The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844

EPISTLE

ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY JUST MARRIEDOn matrimony’s fickle seaI hear thou’rt ventured fairly;Though young in years, it may not beThy bark is launched too early.Each wish of mine to heaven is sent,That on the stormy waterThou’lt prove a wife obedient,As thou hast been a daughter.If every wish of mine were bliss,If every hope were pleasure,Thou wouldst with him find happiness,And he in thee a treasure:For every wish and hope of mine,And every thought and feeling,Is for the weal of thee and thine,As true as my revealing.To please thy husband in all things,Forever be thou zealous;And bear in mind that Love has wings,Then never make him jealous:For if Love from his perch once flies,How weak are Beauty’s jesses!In vain might plead thy streaming eyes,And thy dishevelled tresses.Be prudent in thy thoughts of dress,Be sparing of thy parties;Where fashion riots in excess,O! nothing there of heart is!And can its palling sweets compareWith love of faithful bosom?Then of the fatal tree beware,There’s poison in its blossom!Each thought and wish in him confide,No secret from him cherish;Whenever thou hast aught to hide,The better feelings perish.In whatsoe’er ye do or say,O never with him palter;Remember too, thou saidst ‘obey’Before the holy altar.Bear and forbear, for much thou’lt findIn married life to tease ye,And should thy husband seem unkind,Averse to smile, or please ye,Think that amid the cares of lifeHis troubles fret and fear him;Then smile as it becomes a wife,And labor well to cheer him.Aye answer him with loving word,Be each tone kindly spoken,For sometimes is the holy cordBy angry jarring broken.Then curb thy temper in its rage,And fretful be thou never;For broken once, a fearful changeFrowns over both forever.Upon thy neck light hang the chain,For Hymen now hath bound ye,O’er thee and thine may pleasure reign,And smiling friends surround ye.Then fare ye well, and may each timeThe sun smiles, find ye wiser:Pray kindly take the well-meant rhymeOf thy sincere adviser.

Through the kindness of Messrs. Mason and Tuttle, Nassau-street, (who import the originals for immediate circulation to American subscribers,) we have our copies of the foreign Monthlys, as well as of the ‘Edinburgh,’ ‘Foreign,’ and ‘Quarterly’ Reviews for the current quarter. The ‘Quarterly, so savage and tartarly,’ has a notice of the ‘Change for American Notes,’ which is not conceived in the kindest spirit toward this country. It reviews Prescott’s late work, however, at great length, and welcomes it with cordial commendation. Among other ‘good words,’ the reviewer observes: ‘He is full and copious, without being prolix and wearisome; his narrative is flowing and spirited, sometimes very picturesque; his style is pure, sound English.’ In conclusion, the reviewer says: ‘We close with expressing our satisfaction that Mr. Prescott has given us an opportunity at this time of showing our deep sympathy, the sympathy of kindred and of blood, with Americans who like himself do honor to our common literature. Mr. Prescott may take his place among the real good English writers of history in modern times.’ The ‘Foreign Quarterly’ opens with a paper upon ‘The Poets and Poetry of America,’ ostensibly based upon Mr. Griswold’s book. It is not altogether a review, however, but a very coarse and evidently malignant tirade against America, her people, institutions, manners, customs, literature; every thing, in short, that she is and that she contains. We annex a hasty synopsis of the critical portion of the article in question. Halleck is ‘praised, and that highly too.’ His ‘Marco Bozzaris’ is pronounced ‘a master-piece,’ and the ‘most perfect specimen of versification in American literature;’ and himself as possessing ‘a complete knowledge of the musical mysteries of his art.’ A quotation is made, with much laud, from his ‘Red-Jacket,’ but the lines are spoiled by two gross errors; one in the last line of the third, and the other in the first line of the fifth stanza. The highest encomiums are justly bestowed upon Bryant, as a ‘purely American poet,’ who ‘treats the works of Nature with a religious solemnity, and brings to the contemplation of her grandest relations a pure and serious spirit. His poetry is reflective but not sad; grave in its depths but brightened in its flow by the sunshine of the imagination. He never paints on gauze; he is always earnest, always poetical; his manner is every where graceful and unaffected.’ The illustrative quotation is from ‘An Evening Reverie,’ written by Mr. Bryant for the Knickerbocker. Longfellow is pronounced to be ‘unquestionably the first of American poets; the most thoughtful and chaste; the most elaborate and finished. His poems are distinguished by severe intellectual beauty, by dulcet sweetness of expression, a wise and hopeful spirit, and a complete command over every variety of rhythm. They are neither numerous nor long, but of that compact texture which will last for posterity.’ Sprague is represented as having in certain of his poems imitated Shakspeare and Collins rather too closely for all three to be original. ‘Pierpont is crowded with coincidences which look very like plagiarisms;’ ‘but,’ adds the reviewer, ‘it is reserved for Charles Fenno Hoffman to distance all plagiarists of ancient and modern times in the enormity and openness of his thefts. He is Moore hocused for the American market. His songs are rifaciamentos. The turns of the melody, the flowing of the images, the scintillating conceits, are all Moore. Sometimes he steals his very words.’ Mrs. Sigourney’s poetry is said to be characterized by ‘feeble verbosity’ and ‘lady-like inanity,’ and Mrs. Osgood is represented as being in the same category. After quoting certain characteristic lines of Mr. John Neal, describing the eye of a poet as ‘brimful of water and light,’ and his forehead as being ‘alarmingly bright,’ the reviewer adds: ‘We find a pleasant relief from these distressing hallucinations, in the poems of Alfred B. Street. He is a descriptive poet, and at the head of his class. His pictures of American scenery are full of gusto and freshness; sometimes too wild and diffuse, but always true and beautiful.’ So some are praised and some are blamed—‘thus runs the world away!’ ••• We are made aware, and we would not have our correspondents ignorant of the fact, that there is a critical eye monthly upon our pages, that is keen to discover errors (as well as beauties) in language and construction of sentences. See: ‘By the by, what a miserable language is our English in some respects; so awkward, so incompact! Look at the phrase ‘unheard of,’ and compare it with the Latin ‘inauditus.’ What a pity we were not born Romans or Greeks, with Yankee notions! Tell your Gotham friends that if they are speaking of a ruinous brick wall, they must say dilaterated, from ‘later,’ a brick, and not ‘dilapidated,’ from ‘lapis,’ a stone. One might as well say a man is ‘stoned’ to death with brick-bats.’ ••• What sad and startling contrasts are presented to the eye and mind of one who attentively looks over the illustrated newspapers of the British metropolis! On one hand, pictures of triumphal processions, arches, bonfires, illuminations, rich presents, gorgeous equipages, state-beds, ‘royal poultry-houses, owleries, and pigeonries,’ accompanied by elaborate descriptions, arrest the attention; on the other, there is a picture of a city ‘Asylum for the Destitute,’ where poor naked wretches find a temporary refuge from the pitiless winter storm without: huddling round a dim fire, or sunk exhausted upon the straw in the human ‘stalls,’ or clutching at their bowls of pauper-soup; a scene whose true character is enforced by accounts of poor women making shirts for a farthing apiece, a hard day’s work; sleeping four in a bed; purchasing with the scanty pittance tea-leaves to boil over again! Hardly-entreated brothers and sisters of humanity! not always shall the glaring inequality that surrounds you, crush your spirits to the earth! ••• There is a pleasant pen in our metropolitan ‘Aurora,’ which occasionally dashes off sententious paragraphs that flash and sparkle like snow-crust in a moon-lit night in winter. There is evidently a Foster-ing hand over its columns; and through them (let us add, as it is that of which we especially wish to speak,) over the reputation of Mr. Willis. The remarks in a late number of that journal, under the head of ‘Mr. Willis’s Defence’ against a scurrilous attack on his private character in a down-eastern print, were equally just and felicitous. Had it been generally known in his native town who was the instigator of that attack, we have good authority for saying that, gross as it was, Mr. Willis would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. As it was, however, he deemed it not amiss at one and the same time to punish skulking envy and impotent malignity; to vindicate his reputation with his townsmen against unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks from the same source altogether ‘of none effect’ and unworthy of heed. This he accomplished by his ‘Defence’ and the ‘terrors of the law,’ which speedily produced a satisfactory sample of wholesale word-eating. ••• Of all the Polichinellos we have ever encountered, we consider ‘Punch, or the London Charivari,’ the best. His fun is exhaustless. He ought to be knighted and appointed court-jester to King Ennui. ‘Laughter,’ he tells us, ‘is a divine faculty. It is one of the few, nay, the only one redeeming grace in that thunder-cased, profligate old scoundrel Jupiter, that he sometimes laughs: he is saved from the disgust of all respectable people by the amenity of a broad grin.’ We ourselves hold with the pleasant Lincoln Ramble: ‘I love a hearty laugh; I love to hear a hearty laugh above all other sounds. It is the music of the heart; the thrills of those chords which vibrate from no bad touch; the language Heaven has given us to carry on the exchange of sincere and disinterested sympathies.’ And to the end that ‘laughter free and silvery from the heart may escape the reader, doing rightful honor to Punch, and bestowing cheerfulness and health upon the laughter,’ we proceed to present a few excerpta which arrested our attention in looking over late files. We suspect that the annexed report of the ‘doings of Royalty’ in the country have more than once had a precedent. Prince Albert is here at Dayton-Manor, the seat of Sir Robert Peel: ‘Her Majesty slept extremely well; but whether it was the air of Dayton, or the conversation of the host, did not transpire. At eleven o’clock in the morning, Prince Albert went out to shoot. The guns were ordered at ten and the game was desired to be in attendance at half-past. The Prince first went in a boat on the water, where several ducks were appointed to be in waiting. Having granted an audience to the whole of them, and unintentionally honored two by shooting them, though it was another duck who had the distinguished gratification of being aimed at and missed, his Royal Highness landed. A numerous meeting of hares and pheasants having been called to pay their respects to the Prince, the game-keepers forming an outer circle, with their guns pointed to keep the game well up to the mark, His Royal Highness shot sixty pheasants, twenty-five head of hares, eight rabbits and one wood-cock, who would cock his bill opposite the muzzle of Royalty.’ The poetical advertisement of one Moses, a slop-shop clothes-man, is pleasantly ‘reviewed.’ Of his ‘Prince Albert coats,’ Punch says: ‘Whatever may be the resemblance between the Prince and the coat, the similarity certainly ends with the price; one costing thirty shillings and the other thirty thousand pounds per annum.’ Here is a touch at Moses’ sea-coats:

‘These coats for nautical pursuitsHave qualities no one disputes;The very texture of their clothSeems to defy the ocean’s wrath:And then their form and make as wellAre suited to the billows’ swell.’

What can be happier than the allusion to the fact mentioned in the last two lines; namely, that the coat is quite a match for the billows, being as great a swell as any of them? The poet dashes off a few lines on trowsers, finishing with the following couplet, which is not likely to encourage purchasers. It is stated, and we dare say truly, that if any one puts on a pair of Moses’ trowsers he becomes at once an object of general observation:

‘While oft such cries as these escape;Look! there’s a figure! there’s a shape!’

It is a very natural consequence, no doubt, of disporting one’s-self in doe-skins made for seven-pence a pair; but the cries of ‘There’s a figure! there’s a shape!’ must make the trowsers rather dear to any one who wishes to walk about peaceably, unmolested by this species of street-criticism.’ Under the head of ‘Bolsters for Behindhand Botanists,’ we find these original questions and answers: ‘What are the most difficult roots to extract from the ground?’ The cube-root. ‘What is the pistil of a flower?’ It is that instrument with which the flower shoots. ‘What is meant by the word stamina?’ It means the pluck or courage which enables the flower to shoot.’ ‘The reversionary interest of a life-crossing, with retail lucifer business attached,’ is offered by a street-sweeper near the Bank of England, he having ‘prigged vat vasn’t his’n, and gone to pris’n.’ ‘He effected an irregular transfer at the bank one day, which, whatever his doubts upon the subject might previously have been, led to his ultimate conviction.’ The ‘Comic Blackstone’ enlightens us upon one of the ‘King’s prerogatives’: ‘The King is the fountain of justice, from which are supplied all the leaden reservoirs in Westminster-Hall, and the pumps at the inferior tribunals.’ Among the public inquiries is the following: ‘At a crowded meeting at Islington, on the question of granting a theatrical license, the papers state that the judges declined at first, but upon the urgent appeal of an advocate, ‘the bench gave way.’ Are we to understand from this that the opposition fell to the ground?’ In ‘Punch’s Almanac’ for 1844, we find among other side-remarks, the annexed: under May seventh: ‘Washington Irving on his way to Madrid as American Ambassador, is entertained in London, 1842. America takes the hand of Spain, and puts her best pen into it.’ ‘June sixth: The first cargo of ice comes from America, 1843, for the relief of those who had burnt their fingers with Pennsylvania bonds.’ ‘Time is money; but it doesn’t follow that man is a capitalist who has a great quantity of it on his hands.’ Punch’s ‘Literary Intelligence’ is very full. From it we gather that the author of the ‘Mothers,’ ‘Wives,’ ‘Maids,’ and ‘Daughters’ of England has another work in press, entitled ‘The Grandmothers of England.’ ‘No grandmother’s education will be complete till she has read and re-read ‘The Grandmothers of England.’ The book is the very best guide to oval suction extant.’ So says an ‘Evening Paper.’ ••• We should be glad to be informed of the name of any real or pretended lover of the turf and its manifold interests, or of an admirer of one of the most entertaining weekly journals on this continent, who could ask more than is offered by the ‘Spirit of the Times’ to all new subscribers to that widely-popular sheet; being no less than any five of those fine large quarto engravings on steel, from original paintings, of Col. Johnson and M’lle Augusta, among ‘us humans,’ and among our four-footed friends ‘of the lower house,’ Ripton, Confidence, Boston, Wagner, Monarch, Leviathan, Argyle, Black-Maria, Grey-Eagle, Shark, Hedgeford, John Bascombe, and Monmouth-Eclipse. On the second day of March a new volume commences; when we hope that this accredited organ of the sporting world, which has raised the prices of blood-stock in this country beyond all precedent, and which in its literary and dramatic departments is without a rival in this or any other country, will take a long lease of a healthful existence, and go on ‘prospering and to prosper.’ ••• The reader will be amused we think with the ‘Veritable Sea-Story,’ told by our friend Harry Franco, in a species of poetry run mad, in preceding pages. He writes us: ‘I send you an epic poem for the Knickerbocker, founded on facts within my own personal experience. I mention this lest you should deem it destitute of merit; for it possesses the greatest merit that any human composition can possess; namely, truth. And in this respect, if in no other, my poem is beyond dispute superior to the Iliad and Paradise Lost. However, tastes differ, I am aware; and you may possibly prefer those two epics to mine! They are longer, it is true; but then I think it will be conceded, even by the critics of the Poh school, that my metre is sufficiently long, even though my story is short. While others measure their verse by the ‘feet,’ I measure mine by the yard.’ ••• D.’s paper, (of Georgia,) so thickly interlarded with French, and Italian synonymes for far more expressive English words, reminds us of an old ‘ignorant ramus’ in the country, who was always eking out his meaning by three or four familiar Latin terms, which he almost invariably misapplied. He observed one day to a neighbor, who was speaking disrespectfully of a deceased townsman, ‘Well, he’s gone to be judged. E pluribus unum—‘speak no evil of the dead’—as the Latin proverb says!’ ••• ‘The New World’ enters upon a new year in a very beautiful dress, and with renewed attractions in all its internal departments. Its large clear types, impressed upon good paper, are exceedingly pleasant to the eye, and what they convey to the reader is equally agreeable to the mind ‘studious of novelty’ and variety. The success which it deserves, we are glad to learn it abundantly receives. The ‘Brother Jonathan’ has changed proprietors, cast its old skin, and comes out as bright and fresh as a June morning. The versatile Mrs. Ann Stephens (a lady of fine intellect, who has produced better prose tales and home-sketches than any one of her gifted contemporaries) and Messrs. M‘Lachlin and Snow, the resident editors of the ‘Jonathan,’ discharged their functions to due public acceptance; but a name so invariably connected with unsuccessful publications that it has come to be justly regarded as the sure precursor and inevitable cause of failure, was at the head of the journal as ‘principal editor;’ and ‘down east’ editorial-ings, transmitted by the yard, and endless unreadable tales, claiming a kindred paternity, gradually ‘choked its wholesome growth,’ and finally brought it to a temporary end. The new proprietor however has wisely declined this ‘principal’ incumbrance; and having secured the services of an able editor in the person of Henry C. Deming, Esq., a gentleman of high literary distinction, and of popular correspondents, the journal is already, as we learn, rejoicing in a rapidly-enhancing list of subscribers. Success to thee, ‘Brother Jonathan!’ ••• The ‘Yankee Trick’ described by our Medford (Mass.) correspondent is on file for insertion. It is in one of its features not unlike the anecdote of an old official Dutchman in the valley of the Mohawk, who one day stopped a Yankee pedler journeying slowly through the valley on the Sabbath, and informed him that he must ‘put up’ for the day; or ‘if it vash neshessary dat he should travel, he must pay de fine for de pass.’ It was necessary, it seems; for he told the Yankee to write the pass, and he would sign it; ‘that he could do, though he didn’t much write, nor read writin’.’ The pass was written and signed with the Dutchman’s hieroglyphics, and the pedler went forth ‘into the bowels of the land, without impediment.’ Some six months afterward, a brother Dutchman, who kept a ‘store’ farther down the Mohawk, in ‘settling’ with the pious official, brought in, among other accounts, an order for twenty-five dollars’ worth of goods. ‘How ish dat?’ said the Sunday-officer; ‘I never give no order; let me see him.’ The order was produced; he put on his spectacles and examined it. ‘Yaäs, dat ish mine name, sartain—yaäs; but—it ish dat d–d Yankee pass!’ ••• Our town-readers, many of them, will remember the bird Mino, who was so fond of chatting in a rich mellow voice with the customers at the old Quaker’s seed-store in Nassau-street. His counterpart may at this moment be seen at ‘an hostel’ near by; but the associations and language of the modern bird are very dissimilar. ‘How are you?’ is his first salutation; ‘do you smoke?’ his next: ‘What’ll you drink? Brandy-and water?—glass o’ wine?’ It has a most whimsical effect, to hear such anti-temperance invitations from the bill of a bird, whose bright eye is fixed unwinkingly upon you. The Washingtonians should ‘look out for him.’ ••• The editor of the Albion has issued to his subscribers a very fine large quarto engraving, in mezzo-tint by Sadd, of Heath’s celebrated line-engraving of Washington. Its size is twenty by twenty-seven inches, and represents the Pater Patriæ in his most elevated character; that of a Chief Magistrate elevated by the free suffrages of his countrymen, after having voluntarily laid down his military authority. This print cannot fail to be acceptable to every reader of the Albion, unless he shall be too narrow-minded to honor true nobleness and dignity of character in one who by force of circumstances once stood in a warlike relation to his country. Apropos of the ‘Albion:’ is our friend the Editor aware that ‘The Evening before the Wedding,’ published as original in a late issue, was translated for the Knickerbocker? ••• ‘Oh dem! dem!’ There is on the tapis a new daily journal, to be called ‘The Exclusive,’ which is to be the very antithesis of every thing in the ‘cheap and vulgar’ line; no slanders, no crim. con.’s, no horrible accidents; ‘no nothing’ of that sort. The affair is already creating some excitement among the beau-monde. The reputed editors are literary men of the world, who ‘know their way.’ Circulars in gold-edged and perfumed paper are already flying about. On dit: that the carriers are to be dressed in uniform, and deliver the paper in white kid gloves; that pastiles are to be kept burning in the publication-office, to disinfect the air of the room of ink and damp sheets; and that only those of the first respectability and acknowledged standing in gay society, are permitted to subscribe to or receive the journal at all! ••• Here is a rich specimen of clerical catachresis, which we derive from an eastern correspondent: ‘Our good dominie gave us on Sunday a sermon on the ocean; its wonders, its glories, its beauties; its infinity, its profundity, its mightiness, etc., ‘But,’ said he, ‘what is all this? It is but a drop in the bucket of God’s infinity!’ I wonder what is outside of it!’ ••• It is not the wont of the Editor of this Magazine, as those of its readers who have followed us through twenty-two volumes of the Knickerbocker can bear witness, to trumpet in its pages the many kind things that are said of us by the public press; but as a fragment is wanted to fill out this page; as we are just at the commencement of a new volume; and as we are more than pleased at the cordiality with which the first number of it has been received; we shall venture to select from a great number of testimonials one or two for insertion here, which are the more gratifying, that they evince the regard in which the ‘Old Knick.’ is held at home, and by those who have known us the longest and most intimately. The New-York Courier and Enquirer says of our last number:

‘This sterling Monthly is always punctual to a day in its issues, promptly appearing with the dawn of the month, though our notices of it frequently lag sadly behind it. It is yet, however, by no means too late to say that it enters upon the year ’44 and its twenty-third volume with ability and zeal unabated, and that it is yet, as it has been heretofore, by far the handsomest, ablest, and most interesting literary Monthly issued in this country. Each number contains over a hundred pages, and in the Editor’s Table alone is often found more matter than the entire body of some of its rivals contains. It has a long list of zealous correspondents, bound to it not more by interest than affection, and numbering among them the most gifted and distinguished writers in the country. The ‘Quod Correspondence,’ a novel which is running through the successive numbers, is one of the best works of the kind ever written; its scenes possess a deep dramatic interest, and throughout the whole, moral principles are clearly and powerfully evolved. ‘The Idleberg Papers’ is the general title of another capital series, and the work is otherwise filled with excellent prose and generally good poetry. The ‘Editor’s Table’ is by far the most racy and entertaining collection of anecdotes, humorous and pathetic passages, slight criticisms, etc., to be met in any magazine. We cordially commend the old and excellent Knickerbocker to the continued love and patronage of the public.’