent little girls throughout our country, many of them without the slightest taste or talent for these things, still laboring four, five, or six hours in every twenty-four, to gain a little elementary knowledge of what they will generally abandon immediately after leaving school, or at farthest, as soon as they get married--to gain which knowledge has been the chief object, the painful toil for so many irrevocable years of all this warring against nature, common sense, and moral fitness. But suppose the success of such training as ample as heart can wish, and the poor little creatures are made prodigies of early proficiency in arts, which are very soon to be of little or no real use to them? Is it politic--is it wise--in fact, is it not a most sinful breach of parental duty, to impart to our daughters, as among the most desirable things in life, strong tastes which they can scarcely gratify at all without frequently seeking company abroad, nor often indulge at home, unless by neglecting some of those important, indispensable domestic employments which devolve exclusively on the mistress of the family?

Let it not be inferred from any of the foregoing remarks, that I am an enemy to what are called fashionable schools--my enmity extends only to some of their practices. Let them be reformed, and I shall have no enmity whatever to the title "fashionable," if it be deemed essential to gain scholars for those who keep them. Let them make it fashionable to fit their pupils for private life, and for all its necessary duties, by giving them genuine moral and religious principles first and above all things; then let accomplishments follow in their proper, but very subordinate place, and they will have no warmer friend than myself.

I am well aware that I subject myself to the charge of great presumption in censuring, as I have done, many of the principal matters taught at present in fashionable, as well as other schools, both for boys and girls; and to this charge I am prepared patiently to submit, provided it be made, if at all, after a full, fair, and candid examination of all that I have said on these topics. To retract however, my accusations, will be impossible, unless I could rid myself of the conscientious belief, and thorough conviction, that not only the temporal, but eternal happiness, both of the present and future generations, depends on a radical change being made in regard to the principal objects of Education, as well as in the means of attaining them. These must be to prepare us for this life--not as an end, but only as the means of attaining happiness in the next.

My business, however, being more to point out faults, than remedies--rather to describe diseases, than to offer nostrums for their removal, I shall leave the curative process to other hands, sincerely hoping that it may be attempted by some much abler moral physicians, who will apply themselves to the Herculean task with a degree of zeal, vigor, and perseverance fully commensurate to the difficulty and vital importance of the undertaking. There can be no greater object of human ambition--no more exalted purpose for human effort--nor any human occupation, the results of which, if the laborers in this sacred vineyard be successful, can compare with this either in degree or extent--since human happiness, both temporal and eternal, is its end, and must be its final consummation. Riches often perish, and are followed by poverty, wretchedness, and extreme suffering. Honors frequently fade away, or are snatched from us, to be succeeded by persecution, calumny, hatred, and disgrace. Sensual gratifications may never come at all, or if they do, bitter recollections, bodily diseases--nay, incurable remorse for their indulgence, rarely fail to come soon after; and all this too in defiance, as it were, of what the world generally calls "good Education." But pure Religion and true Christian morality impart a peace to the soul which nothing in nature can destroy, nor even long disturb; while the unutterable joys and delights of a well spent life are the sure fruits, the certain rewards of every system of instruction well followed out, which, without any exclusion either of science, literature, foreign languages, or tasteful accomplishments, makes the gospel of our blessed Saviour its beginning, its middle, and its end.

Milton is indebted for some of the finest passages in the Paradise Lost to Marino's "Sospetti D'Herode."

{735}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

LOSS OF BREATH.

A TALE A LA BLACKWOOD. BY EDGAR A. POE.

O breathe not, &c.--Moore's Melodies.

The most notorious ill-fortune must, in the end, yield to the untiring courage of philosophy--as the most stubborn city to the ceaseless vigilance of an enemy. Salmanezer, as we have it in the holy writings, lay three years before Samaria: yet it fell. Sardanapalus--see Diodorus--maintained himself seven in Nineveh: but to no purpose. Troy expired at the close of the second lustrum: and Azoth, as Aristæus declares upon his honor as a gentleman, opened at last her gates to Psammitticus, after having barred them for the fifth part of a century.

* * * * *

"Thou wretch!--thou vixen!--thou shrew!"--said I to my wife on the morning after our wedding--"thou witch!--thou hag!--thou whippersnapper!--thou sink of iniquity!--thou fiery-faced quintessence of all that is abominable!--thou--thou--" Here standing upon tiptoe, seizing her by the throat, and placing my mouth close to her ear, I was preparing to launch forth a new and more decided epithet of opprobrium which should not fail, if ejaculated, to convince her of her insignificance, when, to my extreme horror and astonishment, I discovered that I had lost my breath.

The phrases "I am out of breath," "I have lost my breath," &c. are often enough repeated in common conversation, but it had never occurred to me that the terrible accident of which I speak could boná fide and actually happen! Imagine--that is if you have a fanciful turn--imagine I say, my wonder--my consternation--my despair!

There is a good genius, however, which has never, at any time, entirely deserted me. In my most ungovernable moods I still retain a sense of propriety, et le chemin des passions me conduit--as Rousseau says it did him--à la philosophie veritable.

Although I could not at first precisely ascertain to what degree the occurrence had affected me, I unhesitatingly determined to conceal at all events the matter from my wife until farther experience should discover to me the extent of this my unheard of calamity. Altering my countenance, therefore, in a moment, from its bepuffed and distorted appearance, to an expression of arch and coquettish benignity, I gave my lady a pat on the one cheek, and a kiss on the other, and without saying one syllable, (Furies! I could not,) left her astonished at my drollery, as I pirouetted out of the room in a Pas de Zephyr.

Behold me then safely ensconced in my private boudoir, a fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibility--alive with the qualifications of the dead--dead with the propensities of the living--an anomaly on the face of the earth--being very calm, yet breathless.

Yes! breathless. I am serious in asserting that my breath was entirely gone. I could not have stirred with it a feather if my life had been at issue, or sullied even the delicacy of a mirror. Hard fate!--yet there was some alleviation to the first overwhelming paroxysm of my sorrow. I found upon trial that the powers of utterance which, upon my inability to proceed in the conversation with my wife, I then concluded to be totally destroyed, were in fact only partially impeded, and I discovered that had I, at that interesting crisis, dropped my voice to a singularly deep guttural, I might still have continued to her the communication of my sentiments; this pitch of voice (the guttural) depending, I find, not upon the current of the breath, but upon a certain spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat.

Throwing myself upon a chair, I remained for some time absorbed in meditation. My reflections, be sure, were of no consolatory kind. A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possession of my soul--and even the phantom Suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal. Thus I shudderd at self-murder as the most decided of atrocities, while the tabby cat purred strenuously upon the rug, and the very water-dog wheezed assiduously under the table, each taking to itself much merit for the strength of its lungs, and all obviously done in derision of my own pulmonary incapacity.

Oppressed with a tumult of vague hopes and fears, I at length heard the footstep of my wife descending the staircase. Being now assured of her absence, I returned with a palpitating heart to the scene of my disaster.

Carefully locking the door on the inside, I commenced a vigorous search. It was possible, I thought, that concealed in some obscure corner, or lurking in some closet or drawer, might be found the lost object of my inquiry. It might have a vapory--it might even have a tangible form. Most philosophers, upon many points of philosophy, are still very unphilosophical. William Godwin, however, says in his "Mandeville," that "invisible things are the only realities." This, all will allow, is a case in point. I would have the judicious reader pause before accusing such asseverations of an undue quantum of absurdity. Anaxagoras--it will be remembered--maintained that snow is black. This I have since found to be the case.

Long and earnestly did I continue the investigation: but the contemptible reward of my industry and perseverance proved to be only a set of false teeth, two pair of hips, an eye, and a bundle of billets-doux from Mr. Windenough to my wife. I might as well here observe that this confirmation of my lady's partiality for Mr. W. occasioned me little uneasiness. That Mrs. Lacko'breath should admire any thing so dissimilar to myself was a natural and necessary evil. I am, it is well known, of a robust and corpulent appearance, and, at the same time somewhat diminutive in stature. What wonder then that the lath-like tenuity of my acquaintance, and his altitude which has grown into a proverb, should have met with all due estimation in the eyes of Mrs. Lacko'breath? It is by logic similar to this that true philosophy is enabled to set misfortune at defiance. But to return.

My exertions, as I have before said, proved fruitless. Closet after closet--drawer after drawer--corner after corner--were scrutinized to no purpose. At one time, however, I thought myself sure of my prize, having, in rummaging a dressing-case, accidentally demolished a bottle (I had a remarkably sweet breath) of Hewitt's "Seraphic and Highly-Scented Extract of Heaven or Oil of Archangels"--which, as an agreeable perfume, I here take the liberty of recommending.

{736} With a heavy heart I returned to my boudoir--there to ponder upon some method of eluding my wife's penetration, until I could make arrangements prior to my leaving the country, for to this I had already made up my mind. In a foreign climate, being unknown, I might, with some probability of success, endeavor to conceal my unhappy calamity--a calamity calculated, even more than beggary, to estrange the affections of the multitude, and to draw down upon the wretch the well-merited indignation of the virtuous and the happy. I was not long in hesitation. Being naturally quick, I committed to memory the entire tragedies of ----, and ----. I had the good fortune to recollect that in the accentuation of these dramas, or at least of such portion of them as is allotted to their heroes, the tones of voice in which I found myself deficient were altogether unnecessary, and that the deep guttural was expected to reign monotonously throughout.

I practised for some time by the borders of a well-frequented marsh--herein, however, having no reference to a similar proceeding of Demosthenes, but from a design peculiarly and conscientiously my own. Thus armed at all points, I determined to make my wife believe that I was suddenly smitten with a passion for the stage. In this I succeeded to a miracle; and to every question or suggestion found myself at liberty to reply in my most frog-like and sepulchral tones with some passage from the tragedies, any portion of which, as I soon took great pleasure in observing, would apply equally well to any particular subject. It is not to be supposed, however, that in the delivery of such passages I was found at all deficient in the looking asquint--the showing my teeth--the working my knees--the shuffling my feet--or in any of those unmentionable graces which are now justly considered the characteristics of a popular performer. To be sure they spoke of confining me in a straight jacket--but good God! they never suspected me of having lost my breath.

Having at length put my affairs in order, I took my seat very early one morning in the mail stage for ----, giving it to be understood among my acquaintances that business of the last importance required my immediate personal attendance.

The coach was crammed to repletion--but in the uncertain twilight the features of my companions could not be distinguished. Without making any effectual resistance I suffered myself to be placed between two gentlemen of colossal dimensions; while a third, of a size larger, requesting pardon for the liberty he was about to take, threw himself upon my body at full length, and falling asleep in an instant, drowned all my guttural ejaculations for relief, in a snore which would have put to the blush the roarings of a Phalarian bull. Happily the state of my respiratory faculties rendered suffocation an accident entirely out of the question.

As however, the day broke more distinctly in our approach to the outskirts of the city, my tormentor arising and adjusting his shirt-collar, thanked me in a very friendly manner for my civility. Seeing that I remained motionless, (all my limbs were dislocated, and my head twisted on one side,) his apprehensions began to be excited; and arousing the rest of the passengers, he communicated, in a very decided manner, his opinion that a dead man had been palmed upon them during the night for a living boná fide and responsible fellow-traveller--here giving me a thump on the right eye, by way of evidencing the truth of his suggestion.

Thereupon all, one after another, (there were nine in company) believed it their duty to pull me by the ear. A young practising physician, too, having applied a pocket-mirror to my mouth, and found me without breath, the assertion of my persecutor was pronounced a true bill; and the whole party expressed their determination to endure tamely no such impositions for the future, and to proceed no farther with any such carcasses for the present.

I was here accordingly thrown out at the sign of the "Crow," (by which tavern the coach happened to be passing) without meeting with any farther accident than the breaking of both my arms under the left hind wheel of the vehicle. I must besides do the driver the justice to state that he did not forget to throw after me the largest of my trunks, which, unfortunately falling on my head, fractured my skull in a manner at once interesting and extraordinary.

The landlord of the "Crow," who is a hospitable man, finding that my trunk contained sufficient to indemnify him for any little trouble he might take in my behalf, sent forthwith for a surgeon of his acquaintance, and delivered me to his care with a bill and receipt for five and twenty dollars.

The purchaser took me to his apartments and commenced operations immediately. Having, however, cut off my ears, he discovered signs of animation. He now rang the bell, and sent for a neighboring apothecary with whom to consult in the emergency. In case, however, of his suspicions with regard to my existence proving ultimately correct, he, in the meantime, made an incision in my stomach, and removed several of my viscera for private dissection.

The apothecary had an idea that I was actually dead. This idea I endeavored to confute, kicking and plunging with all my might, and making the most furious contortions--for the operations of the surgeon had, in a measure, restored me to the possession of my faculties. All, however, was attributed to the effects of a new Galvanic Battery, wherewith the apothecary, who is really a man of information, performed several curious experiments, in which, from my personal share in their fulfilment I could not help feeling deeply interested. It was a source of mortification to me nevertheless, that although I made several attempts at conversation, my powers of speech were so entirely in abeyance, that I could not even open my mouth; much less then make reply to some ingenious but fanciful theories of which, under other circumstances, my minute acquaintance with the Hippocratian Pathology would have afforded me a ready confutation.

Not being able to arrive at a conclusion, the practitioners remanded me for further examination. I was taken up into a garret; and the surgeon's lady having accommodated me with drawers and stockings, the surgeon himself fastened my hands, and tied up my jaws with a pocket handkerchief--then bolted the door on the outside as he hurried to his dinner, leaving me alone to silence and to meditation.

I now discovered to my extreme delight that I could have spoken had not my mouth been tied up by the pocket-handkerchief. Consoling myself with this reflection, I was mentally repeating some passages of the {737} ----, as is my custom before resigning myself to sleep, when two cats, of a greedy and vituperative turn, entering at a hole in the wall, leaped up with a flourish à la Catalani, and alighting opposite one another on my visage, betook themselves to unseemly and indecorous contention for the paltry consideration of my nose.

But, as the loss of his ears proved the means of elevating to the throne of Cyrus, the Magian or Mige-Gush of Persia, and as the cutting off his nose gave Zopyrus possession of Babylon, so the loss of a few ounces of my countenance proved the salvation of my body. Aroused by the pain, and burning with indignation, I burst, at a single effort, the fastenings and the bandage. Stalking across the room I cast a glance of contempt at the belligerents, and throwing open the sash to their extreme horror and disappointment, precipitated myself--very dexterously--from the window.

The mail-robber W----, to whom I bore a singular resemblance, was at this moment passing from the city jail to the scaffold erected for his execution in the suburbs. His extreme infirmity and long-continued ill health, had obtained him the privilege of remaining unmanacled; and habited in his gallows costume--a dress very similar to my own--he lay at full length in the bottom of the hangman's cart (which happened to be under the windows of the surgeon at the moment of my precipitation) without any other guard than the driver who was asleep, and two recruits of the sixth infantry, who were drunk.

As ill-luck would have it, I alit upon my feet within the vehicle. W----, who was an acute fellow, perceived his opportunity. Leaping up immediately he bolted out behind, and turning down an alley, was out of sight in the twinkling of an eye. The recruits aroused by the bustle, could not exactly comprehend the merits of the transaction. Seeing, however, a man, the precise counterpart of the felon, standing upright in the cart before their eyes, they were of opinion that "the rascal, (meaning W----) was after making his escape," (so they expressed themselves) and, having communicated this opinion to one another, they took each a dram, and then knocked me down with the but-ends of their muskets.

It was not long ere we arrived at the place of destination. Of course nothing could be said in my defence. Hanging was my inevitable fate. I resigned myself thereto, with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious. Being little of a cynic, I had all the sentiments of a dog. The hangman, however, adjusted the noose about my neck. The drop fell. My convulsions were said to be extraordinary. Several gentlemen swooned, and some ladies were carried home in hysterics. Pinxit, too, availed himself of the opportunity to retouch, from a sketch taken upon the spot, his admirable painting of the "Marsyas flayed alive."

I will endeavor to depict my sensations upon the gallows. To write upon such a theme it is necessary to have been hanged. Every author should confine himself to matters of experience. Thus Mark Antony wrote a treatise upon drunkenness.

Die I certainly did not. The sudden jerk given to my neck upon the falling of the drop, merely proved a corrective to the unfortunate twist afforded me by the gentleman in the coach. Although my body certainly was, I had, alas! no breath to be suspended; and but for the shaking of the rope, the pressure of the knot under my ear, and the rapid determination of blood to the brain, should, I dare say, have experienced very little inconvenience.

The latter feeling, however, grew momentarily more painful. I heard my heart beating with violence--the veins in my hands and wrists swelled nearly to bursting--my temples throbbed tempestuously--and I felt that my eyes were starting from their sockets. Yet when I say that in spite of all this my sensations were not absolutely intolerable, I will not be believed.

There were noises in my ears--first like the tolling of huge bells--then like the beating of a thousand drums--then, lastly, like the low, sullen murmurs of the sea. But these noises were very far from disagreeable.

Although, too, the powers of my mind were confused and distorted, yet I was--strange to say!--well aware of such confusion and distortion. I could, with unerring promptitude determine at will in what particulars my sensations were correct--and in what particulars I wandered from the path. I could even feel with accuracy how far--to what very point, such wanderings had misguided me, but still without the power of correcting my deviations. I took besides, at the same time, a wild delight in analyzing my conceptions.[1]

[Footnote 1: The general reader will I dare say recognize, in these sensations of Mr. Lacko'breath, much of the absurd metaphysicianism of the redoubted Schelling.]

Memory, which, of all other faculties, should have first taken its departure, seemed on the contrary to have been endowed with quadrupled power. Each incident of my past life flitted before me like a shadow. There was not a brick in the building where I was born--not a dog-leaf in the primer I had thumbed over when a child--not a tree in the forest where I hunted when a boy--not a street in the cities I had traversed when a man--that I did not at that time most palpably behold. I could repeat to myself entire lines, passages, names, acts, chapters, books, from the studies of my earlier days; and while, I dare say, the crowd around me were blind with horror, or aghast with awe, I was alternately with Æschylus, a demi-god, or with Aristophanes, a frog.

* * * * *

A dreamy delight now took hold upon my spirit, and I imagined that I had been eating opium, or feasting upon the Hashish of the old Assassins. But glimpses of pure, unadulterated reason--during which I was still buoyed up by the hope of finally escaping that death which hovered, like a vulture above me--were still caught occasionally by my soul.

By some unusual pressure of the rope against my face, a portion of the cap was chafed away, and I found to my astonishment that my powers of vision were not altogether destroyed. A sea of waving heads rolled around me. In the intensity of my delight I eyed them with feelings of the deepest commiseration, and blessed, as I looked upon the haggard assembly, the superior benignity of my proper stars.

I now reasoned, rapidly I believe--profoundly I am sure--upon principles of common law--propriety of that law especially, for which I hung--absurdities in political economy which till then I had never been able to acknowledge--dogmas in the old Aristotelians now {738} generally denied, but not the less intrinsically true--detestable school formulæ in Bourdon, in Garnier, in Lacroix--synonymes in Crabbe--lunar-lunatic theories in St. Pierre--falsities in the Pelham novels--beauties in Vivian Grey--more than beauties in Vivian Grey--profundity in Vivian Grey--genius in Vivian Grey--every thing in Vivian Grey.

Then came, like a flood, Coleridge, Kant, Fitche, and Pantheism--then like a deluge, the Academie, Pergola, La Scala, San Carlo, Paul, Albert, Noblet, Ronzi Vestris, Fanny Bias, and Taglioni.

* * * * *

A rapid change was now taking place in my sensations. The last shadows of connection flitted away from my meditations. A storm--a tempest of ideas, vast, novel, and soul-stirring, bore my spirit like a feather afar off. Confusion crowded upon confusion like a wave upon a wave. In a very short time Schelling himself would have been satisfied with my entire loss of self-identity. The crowd became a mass of mere abstraction.

About this period I became aware of a heavy fall and shock--but, although the concussion jarred throughout my frame, I had not the slightest idea of its having been sustained in my own proper person; and thought of it as of an incident peculiar to some other existence--an idiosyncrasy belonging to some other Ens.

It was at this moment--as I afterwards discovered--that having been suspended for the full term of execution, it was thought proper to remove my body from the gallows--this, the more especially as the real culprit had now been retaken and recognized.

Much sympathy was now exercised in my behalf--and as no one in the city appeared to identify my body, it was ordered that I should be interred in the public sepulchre early in the following morning. I lay, in the meantime, without signs of life--although from the moment, I suppose, when the rope was loosened from my neck, a dim consciousness of my situation oppressed me like the night-mare.

I was laid out in a chamber sufficiently small, and very much encumbered with furniture--yet to me it appeared of a size to contain the universe. I have never before or since, in body or in mind, suffered half so much agony as from that single idea. Strange! that the simple conception of abstract magnitude--of infinity--should have been accompanied with pain. Yet so it was. "With how vast a difference," said I, "in life and in death--in time and in eternity--here and hereafter, shall our merest sensations be imbodied!"

The day died away, and I was aware that it was growing dark--yet the same terrible conceit still overwhelmed me. Nor was it confined to the boundaries of the apartment--it extended, although in a more definite manner, to all objects, and, perhaps I will not be understood in saying that it extended also to all sentiments. My fingers as they lay cold, clammy, stiff, and pressing helplessly one against another, were, in my imagination, swelled to a size according with the proportions of the Antoeus. Every portion of my frame betook of their enormity. The pieces of money--I well remember--which being placed upon my eyelids, failed to keep them effectually closed, seemed huge, interminable chariot-wheels of the Olympia, or of the Sun.

Yet it is very singular that I experienced no sense of weight--of gravity. On the contrary I was put to much inconvenience by that buoyancy--that tantalizing difficulty of keeping down, which is felt by the swimmer in deep water. Amid the tumult of my terrors I laughed with a hearty internal laugh to think what incongruity there would be--could I arise and walk--between the elasticity of my motion, and the mountain of my form.

* * * * *

The night came--and with it a new crowd of horrors. The consciousness of my approaching interment, began to assume new distinctness, and consistency--yet never for one moment did I imagine that I was not actually dead.

"This then"--I mentally ejaculated--"this darkness which is palpable, and oppresses with a sense of suffocation--this--this--is indeed death. This is death--this is death the terrible--death the holy. This is the death undergone by Regulus--and equally by Seneca. Thus--thus, too, shall I always remain--always--always remain. Reason is folly, and Philosophy a lie. No one will know my sensations, my horror--my despair. Yet will men still persist in reasoning, and philosophizing, and making themselves fools. There is, I find, no hereafter but this. This--this--this--is the only Eternity!--and what, O Baalzebub!--what an Eternity!--to lie in this vast--this awful void--a hideous, vague, and unmeaning anomaly--motionless, yet wishing for motion--powerless, yet longing for power--forever, forever, and forever!"

But the morning broke at length--and with its misty and gloomy dawn arrived in triple horror the paraphernalia of the grave. Then--and not till then--was I fully sensible of the fearful fate hanging over me. The phantasms of the night had faded away with its shadows, and the actual terrors of the yawning tomb left me no heart for the bug-bear speculations of Transcendentalism.

I have before mentioned that my eyes were but imperfectly closed--yet as I could not move them in any degree, those objects alone which crossed the direct line of vision were within the sphere of my comprehension. But across that line of vision spectral and stealthy figures were continually flitting, like the ghosts of Banquo. They were making hurried preparations for my interment. First came the coffin which they placed quietly by my side. Then the undertaker with attendants and a screw-driver. Then a stout man whom I could distinctly see and who took hold of my feet--while one whom I could only feel lifted me by the head and shoulders. Together they placed me in the coffin, and drawing the shroud up over my face proceeded to fasten down the lid. One of the screws, missing its proper direction, was screwed by the carelessness of the undertaker deep--deep--down into my shoulder. A convulsive shudder ran throughout my frame. With what horror, with what sickening of heart did I reflect that one minute sooner a similar manifestation of life, would, in all probability, have prevented my inhumation. But alas! it was now too late, and hope died away within my bosom as I felt myself lifted upon the shoulders of men--carried down the stairway--and thrust within the hearse.

During the brief passage to the cemetery my sensations, which for some time had been lethargic and dull, {739} assumed, all at once, a degree of intense and unnatural vivacity for which I can in no manner account. I could distinctly hear the rustling of the plumes--the whispers of the attendants--the solemn breathings of the horses of death. Confined as I was in that narrow and strict embrace, I could feel the quicker or slower movement of the procession--the restlessness of the driver--the windings of the road as it led us to the right or to the left. I could distinguish the peculiar odor of the coffin--the sharp acid smell of the steel screws. I could see the texture of the shroud as it lay close against my face; and was even conscious of the rapid variations in light and shade which the flapping to and fro of the sable hangings occasioned within the body of the vehicle.

In a short time however, we arrived at the place of sculpture, and I felt myself deposited within the tomb. The entrance was secured--they departed--and I was left alone. A line of Marston's "Malcontent,"

"Death's a good fellow and keeps open house,"

struck me at that moment as a palpable lie. Sullenly I lay at length, the quick among the dead--and Anacharsis inter Scythas.

From what I overheard early in the morning, I was led to believe that the occasions when the vault was made use of were of very rare occurrence. It was probable that many months might elapse before the doors of the tomb would be again unbarred--and even should I survive until that period, what means could I have more than at present, of making known my situation or of escaping from the coffin? I resigned myself, therefore, with much tranquillity to my fate, and fell, after many hours, into a deep and deathlike sleep.

How long I remained thus is to me a mystery. When I awoke my limbs were no longer cramped with the cramp of death--I was no longer without the power of motion. A very slight exertion was sufficient to force off the lid of my prison--for the dampness of the atmosphere had already occasioned decay in the woodwork around the screws.

My steps as I groped around the sides of my habitation were, however, feeble and uncertain, and I felt all the gnawings of hunger with the pains of intolerable thirst. Yet, as time passed away, it is strange that I experienced little uneasiness from these scourges of the earth, in comparisons with the more terrible visitations of the fiend Ennui. Stranger still were the resources by which I endeavored to banish him from my presence.

The sepulchre was large and subdivided into many compartments, and I busied myself in examining the peculiarities of their construction. I determined the length and breadth of my abode. I counted and recounted the stones of the masonry. But there were other methods by which I endeavored to lighten the tedium of my hours. Feeling my way among the numerous coffins ranged in order around, I lifted them down, one by one, and breaking open their lids, busied myself in speculations about the mortality within.

"This," I reflected, tumbling over a carcass, puffy, bloated, and rotund--"this has been, no doubt, in every sense of the word, an unhappy--an unfortunate man. It has been his terrible lot not to walk, but to waddle--to pass through life not like a human being, but like an elephant--not like a man, but like a rhinoceros.

"His attempts at getting on have been mere abortions--and his circumgyratory proceedings a palpable failure. Taking a step forward, it has been his misfortune to take two towards the right, and three towards the left. His studies have been confined to the Philosophy of Crabbe.

"He can have had no idea of the wonders of a Pirouette. To him a Pas de Papillon has been an abstract conception.

"He has never ascended the summit of a hill. He has never viewed from any steeple the glories of a metropolis.

"Heat has been his mortal enemy. In the dog-days his days have been the days of a dog. Therein, he has dreamed of flames and suffocation--of mountains upon mountains--of Pelion upon Ossa.

"He was short of breath--to say all in a word--he was short of breath.

"He thought it extravagant to play upon wind instruments. He was the inventor of self-moving fans--wind-sails--and ventilators. He patronized Du Pont the bellows-maker--and died miserably in attempting to smoke a cigar.

"His was a case in which I feel deep interest--a lot in which I sincerely sympathize."

"But here," said I--"here"--and I dragged spitefully from its receptacle a gaunt, tall, and peculiar-looking form, whose remarkable appearance struck me with a sense of unwelcome familiarity--"here," said I--"here is a wretch entitled to no earthly commiseration." Thus saying, in order to obtain a more distinct view of my subject, I applied my thumb and forefinger to his nose, and, causing him to assume a sitting position upon the ground, held him, thus, at the length of my arm, while I continued my soliloquy.

--"entitled," I repeated, "to no earthly commiseration. Who indeed would think of compassionating a shadow? Besides--has he not had his full share of the blessings of mortality? He was the originator of tall monuments--shot-towers--lightning-rods--lombardy-poplars. His treatise upon 'Shades and Shadows' has immortalized him.

"He went early to college and studied Pneumatics. He then came home--talked eternally--and played upon the French horn.

"He patronized the bag-pipes. Captain Barclay, who walked against Time, would not walk against him. Windham and Allbreath were his favorite writers. He died gloriously while inhaling gas--levique flatu corrumpitur, like the fama pudicitiæ in Hieronymus.[2] He was indubitably a"----

[Footnote 2: Tenera res in feminis fama pudicitiæ et quasi flos pulcherrimus, cito ad levem marcessit auram, levique flatu corrumpitur--maxime, &c.--Hieronymus ad Salvinam.]

"How can you?--how--can--you?"--interrupted the object of my animadversions, gasping for breath, and tearing off, with a desperate exertion, the bandage around his jaws--"how can you, Mr. Lacko'breath, be so infernally cruel as to pinch me in that manner by the nose? Did you not see how they had fastened up my mouth--and you must know--if you know any thing--what a vast superfluity of breath I have to dispose of! If you {740} do not know, however, sit down and you shall see. In my situation it is really a great relief to be able to open one's mouth--to be able to expatiate--to be able to communicate with a person like yourself who do not think yourself called upon at every period to interrupt the thread of a gentleman's discourse. Interruptions are annoying and should undoubtedly be abolished--don't you think so?--no reply, I beg you,--one person is enough to be speaking at a time. I shall be done, by and bye, and then you may begin. How the devil, sir, did you get into this place?--not a word I beseech you--been here some time myself--terrible accident!--heard of it I suppose--awful calamity!--walking under your windows--some short while ago--about the time you were stage-struck--horrible occurrence! heard of 'catching one's breath,' eh?--hold your tongue I tell you!--I caught somebody else's!--had always too much of my own--met Blab at the corner of the street--would'nt give me a chance for a word--could'nt get in a syllable edgeways--attacked, consequently, with Epilepsis--Blab made his escape--damn all fools!--they took me up for dead, and put me in this place--pretty doings all of them!--heard all you said about me--every word a lie--horrible!--wonderful!--outrageous!--hideous!--incomprehensible!-- et cetera--et cetera--et cetera--et cetera"----

It is impossible to conceive my astonishment at so unexpected a discourse; or the extravagant joy with which I became gradually convinced that the breath so fortunately caught by the gentleman--whom I soon recognized as my neighbor Windenough--was, in fact, the identical expiration mislaid by myself in the conversation with my wife. Time--place--and incidental circumstances rendered it a matter beyond question. I did not however, immediately release my hold upon Mr. W.'s proboscis--not at least during the long period in which the inventor of lombardy poplars continued to favor me with his explanations. In this respect I was actuated by that habitual prudence which has ever been my predominating trait.

I reflected that many difficulties might still lie in the path of my preservation which extreme exertion on my part would be alone able to surmount. Many persons, I considered, are prone to estimate commodities in their possession--however valueless to the then proprietor--however troublesome, or distressing--in precise ratio with the advantages to be derived by others from their attainment--or by themselves from their abandonment. Might not this be the case with Mr. Windenough? In displaying anxiety for the breath of which he was at present so willing to get rid, might I not lay myself open to the exactions of his avarice? There are scoundrels in this world--I remembered with a sigh--who will not scruple to take unfair opportunities with even a next door neighbor--and (this remark is from Epictetus) it is precisely at that time when men are most anxious to throw off the burden of their own calamities that they feel the least desirous of relieving them in others.

Upon considerations similar to these, and still retaining my grasp upon the nose of Mr. W., I accordingly thought proper to model my reply.

"Monster!"--I began in a tone of the deepest indignation--"monster! and double-winded idiot!--Dost thou whom, for thine iniquities, it has pleased Heaven to accurse with a two-fold respiration--dost thou, I say, presume to address me in the familiar language of an old acquaintance?--'I lie,' forsooth!--and 'hold my tongue,' to be sure--pretty conversation, indeed, to a gentleman with a single breath!--all this, too, when I have it in my power to relieve the calamity under which thou dost so justly suffer--to curtail the superfluities of thine unhappy respiration." Like Brutus I paused for a reply--with which, like a tornado, Mr. Windenough immediately overwhelmed me. Protestation followed upon protestation, and apology upon apology. There were no terms with which he was unwilling to comply, and there were none of which I failed to take the fullest advantage.

Preliminaries being at length arranged, my acquaintance delivered me the respiration--for which--having carefully examined it--I gave him afterwards a receipt.

I am aware that by many I shall be held to blame for speaking in a manner so cursory of a transaction so impalpable. It will be thought that I should have entered more minutely into the details of an occurrence by which--and all this is very true--much new light might be thrown upon a highly interesting branch of physical philosophy.

To all this, I am sorry, that I cannot reply. A hint is the only answer which I am permitted to make. There were circumstances--but I think it much safer upon consideration to say as little as possible about an affair so delicate--so delicate, I repeat, and at the same time involving the interests of a third party whose resentment I have not the least desire, at this moment, of incurring.

We were not long after this necessary arrangement in effecting an escape from the dungeons of the sepulchre. The united strength of our resuscitated voices was soon efficiently apparent. Scissors, the Whig Editor, republished a treatise upon "the nature and origin of subterranean noises." A reply--rejoinder--confutation--and justification followed in the columns of an ultra Gazette. It was not until the opening of the vault to decide the controversy, that the appearance of Mr. Windenough and myself proved both parties to have been decidedly in the wrong.

I cannot conclude these details of some very singular passages in a life at all times sufficiently eventful, without again recalling to the attention of the reader the merits of that indiscriminate philosophy which is a sure and ready shield against those shafts of calamity which can be neither seen, felt, nor fully understood. It was in the spirit of this wisdom that, among the ancient Hebrews, it was believed the gates of Heaven would be inevitably opened to that sinner, or saint, who with good lungs and implicit confidence, should vociferate the word "Amen!" It was in the spirit of this wisdom that when a great plague raged at Athens, and every means had been in vain attempted for its removal, Epimenides--as Laertius relates in his second book of the life of that philosopher--advised the erection of a shrine and temple to prostekonti Theo--"to the proper God."

The "Acajou et Zirphile" of Du Clos is a whimsical and amusing Fairy Tale, ingeniously composed in illustration of a series of grotesque, and extravagant engravings, whose figures, rats, apes, butterflies, and men, have no earthly meaning or connection but that given by the pen of the writer.

{741}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

CUPID'S SPORT.

"And is this Cupid's realm?--if so, good by! Cupid, and Cupid's votaries I fly: No offering to his altar do I bring-- No bleeding heart, nor hymeneal ring."

In the third number of the Messenger, my good reader, you and I were engaged in taking a peep at Cupid's Sport. Unless you have fallen out with me, (as I certainly have not with you,) we will again travel together, in a half merry, half serious mood, through some three or four pages. We shall perhaps be forced to scramble over hedges matted with brambles, or amble along some grassy mead or velvet lawn; it may be we

"Must pore where babbling waters flow, And watch unfolding roses blow."

You no doubt remember in what a sad plight we left our young friend Timothy Wilberforce; how he had been gradually led on by Cupid, buoyed up and transported, till he attained within a step of the pinnacle of bliss--and then, how the mischief-making God had precipitated him to the very brink of despair; how, like Sisyphus,

"Up the high hill he heav'd the huge round stone;"

and how

"The huge round stone resulting with a bound, Thunder'd impetuous down, and smoked along the ground."

In fine, he had been caught and caged, manacled, cuffed, and then kicked, (that's the word,) by our good little, sweet little Molly, to his heart's content. Alas! this truly is one of the miseries of human life. Had Tim received a kick from a man fashioned like himself, he might at least have returned the blow. Had it been bestowed by one fashioned after the manner of the Houyhnims, with hock and hoof, or had it been driven full in his face by an ass, shod with a double set of irons, he might have consoled himself with the reflection that some skilful surgeon would replace the mangled elements, or kind nature reproduce a healthy action. But the impress of a damsel's foot upon a generous heart was far more difficult to efface. The wound it inflicted, had baffled through all ages the skill of anatomists, phrenologists, and philosophers. Tim then, could only bewail the hopelessness of his situation in the mournful strains of the gentle Corydon:

"She is faithless, and I am undone. Ye that witness the woes I endure, Let reason instruct you to shun What it cannot instruct you to cure."

These were the first sensations of his softened soul, but as time moved on with his unslackened wing, other thoughts unbidden sprung upon his mind. Memory indeed, for awhile continued to brood over "the ills that flesh is heir to," but the good Tim, at last, came to the same conclusion with the wise McPherson, that

"To cut his throat, a brave man scorns, So, instead of his throat, he cut--his corns."

Tim, like all honest bachelors, swore most roundly, that he would never more be caught by woman's wiles; that she was heartless, faithless, deceitful, "and desperately wicked." Alas! poor Tim knew not the susceptibility of his own heart; and Cupid but smiled to think how easily he could hold our hero in magic thraldom. Tim indeed could cry out in the agony of woe,

"Have I not had my brain sear'd, heart riven, Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, life's life lied away?"

but still, blindfold and unconscious, he would find himself worse than ever entangled and ensnared. A ringlet tastefully displayed, a soft melting eye, it might be a keen piercing one, it mattered not to him, a dimpled cheek, a laughter making mouth, were to him more attractive, than a diamond to a miser, a ship with her canvass swelling to the breeze to the jolly tar, or a well fed steed to a Dutchman's fancy. The very hopes he once cherished, now nipped and blighted; his former fondness for society which he now shunned and despised, served by the contrast to make him doubly gloomy and alone,

"Lone--as the corse within its shroud, Lone--as a solitary cloud, A single cloud on a sunny day, While all the rest of heaven is clear, A frown upon the atmosphere, That hath no business to appear When skies are blue, and earth is gay."

Feeling so doubly lone, Tim would again seek a partner to sympathize in his sorrows, and to whom could he go? to man--cold calculating man? What is man worth in sorrow? Has he the tender sensibility, the warm hearted sympathy that is ever alive in a female's bosom? If you tell him your love sick tale, he will laugh you to scorn, he will frown you down for a puling blockhead; but woman will listen to your griefs, will alleviate your pain, assuage your sorrow, and if she but smiles, Tim would exclaim,

"How she smiled, and I could not but love."

With feelings such as these, Tim accidentally became acquainted with "the lass with the auburn curls." These accidents occur sometimes, so happily and apropos, that we are tempted to believe them not merely the result of casualty; my own opinion is, that they are all devised, planned and executed by that wily urchin cupid, to bring those together, upon whom to sport his strange fantastic freaks.

One autumn's eve, when the sun was low, Catherine and her Cousin Tony issued forth, to ramble along the winding banks of the James River Canal. They were admiring the beauty of the scenery, and occasionally turning to view the dazzling brilliancy of many of the windows in the city, caused by the reflection of the setting sun, producing the effect of an illumination shifting from house to house as they changed their position.

They had progressed along the canal as far as the first water-fall, the situation of which, many of my readers will no doubt remember; not as it is at present, but as it existed a few years ago, before the polishing hand of art had shorn it of half its beauties. There is an arch turned there, spanning the ravine, over which the canal passes at its usual level, and is thus raised, some thirty feet perhaps, above the base of the ravine. Under this arch a pellucid rivulet gently ripples, till reaching the brink of the acclivity below, it leaps and bounds towards the river. Above the sides of this arch, the waste water from the canal rushed headlong, mingling with the clear waters of the rivulet, and dashing foamingly along, or eddying and bubbling among a rugged bed of granite. On the east side of this fall, there was once a rock, raised high above the rest, by the side of which a little cedar grew, over and around whose boughs the wild grape and sweet brier {742} intertwined their branches until they hung a verdant canopy above. This place, adorned as it was with its native drapery, had obtained the name of "Cupid's Cavern,"--for here, many a loving couple, after an evening's walk, would rest, feasting upon the beauties of the surrounding scenery. And here, many a tale of love had been told, which the roar of the water-fall deafened to all, but the ears into which they had been whispered. On the rock just mentioned, by the side of the cavern, Tony and Kate at length seated themselves, and will you believe it, Tony was actually endeavoring to persuade his cousin to permit him, to call her, by a more endearing title.

Tim too, had been attracted by the delicious softness of the evening, to gaze upon the same beauties; he was a little behind them during the walk, but had been so absorbed with his own reflections, that he had scarcely noticed that any one was before him. Here, he had often walked with his once sweet Molly in the days of his happiness, and although he now boasted that his heart was free as air, association necessarily brought to his mind, her whom he wished to banish, and spite of himself, he more than once repeated,

"Alas! where with her I have stray'd, I could wander with pleasure alone."

A few yards above the fall I have vainly endeavored to describe, there was a little bridge across the canal, then formed of two logs, each about a foot wide, but without railing or safeguard of any kind. From its proximity to "Cupid's Cavern," it might well have been termed the "Bridge of Sighs." These logs had been so long exposed to the weather, and were so much used and worn, as to have become very much decayed and absolutely dangerous. Still, through mere habit, they were daily crossed by many, and their dilapidated condition was scarcely noticed. One had evidently, already, partially given way near the middle, while the other was not in a much more sound condition.

Upon the end of this bridge, Tim determined to rest, and while thoughtfully musing, his eyes fell upon the cousins I have just described, seated on the rock below.

Reader, I cannot tell you all that Tony or Kate said; I wish I could. A word or two must suffice. It is not what they said I care about. I desire you to look at Kate, and then tell me if you can blame Tim for looking too.

"Cousin Kate," said Tony, "Did you ever feel as if you would choke when you attempted to speak?" This was a plain, common place question, and Catherine might have answered straight forward, "Yes, cousin Tony, I have,"--or "No, Tony, I have not;" or "I do not know cuz;"--but, some how or other, girls are strange beings. Catherine said not one word, but began to blush. "I have called you cousin," said Tony, "long enough, Kate." Here the perspiration stood upon Tony's brow, and Kate blushed crimson. "Cousin Tony," said Kate, "It is time for us to be returning home." "Ah Kate," said Tony, "you know how long and how ardently I have loved you; may I not, one day, drop that epithet of Cousin?" Tony looked at Kate for some reply. "Cousin Tony," said Catherine, summoning up all her courage, "we can never be more than friends and cousins." Then Kate's brow began to cool, but whenever Tony would press the matter, all he saw was new blown blushes, for Kate had seen that Tim's eyes were fastened upon her, and from Tony's eager gaze and manner, she well knew a stranger's suspicions must be roused.

Gentle reader, I have told you thus much of Tony's courtship, that you, as well as Tim, might see a few of Katy's blushes. She was as delicately refined in thought and sentiment as you can possibly conceive. Her's was

"A beautiful transparent skin, Which never hides the blood, yet holds it in;"

so soft, and thin, and white, that you might perceive each pulse as it ebbed and flowed; indeed, whenever her heart was excited by any sudden emotion, the delicate ruby would come and go, till the consciousness of blushing would make her doubly crimson. She would endeavor to conceal her emotions,

"But o'er her bright brow flashed a tumult strange, And into her clear cheek the blood was brought, Blood red, as sunset summer clouds, which range The verge of heaven."

Good reader, I hate formal introductions, and therefore I have not introduced you formally to my heroine, but since I have let you into the secret that Kate's foible was blushing, I must go a little further; when she did blush, she had a habit, as if to cool her brow, of parting her ringlets, and then, carelessly, throwing them back, there wantonly hung

"Down her white neck, long floating auburn curls, The least of which, would set ten poets raving."

You are not to consider this a description of Katy's person; when I attempt such a delineation, it will be with a flourish of trumpets, louder and longer than Joshua made, when he encompassed the walls of Jericho and blew them into fragments. At present, you see our Catherine in a simple, neat, white dress, which

"Like fleecy clouds about the moon, play'd 'round her."

All this time, Tim, that most notorious contemner of beauty, and the man of all others who could most manfully resist loveliness, "in any shape, in any mood," sat drinking in these unconscious exhibitions of Katy's character and mind. He saw not Tony, much less did he hear or imagine what he said. All he perceived was Catherine's face, and those rich, floating curls. It was indeed cruel in Cupid to place him there. At every succeeding blush, a poisoned arrow flew from his silver bow, and Tim's poor heart fluttered in his bosom. Determining for once, however, to out general Cupid, Tim gallantly resolved upon a hasty flight; accordingly, he took himself across the little bridge, and began sauntering away on the opposite hill.

About the same time, Catherine again insisted upon returning, and Tony finding all effort at persuasion perfectly hopeless, began to put upon the matter the best face he could muster. Taking his cousin's arm he insisted she should vary the walk, by crossing to the other side of the canal, and return to the city in that direction. Kate expressed her uneasiness at crossing this insecure bridge, but as Tony was importunate, she reluctantly consented, not desiring farther to add to his mortification by a positive refusal. Tony, as a man of gallantry naturally would do, placed Catherine upon the soundest of the logs, he himself walking by her side on the weaker of the two, not reflecting that the weaker log would much more easily bear her weight than his. As fate would have it, Catherine became alarmed by the trembling of the bridge, and leaned the more heavily {743} upon Tony for support, and as he was not in a mood to care much whether he broke his own neck or not, he insisted upon proving to his cousin, that the bridge was perfectly secure, and that all her fears were totally groundless. So taking her by the arm, in a careless way, and telling her gaily, "Now mind what you are about," he raised himself upon his feet several times, so as to produce an oscillating motion in the log. At this moment, Tim had turned about to cast one lingering look, merely to inquire with himself, what lassie that might be, when perceiving the danger they were in, he shouted at the top of his voice, "Take care!"--but it was too late,--down went the log with a terrible crash, and poor Tony and sweet Kate were precipitated into the water below, in the middle of the canal, at the deepest point. If ever you have seen in the hand of some ruthless urchin, an innocent bird (which he has just succeeded in securing from his trap,) flurried, gasping and panting with fright, you will have a correct idea of Katy. She gave one shriek as she fell, and then rose almost breathless, gasping and panting in an agony of alarm. Luckily the water was not more than waist deep. Tony went down feet foremost, following the decayed timbers, (pity he had not fallen on his head,) but Catherine, clinging to his arm at the time of the accident, and having her support suddenly taken from her, was precipitated at full length into the water. In an instant, Tim rushed to the spot. Into the canal he went, and catching the terrified Kate in his arms, he brought her safely to the shore. Tony did all he could, but poor fellow he was completely involved among the broken fragments, and though he strove to rescue Kate, it was as much as he could do to extricate himself. Tim knew there was no danger of Tony's drowning, and so he left him to struggle for himself, giving all his attention to Kate, who was truly an object worthy of his care, and yet not the less of his admiration. She, though thoroughly wet, withal looked so grateful, and her countenance expressed so many thanks, and her pitiable situation, together with the freshness of the water, heightened the bloom of her cheek to such a degree, that Tim never once noticed her dress. Well might he have imagined her the beauteous Goddess Thetis, with her silvery drapery, as she issued from her watery mansion. But when she took off her fragile bonnet, to adjust her dishevelled hair, and he viewed

"O'er her white forehead the gilt tresses flow, Like the rays of the sun on a hillock of snow,"

who could have blamed him, if he had given way to his raptures, and exclaimed,

"My heart for a slave to gay Venus I've sold, And bartered my freedom for ringlets of gold."

As for Tony, if you could have seen him, as he crept out of the water, with his "long tailed blue," tapering to a point, and dripping like an old rooster under a cart, on a rainy day, with his head up and his tail down, you really would have pitied him; he knew not which way to look, nor what to say. I have seen a dog caught in the act of killing sheep; have seen a wet rat creeping out of a tub; and I saw the gay Tony sneaking out of the canal after having been turned off by his sweetheart, and each of these animals, dog, rat, and Tony, had the same identical sickly phiz. The dog slunk to his kennel, the rat crept to his hole, but Tony was forced to his mistress, who with all imaginable sweetness forgave him in an instant. He ought, if he could, to have crept into an augur hole and hid himself there forever.

However, finding Tim was an old friend of his, he thanked him kindly for his timely assistance, and introduced him to her, of all others, with whom Tim most desired some farther acquaintance.

In a little time, our three friends began to laugh the matter over as well as they could, and being thoroughly drenched, they endeavored to keep each other in countenance, on their way homeward. Tim accompanied Kate to her door, and then, wishing she might experience no farther inconvenience from her accident, and having received a polite invitation to visit the family, retired with Tony to procure a drier suit.

My kind reader, you must listen to me with patience; hereafter, I will not ramble so much at large, but will hasten on with my story. Time's magic wing sped on, and days, weeks and months rolled by. In the mean time, Tim continued his visits to Kate. Sometimes, at an interval of a fortnight; at other times but a week would elapse; then this short week began to appear an entire month; finally, weeks were reduced to days, and days to hours, and Tim was not satisfied unless he paid a visit at least twice a day.

The gossips of the city were thus furnished with a new theme to run riot with, and Tim and Catherine were bandied about at a merciless rate. Some thought it passing strange--others thought it natural enough. "Did you hear Mr. Wilberforce was courting?" said one; "Did you know Miss Catherine was engaged?" said another; "I'll bet my life they will be married!" "I know she has turned him off!" "She will never have him in the world," said a third, "for she is already engaged to her cousin Tony." And thus, Tim was known to be courting, engaged, turned off and jilted, before he himself had ascertained what his fate would be; but the latter opinion, that he was certainly turned off, gained the more currency, particularly as our friend was suddenly called off, by business, to a distant city, where he was compelled to remain for several months. The busy bodies could not but notice, with what a heavy heart he departed, and there could be no possibility of doubt about it. Tim had certainly received his walking papers. No matter, friend Tim, thou must learn

"What it is to admire and to love, And to leave her we love and admire."

My best wishes attend thee wherever thou goest.

Most persons would suppose, that after the honest denial, and the decent ducking Tony had obtained, that the ardor of his love would have been somewhat cooled, and that he would have been the last person who would ever have attempted again to mention love in Catherine's presence. Not so, Tony. He had been more than once rejected already by his cousin, but because they were cousins, and Catherine had always treated him kindly, Tony was still induced to harbor hope, when almost any other person would only have welcomed despair. He found it impossible "to look and not to love." He was one of those luckless wights, who love and are not beloved, and yet cannot bring themselves to give up the loved object--who, though driven from the presence of their fair ones, continue to cast a lingering look behind, to catch a glimpse of relenting compassion. He reminded me of the glowing {744} description of Lot's wife, once given by an humble divine, when he endeavored to explain to his flock why it was that she continued to look back as she fled from the ill-fated Sodom. "Ah, my brethren," he said, "no doubt the good woman had a pleasant little garden there, filled with all kinds of vegetables, and the remembrance of her greens, and her turnips, her potatoes, tomatoes, her squashes and beans, about which she had experienced many moments of anxiety and vexation, caused her heart to cling to the world, and so from the top of every little knob, she looked,--and looked,--and there she stands, a pillar of salt." If Tony but received a look of recognition, it was sufficient encouragement for him. If he accidentally received a civil bow, in return for a gracious smile, he would imagine himself welcomed to her arms. If he offered his hand, and she did not put her arms akimbo, and look like a very virago, he would return the next morning, and if he was again told of friendship merely, Tony would only express his astonishment, and say, "Why then did you give me such encouragement,--why did you look in that way?" Look in that way! Now the fact is, no matter which way Catherine might have looked, it would have been all the same to Tony. If she looked mild and placid, or fierce and acid; if she had been pensive and musing, or laughing and romping; had she looked out of her right eye athwart her nose, or out of her left athwart her shoulder, or had she not looked at all, "like Paddy, when he shut his eyes to peep in the glass, to see how he looked when asleep," Tony would have discovered ample cause for indulging in hope in each smile, frown, curl of the lip, or play of a muscle. But though, continuing in the same hopeless condition, he always consoled himself by saying,

"She gaz'd as I slowly withdrew, My path I could hardly discern, So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return."

Time still moved onward. And Catherine still attracted and received the admiration of all who beheld her. One day, as she was seated alone in her parlor, in a somewhat melancholy mood, (for it was a rainy, dreary day,) with a book in her hand, her back to the door, and her head leaning against the sash of the window, she began to hum to herself a little song a friend had lately given her. She would sing a line or two, and pause,--and then again would raise her mellow voice.

"If he return not, ah, she said, I'll bid adieu to Hope to-morrow."

And this was sung with so much feeling, you could plainly see her heart had given utterance to its inmost sentiments. Her singing was so sweet, we might truly say,

"It was the carol of a bird; It ceased, and then it came again, The sweetest song ear ever heard."

The notes however died away, and Kate still sat in a seeming reverie. When we are fairly in one of these musing moods, we will sit for hours, without being able to tell upon what object our eyes or thoughts have been so keenly rivetted. Our senses seem to be closed against ordinary impressions. At any rate, while Catherine continued thus leaning, some one walked lightly into the room, and discovering he was not noticed, gently placed his hands over her eyes without speaking.

"Now, cousin Tony," said Kate, "none of your tricks; I am not in a humor for trifling to-day." Tony was not satisfied with feeling cousin Katy's eyes, but turning her head gently back, was feasting on the face, which a little vexation had slightly ruffled. "I'll pay you for this, Tony," she said, in a sprightlier tone, "I know it is you, so let me go." Tony had often played this trick before. "I thought, after what passed," said Kate, and she was about saying something harsh, but checking herself, she added, "Never mind, Tony." "Indeed, Kate, it is not Tony," said the gentleman, releasing his prisoner.

Reader, you have seen blushes! Had you been with me that day, you would have witnessed "smiles playing with dimples, suffused with blushes, Aurora alone could rival." You would have seen surprise and joy chasing away sorrow from a pensive brow; and from the "joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem," you would have sworn that these were acknowledged lovers.

"Oh, there are looks and tones that dart An instant sunshine through the heart."

Who do you think could have thus intruded and taken such a liberty, other than cousin Tony? It was our old friend Timothy Wilberforce, returned from his travels.

Any one of ordinary comprehension, who could have witnessed this meeting, and seen these looks, would have felt no hesitation in making affidavit to the fact, that Kate had not only never rejected Tim, but that they were upon pretty reasonable terms.

Some of my fair readers, I have no doubt, have already determined, if any engagement actually existed, that Tim was a cold, phlegmatic, inanimate being, or he would have kissed her at every hazard. I know one young lady, who jilted a beau, because he never offered to salute her,--she "had no idea of icicles"--not she. And I know another, who swears! (ladies never swear,) who "vows, 'pon honor, she would turn off any man under the sun, who would have the presumption to approach her with such an intention even." But if the doors were closed, blinds drawn, and they were all alone, and she was sure nobody could see them, I rather think it would not be quite as shocking as some people might imagine. The fact is, my dear madam, Tim was excessively remiss on this occasion, but he must be excused, because, just as he was in the very act, with one hand under Katy's chin, and the other at the back of her head, and just as her little lips began to crimson, in came Katy's dear old aunty! I take my oath, I would have gone the whole figure, and old aunt Tabby might have gone to the ----. (I beg pardon.) Tim and Kate took it out in looking, and

"In the large dark eyes mutual darted flame,"

enough was said and felt to compensate the loss.

Now, you must understand, that for some cause, I never could divine what, aunt Tabby had taken up a mortal antipathy to our friend Tim; indeed, she was his evil genius, and she always managed to step in, at the very moment of all others, when her company was least desired. If he paid a morning visit, and the rest of the family kindly dropped off one by one, (each, by the bye, making a lame excuse for his or her absence,) just as Tim would draw up his chair close along side, and begin those endearments, which all know how to use, but few to express, {745}

"The gentle pressure and the thrilling touch, The least glance, better understood than words,"

in would pop aunt Tabby, and down she would sit, like a cat at a hole, and sit there for hours. Oh how Tim's heart would sicken. If he made an evening call, and sat till all the family retired to repose, good aunt Tabby did not think it proper for young ladies to be left alone with young gentlemen; such things were not tolerated in her day. Thus did the old lady keep her nightly vigils, rattling away about ten thousand fooleries, and fretting honest Tim more than a legion of devils, and at last, after vainly spending the evening, the poor fellow would slowly depart, growling smothered curses:

"So turns the lion from the nightly fold, Though high in courage, and with hunger bold, Long galled by herdsmen, and long vex'd by hounds, Stiff with fatigue, and fretted sore with wounds: The darts fly round him from an hundred hands, And the red terrors of the blazing brands: 'Till late, reluctant, at the dawn of day, Sour he departs, and quits the untasted prey."

Some readers will say, "what difference would it make if aunt Tabby was present?" I set all such down as utter boobies; for if any one could carry on a courtship, or after engagement could carry on a conversation with his intended, when the "Mother of Vinegar" was present, in the shape of an old maid, and that old maid a sworn enemy, I would unhesitatingly pronounce, that Cupid had nothing in the world to do with the matter.

Tim and Kate however, found opportunities, at other times, to elude even the vigilance of aunt Tabby, and the old lady finding matters were going on swimmingly, in spite of her interruptions and vigils, only became the more determined to break off the match, if it could by possibility be accomplished. The dear old lady never failed to whisper into Katy's ear, every idle slander that the fertility of her own mind enabled her to invent, or that she accidentally picked up among the malicious gossips of the neighborhood, and more than once Katy's faith had been shaken by her plausible inventions. Nevertheless, as yet, Tim was smoothly gliding on the unruffled wave of happiness; all was quiet and calm, and but a few days had elapsed since Kate appointed the period for the consummation of their nuptials.

On a former occasion, when Tim and little Molly were engaged, my readers will remember how Tim endeavored to break the matter to his mother. How he began with a desire to have the old house in which they lived, newly painted, and how, before they came to the conclusion to do so, the matter was suddenly terminated, by the unlucky intrusion of a small friendly epistle, which not only rendered it unnecessary to paint the house, but actually caused Tim to kick up more dust and soot, than could be effaced by the best coat of English lead that could be procured.

At the present juncture, the first intimation the old lady had of the matter, was afforded her by an army of carpenters, bricklayers, stone-masons and painters, scaling her house with ladders and scaffolds, and turning the whole concern, topsy turvy, from the garret to the cellar. Here ran the painters devils, rubbing every thing with sand paper; there shouted the bricklayer, "mortar! bricks here!" Here whistled the carpenter, and jarred the old timbers with his hammer, banging and whacking away with the force of a giant.

"In the name of common sense," said the old lady, "good people what do you mean?" If ever you saw a hen fluttering when a hawk made a sudden dart at one of her brood, you would have some idea of the old lady on this memorable occasion. It was as plain as the nose in her face, that something was to pay, and she half suspected what it was; but that Tim should go to work without any consultation was unaccountable, and more than that, it was unreasonable. She hallooed for Tim; he was not forthcoming. She asked the carpenter what he was about? "Mr. Wilberforce had ordered him to mend every thing that required mending." She inquired of the bricklayer what he was doing? "Mr. Wilberforce told him to cap the chimnies, relay the hearths and mend the whole concern." She asked the painter what he meant by all this preparation? "Mr. Wilberforce sent him to paint the house all over." "You must have made a mistake in the house," said Tim's mother. "No--there was no mistake. It was to be done, and in the best style, and in the shortest possible time." The old lady packed off the servants in all directions for Tim, and in the mean time continued fluttering about, stowing away this thing and that thing, into this hole and that cuddy, until she had fatigued herself into a perfect fever. At length, Tim arrived. "My dear son," said she, "what in the world has got into you? Do you mean to ruin yourself, Tim?" "Mother," says Tim, kindly, "I told you I was going to be married." "No you did'nt." "Well, I tell you so now, and I think our house wants a little furbishing." Now, the old lady had frequently of late, been charging Tim with being in love with Kate, and though he never exactly denied it, yet he never had admitted it; and though she had no decided objection to the match, yet she never had made up her mind to it, and therefore she seated herself and began to cry. She did'nt ask Tim, who he was to marry? Where the young lady lived? What she was like? Whether she had a fortune or not? But she sat down, as one bereft of all hope, and tuned up her pipes. Alas for Tim! He had been too precipitate. Such matters require some introduction.

The truth was, nothing could give the old lady so much happiness, as to contribute in any way to Tim's comfort and felicity, or to know that he was happy; but then, she and Tim had lived so long together, now that he was going to be married, it seemed to her as though she and he were to be divorced forever, and a thousand conflicting feelings rushed into her bosom. Tim asked his mother if she was dissatisfied with the match? "No," she said, in a tone of inextinguishable grief, and then burst forth into fresh weeping.

Now, gentle reader, I have told you that the painters were making terrible preparations for their work, and while Tim and his mother were engaged, as we have just seen,--he, endeavoring to soothe the old lady's unreasonable and ill-timed grief, and she, exhibiting as much woe as she could possibly have done, had Tim been wrapped in his winding sheet before her,--one of these aforesaid daubers kept continually passing in and out at the door, until he had heard enough to satisfy him that Tim was going to be married, and that the old lady was most vehemently opposed to the match. He had not heard her deny her opposition, but he had seen and heard her weepings and wailings, which {746} convinced him that she would never consent to the match in the world. So, on his way home that day, he happened to meet his cousin Patsy Wiggins, and stopping her in the street,--"Did you know, cousin Patty, that young Mr. Wilberforce is going to be married?" said brushy. "But I tell you what, it has kicked up a terrible rumpus. I just left the old lady, breaking her heart about it, and poor Mr. Tim is in a peck of troubles." Brushy went his way, and so did cousin Patty, but meeting her dear friend Miss Deborah Dobbins, as she was gossiping about the neighborhood; "Ah, my dear Deb," says she, "have you heard the news? Old Mrs. Wilberforce says, she will see her son in his grave, before she will give her consent to his marrying, and what's more, Miss Catherine Turberville shall never darken her doors while her head is hot. You may rely upon it, they will have monstrous work of it." So off posted the friendly Deborah Dobbins, to visit her crony, good Miss Catherine's dear aunt Tabby. "Aunt Tabby," said Deb, "I am afraid I have bad news to tell you." "What is it child?" "I know it will distress you to hear it, but Mrs. Wilberforce has just heard that her son and your niece are engaged, and she has told her son, in the most peremptory manner, that her family shall never be disgraced by such a connexion--that your niece is beneath his notice, and if he does not break off the match immediately, he never more shall see her face. Now, Mr. Tim swears he will marry her in spite of all opposition, and so the whole house is in an uproar. If I were Kate, I'd let them know who was disgraced."--"Beneath them!" said aunt Tabby, turning up her nose until it nearly twisted over the back of her head--"Beneath them, indeed!" "Darken her doors!" "She disgraced by my niece!" "She!"

Gentle reader, you may readily imagine what else these good people said and devised; but while this tale was going the rounds, gathering as it rolled, Tim had entirely reconciled his mother to his intended marriage, and as he unfolded his little plans, for his own and her future comfort, the old lady cheered up and resumed her wonted good humor.

The next day, Tim as usual, called to see his dearest Catherine, but he was told she was not at home that morning. In the evening he called again. "Miss Catherine was so unwell, she had taken to her bed." Early the day after, Tim called to inquire how Catherine was. "Tell Miss Catherine," said Tim, "I called to see her, and hope she is better." Tim rambled about the lower part of the house. "Miss Catherine was not so well." In this way, Tim called for several days, vainly hoping to see his Kate, or at any rate to receive some kind word or message. At last, he was honored with the following letter.

"Richmond, March 10th.

"I hope Mr. Wilberforce will pardon me for having denied myself so often. At first, it was to me as painful as it could have been to him, but if he knew the reason which prompted the course I have adopted, he could not fail to applaud, what he now, no doubt, condemns. In determining not to see him again, I have consulted not only his peace, and the felicity of those dearest to him, but I am convinced, my own happiness also. My reasons would satisfy the most scrupulous--but as I cannot divulge them, I must bear the scoffs of the world, for the fickleness and coquetry which my conduct apparently justifies. I hope my friend will bear this blow with becoming fortitude. The determination I have made is painful to myself, but it is irrevocable. If it will afford my friend any satisfaction to know, that nothing that he has said or done, has produced this sudden change in my purposes, I freely acknowledge the fact. He is in every respect worthy of the best and loveliest. Forgive me, as freely as I acquit you. Our engagement is terminated.

CATHERINE TURBERVILLE."

Tim sat down,--his elbow on the table,--his head on his hand.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

MY TONGS. BY ----.

During the very cold weather which ushered in our last spring, I was one night sitting in my dormitory, before a blazing fire, luxuriating in that most selfish of all pleasures, vulgo a "brown study." There was something so indescribably comfortable in my situation, that, although I had half a dozen unprepared lectures for the next morning staring me in the face, I found it a matter of utter impossibility to open a text book, still less to direct my attention even for the shortest time to its contents. Stretched in my capacious arm chair--my feet toasting before the aforesaid blazing fire--I lay listening with a dreamy sort of consciousness, to the continual, dull, unceasing hum of the falling snow. Regardless and entirely independent of the cold and storm without, my eyes fixed on the fanciful figures, changeable as the images of the Kaleidescope, which the burning coals assumed--in a word, settled in that position, a description of which has been so often attempted--and which every man who has one particle of soul about him has often and oftentimes enjoyed, I fell into a long train of reflections as absorbing and delightful as they were false and illusory. The future--the present--the past--castles in the air--my far distant home--were the most prominent and strongly marked images in the scenes which flitted across the magic mirror of my fancy.

"I thought about myself and the whole earth, Of man the wonderful, and of the stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then I thought of earthquakes and of wars; How many miles the moon might have in girth; Of air balloons, and of the many bars To perfect knowledge--of the boundless skies."

I know not how long I had been in this situation, when my dreaming was suddenly interrupted in a most singular manner. My tongs, which were but little removed from the direct line of my vision, seemed suddenly to become extremely uneasy. The simple, unoffending tongs, which, except when used, had quietly occupied their allotted station in the corner during the whole session, appeared to be seized with a strange propensity for locomotion, and at the same time to be altering the figure of their outward self in a manner singular, wonderful, unaccountable. The general appearance--the "tout ensemble" was, it is true, nearly the same, but still there seemed to have been effected a certain change, which attracted my wandering attention rather more immediately towards them. You may smile perhaps, and say that either I was rather light headed, or that I was neither more nor less than dreaming in reality. But there before my eyes, which were as wide awake {747} as they are at this moment, upon the round knob which I had so often and so unceremoniously grasped, was as quaint and humorous a face as ever came from the pencil of Hogarth. A slight glance now gave me an insight into the whole figure. Imagine the long spindle legs cased in a pair of rusty looking "shorts"--the body, what little there was of it, surrounded by one of those comfortable old garments, which have been, not inaptly denominated quaker coats--and the rest of the clothing in strict keeping with a style which, all who can recollect, or even have heard much of the good old days of our grandfathers, will at once recognise. Just imagine, I say, this odd figure, thus garmented up, and you will form a good idea of the general appearance of my visiter--(For I cannot believe it was the same boná fide pair of tongs, which are now so peacefully reposing before me.) The first glance was sufficient for an introduction. A slight start on my side, and a familiar "at home" sort of nod on his--and all was settled. His first motion was to seat himself on my fender, where he deliberately crossed his legs--his first remark was on the subject that last engaged my thoughts. A voice sweet and delightful as the first waking notes of distant serenade, but perfectly full and distinct, stole over my enraptured senses.

"You will doubtless be surprised to learn that I have been listening to your thoughts for the last half hour. But know" said he, a little pompously I thought, "that if your breast had in it the imaginary window of Momus, your slightest meditations would not be more plain and open to inspection than they are to me now. They have been running rather in a scattered and unconnected manner, but like those of most young men, they are principally directed to your own future destiny and the choice you are to make with regard to your pursuits and efforts hereafter. In a word, as a matter of considerable importance to yourself, you are weighing the comparative advantages of political and literary fame. Both are sufficiently attractive, but to most young men, and particularly to those of your country, the former is especially enticing. Perhaps there are at times, doubts resting upon the minds of all men, whether these attractions are not far greater in anticipation than the reality would authorize. Even if these doubts were well founded, I would not attempt to damp your bright and delightful hopes, by pouring into your ears the dull, cold voice of a desponding prophesy. But such is not the case. The pleasure of possession is real, and though in our ignorance we sometimes decide, that when a balance is struck between the bitter and sweet, in that mixture called the enjoyment of honors, it is heavy in favor of the former--though we hear the pursuit after worldly honors daily decried as a chase after some gaudy and painted insect, which, when gained with difficulty, when grasped with all the fervor and delight of gratified success, vanishes from the sight and leaves nothing behind but the pain and agony of its sting--though men who have never enjoyed them, often condescend to pity their unhappy possessors--still do I assure you that possession is delightful--even as delightful perhaps as your wildest dreams may have painted it. The very eagerness with which all strive for it, who can do so with any probability of success--the unconquerable perseverance with which they hold it when obtained--are sufficient proofs that it is worth the pursuit, and well rewards the winner. But you have already decided on this point; perhaps your only doubts are, upon which of the two principal (and in the present peaceful days, I may almost say only,) roads to honor, will a man find the best reward for the necessary exertions required to obtain it.

"The Hill of Fame on which your attention is fixed, is divided into two summits. To the one every step of the path is plain, and open to your view. You are at once sensible of the enjoyments as well as the difficulties, which are found in the various parts of the ascent, while those who journey upward are seen by all from the moment they start. You perceive along this path the most delightful pleasures awaiting those who may be so happy as to reach them--and increasing in number as they rise. But you see dangers and difficulties of every kind interspersed among them and also increasing to the very top. The flowers when plucked have often a poisonous insect enclosed in them--the finest fruit grows upon precipices the most steep and frightful--or when gathered 'turns to ashes in the mouth.' Yet in spite of these dangers you see many rising free and uninjured, higher and higher, till they attain even to the summit. But here, though pleasures are more abundant, the dangers are likewise increased--though the flowers are more beautiful and more numerous, the fruit large, and more delicious--the poison is also more deadly, the precipices are higher, and the fall from them more certainly fatal. But still is that summit, bright and glorious as it is--the brilliant object on which is fixed the ardent, anxious, devoted gaze of all who toil up the sides of the mountain. This is the Hill of Political Fame. Now let us turn to the other; it presents us quite a different aspect; its sides and bottom are covered with a dim mist, through which no objects are distinctly seen; we can only perceive that the way, though extremely steep and laborious, is as free from the precipices and dangers of the first, as it is deprived of its pleasures and enticements. Those who are toiling on their way to its summit, have nothing to cheer them in their dreary task but the prospect of the bright vision above them--which like the beacon signal to the worn mariner, holds out comfort and repose--cheering and inspiring him with fortitude--nerving his limbs with new vigor, and instilling renewed hope into his heart. Nor do you see them assailed by many imminent perils; yet many faint and sink on their tedious way--and few, very few are so fortunate as to gain the bright summit which rears its head above--free from the shades and mists which envelope the skies--brilliant and glorious as its opposite neighbor, and at the same time undisturbed by its dangers. Even of those who do ultimately reach this rich goal of their hopes--this happy end of their labors--how very few enjoy their hard earned rewards--many of them supported alone by their hopes on their wearisome journey--fall as soon as they reach the top, and gain only after death the glorious distinction for which they spent--to which they devoted their lives. This is the Hill of Literary Fame.

"And now examine each and decide for yourself, which you will choose as the scene of your future efforts--choose, and pursue that choice with determination. One road alone can you follow. Some, it is true, have, when tired of the one, pursued the other for a time. {748} But no man ever reached the top of both. You are then to decide in favor of one, and having decided, steadily to pursue it, or content yourself with remaining unnoticed in the crowd which fills the plain beneath. That you may form your decision more correctly, look into the history of those who have sought and gained pre-eminence, in either kind of fame. Let us then (laying aside our metaphors) judge from past history, and by that let your future course be decided. In the histories of those who have even stood highest as writers, poets, &c. you often find much calculated to disgust you with the pursuit which they followed--how little do you find to envy in the lot of the beggar Homer--the blind and half starved Milton--the miserable Otway dying, choked with the morsel of food which he had begged of a friend; Goldsmith, Johnson, &c. It is true, that in contrast to these we may name Newton, Bacon, Shakspeare, Byron, who succeeded in gaining during (and some of them early in) their lives the fame they so eagerly sought. But more numerous are the instances on record, where literary merit has been unrewarded except by posthumous renown. Of genius the most brilliant--of minds the most powerful, which have gained their hard earned mede of praise--when their bodies were mouldering in the grave--when the head which conceived, and the hand which penned their bright aspirations, as well as the heart which so ardently beat for glory and honor--have mingled with the dust, alike unmindful and indifferent to praise or reproach, to fame or obloquy. When the bright etherial spirit, which once so strongly throbbed for a 'name among men,' has taken its flight to a truer home, where the glory of this world is nothing--then is paid to the memory the honor which the man deserved--which would have made him so completely happy. His life perhaps was spent in grinding poverty, in misery and wretchedness, imbittered by that chill cold neglect of the world, which so withers the sensitive heart--for what? A name after death. Let us turn from this dismal picture, to the other. Here at least, are some substantial pleasures, however they may be alloyed by the attendant evils, dangers and difficulties. Here at least, honor is nearly always rendered, if bestowed at all, whilst it can be appreciated. And now let us see whether the dangers and difficulties I have mentioned, may not be really less than we were at first inclined to believe them, and whether with care they may not be almost entirely avoided. It is true, that he who once becomes a public servant, throws his character in the hands of every man, and lays himself open to the attacks of every scribbler. He is exposed to the malicious accusations of men, who are neither able nor anxious to see his actions in their true light; his slightest faults held up on high to become marks of scorn among men--buts at which every vindictive slanderer may wing a poisoned shaft--even his very virtues distorted and perverted till they become in appearance vices. This I grant, is the life which all public men must lead; but let not this picture startle you. If really innocent, he will rise above the abuse which is poured upon him. Confident in the great decision of a candid world, he is superior to this sort of scandal. And have we not reason to believe that here as in other cases, custom renders one indifferent to that which at first would make him miserable? And that the most sensitive mind may soon begin to look on these as troublesome insects, which may at the time incommode, but which should create no lasting disturbance. The best proof of this, as I have before told you is, that men who have succeeded at all in public life, will, however disagreeable it may appear, cling to it as strongly as if in this, lay the very light of their existence. How sweet it is to have one's name in the mouths of all--to be the theme of admiration and wonder with the crowd--to have power. But there is even a purer and better enjoyment. How perfect the pleasure which animates the bosom of the statesman when he knows that to his talents--to his efforts--millions are indebted for their greatest comforts--that a whole nation looks up to him as their benefactor--that through his means"----

My visiter had proceeded thus far, when a villainous log of wood became suddenly discontented with its situation and rolled out upon the hearth, scattering its sparks over me. Though deeply interested, my first and most natural impulse was to grasp the tongs and set every thing to rights. At the next instant my recollection returned and I carefully replaced them. But it was too late. I saw nothing before me but the cold and senseless instrument. The mild expression of the features was gone--the quaint old figure had vanished, and the faint sound of that sweet voice melted away on my ear, like the dying ring of a harp, leaving me alone and disconsolate in my solitary room.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO MRS. ----,

Whose husband was absent in the United States Navy. On seeing her in a gay company.

Canst thou forget, amidst the gay and heartless, One far away whom thou hast vowed to love? Thou'rt lovely, and thou seemest pure and artless, And innocent and gentle as the dove. Dost thou forget, or do thy blue eyes brighten Only with thoughts of his return to thee? Dost thou the pains of absence seek to lighten, In scenes like this of mirth and revelry?

Ah, pause awhile, mid sounds of song and dancing, While thoughts of conscious beauty paint thy cheek, While eyes, admiring eyes, around thee glancing, Volumes of warmest admiration speak-- Think, if 'tis well for one whose faith is plighted, To shine among the free unfettered gay-- Think, should those lovely eyes with smiles be lighted At homage which no heart but one should pay?

Oh keep those smiles, so full of light and gladness, To welcome one whom thou canst call thine own; And may no darkling shade of gloom or sadness Come o'er thy life, thou bright and peerless one!

E. A. S.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

LINES WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.

Eliza!--let thy generous heart From its present pathway part not: Being every thing which now thou art, Be nothing which thou art not.

So with the world thy gentle ways-- Thy unassuming beauty-- And truth shall be a theme of praise Forever--and love a duty.

E. A. P.

{749}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

GENERAL WARREN.

STORIES ABOUT GENERAL WARREN--By a Lady of Boston, 1835, pp. 112, 12mo.

The sneers of those grown up readers,--who may choose to sneer at a review of so very juvenile a book as this, we brave, for the sake of bringing it, and its subject, somewhat into notice--pointing out some phraseological errors--doing justice to its merits--and, above all, freshening the memories, if not informing the minds, of the less fastidious among our countrymen, as to a few of the incidents preceding and attending the commencement of that great struggle, of which the cherished remembrance conduces so much to preserve in American bosoms a catholic, American, liberty-loving spirit. These incidents will be found naturally to imbody themselves in a brief account of the life of General Warren, drawn chiefly from the volume above mentioned. Those who may incline to despise either so simple a book, or a narrative of (to them) such trite facts, as these of which we shall speak, are probably not aware how shallow and narrow is the knowledge existing through the country, and even in some minds that claim to be considered as enlightened, with regard to our own history. "Mr. President!"--recently, at a public dinner in Virginia, vociferated a young orator of the Milesian school--a lawyer, we took him to be--"Mr. President! I give you, sir, the memory of the gallant General Warren, who fell at the battle of LEXINGTON!" And but a few months before, a friend as dear to us as ourselves, and whose age and opportunities should certainly have made him know better, confounded Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia in the times of Charles I and II, with Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, viceroy of George III, in 1769 and 1770! It would not surprise us, to hear a lawyer or a physician--still less a gentleman at large--talk of the burning of Charles_ton_ as simultaneous with the battle of Sullivan's Island, because Charles_town_ burned while the battle of Bunker Hill was fighting--as "John Bull in America" passes in half an hour from Boston, where the folk make wooden nutmegs, roast witches, and bake pumpkin pies, into Charleston, where they gouge and stab, drink mint juleps, eat young negroes, and feed old ones upon cotton seed.

The narrative before us is couched in a dialogue, between a mother and her two children; and, being obviously designed for gentlemen and ladies not much higher than mamma's rocking chair, has frequently an infantine simplicity of style, that makes us marvel at our own moral courage, in daring to serve up such a baby's mess. Convinced, however, that children's reading may afford both amusement and instruction to grown people, (witness "Early Lessons," "Frank," "The Parent's Assistant," "Sandford and Merton," and "Evenings at Home," cum pluribus aliis;) believing, at any rate, that among the palates for which it is our duty to cater, there are some youthful ones to which this dish may be both pleasant and useful; hoping, too, that by having her faults of composition noted, the authoress may be induced to cure, or "others in like cases offending" be moved to shun them, we make the venture. Indeed, not only the book's childishness of style, but many offences far more atrocious in a critic's eyes--sins against grammar, idiom, and good taste--are in great part redeemed by the good sense and justness of its reflections, the interesting tenor of its incidents, and the virtuous glow it is calculated to kindle. The sins are very many. "Lay," used for "lie," is wholly unwarranted--scarcely palliated--even by the example of Byron, in the Fourth Canto itself: for he was compelled by duress of rhyme; a coercion, which the most tuneful and the most dissonant are alike powerless to resist. "Mr. Warren, the father of Joseph, while walking round his orchard to see if every thing was in good order, as he was looking over the trees, he perceived," &c. Here is a nominative without any verb. There is a four or five fold vice in the second member of the following sentence, in which, as it stands, the writer may be defied to show a meaning: "It often happens that a mother is left with a family of young children, and is obliged to bring them up without the controlling power of a father's care; it is therefore the duty of every female so to educate her own mind, and that of her daughters, as to enable her, if she should be placed in this responsible situation, to be able to guide aright the minds of those under her care." Enable her to be able! Educate her own mind! and that of her daughters! Are they to be supposed to have but one mind among them, as the Sirens had but one tooth? The use of educate for train, is a match for the Frenchman's blunder, who, finding in the Dictionary that to press means to squeeze, politely begged leave to squeeze a lady to sing. "Enable HER." Enable whom? Why herself and her daughters: and she should have said so. Never, surely, was prosing, bona fide, printed prosing, to so little purpose. Again: "A mother should always possess ... a firm principle of action." Does she need but one firm principle of action? If so, it is to be hoped the next edition will say what that one is; for it must be valuable. A common blunder in the times of the infinitive mood, occurs repeatedly in this book: "How I should have admired to have gone to see her!" "It would have been a pity for us to have followed his example, and thus have lessened," &c.--"must have ardently desired to have been present"--"must have wished very much to have seen," &c. We cannot see the propriety of using the word "admired," as it is in one of these quotations. "Tell us if he did get in, and how he contrived to?" We protest against this fashion which our Yankee brethren are introducing, of making to, which is but the sign of the infinitive, stand for the infinitive itself. This is one of the few cases, in which we are for going the whole. "He began to practice"--"I know it was not him"--"he whom I told you was the first one"--"to respect, was added admiration and love"--"this tax bore very heavy"--"soldiers which"--"your country has much to hope from you, both in their counsels and in the field." These errors, a very moderate skill in orthography and syntax would have sufficed to avoid. Such a vulgarism as "nowadays," or such provincialisms as "pay one single copper," and "walked back and forth the room," (meaning to and fro, or backwards and forwards in the room) would not have occurred, if the author had remembered, that the simplicity which suits children's minds, is altogether different from vulgarity. There is such a thing as neat and graceful simplicity in writing, as well as in dress and manners. "They had contemplated making some attack on the British, or at least to endeavor to destroy their shipping." Contemplated to destroy! We will not further pursue this unwelcome {750} task; pausing, short of the middle of the book, and having already passed over several faults without animadversion. Let the author be entreated to get the aid of some friend who is master (if she is not mistress) of grammar and taste enough, to reform these and the other errors of her little work, and then give us a new edition, calling in all the copies of the first, that are within her reach.--And now to our tale.

JOSEPH WARREN was born in 1741, in the village of Roxbury, one or two miles south from Boston, Mass. His father, a rich farmer, inhabited a house, the ruins of which are still visible; and was famous for raising the best fruit in that neighborhood. He was killed by a fall from one of his own apple trees, leaving a widow and four sons, of whom Joseph, the eldest, was 16, and John, the youngest, was 4 years old. This excellent woman appears to have much resembled the mother of Washington, in the skill and care with which she infused generous sentiments and virtuous principles into the bosoms of her children: and she reaped almost as richly as Mrs. Washington, the fruits of her labors. Her sons passed through life, all honored and loved, and more than one of them distinguished. Her nature seems to have had more of amiable softness than Mrs. Washington's; who, it must be confessed, blended something of the sternness with the purity and nobleness of a Spartan matron. Mrs. Warren's door was always open for deeds of hospitality and neighborly kindness. It is not easy to imagine a lovelier scene than one paragraph presents, of the evening of a well spent life, still warmed and brightened by the benign spirit, which had been the sun of that life's long day.

"In her old age, when her own children had left her fireside, it was one of her dearest pleasures to gather a group of their children, or of the children of others around her. She did all in her power to promote their enjoyment, and her benevolent smile was always ready to encourage them. On Thanksgiving-day,[1] she depended on having all her children and grand children with her; and until she was 80 years of age, she herself made the pies with which the table was loaded! Not satisfied with feasting them to their heart's content while they were with her, she always had some nice great pies ready for them to take home with them."

[Footnote 1: Thanksgiving-day is in New England, what Christmas is in the Southern States and England. It is always in November, on a day fixed by Proclamation of the Governor of each State, in each year. Christmas, from the anti-Catholic zeal of the Puritan Pilgrims, is almost entirely neglected; being, with all its train of quips, cranks, gambols and mince-pies, thought to savor too strongly of popery.]

Joseph's education, till his fourteenth year, was at the public school in Roxbury; one of those common schools, which, from the earliest times of New England, have been planting and nurturing in her soil the seeds and shoots of virtue and freedom. Even in boyhood, our hero was manly, fearless and generous: always taking the part of his weaker school-fellows against a strong oppressor--always the

"village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood."

At fourteen, he entered Harvard University. His talents, perseverance, gentleness and courage, here gained him unrivalled popularity. That he did not acquire or preserve the regard of his fellow students by any base compliances with vice or disorder, the following incident shews.

Some of them had once resolved on some breach of the laws, which, from the sturdiness of his principles, they knew that young Warren would disapprove, and by his powerful influence probably prevent. They therefore met in an upper room of the college, to arrange their plans secretly; fastening the door against him. He found what they were about; and seeing the window of their room open, crept out, through a scuttle door, upon the roof--crawled to the eaves--and there, seizing a water-spout nearly rotten with age, he swung and slid down by it to the window, and unexpectedly sprang in amongst the conspirators. The spout, at the instant of his quitting it, fell with a crash to the ground, and was shivered to pieces. Only saying, in answer to the exclamations of astonishment that burst from his comrades, "it stayed up just long enough for my purpose," he commenced an expostulation against their intended misdemeanor, and succeeded in diverting them from it.

On leaving college, he studied medicine, and began to practise at the age of 23, just previously to a visit of the small pox to Boston, with those fearful ravages which usually attended its march, before the virtues of vaccination were known. Dr. Warren's judgment, tenderness, and skill, made him pre-eminently successful in treating the disease. And it is said, that his gentle and courteous deportment completely neutralized the usual tendency of such professional success, to enkindle the jealousy of his brethren. His mild features and winning smile, true indexes, for once, to the soul within, gained every heart; his knowledge and talents added respect to love. Thus, by the same qualities which had distinguished him at school and at college, did he acquire among his fellow townsmen an influence which no other man of his age and day possessed.

When the British Parliament and Crown began, in 1764, that course of unconstitutional legislation, which was destined, after eleven years of wordy war, to end in a war of blood, Dr. Warren was among the first to stand forth for the rights of America--to assert, and to labor in demonstrating to his countrymen, that the power to tax them (claiming, as they did, all the liberties of Englishmen) could not exist in a government of which no representatives of theirs formed a part. Fostered by him, and by others like him, the spirit of resistance to tyranny grew daily more strong. The inhabitants of the whole country, and especially of Boston, gave token after token of their fixed resolve, to spurn the chain which they saw preparing for them. In 1768, Col. Dalrymple with two royal regiments, reinforced afterwards by additional troops, entered that devoted town, with more than the usual "pomp and circumstance" of military bravado; and there remained in garrison, to repress what the king and ministry were pleased to call "the seditious temper" of the people. Never was attempt at restraint more impotent; nay, more suicidal. The curb, feebly and capriciously or unskilfully plied, served but to infuriate the noble animal it was meant to check and guide: and no wonder that the rider was at length unseated, and stretched in the dust. The New Englanders--we should rather say, the Americans--were too stubborn to be driven, and too shrewd to be circumvented. Every measure of tyranny, they met with an appropriate measure of resistance. {751} Tea had been brought from India, to be the vehicle of unconstitutional taxation. They threw part of it into the sea; another part they hindered from being landed; and the remainder they excluded from use, by mutual pledges to "touch not, taste not" "the unclean thing." Judges were sent over to judge them--creatures of the king--the panders of ministerial oppression. The people would not suffer them to mount the judgment seat--closed the court houses--referred all their differences to arbitrators chosen by the parties--and even so far tamed the spirit of litigation and disorder, as to make tribunals of any sort in a great degree needless.[2] Between the British troops and the Boston people, animosities soon ran high. The soldiers seized every opportunity to exasperate the people: the people assembled in mobs, to revenge themselves on the soldiers. Amidst these tumults, Dr. Warren repeatedly exposed his life to soothe and restrain his countrymen. His eloquent persuasions were generally successful. At first, the more violent would endeavor to repel him, and would clamor to drown his voice. "While they did this, he would stand calmly and look at them. His intrepidity, his commanding and animated countenance, and above all, their knowledge that he was on their side so far as it was right to be, would soon make them as eager to hear as he was to speak: and finally, they would disperse to their homes with perfect confidence that they could not do better than to leave their cause in such hands." Those who seek to restrain the excesses of contending factions, may always expect rough usage from both sides. Warren incurred the occasional displeasure of his own party; but he did not escape insult and outrage from the British. They often called him rebel, and threatened him with a rebel's doom. One day, on his way to Roxbury, to see his mother, he passed near several British officers, standing in the Neck, which joins the peninsula of Boston to the main land. Not far before him stood a gallows. One of the officers called out, "Go on, Warren, you will soon come to the gallows:" and the whole party laughed aloud. Walking directly up to them, he calmly asked, which of them had thus addressed him? Not one was bold enough to avow the insolence, and he left them, crest-fallen and ashamed.

[Footnote 2: We have grouped together here, the events of several years, in the rapidity of our narrative. The dependence of the judges for their salaries on the Crown, instead of on the Colonial Legislatures, (whence we date their meriting to be called creatures and panders,) began in 1772: and the tea was thrown into Boston Harbor, Dec. 16th, 1773.]

Distinguished for his eloquence, our young physician was repeatedly called on to address the people, upon the great and soul-stirring topics of the times. Far the most interesting of these, was the Massacre of the Fifth of March. Our authoress has passed too slightly over this incident. Let us be a little more full.

Insults, recrimination, and outrage, between the soldiers and citizens, were at length, on the 5th of March, 1770, consummated, by the former's firing upon the latter in the streets of Boston, and killing five men--with circumstances shocking to humanity. After one of the slain (Mr. Gray,) had been shot through the body, and had fallen on the ground, a bayonet was pushed through his skull, and his brains fell out upon the pavement. This was the first bloodshed, consequent on the long festering irritations of the period. The officer (Capt. Preston) who gave the word "fire!" and six of the soldiers who had so fatally obeyed it, were in the ensuing October tried before a Boston jury: and, defended, in spite of obloquy, popular clamor, and the remonstrances of timid or prudent friends, by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., were even by that jury, acquitted. It grieves us that we cannot pause here, to bestow a merited tribute on the moral courage of the illustrious counsel who dared defend, on the steady justice of the tribunal that could acquit, and on the virtue and good sense of the multitude who, when the first paroxysm of natural excitement was over, could applaud that defence and approve that acquittal[3]--horrible as had been the deed--maddening as had been the antecedent circumstances. But though the killing happened not to be murder, (because the people had been the assailants,) still, the violent destruction of five human lives by an armed soldiery in the streets of a free and peaceful city, was too impressive an example of what mischiefs may come of standing armies and lawless government, to pass unimproved. It was determined to solemnize each anniversary of that day, by a public exposition of those mischiefs; by an oration, commemorative of the tragedy, and of those great principles, the disregard of which had led to its perpetration. Warren delivered two of these orations.[4] His first was on the 5th of March, 1772. It is not contained in the little book now before us, but we have seen it elsewhere: and on reading it, no one need be surprised at its having well nigh urged the people, even at that early day, to forcible measures. Its masterly argumentation is equalled by its burning appeals to the passions. All the four first of these orations had wrought so powerfully upon the public mind, that the British officers declared there should be no more of them: and that whoever undertook to deliver another, should do so at the peril of life. This menace daunted others, but only roused Warren. Not wailing to be invited, he solicited the task of addressing the people; and prepared himself accordingly for the fifth anniversary of the massacre--1775. Meanwhile, the givings out of the officers, and the rumors among the populace, imported mortal hazard to him if he should persist. He persisted but the more resolutely. Early in the day, the Old South Meeting House--which, as the scene of these orations, deserves, better than Faneuil Hall, to be termed the cradle of liberty--was crowded to its very porch. Many a devoted friend {752} of Warren's was there, determined to see him safely through, or to fall in his defence. British officers and soldiers filled the aisles, the pulpit steps, and even the pulpit. Thinking that if he pushed through them to his place, a pretext might be seized for some disturbance, which would take from him and his audience the desirable degree of calmness, he procured a ladder to be placed outside, and by it, climbed through the window into the pulpit, just as all were expecting his entrance at the door. The officers quailed and receded, at his sudden appearance and dauntless air: while he, far from sure that his first word would not be answered by a bayonet-thrust or a pistol-shot, addressed the silent, breathless multitude. His countenance was lighted up with more than its usual glow of patriotic enthusiasm: but every other face was pale; every auditor could distinctly hear the throbbings of his own heart. The speech is given at length in the appendix to the work under examination; from the original, as we may conjecture, which, in the orator's own hand writing, is now in the possession of his nephew, Dr. John C. Warren. The opening was brief and simple: but in it we discern that curbed energy, that impassioned moderation--une force contenue, une rèserve animée--so characteristic of a great mind, concentrating its powers for some gigantic effort: and as he passes on from the unaffected humility of his exordium "to the height of his great argument," we have bodily before our fancy's eye, a nobler personification of wisdom, courage, eloquence and virtue, than Homer has displayed in the form of Ulysses.

"MY EVER HONORED FELLOW CITIZENS,

"It is not without the most humiliating conviction of my want of ability, that I now appear before you; but the sense I have, of the obligation I am under to obey the calls of my country at all times, together with the animating recollection of your indulgence, exhibited upon so many occasions, has induced me once more, undeserving as I am, to throw myself upon that candor, which looks with kindness upon the feeblest efforts of an honest mind.

"You will not now expect the elegance, the learning, the fire, the enrapturing strains of eloquence, which captivated you when a Lovell, a Church, or a Hancock spake: but you will permit me to say, that with a sincerity equal to theirs, I mourn over my bleeding country: with them I weep at her distress, and with them, deeply resent the many injuries she has received from the hands of cruel and unreasonable men."

[Footnote 3: Mr. Adams was, at the time, 35 years old; Mr. Quincy only 26. They were both threatened with loss of friends, of popularity, and of all prospect of political preferment. The "Memoirs of Quincy" (by his son Josiah, once a prominent federal leader in Congress, now President of Harvard University,) contain a letter from his venerable father, earnestly expostulating upon the step. The young barrister's reply is also given--a triumphant vindication of the motives, and even of the prudence of his resolution, to undertake the defence. In the success of that defence, in the universal approbation which soon followed it, and in the professional and political advancement of the generous advocates, they found ample rewards for having breasted the storm of popular feeling, in obedience to the call of duty.]

[Footnote 4: The oration of 1771 was delivered by James Lovell; that of 1772 by Joseph Warren; of 1773, by Dr. Benjamin Church; of 1774, by John Hancock; of 1775, by Joseph Warren. These, and eight others of succeeding years, down to 1783, we have in Mr. H. Niles' inestimable collection of "Revolutionary Acts and Speeches."]

Having laid down as axioms, the natural right of every man to personal freedom and to the control of his property, the orator sketched, with a master's hand, the history of English America: and, deducing the right of the colonists to the soil from their treaties with the Indians, and not from the grants of King James or King Charles, (whose pretended claims of right they undoubtedly despised--whose patents they probably accepted only "to silence the cavils of their enemies," and who "might with equal justice have made them a grant of the planet Jupiter,") he proved by unanswerable reasoning the rights of America, and painted in deep and living colors the usurpations and injustice of England. He traced the progress of these wrongs: he depicted the halcyon peace, the mutual benefactions, and the common happiness of the two countries, marred by successive and heightening aggressions--reaching, at length, that last aggravation short of civil war--the quartering of an insolent, hireling soldiery upon the people, to enforce submission to unjust and unconstitutional laws. The danger of standing armies, always, to liberty--the incompatibility of martial law with the government of a well regulated city--the certainty of disputes between the soldier and the citizen, especially when they are in each other's eyes, respectively, a rebel, and an instrument of tyranny--all made it but just to fear the most disagreeable consequences. "Our fears, we have seen," continued the orator, "were but too well grounded."

"The many injuries offered to the town, I pass over in silence. I cannot now mark out the path which led to that unequalled scene of horror, the sad remembrance of which takes full possession of my soul. The sanguinary theatre again opens itself to view. The baleful images of terror crowd around me, and discontented ghosts, with hollow groans, appear to solemnize the anniversary of the FIFTH OF MARCH.

"Approach we then the melancholy walk of death. Hither let me call the gay companion; here let him drop a farewell tear upon that body, which so late he saw vigorous and warm with social mirth; hither let me lead the tender mother, to weep over her beloved son: come, widowed mourner, here satiate thy grief! behold thy murdered husband gasping on the ground; and, to complete the pompous show of wretchedness, bring in each hand thy infant children to bewail their father's fate: take heed, ye orphan babes, lest, while your streaming eyes are fixed upon the ghastly corpse, your feet slide on the stones bespattered with your father's brains! Enough! this tragedy need not be heightened by an infant weltering in the blood of him that gave it birth. Nature, reluctant, shrinks already from the view; and the chilled blood rolls slowly backward to its fountain. We wildly stare about, and with amazement, ask, who spread this ruin round us? Has haughty France or cruel Spain, sent forth her myrmidons? Has the grim savage rushed again from the distant wilderness? Or does some fiend, fierce from the depth of hell, with all the rancorous malice which the apostate damned can feel, twang her destructive bow, and hurl her deadly arrows at our breast? No, none of these. It is the hand of Britain that inflicts the wound! The arms of George, our rightful king, have been employed to shed that blood, when justice, or the honor of his crown, had called his subjects to the field!

"But pity, grief, astonishment, with all the softer movements of the soul, must now give way to stronger passions. Say, fellow citizens, what dreadful thought now swells your heaving bosoms? You fly to arms--sharp indignation flashes from each eye--revenge gnashes her iron teeth--death grins an hideous smile, secure to drench his jaws in human gore--whilst hovering furies darken all the air! But stop, my bold, adventurous countrymen; stain not your weapons with the blood of Britons! Attend to reason's voice. Humanity puts in her claim, and sues to be again admitted to her wonted seat, the bosom of the brave. Revenge is far beneath the noble mind. Many, perhaps, compelled to rank among the vile assassins, do, from their inmost souls, detest the barbarous action. The winged death, shot from your arms, may chance to pierce some breast, that bleeds already for your injured country.

"The storm subsides: a solemn pause ensues: you spare, upon condition they depart. They go; they quit your city: they no more shall give offence. Thus closes the important drama.

"And could it have been conceived that we again should see a British army in our land, sent to enforce obedience to acts of Parliament destructive to our liberty?... Our streets are again filled with armed men; our harbor is crowded with ships of war: but these cannot intimidate us: our liberty must be preserved: it is far dearer than life--we hold {753} it even dear as our allegiance. We must defend it against the attacks of friends, as well as enemies: we cannot suffer even Britons to ravish it from us. No longer could we reflect, with generous pride, on the heroic actions of our American forefathers; no longer boast our origin from that far famed island, whose warlike sons have so often drawn their well tried swords to save her from the ravages of tyranny;--could we, but for a moment, entertain the thought of giving up our liberty. The man who meanly will submit to wear a shackle, contemns the noblest gift of Heaven; and impiously affronts the God that made him free."

Highly wrought as these passages may appear, they accorded, perfectly, with the minds to which they were addressed.

It may be doubted, if any scene of the kind ever possessed more of the moral sublime, than that which our young countryman presented,--daring thus, amidst armed and frowning enemies, to denounce them and their masters, and to speak forth the startling truths of justice and freedom, with the naked sword of tyranny suspended over his head. The rising of Brutus, "refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate," shaking his crimsoned steel, and hailing Tully aloud as the "father of his country"--Tully's own denunciations of Catiline, Verres and Anthony--or the more illustrious Philippics of Demosthenes--all remote from personal danger--the objects of their enmity and invective being absent, defenceless, or prostrate--cannot be compared, for moral sublimity, with the splendid boldness of Warren. And, whatever classical anathemas await us for it, we are heretical enough to venture the opinion, that for true eloquence, blendedly pathetic and argumentative, his oration outstrips any that we have read of Cicero's, and equals aught that we have seen of Demosthenes. To the most effective effusions of the latter, indeed, it bears the closest resemblance--rapid, condensed, inornate, impassioned: similar, too, in its result, if we consider the difference of their auditories--the one a mercurial mob, ever liable to be swayed by whim or convulsed by passion; the other a grave, reflecting people, who subjected every thing--feeling, imagination, and even the love of liberty--to REASON. The oratory of Demosthenes made the Athenians cry out, "Let us march against Philip!" When Warren ended, a glow of admiration and respect pervaded even the hostile bosoms around him; but the people of Boston were ready at once to abjure allegiance to Great Britain. For this, however, affairs were not yet ripe.

The celebrated Josiah Quincy, Jr. was at this time in England, on a mission of remonstrance and observation. His interesting letters, and more interesting journal, (for parts of which we are indebted to the "Memoirs" before referred to,) shewed his conviction that the pending disputes must come to the arbitrament of arms. His countrymen, he said, "must seal their cause with their blood." This, he was assured by Warren, (one of his warmest and dearest friends) they were ready to do. "It is the united voice of America" (Warren wrote him) "to preserve their freedom, or lose their lives in its defence." Warren was President of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. He writes thus to Quincy concerning it: "Congress met at Concord at the time appointed. About 260 members were present. You would have thought yourself in an assembly of Spartans, or ancient Romans, had you seen the ardor of those who spoke on the important business they were transacting." Quincy remained but six months in England, and then embarked for his home in an advanced stage of consumption: having, as he told the seaman who attended his sick bed, but one desire--that he might live long enough to have one more interview with Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren. His prayer was not granted. He died on ship board, just entering Cape Anne Harbor, on the 26th of April, 1775,[5] eight days after the battle of Lexington; where, unknown to him, his countrymen had already "sealed their cause with their blood."

[Footnote 5: Love for his country and her liberties, may be safely considered the ruling passion of this man's pure and splendid and too short life. He displayed it also "strong in death." His last reported words were in a letter to his family, dictated to his sailor nurse; in which he breathes a dying wish for his country. And his Will contains the following clause: "I give to my son, when he shall arrive to the age of 15 years, Algernon Sidney's Works, John Locke's Works--Lord Bacon's Works--Gordon's Tacitus, and Cato's Letters. May the spirit of Liberty rest upon him."]

Warren (now a brigadier general of the Massachusetts militia) was not unconcerned in that battle. Scouts of his had notified him on the 18th of April, that a detachment of troops was to march that night towards Concord: and then, remaining himself upon the watch, he saw Colonel Smith and 8 or 900 men embark for Charlestown. Knowing the stores and ammunition at Concord to be their object, he instantly sent messengers over the surrounding country, to give the alarm; and himself rode all night--passing so near the enemy, as to be more than once in great danger of capture. His messenger to Lexington was Col. Revere; who, on suddenly turning a corner as he passed through Charlestown, found himself close to a party of the British. In a moment he put his horse at full speed, dashed through them, and before they could well ascertain him to be a foe, was beyond the reach of the balls which they fired after him. It was his summons, that called forth the company of Lexington militia, upon whom, about sunrise on the 19th, was begun that bloody drama, of which the progress was to shake two continents, and the catastrophe to dissever an empire. Warren, sleepless and in motion throughout the night, hurried to the scene of action: and, when the enemy were retreating from Concord, he was among the foremost in hanging upon their rear, and assailing their flanks. By pressing them too closely, he once narrowly escaped death. A musket ball took off a lock of hair, which curled close to his head, in the fashion of that time.

When his mother first saw him after the battle, and heard of this escape, she entreated him with tears not again to risk a life so precious. "Where danger is, dear mother," he answered, "there must your son be. Now is no time for any of America's children to shrink from any hazard. I will see her free, or die."

An exchange of prisoners was soon afterwards agreed on, to be carried into effect at Charlestown. Generals Warren and Putnam with two select companies of Massachusetts troops, repaired thither for the purpose. Here was a touching scene. The British and American officers, on meeting once more as friends after the recent strife had so rudely sundered their long subsisting ties of hospitality and mutual kindness, melted with tenderness, and rushed into each other's arms. The soldiers {754} caught the infection: and mingled tears, and hands cordially shaken, softened for awhile the rugged front of war. Putnam and Warren entertained the British as guests, as sumptuously as the occasion allowed.

A few days afterwards, Warren was appointed Major General of the Massachusetts forces: but still retained his post as President of the Provincial Congress. He seems to have combined, with rare felicity, the qualities of a civil and a military leader. Cool yet brave, gentle yet decided and firm, he was precisely fitted to teach and enforce order and discipline. Mingling in the ranks, and talking with individual soldiers as with brothers, he gained their love, and infused into them his own ardor and sanguine confidence. He acted with equal talent in civil council. He spent a part of each day in sharing the deliberations of the Congress, which sat now at Watertown, ten miles northwest from Boston. His labors ended there, he would gallop to the camp at Cambridge. When the American commanders deliberated upon the seizure and fortification of Dorchester Heights and Bunker Hill, with a view to strike at the enemy's shipping, or to anticipate them in a similar movement,--Warren opposed it. Our raw troops, he thought, were not yet ready to cope with the trained veterans of England. Putnam, then commander-in-chief at Cambridge, thought differently. Warren renewed his opposition before the committee of safety and the council of war: but when these bodies successively resolved upon the measure, he promptly gave his whole heart to promote its success; repeating his determination, to be, himself, ever at the post of greatest danger. On the 16th of June, when Col. Prescott received his orders, and marched with his thousand men to fortify Bunker's Hill, the session at Watertown was so protracted, that Warren could not leave it until late at night. So soon as he could, he prepared to join Prescott--despite the dissuasion of his friends. To their assurances, that most of the detachment, and especially he--daring and conspicuous as he was--would in all probability be cut off; and that he could not be spared so soon from the cause; he replied, "I cannot help it: I must share the fate of my countrymen. I cannot hear the cannon and remain inactive." Among the most intimate of these friends, was the afterwards distinguished Elbridge Gerry; with whom he lodged regularly in the same room, and, on that last night, in the same bed. To him;--when they parted after midnight, Warren uttered the sentiment--so truly Roman, and in this instance so prophetic--"dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori." By day-break, he was at the camp in Cambridge; where, finding that the British had not shewn themselves, and sick with an aching head, from mental and bodily toil, he lay down, to snatch a little repose. But he was soon roused by tidings, that the enemy were in motion: and instantly rising, he exclaimed, "my headache is gone." Others doubted what the object of the enemy's threatened movement was. He at once saw it to be, the unfinished fortification upon Bunker Hill. The committee of safety (which sat in the house where he was) having resolved immediately to despatch a reinforcement thither, Warren mounted his horse, and with sword and musket, hastened to the scene of strife. He arrived just as the fight began, and seeking out General Putnam, (who was already there) desired to be posted where the service was to be most arduous. Putnam expressed his sorrow at seeing him, in a place so full of peril: "but since you have come," added he, "I will obey your orders with pleasure." Warren replied, that he came as a volunteer--to obey and fight; not to command. Putnam then requested him to take his stand in the redoubt, where Prescott commanded, and which was considerably in advance of the slighter defence, behind which Putnam and his men were stationed. On his entering the redoubt, he was greeted with loud huzzas: and Prescott, like Putnam, offered him the command. He again refused it; saying, that he was a mere volunteer, and should be happy to learn service from so experienced a soldier. We cannot, thrilling as they are to our recollections, undertake to narrate the well known particulars of that great day. But we commend the story, as told by the authoress before us, to the attention of our readers. Our business is with General Warren. He was constantly active; going through the ranks, cheering on his comrades, sharing their perils, and plying his musket against the advancing enemy. When the British had twice been driven from the height, with a thousand slain; when the exhaustion of powder and ball, leaving the Americans no means of resistance but clubbed guns, against fixed bayonets and fourfold numbers, necessarily made the third onset successful--Warren was the last to leave his station. The slowest in that slow and reluctant retreat, he struggled for every foot of ground; disdaining to quicken his steps, though bullets whizzed and blood streamed all around him. Major Small, of the British army, recognized him; and eager to save his life, called upon him for God's sake to stop, and be protected from destruction. Warren turned and looked towards him: but sickening at the sight and the thought of his slaughtered countrymen and of the lost battle, again moved slowly off as before. Major Small then ordered his men not to fire at the American General: but it was too late. Just as the order was given, a ball passed through his head; he fell, and expired.

His body lay on the field all the next night. When one who knew his person, told General Howe the next morning that Warren was among the slain, he would not believe it; declaring it impossible that the President of the Congress should have been suffered to expose himself so hazardously. An English surgeon, however, who had also known Warren, identified his corpse; and, to prove the daring of which he was capable, added, that but five days before, he had ventured alone into Boston in a small canoe, to learn the plans of the British; and had urged the surgeon to enter into the American service. General Howe declared, that the death of one such adversary balanced the loss of 500 of his own men. Warren's body was buried with many others, English and American, near the spot where he fell; whence, sometime afterwards, it was removed to the Tremont burying ground, and finally to the family vault under St. Paul's Church, in Boston. His brothers, at the first disinterment, knew his remains by an artificial tooth, by a nail wanting on one of his fingers, and by his clothes, in which he was buried just as he fell. His youngest brother, Dr. John Warren, at first sight of the body, fainted away, and lay for many minutes insensible on the ground. We draw a veil over the grief of his mother, when, after a torturing suspense {755} of three days, the dreadful truth was disclosed to her. In General Warren's pocket, an English soldier found a prayer book, with the owner's name written in it. The soldier carried it to England, and sold it for a high price to a kind-hearted clergyman, who benevolently transmitted it to a minister in Roxbury, with a request that he would restore it to the general's nearest relation. It was accordingly given to his youngest brother, whose son, Dr. John C. Warren, still retains it. It was printed in 1559, in a character remarkably distinct, and is strongly and handsomely bound.

If our due space had not already been exceeded, we would include in this sketch several other interesting particulars, connected with its illustrious subject: but we must forbear.

There were ample contemporaneous testimonials to the merits of General Warren. Amongst others, was a vote of the general Congress, that a monument should be erected to his memory, "as an acknowledgment of his virtues and distinguished services;" and that his children should be supported at the public charge. Like the prayers of Homer's heroes, this vote was half dispersed in empty air: the other half took effect, so far as the annual payment of a moderate sum went, towards the maintenance and education of the children. It is not until she has mentioned this fact, that our authoress bethinks her of saying, that General Warren was married to an excellent and amiable woman, who died three years before him; and that he left four orphan children. So important an event in human life might surely have been earlier told, and more regardfully dwelt upon. We would fain have had something said of his domestic life, who filled so large a space in his country's eye; something to exemplify what we hold as an everlasting truth--that a good son and a true patriot is sure to make a true husband and a good father. Situated as she is, our authoress cannot fail, by reasonable diligence of inquiry, to learn many things, worthy of the improved edition which we hope to see, of her interesting and valuable, though so faulty production.

We, as one of the posterity whose gratitude and admiration General Warren so richly earned, can read in his destiny more than a fulfilment of the augury contained in the official account of the Battle of Bunker Hill, drawn up by the Provincial Congress. It speaks of him as "a man, whose memory will be endeared to his countrymen, and to the worthy in every part and age of the world, so long as VALOUR shall be esteemed among mankind." To VALOUR, we would add the lovelier and nobler names of COURTESY, GENEROSITY, and INTEGRITY.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO CHRISTIANA.

Sister, while life and joy are young, While the sweet lyre of hope is strung, Ere thou hast known a crowd of cares, Earth's vain regrets and burning tears-- Ere the sick heart of grief is thine, Or rapture's thrilling pulse decline-- Ere wounded pride and love shall tell That thou hast served the world too well, Turn thou to worship at the shrine Of faith and holy love divine! Bring all thy strength of feeling there; Wait not to waste affection where No harvest ever can repay For all thou losest by delay. Seek the bright path the saints have trod; At his own altar worship God; And find that peace whilst kneeling there The world can neither give nor share. Mourn thou with hope--with fear rejoice; List to that small but awful voice, Which tells us all things fade and die To bloom no more beneath the sky. Earth's brightest dreams soon melt away, Her forms of loveliness decay-- And disappointment's chilling gloom Blights all her flowers of fairest bloom; But oh, remember, there is bliss In a far better land than this: Look thou beyond this world of care, And hope a fadeless crown to wear. Then may distress and sorrow come, Thy soul can ever find a home!

E. A. S.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

THE FRIENDS OF MAN.

The young babe sat on its mother's knee, Shaking its coral and bells with glee, When Hope drew near with a seraph smile, And kiss'd the lips that had spoke no guile, Nor breath'd the words of sorrow. Its little sister brought a flower, And Hope still lingering nigh, With sunny tress and sparkling eye, Whisper'd of buds in a brighter bower It might cull for itself to-morrow.

The boy came in from the wintry snow, And mus'd by the parlor fire,-- But ere the evening lamps did glow A stranger came with a thoughtful brow; "What is that in your hand?" she said; "My new-year's gift, with its covers red." "Bring hither the book, my boy, and see The magic spell of Memory;-- That page hath gold, and a way I'll find To lock it safe in your docile mind: For books have honey, the sages say, That is sweet to the taste, when the hair is grey."

The youth at midnight sought his bed, But ere he closed his eyes Two forms drew near with a gentle tread, In meek and saintly guise; One struck a lyre of wondrous power, With thrilling music fraught, That chain'd the flying summer hour, And charm'd the listener's thought-- For still would its tuneful cadence be, "Follow me! Follow me! And every morn a smile shall bring As sweet as the merry lay I sing."

But when she ceas'd, with serious air The other made reply, "Shall he not also be my care? May not I his pleasures share? {756} Sister! Sister! tell me why? Need Memory e'er with Hope contend? Doth not the virtuous soul still find in both a friend?"

The youth beheld the strife, And earnestly replied, "Come, each shall be my guide-- Both gild the path of life:" So he gave to each a trusting kiss, And laid him down, and his dream was bliss.

The man came forth to run his race, And ever when the morning light Rous'd him from the trance of night, When singing from her nest The lark went up with a dewy breast, Hope by his pillow stood with angel grace-- And as a mother cheers her son, She girded his daily harness on. And when the star of eve from weary care Bade him to his home repair; When by the hearth-stone where his joys were born, The cricket wound its tiny horn, Sober Memory spread her board, With knowledge richly stor'd, And supp'd with him, and like a guardian blest His nightly rest.

The old man sat in his elbow-chair, His locks were thin and grey-- Memory, that faithful friend was there, And he in a querulous tone did say, "Hast thou not lost with careless key Something that I have entrusted to thee?" Her pausing answer was sad and low, "It may be so! It may be so! The lock of my casket is worn and weak, And Time with a plunderer's eye doth seek: Something I miss, but I cannot say What it is he hath stolen away-- For it seems that tinsel and trifles spread Over the alter'd path we tread: But the gems thou didst give me when life was new, Look! here they are, all told and true, Diamonds and rubies of changeless hue."

Thus, while in grave debate, Mournful and ill at ease they sate, Finding treasures disarranged, Blaming the fickle world, when they themselves were chang'd, Hope, on a brilliant wing did soar, Which folded neath her robe she long had wore, And spread its rainbow plumes with new delight, And hazarded its strength in a bold heavenward flight.

The dying lay on his couch of pain, And his soul went forth to the angel train-- Yet when heaven's gate its golden bars undrew, Memory walked that portal through, And spread her tablet to the Judge's eye, Heightening with clear response the welcome of the sky. But at that threshold high, Hope faltered with a drooping eye, And as the expiring rose Doth in its last adieu its sweetest breath disclose, Laid down to die.

As a spent harp its symphony doth roll, Faintly her parting sigh Greeted a glorious form that stood serenely by: "Earth's pilgrim I resign; I cheered him to his grave--I lov'd him--he was mine; Christ hath redeemed his soul-- Immortal Joy! 'tis thine."

L. H. S.

Hartford, Con. Sept. 1835.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

THOUGHTS.

Oh Britain! on thy far, far distant shores, Mid scenes of grandeur, scenes with beauty fraught, Oft do I wish to stray, when fancy pours Her rainbow colors in the urn of thought.

Each crumbling tower, and each enchanted wood, And every haunted glen by Poets sung-- Each mountain, forest, valley, field, or flood, O'er which romance her magic veil has hung;

Thy "stately homes," the beautiful, the grand-- Each "breezy lawn," and each embowering tree, In Albion clothed by nature's partial hand In bloom and verdure--all I seem to see.

I picture to myself thy regal halls, Where pomp and splendor hold an equal sway; Thy palaces, within whose time-stained walls Kings have been born, have lived, and passed away;

That ancient pile,[1] where gloom and silence keep Their vigils o'er the great and honored dead-- Where princes proud, and gifted poets sleep, Each laid forever in his narrow bed;

The spots that hallowed in thy history stand, The graves of those whose mem'ries cannot die, With living gems that still adorn thy land, All, all appear to fancy's ardent eye.

Parent thou art of many a cherished son, And many a daughter crowned with wreaths of fame, Whose talents high, or virtues rare have won An ever glorious, ever honored name.

A Milton's genius awfully sublime, A Shakspeare's wit in nature's garments drest, A Scott whose fame can only end with time, Sprung from thy soil, and sleep within its breast.

A Campbell's pure and chastened flow of thought, A Hemans' skill poetic flowers to twine, A Bulwer's matchless page with interest fraught, A Landon's love-tuned lyre, all--all are thine!

But oh, between my own blest land and thee Old Ocean's wide and restless waters spread; Thy gifted great I may not hope to see, And on thy shores I know I ne'er shall tread.

Yet the free spirit roves where I would go, To other climes, the beautiful and bright, Through fields of air, o'er ocean's trackless flow, Eager, unchecked and chainless in its flight!

E. A. S.

[Footnote 1: Westminster Abbey.]

{757}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

KING PEST THE FIRST.

A TALE CONTAINING AN ALLEGORY--BY ----.

The Gods do bear and well allow in kings The things which they abhor in rascal routes. Buckhurst's Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex.

About twelve o'clock, one sultry night, in the month of August, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward, two seamen belonging to the crew of the "Free and Easy," a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London--which ale-house bore for sign the portraiture of a "Jolly Tar."

The room, it is needless to say, although ill-contrived, smoke-blackened, low-pitched, and in every other respect agreeing with the general character of such places at the period--was, nevertheless, in the opinion of the grotesque groups scattered here and there within it, sufficiently well adapted for its purpose.

Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think, the most interesting, if not the most conspicuous.

The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed by the characteristic appellation of "Legs," was also much the most ill-favored, and, at the same time, much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet nine inches, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous.

Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by deficiencies in other respects. He was exceedingly, wofully, awfully thin; and might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when sober, for a pennant at the mast-head, or, when stiff with liquor, have served for a jib-boom. But these jests, and others of a similar nature, had evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the leaden muscles of the tar. With high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general, was not the less utterly solemn and serious beyond all attempts at imitation or description.

The younger seaman was in all outward appearance, the antipodes of his companion. His stature could not have exceeded four feet. A pair of stumpy bow-legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his unusually short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their extremities, swung off, dangling from his sides like the fins of a sea-turtle. Small eyes, of no particular color, twinkled far back in his head. His nose remained buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upper-lip rested upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent self-satisfaction, much heightened by the owner's habit of licking them at intervals. He evidently regarded his tall ship-mate with a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical; and stared up occasionally in his face as the red setting sun stares up at the crags of Ben Nevis.

Various and eventful, however, had been the peregrinations of the worthy couple in and about the different tap-houses of the neighborhood during the earlier hours of the night. Funds even the most ample, are not always everlasting: and it was with empty pockets our friends had ventured upon the present hostelrie.

At the precise period then, when this history properly commences, Legs, and his fellow Hugh Tarpaulin, sat, each with both elbows resting upon the large oaken table in the middle of the floor, and with a hand upon either cheek. They were eyeing, from behind a huge flagon of unpaid-for "humming-stuff," the portentous words "No Chalk," which to their indignation and astonishment were scored over the door-way by means of that very identical mineral whose presence they purported to deny. Not that the gift of decyphering written characters--a gift among the commonalty of that day considered little less cabalistical than the art of inditing--could, in strict justice, have been laid to the charge of either disciple of the sea; but there was, to say the truth, a certain twist in the formation of the letters--an indescribable lee-lurch about the whole--which foreboded, in the opinion of both seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at once, in the pithy words of Legs himself, to "pump ship, clew up all sail, and scud before the wind."

Having accordingly drank up what remained of the ale, and looped up the points of their short doublets, they finally made a bolt for the street. Although Tarpaulin rolled twice into the fire-place, mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at length happily effected--and half after twelve o'clock found our heroes ripe for mischief, and running for life down a dark alley in the direction of St. Andrew's Stair, hotly pursued by the landlord and landlady of the "Jolly Tar."

* * * * *

At the epoch of this eventful tale, and periodically, for many years before and after, all England, but more especially the metropolis, resounded with the fearful cry of "Pest! Pest! Pest!" The city was in a great measure depopulated--and in those horrible regions, in the vicinity of the Thames, where amid the dark, narrow, and filthy lanes and alleys, the Demon of Disease was supposed to have had his nativity, awe, terror, and superstition were alone to be found stalking abroad.

By authority of the king such districts were placed under ban, and all persons forbidden, under pain of death, to intrude upon their dismal solitude. Yet neither the mandate of the monarch, nor the huge barriers erected at the entrances of the streets, nor the prospect of that loathsome death which, with almost absolute certainty, overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril could deter from the adventure, prevented the unfurnished and untenanted dwellings from being stripped, by the hand of nightly rapine, of every article such as iron, brass, or lead-work, which could in any manner be turned to a profitable account.

Above all, it was usually found, upon the annual winter opening of the barriers, that locks, bolts, and secret cellars had proved but slender protection to those rich stores of wines and liquors which, in consideration of the risk and trouble of removal, many of the numerous dealers having shops in the neighborhood had consented to trust, during the period of exile, to so insufficient a security.

But there were very few of the terror-stricken people who attributed these doings to the agency of human hands. Pest-Spirits, Plague-Goblins, and Fever-Demons were the popular imps of mischief; and tales so {758} blood-chilling were hourly told, that the whole mass of forbidden buildings was, at length, enveloped in terror as in a shroud, and the plunderer himself was often scared away by the horrors his own depredations had created; leaving the entire vast circuit of prohibited district to gloom, silence, pestilence, and death.

* * * * *

It was by one of these terrific barriers already mentioned, and which indicated the region beyond to be under the Pest-Ban, that, in scrambling down an alley, Legs and the worthy Hugh Tarpaulin found their progress suddenly impeded. To return was out of the question, and no time was to be lost, as their pursuers were close upon their heels. With thorough-bred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned plank work was a trifle; and, maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the enclosure, and holding on their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon bewildered in its noisome and intricate recesses.

Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond all sense of human feelings, their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their situation. The air was damp, cold and misty. The paving stones loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up hideously around the feet and ancles. Rubbish of fallen houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells every where prevailed--and by the occasional aid of that ghastly and uncertain light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the bypaths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.

But it lay not in the power of images, or sensations, or impediments like these, to stay the course of men who, naturally brave, and at that time especially, brimful of courage and of "humming-stuff," would have reeled, as straight as their condition might have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of the Archangel Death. Onward--still onward stalked the gigantic Legs, making the desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific warwhoop of the Indian: and onward--still onward rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging on to the doublet of his more active companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous exertions in the way of vocal music by bull-roarings in basso, from the profundity of his Stentorian lungs.

They had now evidently reached the strong hold of the pestilence. Their way at every step or plunge grew more noisome and more horrible--the paths more narrow and more intricate. Huge stones and beams falling momentarily from the decaying roofs above them, gave evidence, by their sullen and heavy descent, of the vast height of the surrounding buildings, while actual exertion became necessary to force a passage through frequent heaps of putrid human corpses.

Suddenly, as the seamen stumbled against the entrance of a gigantic and ghastly-looking building, a yell more than usually shrill from the throat of the excited Legs, was replied to from within in a rapid succession of wild, laughter-like, and fiendish shrieks.

Nothing daunted at sounds which, of such a nature, at such a time, and in such a place, might have curdled the very blood in hearts less irrecoverably on fire, the drunken couple burst open the pannels of the door, and staggered into the midst of things with a volley of curses. It is not to be supposed however, that the scene which here presented itself to the eyes of the gallant Legs and worthy Tarpaulin, produced at first sight any other effect upon their illuminated faculties than an overwhelming sensation of stupid astonishment.

The room within which they found themselves, proved to be the shop of an undertaker--but an open trap-door in a corner of the floor near the entrance, looked down upon a long range of wine-cellars, whose depths the occasional sounds of bursting bottles proclaimed to be well stored with their appropriate contents. In the middle of the room stood a table--in the centre of which again arose a huge tub of what appeared to be punch. Bottles of various wines and cordials, together with grotesque jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality, were scattered profusely upon the board. Around it, upon coffin-tressels, was seated a company of six--this company I will endeavor to delineate one by one.

Fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions, sat a personage who appeared to be the president of the table. His stature was gaunt and tall, and Legs was confounded to behold in him a figure more emaciated than himself. His face was yellower than the yellowest saffron--but no feature of his visage, excepting one alone, was sufficiently marked to merit a particular description. This one consisted in a forehead so unusually and hideously lofty, as to have the appearance of a bonnet or crown of flesh superseded upon the natural head. His mouth was puckered and dimpled into a singular expression of ghastly affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes of all at table, were glazed over with the fumes of intoxication.

This gentleman was clothed from head to foot in a richly embroidered black silk-velvet pall wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a Spanish cloak. His head was stuck all full of tall, sable hearse-plumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and knowing air, and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thigh-bone, with which he appeared to have been just knocking down some member of the company for a song.

Opposite him, and with her back to the door, was a lady of no whit the less extraordinary character. Although quite as tall as the person who has just been described, she had no right to complain of his unnatural emaciation. She was evidently in the last stage of a dropsy; and her figure resembled nearly in outline the shapeless proportions of the huge puncheon of October beer which stood, with the head driven in, close by her side, in a corner of the chamber. Her face was exceedingly round, red, and full--and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president--that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed, the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular {759} portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion proved to be the mouth. Commencing at the right ear, it swept with a terrific chasm to the left--the short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. She made, however, every exertion to keep her jaws closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a newly starched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimped ruffle of cambric muslin.

At her right hand sat a diminutive young lady whom she appeared to patronize. This delicate little creature, in the trembling of her wasted fingers, in the livid hue of her lips, and in the slight hectic spot which tinged her otherwise leaden complexion, gave evident indications of a galloping consumption.

An air of extreme haut ton, however, pervaded her whole appearance--she wore in a graceful and degagé manner, a large and beautiful winding-sheet of the finest India lawn--her hair hung in ringlets over her neck--a soft smile played about her mouth--but her nose, extremely long, thin, sinuous, flexible, and pimpled, hung down far below her under lip, and, in spite of the delicate manner in which she now and then moved it to one side or the other with her tongue, gave an expression rather doubtful to her countenance.

Over against her, and upon the left of the dropsical lady, was seated a little puffy, wheezing, and gouty old man, whose cheeks hung down upon the shoulders of their owner, like two huge bladders of Oporto wine. With his arms folded, and with one bandaged leg cocked up against the table, he seemed to think himself entitled to some consideration.

He evidently prided himself much upon every inch of his personal appearance, but took more especial delight in calling attention to his gaudy colored surcoat. This, to say the truth, must have cost no little money, and was made to fit him exceedingly well--being fashioned from one of the curiously embroidered silken covers appertaining to those glorious escutcheons which, in England and elsewhere, are customarily hung up in some conspicuous place upon the dwellings of departed aristocracy.

Next to him, and at the right hand of the president, was a gentleman in long white hose and cotton drawers. His frame shook in a ludicrous manner, with a fit of what Tarpaulin called "the horrors." His jaws, which had been newly shaved, were tightly tied up by a bandage of muslin; and his arms being fastened in a similar way at the wrists, prevented him from helping himself too freely to the liquors upon the table; a precaution rendered necessary, in the opinion of Legs, by the peculiarly sottish and wine-bibbing cast of his visage. A pair of prodigious ears, nevertheless, which it was no doubt found impossible to confine, towered away into the atmosphere of the apartment, and were occasionally pricked up, or depressed, as the sounds of bursting bottles increased, or died away, in the cellars underneath.

Fronting him, sixthly and lastly, was situated a singularly stiff-looking personage, who, being afflicted with paralysis, must, to speak seriously, have felt very ill at ease in his unaccommodating habiliments. He was habited, somewhat uniquely, in a new and handsome mahogany coffin.

The top or head-piece of the coffin pressed upon the scull of the wearer, and extended over it in the fashion of a hood, giving to the entire face an air of indescribable interest. Arm-holes had been cut in the sides, for the sake not more of elegance than of convenience--but the dress, nevertheless, prevented its proprietor from sitting as erect as his associates; and as he lay reclining against his tressel, at an angle of forty-five degrees, a pair of huge goggle eyes rolled up their awful whites towards the ceiling in absolute amazement at their own enormity.

Before each of the party lay a portion of a scull which was used as a drinking cup. Overhead was suspended an enormous human skeleton, by means of a rope tied round one of the legs and fastened to a ring in the ceiling. The other limb, confined by no such fetter, stuck off from the body at right angles, causing the whole loose and rattling frame to dangle and twirl about in a singular manner, at the caprice of every occasional puff of wind which found its way into the apartment. In the cranium of this hideous thing lay a quantity of ignited and glowing charcoal, which threw a fitful but vivid light over the entire scene; while coffins, and other wares appertaining to the shop of an undertaker, were piled high up around the room, and against the windows, preventing any straggling ray from escaping into the street.

It has been before hinted that at sight of this extraordinary assembly, and of their still more extraordinary paraphernalia, our two seamen did not conduct themselves with that proper degree of decorum which might have been expected. Legs, having leant himself back against the wall, near which he happened to be standing, dropped his lower jaw still lower than usual, and spread open his eyes to their fullest extent: while Hugh Tarpaulin, stooping down so as to bring his nose upon a level with the table, and spreading out a palm upon either knee, burst into a long, loud, and obstreperous roar of very ill-timed and immoderate laughter.

Without, however, taking offence at behavior so excessively rude, the tall president smiled very graciously upon the intruders--nodded to them in a dignified manner with his head of sable plumes--and, arising, took each by an arm, and led him to a seat which some others of the company had placed in the meantime for his accommodation. Legs to all this offered not the slightest resistance, but sat down as he was directed--while the gallant Hugh removing his coffin-tressel from its station near the head of the table, to the vicinity of the little consumptive lady in the winding-sheet, plumped down by her side in high glee, and, pouring out a scull of red wine, drank it off to their better acquaintance. But at this presumption the stiff gentleman in the coffin seemed exceedingly nettled, and serious consequences might have ensued, had not the president, rapping upon the table with his truncheon, diverted the attention of all present to the following speech:

"It becomes our duty upon the present happy occasion"----

"Avast there!"--interrupted Legs looking very serious--"avast there a bit, I say, and tell us who the devil ye all are, and what business ye have here rigged off like the foul fiends, and swilling the snug 'blue ruin' stowed away for the winter by my honest shipmate Will Wimble the undertaker!"

At this unpardonable piece of ill-breeding, all the {760} original company half started to their feet, and uttered the same rapid succession of wild fiendish shrieks which had before caught the attention of the seamen. The president, however, was the first to recover his composure, and at length, turning to Legs with great dignity, recommenced.

"Most willingly will we gratify any reasonable curiosity on the part of guests so illustrious, unbidden though they be. Know then that in these dominions I am monarch, and here rule with undivided empire under the title of 'King Pest the First.'

"This apartment which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertaker--a man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal ears--this apartment, I say, is the Dais-Chamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to other sacred and lofty purposes.

"The noble lady who sits opposite is Queen Pest, and our Serene Consort. The other exalted personages whom you behold are all of our family, and wear the insignia of the blood royal under the respective titles of 'His Grace the Arch Duke Pest-Iferous'--'His Grace the Duke Pest-Ilential'--'His Grace the Duke Tem-Pest'--and 'Her Serene Highness the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.'

"As regards"--continued he--"your demand of the business upon which we sit here in council, we might be pardoned for replying that it concerns and concerns alone our own private and regal interest, and is in no manner important to any other than ourself. But in consideration of those rights to which as guests and strangers you may feel yourselves entitled, we will furthermore explain that we are here this night, prepared by deep research and accurate investigation, to examine, analyze, and thoroughly determine the indefinable spirit--the incomprehensible qualities and nare of those inestimable treasures of the palate, the wines, ales, and liqueurs of this goodly Metropolis: by so doing to advance not more our own designs than the true welfare of that unearthly sovereign whose reign is over us all--whose dominions are unlimited--and whose name is 'Death.'"

"Whose name is Davy Jones!"--ejaculated Tarpaulin, helping the lady by his side to a scull of liqueur, and pouring out a second for himself.

"Profane varlet!"--said the president, now turning his attention to the worthy Hugh--"profane and execrable wretch!--we have said, that in consideration of those rights which, even in thy filthy person, we feel no inclination to violate, we have condescended to make reply to your rude and unseasonable inquiries. We, nevertheless, for your unhallowed intrusion upon our councils, believe it our duty to mulct you and your companion in each a gallon of Black Strap--having drank which to the prosperity of our kingdom--at a single draught--and upon your bended knees--you shall be forthwith free either to proceed upon your way, or remain and be admitted to the privileges of our table according to your respective and individual pleasures."

"It would be a matter of utter impossibility"--replied Legs, whom the assumptions and dignity of King Pest the First had evidently inspired with some feelings of respect, and who arose and studied himself by the table as he spoke--"it would, please your majesty, be a matter of utter impossibility to stow away in my hold even one-fourth of that same liquor which your majesty has just mentioned. To say nothing of the stuffs placed on board in the forenoon by way of ballast, and not to mention the various ales and liqueurs shipped this evening at different sea-ports, I am, at present, full up to the throat of 'humming-stuff' taken in and duly paid for at the sign of the 'Jolly Tar.' You will, therefore, please your majesty, be so good as take the will for the deed--for by no manner of means either can I or will I swallow another drop--least of all a drop of that villainous bilge-water that answers to the hail of 'Black Strap.'"

"Belay that!"--interrupted Tarpaulin, astonished not more at the length of his companion's speech than at the nature of his refusal--"Belay that you lubber!--and I say, Legs, none of your palaver! My hull is still light, although I confess you yourself seem to be a little top-heavy; and as for the matter of your share of the cargo, why rather than raise a squall I would find stowage-room for it myself, but"----

"This proceeding"--interposed the president--"is by no means in accordance with the terms of the mulct or sentence which is in its nature Median, and not to be altered or recalled. The conditions we have imposed must be fulfilled to the letter, and that without a moment's hesitation--in failure of which fulfilment we decree that you do here be tied neck and heels together, and duly drowned as rebels in yon hogshead of October beer!"

"A sentence!--a sentence!--a righteous and just sentence!--a glorious decree!--a most worthy and upright, and holy condemnation!"--shouted the Pest Family altogether. The king elevated his forehead into innumerable wrinkles--the gouty little old man puffed like a pair of bellows--the lady of the winding sheet waved her nose to and fro--the gentleman in the cotton drawers pricked up his ears--she of the shroud gasped like a dying fish--and he of the coffin looked stiff and rolled up his eyes.

"Ugh!--ugh!--ugh!"--chuckled Tarpaulin without heeding the general excitation--"ugh!--ugh!--ugh!--ugh!--ugh!--ugh!--ugh!--ugh!--ugh!" "I was saying," said he,--"I was saying when Mr. King Pest poked in his marling-spike, that as for the matter of two or three gallons more or less Black Strap, it was a trifle to a tight sea-boat like myself not overstowed--but when it comes to drinking the health of the Devil--whom God assoilzie--and going down upon my marrow bones to his ill-favored majesty there, whom I know, as well as I know myself to be a sinner, to be nobody in the whole world but Tim Hurlygurly, the organ-grinder--why! its quite another guess sort of a thing, and utterly and altogether past my comprehension."

He was not allowed to finish this speech in tranquillity. At the name of Tim Hurlygurly the whole Junto leaped from their seats.

"Treason!"--shouted his Serenity King Pest the First.

"Treason!"--said the little man with the gout.

"Treason!"--screamed the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

"Treason!"--muttered the gentleman with his jaws tied up.

"Treason!"--growled he of the coffin.

"Treason! treason!"--shrieked her majesty of the {761} mouth; and, seizing by the hinder part of his breeches the unfortunate Tarpaulin, who had just commenced pouring out for himself a scull of liqueur, she lifted him high up into the air, and dropped him without ceremony into the huge open puncheon of his beloved ale. Bobbing up and down, for a few seconds, like an apple in a bowl of toddy, he, at length, finally disappeared amid the whirlpool of foam which, in the already effervescent liquor, his struggles easily succeeded in creating.

Not tamely however did the tall seaman behold the discomfiture of his companion. Jostling King Pest through the open trap, the valiant Legs slammed the door down upon him with an oath, and strode towards the centre of the room. Here tearing down the huge skeleton which swung over the table, he laid it about him with so much energy and good will, that, as the last glimpses of light died away within the apartment, he succeeded in knocking out the brains of the little gentleman with the gout. Rushing then with all his force against the fatal hogshead full of October ale and Hugh Tarpaulin, he rolled it over and over in an instant. Out burst a deluge of liquor so fierce--so impetuous--so overwhelming--that the room was flooded from wall to wall--the loaded table was overturned--the tressels were thrown upon their backs--the tub of punch into the fire place--and the ladies into hysterics. Jugs, pitchers, and carboys mingled promiscuously in the melée, and wicker flagons encountered desperately with bottles of junk. Piles of death-furniture floundered about. Sculls floated en masse--hearse-plumes nodded to escutcheons--the man with the horrors was drowned upon the spot--the little stiff gentleman sailed off in his coffin--and the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, scudded out into the street followed under easy sail, by the redoubted Hugh Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

EARLY ADVENTURES.

Dissolve frigus--lignum super focus large reponens.--Horace.

Towards the end of a raw and blustering day in October, I was comfortably seated in my easy chair before a blazing fire, which diffused a cheerful light and a genial warmth through the apartment. My feet, cased in morocco slippers, rested on a footstool, whilst I carelessly sipped a glass of Madeira, supplied from a decanter which reared its rosy form on a table hard by. To an eye-witness I must have seemed the picture of comfort and happiness. On turning to help myself to another glass of the nectar-like fluid that glistened so temptingly by the ruddy light, my eye caught the gold edge of a note which lay on the table, half concealed by a book, and which, upon perusal, I discovered to contain a polite invitation from a wealthy and fashionable acquaintance to spend the next evening at her house. The emphatic N. B. "Mrs. M. would be glad to see her friends in fancy dresses," soon brought to my experienced mind the nature of the fête to which I had the honor of an invitation. I arose to consult my prints and books to discover the most appropriate costume wherein to conceal my noble self. But not being able to suit exactly my somewhat fastidious taste, I resolved to consult the accomplished, beautiful, talented, and "last but not least," the wealthy Miss ----, who performed on the piano like another Handel, and tripped it on the light fantastic toe, with almost as much ease and grace as the fairy Taglioni. I had long looked on Miss ---- with affection--or perhaps love: and I had the vanity to suppose my feelings were reciprocated. But of the latter surmise I could only judge by "circumstantial evidence"--for the Cerberus-like vigilance of the matron under whose protection she lived, (and who had married my father's brother,) prevented me from forming any correct judgment of the extent of her affection for me--or if she possessed any, from taking advantage of it. The old lady (my aunt) who had found the yoke of Hymen not so easily borne, and who knew by experience the hazard that was to be encountered in forming matrimonial connexions, zealously opposed the various attempts I made to win the heart of the mistress of my adoration. Seeing all my designs frustrated, and my schemes overthrown by the superior knowledge and oversight of my feminine antagonist, I resolved, like a prudent general, to "beat a retreat," while it was in my power to effect one without loss of force or reputation. Nevertheless, I deemed it not imprudent to make one vigorous effort to obtain the five thousand dollars a year, along with the person of Miss ----, before I retired from the contest. Fraught with this intention, I resolved to visit Miss ---- immediately, to consult her about something beside the fancy dress. Having exchanged the gown in which I had been so luxuriously enveloped, for a dress coat, cut by the inimitable hands of Nugee, and attired the rest of my person in the most approved style, I sallied forth to the residence of my charmer.

The wind had gradually subsided during the last half hour, until it had nearly died away. The fresh air, with the exercise of walking, produced that racy and dancing stir of the blood, which all action, whether evil or noble in its nature, raises in our veins. The full moon now rose in all the splendor of its matchless beauty, and bathed in silvery light the gorgeous piles of snow-white clouds that calmly reposed on the surface of the dark blue sky. The walk was too pleasant to be of long duration, and before it seemed a moment had elapsed, I found myself on the marble steps of the house to which I had been directing my course. At my aristocratic pull of the door-bell, a servant immediately made his appearance, and to my inquiry if Mrs. D---- was at home, he answered in the negative. "Did Miss ---- accompany her, or did she remain?" said I in a hesitating tone of voice. "She is within," said the servant, and he forthwith ushered me in. In a few moments Miss ---- entered the room, looking as fresh and beautiful as Aurora "when first she leaves her rosy bed." It is useless to trespass upon the patience of the reader by giving a prolix account of a scene he has read of in every novel, romance, or tale, that has been written since the time of Clovis. Be it sufficient to say, that with "accents sweet" I poured forth the impassioned tale of my love--and with all that eloquence which love (and the hope of the five thousand per annum only) could have inspired. My suit was accepted; and to escape the vigilance of my aunt, it was agreed that she should attend the fancy ball the next evening, habited in the costume of a "Novice," at which place I should meet her as Young {762} Norval. Soon as the clock should toll the hour of twelve we should leave the "festive scene," while all would be too busy to notice our departure. Immediately we were to repair to the residence of my aunt, when, after changing our dresses for some more suitable, we should hasten to a country seat about twenty miles distant, possessed by a near relative of mine, where we should be united in the holy band of matrimony.

This arrangement being made, with a heart buoyant with hope, and an elastic tread, I soon regained my apartment. And

"Now the latter watch of wasting night And setting stars to sweet repose invite;"

but the high excitement under which I had been, banished

"Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep,"

from my pillow.

* * * * *

Conformably to the plan arranged between Miss ---- and myself, I drove to Mrs. M ----'s at the usual hour, and halted some distance from the house, in the rear of about a hundred carriages. The rooms were already full when I entered--and after being announced in character and introduced to the lady of the house, I mingled with the motley crowd.

For the first hour the scene was grotesque in the extreme. The guests paraded the rooms with all the gravity of well-bred persons of the sixteenth century, looking stiff and very uncomfortable in their ill-adjusted habiliments. At the announcement of supper the prospect for pleasure brightened, and the guests felt themselves more at home. The gaudy figures moving about in the full blaze of the numberless chandeliers, produced a brilliant effect; and the various characters mingling together, made a splendid show of the burlesque. Here a "Red Man" from the "Far West," with his beautifully variegated moccasins, and a glass of "golden Sherry" in his hand, was descanting on the beauties of the latest tie with a superb "Spanish Cavalier," who haughtily fingered his jet black moustache, and sipped his Sherbet. Next him stood a "Knight of Malta," with his magnificent stars and diamonds, in close converse with a "Peasant Girl." The "Arch Bishop" set the whole table in a roar by his jokes; and "His Holiness" the Pope, giggled with "Anne Boleyn" over an ice-cream. The Jew was detected with ham-sandwich; while "King Lear" forgot the ingratitude of his daughters over champagne.

I finding the assignated time approaching, detached myself from the brilliant crowd around the supper table, and took a seat on a sofa in the next room. I had not been seated many minutes before I perceived "The Novice" approaching, and at that instant a clock near me tolled the midnight hour. I dashed up to the object of my search, and observing it was now time to go, she immediately took my arm, and we marched out. At the door I handed her into a carriage, and ordered the coachman to drive as rapidly as possible to ---- street. In a few moments we arrived at the house, and seeing her rather slow, I requested her to unveil, as we had no time to lose. Slowly she raised her hand, and removing the dark veil from her face, disclosed the features of--my aunt. Overwhelmed with rage and disappointment I rushed from the house, and meeting one of the servants, learned that Miss ---- had suddenly heard of the death of a relative to whom she was much attached, and had been unable to attend the ball. It appears she had written to me, but the note, by some unpardonable negligence of the domestic to whom it was entrusted, had never been delivered. Learning these particulars I hurried down the street, and seeing a stage-coach standing before a hotel door, I leaped into it, and drove off. The motion of the carriage produced a dull, heavy sensation on my frame, and at length I fell asleep. I was aroused from my slumber by the sounds of laughter, and soon discovered that it arose from my fellow-passengers, who were diverting themselves at the oddity of my appearance and dress. Some took me for a madman. But one old gentlemen in pepper and salt dress, and with a red nose, assured the company that I was some theatrical character who had eloped from his creditors. Never was he of the "Grampian Hills" worse treated. At length I arrived at an inn, where I procured a suit of clothes, and resolved either to commit suicide, or drown my cares in a bottle of Champagne.

J. C.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

SHADOW. A FABLE--BY ----.

Ye who read are still among the living, but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and many secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away ere these memorials be seen of men. And when seen there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the Heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others it was evident, that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not, greatly made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city by the melancholy sea, we sat, at night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was fashioned by the artizan Corinnos, and being of rare workmanship was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets--but the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account--things material and spiritual. Heaviness in the atmosphere--a sense of suffocation--anxiety--and above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of {763} thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs--upon the household furniture--upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby--all things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way--which was hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon--which are madness; and drank deeply--although the purple wine reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded--the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and, gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teios. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes rolling afar off among the sable draperies of the chamber became weak, and indistinguishable, and so fainted away. And lo! from among those sable draperies where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a dark and undefined shadow--a shadow such as the moon when low in Heaven might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow neither of man, nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room, it at length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and indefinitive, and was the shadow neither of man nor God--neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldæa, nor any Egyptian God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the entablature of the door, and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, "I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal." And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well remembered and familiar accents of a thousand departed friends.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

CURSE OF THE "BETRAYED ONE."

A FRAGMENT--BY HUGH BLAIR.

They moved her couch, that the whispering breath Of evening might come with its balmy sigh, And fan her brow, e'er the film of death Spread over her dark and beautiful eye.

But she heeded not the whispering wind, For her burning thoughts afar were roaming; Madness had seized on her wretched mind, And her high brow throb'd, and her lips were foaming!

And the beautiful curls of her sable hair Streamed wildly over her fevered pillow-- And her bosom heaved in its whiteness there, As the breeze heaves up the snowy billow--

And her teeth with convulsive grasp were set, And her eye burned bright as a beam of day-- She twined her hand in her locks of jet, And tore their glittering curls away!

And she screamed with a wild, convulsive shriek, Then uttered a low protracted groan-- As ye've heard the wind thro' your lattice break, And die away with a hollow moan.

But at length, through the evening's gathering gloom, Her voice came forth from the riven chords Of her broken heart, as from a tomb! And she utter'd these wild and fearful words:

"I've loved thee, man, with an ardent love; I've sworn it by each orb above-- By the glorious Sun when he sank to rest, And lit with his beams the glowing west-- By the pallid Moon, when her silver beam Danced gladly o'er yon murmuring stream, Upon whose verdant banks with you I've stood that holy orb to view-- And by every lamp which the dusk of even Hung out in the glittering arch of heaven. I cannot now deny the flame Which has wasted thus my wretched frame-- For I've told it thee by many a word Which came from the core of my bleeding heart, As you touched each thrilling, aching chord, By that hellish power, thy fiendish art. I've told it thee by many a sigh, By many a tear in my weary eye, By many a sob, and many a groan, Which burst from the lips of thy 'lovely one'-- And I've told it thee by the burning streak Which so often lit my fevered cheek, As you played with each glittering curl of jet That waved on the neck of 'Thy Martinette!' Come hither thou fiend and gaze upon me; Behold the wreck of thy hellish power-- Come hither, I have a blessing for thee, Which thou shalt hear in my dying hour.

"That maiden, she of the lovely face, Who holds in thy heart my wretched place, Shall become thy bride, and her first born son Be a monster, hideous to gaze upon! And the sight of the thing shall drive her mad! {764} And while she's screaming in accents wild, She shall call upon thee in tones most sad, Thyself to murder her hideous child! Oh, she shall shriek in her wild despair, And her phrensied eye, with a fearful glare, Full on thy faithless face shall gleam-- And with lips of foam and teeth close set, Her voice full in thy ear shall scream, 'Remember the curse of thy Martinette!' And with fingers of blood she shall rend her cheek-- And those lips which now in their freshness part, Shall utter as wild and terrific a shriek As ever yet burst from my broken heart; And her every shriek and her every groan Shall wither thy heart, thou faithless one! And thus she shall die, ere reason's dawn The veil from her wildered soul hath drawn. But her blasted babe, that hideous thing, Shall live--and its frightful presence shall bring Galling thoughts, which shall have the power To blast thy every peaceful hour! By its blasted form thou shalt never forget The dying curse of thy Martinette!"

She spoke, and sunk back on her dying bed, And the blood gushed forth from her lips of foam! They raised her again--but the spirit had fled Away, away to its secret home!

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO MRS. B. G. S.

When Summer sheds her soft perfume The bowers among-- When all the earth is rich in bloom, The sky in song-- When evening's golden clouds like shadows flee, Turn for an instant then your thoughts on me.

When Winter in her frozen zone Robs earth of green-- When only Friendship can atone For what has been-- When round the hearth your other friends you see, It is the hour I love--think then of me.

In days of bliss when hope is nigh, And life is dear, Your heart with joy elate beats high, And friends are near-- Forget not there is one will ever be Glad of thy gladness; cast a thought on me.

And when the darksome days Of age or ill The bright and cheering rays Of hope shall chill, Think there is one whose love can never be Changed with Time's changes--oh remember me.

E. A. S.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

THE SEA BIRD'S REVEL.

BY GILES McQUIGGIN.

Look out upon the ocean wave-- Look from the lonely shore; See how the mountain billows rave, Hark how the waters roar!

Darkly hangs the tempest cloud, From windward to the lee; The thunder mutters hoarse and loud Above the foaming sea.

'Tis nature in her revel hour-- She sweeps a stormy wing; Old Ocean trembles at her power, As wild his surges fling.

The sea bird rides upon her wrath, Rocks on the tempest's ire-- Surveys the lurid lightning's path, And shouts amid its fire.

The proud bird breasts the storm alone, Mounts through its misty height-- The summit is his lofty throne, The thunder his delight.

While gazing on the horrors round, His burning eye-balls glare; King of the storm, with lightnings crown'd, He fears no terrors there.

When he for very gladness shrieks, It deafens ocean's roar-- O'er nature in her wildest freaks The proud storm king may soar.

Ride on aerial charioteer, The tempest hails thy form; Thou lov'st a sky forever clear, Go seek it through the storm.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

I MET THEE BY MOONLIGHT ALONE.

BY M. S. LOVETT.

Air--"Oh! meet me by moonlight alone."

I met thee by moonlight alone, The blue sky was cloudless above; And dew-gems around us were thrown, To gladden our meeting of love.

I met thee by moonlight alone, My heart trusting wholly to thee: Was it prudent? Alas! I will own That I asked not, for thou wast with me.

How buoyant my heart, and how sweet The zephyrs that waved through my hair! Low murmured the stream at my feet, Its tale to the summer-night air.

But ah! did the sky cease to smile? The Moon--were her silver rays gone? Did each beauty but tarry the while We met--love, by moonlight alone?

Oh no, for the sky is still bright, The dew-drops still nightly have shone: On me fell the darkness and blight: I met thee by moonlight alone!

And the pale Moon while wand'ring above, Oft hears its sad votaries own, That too often the Altar of Love Is lighted by moonlight alone.

{765}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

LETTERS FROM A SISTER.

LETTER TWENTY-FIRST.

Places of Protestant Worship in Paris--History of Mr. Lewis Way an English Divine.

PARIS, ----.

Dear Jane:

Here is an interesting narrative to amuse you, which I have just heard related. In the Champs Elysées, there stands a beautiful protestant chapel, where we attend divine service almost every Sabbath; if we do not go there, we repair to the oratorio, a protestant church in the Rue St. Honoré, or to the English Ambassador's, where there is public worship every Sunday, or to another temple consecrated to our form of worship, (the Church of the Visitation,) in the Rue Saint Antoine. Bishop Luscombe officiates at the oratorio, and Mr. Wilkes, a Presbyterian clergyman, assembles his congregation in an upper apartment adjoining the church. The history in question is that of the Rev. Mr. Lewis Way, who owns the chapel in the Champs Elysées and preaches there; he is extremely eloquent and energetic, and speaks plain truths to his flock without hesitation, when necessary. It is said that when a youth he had an ardent desire to be educated for the church, but his parents being extremely poor, and not having any relatives to assist him, he became a student of law at the temple, and was one morning proceeding to his labors, when he observed his own name inscribed on the door plate of a handsome dwelling. He immediately ascended the steps and requested to speak with the master of the house, and on his appearance, after apologizing for the liberty he was taking, told his story, represented his forlorn situation, and begged to be informed if there was any relationship between them. On comparing notes he found there was not and was taking leave, but the gentleman, who was an odd old bachelor, insisted on his prolonging his visit, and in the interim, sent a trusty servant to inquire his character of the lawyer under whom he studied, and who happened to be the one whom he (Mr. Way, Senior,) usually employed. The lawyer's answer was highly creditable to his pupil, and from that moment the old gentleman adopted him, enabled him to take orders, and dying soon afterwards, bequeathed him a fortune of 300,000 pounds sterling. The sudden accession of such wealth affected his brain, and he was crazy for several years. Now, I think he must have been so, when he introduced himself so strangely to his benefactor; but be that as it may, on regaining his senses, he resolved to make Paris his future home, and to devote his time to the protestants in that city. He accordingly came over here, purchased the hotel Marboeuf his present abode, and converted a portion of it into the tasteful little chapel, where he addresses and edifies a numerous congregation on all holy days. The seats of the chapel are covered with cerulean velvet, the windows ornamented with paintings, and there is a good organ, upon which one of his daughters (for he has married and has several children,) always performs. A shady and pleasant garden adds to the beauty and comfort of the place. And thus ends my story, for the truth of which remember I do not vouch. But as I have had it told to me,--so I have detailed it unto thee; and with this flourishing rhyme conclude.

Yours,

LEONTINE.

* * * * *

LETTER TWENTY-SECOND.

Excursion to Lagrange--Count de Tracy and Madame La Fayette--Theatre of Monsieur Compte--Chinese Baths.

PARIS, ----.

I thank you beloved sister! for your affectionate letter of the ---- instant, and shall not delay answering it, for I am impatient to inform you of our recent agreeable excursion to Lagrange. On Friday, we availed ourselves of the kind General's invitation, and rising very early, commenced our journey to his castle. We partook of coffee, eggs, and bread and butter, at a village some leagues hence, and having rested the horses, went on so rapidly as to reach Lagrange in time for dinner; met with a cordial reception from all the family, and were introduced to several distinguished guests. Among these, were the venerable Count de Tracy and the celebrated Monsieur Constant. The former is the father of Madame G. Lafayette, and a charming old gentleman he is. The latter, the intimate friend of Madame de Stael and the leader of the liberal party in the Chamber of Deputies, I have described to you in a previous letter. Madame George Lafayette is the presiding hostess of Lagrange, and has uncommonly affable and affectionate manners; indeed the whole family (as I have already remarked) are extremely amiable, and so charitable, that many poor persons in their neighborhood are supported by their bounty. Madame Lafayette Senior, you know, died of a malady contracted by her, in the damp and noxious dungeon of Olmutz, while she shared her husband's captivity. Her memory is deservedly venerated by him, and I am told that he cannot speak of her, without shedding tears of sorrow and gratitude, at the recollection of her sufferings and self-sacrifice for his sake. He shewed us a miniature of their jailor, which was taken by his eldest daughter, Madame de Maubourg, during their imprisonment, in the following singular manner. She drew it first on her thumb nail with a pin, not being allowed a pencil or paper; however, having found means to obtain a piece of crayon and a blank leaf from a book, she copied the head sketched on her nail, and as the resemblance was striking, her father has since had it painted in oil colors, by an artist, who has enlarged the design; by portraying the old Cerberus with a huge bunch of keys, and in the act of unlocking the prison door. It is quite an interesting little picture.

I will now describe the farm, for we examined all parts of it. Order and neatness reign throughout the domain, and the General himself sees that nothing is neglected. He has a numerous flock of merino sheep, well guarded by a shepherd and two faithful dogs. Their sagacity and vigilance are remarkable; if one of the flock separated itself from the others only a few feet, these dogs would observe it in an instant, and hasten to drive back the wanderer to its place, which they always did with evident tenderness. The horses, cows and swine were in a thriving condition, looking contented, fat and sleek. The poultry yard contains foreign as well as domestic fowls; they are accommodated according to their habits, and form an amusing spectacle. The regulations of the kitchen, the dairy, the ice-house, stables and pig-styes, are admirable, and you may tell Albert that I advise him to come over and take a lesson in such useful {766} arrangements, though I will answer for it, you entertain so exalted an opinion of his knowledge on all subjects, that you deem more acquirements or improvements unnecessary. "Mais revenons au Chateau." It is a stone building enclosing three sides of a square court. There are five towers, one at each corner, and the fifth in the centre of the left side of the castle, as you enter through a large arch which leads into the square court; it is surrounded by a thickly spreading ivy, which was planted by our great statesman, Charles James Fox, more than twenty years ago, while on a visit to Lagrange. You approach the arch by a bridge, thrown over a moat, bounding two sides of the castle, and terminating in a small lake. Here may sometimes be seen floating an American boat, that in 1824 beat an English one, in a race on the water at New York, and was afterwards presented to the good General. He is adored by the Americans and quite devoted to them and their interests. His drawing room is decorated with the portraits of their Presidents, and in an adjoining room may be seen in golden frames, their declaration of independence and the farewell address of Washington; also, the colors of the "Brandywine," the ship they sent out with him when he returned from an excursion to their country four years ago. These colors were presented to him by the officers of that vessel, and the midshipmen gave him as a testimony of their respect, a handsome silver urn, with an appropriate inscription. The library and a cabinet of curiosities, are likewise supplied with American productions. In the first, are beautiful engravings of various parts of the United States, some American works and the cane of Washington; and in the second, divers odd articles of Indian manufacture. On Saturday we took leave of La Grange and its inmates; their kindness and attention to us, and the pleasure we derived from our visit to them, we can never forget; they will be associated with our most agreeable reminiscences of France. Last night we went to the theatre of Monsieur Compte, where all the performers are children; the little creatures acted remarkably well and with great spirit, and we were highly diverted. Monsieur Compte is considered the best ventriloquist in Europe. Edgar and Sigismund have been taking lessons in swimming; there are several excellent schools here for teaching the art, and one for ladies; and Marcella, Leonora and myself had serious thoughts of entering as pupils, but finally concluded we had enough of water works at the delightful "Chinese Baths," on Wednesdays and Saturdays, our regular bathing days, when we usually rise extremely early, so as to accomplish our purpose, and get back in time for breakfast. The "Chinese Baths" are so called, because the building containing them, is in the Chinese style; in front is a parterre of flowers, and beyond this masses of artificial rocks, with a couple of Chinese figures among them; the whole arrangement is singular and picturesque. The H----'s have returned to town for a few weeks, and we are engaged to pass this evening with them. I do not covet going however, for their parties are said to be very stiff.

With our usual affectionate greetings to aunt Margaret, Albert, and yourself, I conclude.

LEONTINE.

* * * * *

LETTER TWENTY-THIRD.

A sociable evening at the ex-Minister's of the Marine--Museum of Artillery--Bay Market--Corn Market--St. Germain l'Auxerrois.

PARIS, ----.

Dear Jane:

Our stay here is drawing to a close and consequently during the last ten days, we have been so occupied in shopping, visiting and sight-seeing, that I have found it impossible to write; but here is a rainy day and I take advantage of it to resume our correspondence. We called yesterday to take leave of Monsieur and Madame de N----, and they looked happier, I assure you, in their own residence in the Faubourg du Roule, than they did when inhabiting the sumptuous edifice of the "Admiralty," on the place "Louis Quinze." I suppose you have learnt from the newspapers that Monsieur de N---- thought it prudent to resign his office, and has been succeeded by Monsieur ----.

We found him and Madame de N---- surrounded by friends, who had accidentally dropped in as well as ourselves, and the evening being sultry, the company were regaled with delicious sorbets and iced creams. Ecarté was soon introduced among the elder gentry, and several of Mr. de Neuville's young nieces being there, our brothers and two other youthful beaux, the girls and myself joined them in playing "Tierce" and Blindman's-buff in the saloon. We enjoyed ourselves thus, till quite a late hour. One of the most curious and interesting places that has recently attracted our attention, is the "Museum of Artillery," in the street of the University. It is the depôt of a great variety of antique armor, ordnance and implements of war, and among the first we beheld the coat of mail of many a famous champion and that of Joan of Arc, which we thought uncommonly large to fit a woman. Every article is kept beautifully neat and bright, and a number of the things are labelled, which saves the trouble of a guide to explain their names and use. Another most singular place we have seen is the "Marché du Vieux Linge," or "rag fair." This is an enormous building divided into four halls, containing 800 stalls or petty shops. And oh! the queer articles that are in these shops!--tawdry second hand hats and dresses--old shoes, old gloves, old ribbons, old trunks, old carpets, bedding, chairs, and other furniture. These castaways are vamped up for sale, and wo betide the unfortunate wight whose path lies through or near the market; he is sure to be assailed and deafened with loud importunities from every quarter, to "come and buy," and may think himself lucky if he be not seized and absolutely forced into some of the stalls, to behold their wonders. We went out of mere curiosity and were glad to hurry out as quickly as our feet could carry us, the people were so rude and presuming. The "Halle au Blé," or "corn market," well merits examination. It is a large circular edifice of stone, enclosing one immense hall with a vaulted roof of sheet iron supported on an immense framing of cast iron; from a window in the centre of which the light descends. The bags of corn are heaped in enormous masses at regular distances, and through the myriad of narrow passages formed by these you thread your way. To-day we visited the venerable church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the bell of which tolled the signal for the Catholics to commence their direful murders on the eve of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. It was {767} once rich in pictures and statues; at present, it is remarkable only for its antiquity and the curious carving around its portal. Its founder was the cruel and superstitious Childebert, and two statues of stone, near the entrance, are said to represent him and his wife. On the fête de Dieu, the royal family walk there in procession from the palace of the Tuilleries, to hear mass. They are magnificently arrayed and attended by a concourse of priests and soldiers, and by a band of females clad in white, who strew roses in their path. From St. Germain, we hastened to the palace of the fine arts on the quay Conti. For an account of it, you must wait till my next letter reaches you; this, you perceive, is almost full, so while I have room, I had better insert the name of your attached

LEONTINE.

* * * * *

LETTER TWENTY-FOURTH.

Packers--The Muette de Portici--The Whale--Place Louis Quinze--Manufacture of Chocolate--Iced Creams--Champs de Mars--Racing--Palace of the Fine Arts and Royal Academy or Institute.

PARIS, ----.

"What! again at your pen Leontine?" inquires Marcella, "assuredly you are a most indefatigable scribe or an exceedingly devoted sister!" "Leave out the or," I answer, "for I am both." You, dearest Jane, can bear witness to the truth of my assertion, and I hope it will ever be my pride to merit the second appellation. Indeed it would be shameful if I did not endeavor to deserve it, as you continually set me the example. This will be my last letter from Paris, for the signals of our departure are resounding through the saloon, from the hammers of the packers there busily engaged. Here, for five francs, you may have your fine dresses and hats, &c. &c. safely and neatly arranged for travelling, by men who thus gain their living, and it is surprising with what adroitness and fitness they adjust each article, depositing more in one box or trunk than we could in two, and fixing every thing so securely that it cannot get injured, no matter how violent the motion of the carriage may be. On Wednesday, we shall set out for the borders of the Rhine. Papa has determined to proceed to Strasbourg and thence descend the river as far as Nimueguen, where we shall abandon the steamboat for the stage and commence our tour through Holland. How I shall regret to part with the Danvilles! Poor Edgar, it will cost him a severe pang to bid farewell to Marcella, though I verily believe she has refused him, judging from certain indescribable, but very expressive symptoms in their recent behaviour towards each other. Alas! we shall probably never see her again. Mr. Danville has promised to rejoin us at Morven Lodge, about the period of your marriage. Papa without assigning the reason of his request has urged him to be with us there by the 10th of April, but I have been so loquacious as to explain all to Leonora, and we have decided on acting as bride's maids, which you must own is extremely kind. Pray don't scold me in your next, for tattling, and don't tell Albert of my volubility; you know, he always insists that the stale and foolish saying, "a woman cannot keep a secret," is correct, and he would be sure to crow over my frailty. This evening we are going to see the opera of the "Muette de Portici," in which there is a representation of Mount Vesuvius in a state of eruption, and the imitation is considered excellent and wonderful. Our party will be large, but I suspect not gay, for the reflection, that in two days we shall be far separated, will doubtless cast a gloom over the mind of each. As for me, I cannot bear to dwell upon the subject in thought or word, so will hasten to another. Who should drop in upon us yesterday evening, while we were at tea, but Ernestus Blanford, and he rendered himself doubly welcome by delivering your despatches. Thank you for my share of them and for the beautiful embroidered reticule. Mamma is much pleased with her's. Really, you are cunningly skilled in producing, Love in a Mist, Heart's Ease and Bachelor's Buttons; may you be as successful in creating the first and second in the hymeneal state; for the third, there will then be no demand. Our father and brothers desire their acknowledgments for the watch guards you wove them, and Sigismund bids me say, that if the chains with which you have encircled Albert are as soft and silken as those just received, he is no longer amazed at his tame submission to thraldom. We took a farewell drive through the city this morning, and visited the whale now exhibiting on the place "Louis Quinze," in a neat edifice erected for its reception; and what do you think of their having converted the poor dead monster into a reading room. It is a fact, that the interior of the carcass is decorated and furnished for that purpose, and is the resort of the newsmonger as well as the curious! It was on the place "Louis Quinze," (from the centre of which, the view of palaces, avenues, colonnades and bridges, is superb) that the royal martyrs and thousands of other victims of the reign of terror, met their fate, at the foot of a statue of Liberty, erected during that bloody period on the ruins of an equestrian statue of Louis XV. This was overthrown by the remorseless revolutionists, although it was universally regarded as an exquisite piece of sculpture, (especially the horse) and was the chéf d'oeuvre of Bouchardon. Issuing like Jonah from the whale, but probably with less velocity, we went to the Bazaar to purchase some rolls of sweet chocolate, which we are advised to carry with us, as being agreeable and wholesome to eat early in the morning, when travelling a long distance to breakfast. While the woman who sold it was tying up the package, we questioned her about the conflagration of the old Bazaar, that happened several years ago, and among other things she told us that two Anacondas, confined in a room of the building, perished in the flames, and during their torments shrieked like human creatures. It is quite amusing to remark the variety of forms into which chocolate is cast here. Tiny boots and shoes, pots and kettles, bugs and nuts, little men and little women, and numerous other objects are represented by the ingenious manufacturer of that luxury. As for the bugs with their wire legs, and the divers sorts of nuts, you can distinguish them from real ones, only by the touch or taste. While on the subject of eatables, let me mention the peculiar manner in which iced creams are served at balls and parties. Each kind is moulded into the shape of the fruit with which it is flavored, and frequently a peach or apple dexterously tinged with red, to render the semblance of nature more complete. The plates containing them are usually in the form of a golden grape leaf; the stem turned up constitutes a handle, and golden spoons accord with the burnished leaf. When an entertainment is given, it is {768} only necessary for the master or mistress to send a mandate for the requisite number of ices, to Tortoni, Hardi, or any other adept in the freezing art, and at the appointed hour they arrive, disposed in the tasteful order just described.

We have lately witnessed a race on the "Field of Mars," the spot appropriated to such sports and to military parades. It is a vast plain, in front of the military school, and is capable of admitting the evolutions of 10,000 soldiers within its boundaries. These consist of rows of trees and a verdant bank, or a wide wall of turfed earth, which affords a safe and convenient station for the spectators of the scene below. The race road is immediately beneath the bank, and separated from the area of the plain by stone pillars connected with iron chains--beyond these the carriages and horsemen are ranged. We observed several ladies dashing about on horseback at a fearless rate, and among them the pretty Mrs. W. the Yankee wife of a rich banker. On one side there was a pavillion wherein we procured seats, and the royal family occupied another near it, which had been prepared for them. The little duke of Bordeaux and his youthful sister, were in extacies whenever the horses ran by. The chief contention was between a courser of Monsieur Casimir Perier and one belonging to Lord Seymour. The French steed gained the victory much to the delight of the populace. But some Englishmen surmised that if Purdy had been there, matters would have ended differently. I asked Mr. Danville who they meant by Purdy, and he informed me that he is a countryman of ours, who once distinguished himself in America, (at the city of New York, I think he said,) by mounting a famous horse, ycleped Eclipse, and wresting the palm from Henry, a celebrated racer of the South. At present I must fulfil my promise of describing to you the "palace of the arts," anciently termed the college of the four nations, because it was designed by its founder Cardinal Mazarin, for the reception of pupils from among the four nations subdued by Louis the great. It is a handsome structure, extending for many yards along the borders of the Seine. Its designation has been changed and it is now used by the "Royal Academy or Institute," for their private meetings and general assemblies. This corps of Savans was established in the reign of Louis, and is composed of the élite of the philosophers, artists and literary men of the kingdom. They correspond with the literati of all countries, and have done much in the cause of literature and the arts and sciences. They have ranged themselves into four classes; the first is devoted to the improvement of natural philosophy, chemistry and mathematics, and is denominated the "Academy of Sciences;" the second makes the language and literature of France its care, and is called the "French Academy;" the third applies itself to history and ancient learning, and bears the title of the "Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres," and the fourth, the "Academy of the Fine Arts," is employed on music, painting, sculpture and architecture. The classes meet separately once a week, and hold each general annual association, in the months of March, April, July and October; at which times prizes are awarded by the Academy of the Fine Arts, to such as deserve them; who are afterwards permitted to repair to Rome and remain there some years to improve themselves in their vocations, the government paying their expenses. The hall in which the general meetings are held, was formerly a chapel; beneath it Cardinal Mazarin lies buried. The members wear a costume of black and green, and the successful candidates are sometimes crowned with wreaths of laurel. The hall and several apartments leading to it, are decorated with statues of various distinguished characters,--as Bossuet, Fenelon, Sully, Pascal, Descartes, Rollin, Molière, and others, whose names are venerated by the learned and good. The post hour has arrived, so farewell to my "bonny Jean"--we shall soon be still farther from you, but any where and every where I shall still be your devoted sister

LEONTINE.

The following specimen of a translation of Homer's Iliad, by the late William Munford, is now ushered before the public for the first time. We have been permitted to make this extract from the work, and will continue to present our readers with other specimens in our succeeding numbers. It is needless to say to our Virginia readers who the author was, for he was known to the state at large, not only as one of the best of men, but as a most laborious public servant, and as a scholar of deep research and profound learning. His fame as a poet depends upon the reception which this translation may meet with. Of the work, the author himself has expressed the hope, that "the lovers of HOMER will not be unwilling to behold their favorite author arrayed in such various suits of apparel, as may be furnished by artists of different tastes. Pope has equipped him in the fashionable style of a modern fine gentleman;--Cowper displays him (like his own Ulysses) 'in rags unseemly,' or in the uncouth garb of a savage. Surely, then, there is room for an effort to introduce him to the acquaintance of my countrymen, in the simple, yet graceful and venerable costume of his own heroic times. The design, at least, will be admitted to be good, however imperfect the execution."

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

THE SCENE BETWEEN HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

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