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

——‘all the syllables that end in éd,Like old dragoons, have cuts across the head,’

always seem to us to come rather from the head than the heart. We shall expect, nevertheless, to hear from our friend again, according to promise. ••• We ‘stop the press’ to announce that Mr. Punch has just dropped in from England, bringing the latest intelligence from ‘the other side.’ He has lately visited several places on the continent, not so much to see them as to be enabled to say, like other English travellers, that he had been there. ‘Mr. Punch, having arrived at Rouen late at night, left it very early the next morning, much impressed with the institutions of the city, both civil and architectural, as well as its manners, customs, and social life, which he is about to embody in a work called ‘Six hours and a half at Rouen,’ to be brought out by a fashionable publisher.’ From the reports of one of the learned societies, we derive the following important scientific information: ‘Mr. Sappy read a paper, proving the impossibility of being able to see into the middle of next week, from known facts with regard to the equation of time. He stated that, supposing it possible for a person to ascend in a balloon sufficiently high for his vision to embrace a distance of seven hundred miles from east to west, he would then only see forty minutes ahead of him; that is, he would see places where the day was forty minutes in advance of the day in which he lived. Thus he might be said to see forty minutes into futurity. It has also been proved that, in sailing round the world in one direction, a day’s reckoning is gained; so that the sailor on his return finds himself to be ‘a man in advance of his age’ by one day. This one day, however, is the farthest attainable limit; and it is therefore impossible to see into the middle of next Week!’ ‘Mr. Tite, proprietor of the ‘Metropolitan Bakedtatery’ brought forward his new ‘Low Pressure Potatoe-Can,’ upon an improved principle. It was constructed of tin, and warranted to sustain a pressure of twenty potatoes upon the square bottom. Mr. Tite explained that the steam had nothing to do with the warmth of the fruit, but was quite independent of it.’ ‘Mr. Flit brought forward his new and improved Street Telescope for looking at the moon. It was most ingeniously constructed, being to the eye a fine instrument of six feet long. Mr. Flit explained, however, that the telescope itself was only an eighteen-inch one, the case being manufactured to increase its importance, in which the real glass was enclosed. The chief merit of this invention was, that the moon could be seen equally well on cloudy nights, or when there was none at all, the case enclosing an ingenious transparency of that body, behind which a small lamp was hung. Mr. Flit could always command a view of any of the celestial bodies by the same means.’ Here are a few items of law from ‘The Comic Blackstone:’ ‘The statute of Edward the Fourth, prohibiting any but lords from wearing pikes on their shoes of more than two inches long, was considered to savor of oppression; but those who were in the habit of receiving from a lord more kicks than coppers, would consider that the law savored of benevolence.’ ‘Unlawfully detaining a man in any way is imprisonment; so that if you take your neighbor by the button, and cause him to listen to a long story, you are guilty of imprisonment.’ Punch’s idea of ‘Woman’s Mission’ differs somewhat from other reformers of the times: ‘To replace the shirt-button of the father, the brother, the husband, which has come off in putting on the vestment; to bid the variegated texture of the morning slipper or the waistcoat grow upon the Berlin wool; to repair the breach that incautious haste in dressing has created in the coat or the trowsers, which there is no time to send out to be mended; are the special offices of woman; offices for which her digital mechanism has singularly fitted her.’ Apropos of ‘Missions:’ we perceive that Dickens understands this vague verbal apology for eccentricity or humbugeousness, if we interpret aright his frail and tearful Moddle; ‘who talked much about people’s ‘missions,’ upon which he seemed to have some private information not generally attainable,’ and who, ‘being aware that a shepherd’s mission was to pipe to his flock, and that a boatswain’s mission was to pipe all hands, and that one man’s mission was to be a paid piper, and another man’s mission was to pay the piper, had got it into his head that his own peculiar mission was to pipe his eye, which he did perpetually.’ ••• A curious volume has recently appeared in Paris, entitled ‘Poésies Populaires Latines antérieures au Douzième Siècle;’ and as sequels to the work, are certain satires upon the avarice and corruption of the papal government in the twelfth century, among which is the following curious parody:

‘Here beginneth the Gospel according to Marks of silver.—In that time the pope said to the Romans: When the son of man cometh to the seat of our majesty, say ye first, Friend, what seekest thou? But if he continue knocking, and give you nothing, cast him out into utter darkness. And it came to pass that a certain poor clerk came to the court of our lord the pope, and cried out, saying, Have pity on me at least you, O gate-keepers of the pope, for the hand of poverty hath touched me. Verily I am needy and poor; therefore, I pray ye, relieve my calamity and my wretchedness. But they, when they heard him, were very wroth, and said, Friend, thy poverty be with thee to perdition! get behind me, Sathanas, for thou art not wise in the wisdom of money. Verily, verily I say unto thee, thou shalt not enter into the joy of thy lord until thou hast given thy last farthing. And the poor man departed, and sold his cloak and his coat and all that he had, and gave it to the cardinals and to the gate-keepers; and they said, What is this among so many? And they cast him out before the doors; and he went out, and wept bitterly, and might not be comforted. Then there came to the court a certain rich clerk, great and fat and swollen, who in a riot had slain a man. He gave first to the gate-keeper, secondly to the chamberlain, thirdly to the cardinals; but they thought among themselves that they should have received more. And when our lord the pope heard that the cardinals and ministers had received many gifts of the clerk, he became sick unto death. But the rich man sent him a medicine of gold and silver, and immediately he was cured. Then our lord the pope called to him the cardinals and ministers, and said to them, Brethren, see that no one seduce you with empty words; for I give you an example, that as I myself receive, so receive ye.’

The corruptions of this era are equally well illustrated by a very amusing anecdote of ‘a handsome Italian friar, teres atque rotundus, about thirty, and extremely bold and eloquent;’ doubtless one of that class so felicitously limned by Thomson:

‘A little round, fat, oily man of GodWas one I chiefly marked among the fry;He had a roguish twinkle in his eyeAnd shone all glittering with ungodly dew,If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by;Which when observed he shrunk into his mew,And straight would recollect his piety anew.’

One day at a remote confessional of the church he declared an unholy and forbidden passion to a young and beautiful married lady, whom he had long ‘followed with his eyes,’ and begged permission to visit her at her residence. Struck with surprise at this new revelation of his character, she evaded reply, being secretly minded to inform her husband, when she returned home, which she did, word for word. He told his wife to contrive to let the friar come, alone and in secret, the next evening, which chanced to be that of Saturday, and the night before the Sunday of Saint Lazarus, on which occasion the friar was to preach. The appointment was made; the friar came, true to the late hour which had been designated; was received at the door, and shown into the lady’s bed-room by a servant, who informed him that she had desired him to request the good man to retire to rest, and to say that ‘she would be with him straight.’ The friar prepared to comply with the direction, and was about stepping into bed, when the door opened suddenly, and the lady entered in great apparent trepidation, exclaiming: ‘My husband is knocking at the door! For heaven’s sake slip into that chest,’ showing him a double one in the apartment, ‘and lie there until I see what may be done! Meanwhile I will hide your clothes somewhere or other, as well as I am able. Heaven knows I fear more for your holy person than I do for my own life!’ The unfortunate wretch, seeing himself reduced to such a pass, did as the worthy lady desired; while the husband, presently coming in, retired to rest with his wife, who had first locked the friar safe in the chest. The poor prisoner uttered sundry involuntary noises in the course of the night, and was in the direst terror at the inquiries which they awakened on the part of the husband. Daylight at length came, and the church-bells began to ring for prayers, which greatly annoyed the captive, who was to preach at the cathedral. The husband having risen, ordered two servants to carry the chest to the church and place it in the middle, saying they were ordered to do so by the preacher; and that unlocking the chest without raising the lid, they should leave it there; all which the fellows did very neatly. Every body stared, and wondered what all this could mean; some said one thing and some another. At last the bell having ceased to ring, and no one appearing in the pulpit, or any other part of the church, a young man rose and said: ‘Really, the good friar makes us wait quite too long; pray let us see what he has ordered to be brought in this chest.’ Having said this much, he before all the congregation lifted up the lid, and looking in, beheld the friar in his shirt, pale, almost frightened to death, and certainly appearing more dead than alive, and as if buried in the chest. Finding himself discovered, however, he collected his mind as well as he could, and stood upright, to the great astonishment of all present; and having taken his text from the Sunday of Lazarus, he thus addressed his congregation: ‘My dear brethren: I am not at all astonished at your surprise in seeing me brought before you in this chest, or rather at my ordering myself to be brought thus: ye know that this is the way in which our holy church commemorates the wonderful miracle our Lord performed on the person of Lazarus, in raising him from the dead who had been buried four days. I was desirous in your favor to present myself to you as it were in the form of Lazarus, in order that seeing me in this chest, which is no other than an emblem of the sepulchre wherein he had been buried, you might be moved more effectually to the consideration of what perishable things we are; and that seeing me stripped of all worldly decorations, thus in my shirt, you may be convinced of the vanity of the things of this world, the which, if only duly considered, may tend greatly to the amending of our lives. Will you believe that since yesterday night I have been a thousand times dead, and revived as Lazarus was; and considering my dreadful situation, remember (as it were with the memory of a similar penance in your hearts) that we must all die, and trust to Him who can bestow upon us life eternal: but first ye must die to sin, to avarice, to rapine, to lust, and all those sinful deeds to which our nature prompts us.’ In such language, and in such manner, did the friar continue his sermon. The husband, astonished at the extraordinary presence of mind which he displayed, laughed heartily at his success; and in consideration of the adroitness of the culprit, did not attempt any farther revenge; ‘but,’ it is added, ‘he took very good care to shut his door in future against all such double-faced hypocrites.’ ••• Reader, what are you thinking of at this moment? ‘Nothing.’ Indeed! and so were we, and of how much a clever man once said upon the subject; observe: ‘Philosophers have declared they knew nothing, and it is common for us to talk about doing nothing; for from ten to twenty we go to school to be taught what from twenty to thirty we are very apt to forget; from thirty to forty we begin to settle; from forty to fifty, we think away as fast as we can; from fifty to sixty, we are very careful in our accounts; and from sixty to seventy, we cast up what all our thinking comes to; and then, what between our losses and our gains, our enjoyments and our inquietudes, even with the addition of old age, we can but strike a balance of ciphers.’ Happy are they who amidst the variations of nothing have nothing to fear; if they have nothing to lose, they have nothing to lament; and if they have done nothing to be ashamed of, they have every thing to hope for. ••• Sententiousness, let us inform ‘S.’ of Cambridge, and antitheses, do not consist of short sentences and inversion of words merely; and even the most felicitous examples in each case often sacrifice the sound to the sense. Here is an instance which is unobjectionable: ‘I knew the old miser well. He amassed a fortune by raising hemp; and if he had had his deserts, would have died as he lived by it.’ ••• Just as the sheets of this department were passing to the press, we received the announcement of a public exhibition of two collections of pictures, which we have seen, and to which we cannot resist the impulse of directing the public attention. At the rooms of the National Academy, corner of Broadway and Leonard-street, may be seen Mr. Cole’s allegorical pictures of ‘The Voyage of Life,’ heretofore noticed at length in these pages; ‘Mount Ætna, from Taormina, Sicily,’ one of the most noble paintings that ever came from this eminent artist’s pencil; ‘Angels ministering to Christ in the Wilderness;’ ‘The Past and the Present;’ ‘A View of Ruined Aqueducts in the Campagna di Roma,’ and other pictures; altogether, an exceedingly fine collection. Indeed, the superb view of Ætna alone, with its vast and sublime accessories, is of itself an exhibition worth twice the price of admission. At the rooms of the Apollo Association, nearly opposite the Hospital, in Broadway, Mr. Harvey’s series of Forty Historic or Atmospheric American Landscape Scenes are to be seen for a short time. It needed not the high patronage of Queen Victoria, the praises of English royalty and nobility, nor the warm encomiums of Allston, Sully, Moore, and others, to secure attention to these graphic sketches from nature. They are their own best recommendation. Trust our verdict, reader, and go and see if they are not. ••• ‘Terpsichore’ is the title of a very spirited satirical poem read at the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge University in August last, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and copied in ‘Graham’s Magazine’ for January. We subjoin a passage which although abundantly poetical contains yet more truth than poetry. It ‘bases’ upon the Dickens dinner:

He for whose sake the glittering show appearsHas sown the world with laughter and with tears,And they whose welcome wets the bumper’s brimHave wit and wisdom—for they all quote him.So, many a tongue the evening hour prolongsWith spangled speeches, let alone the songs;Statesmen grow merry, young attorneys laugh,And weak teetotals warm to half-and-half,And beardless Tullys, new to festive scenes,Cut their first crop of youth’s precocious greens;And wits stand ready for impromptu claps,With loaded barrels and percussion-caps;And Pathos, cantering through the minor keys,Waves all her onions to the trembling breeze;While the great Feasted views with silent gleeHis scattered limbs in Yankee fricassee.Sweet is the scene where genial friendship playsThe pleasing game of interchanging praise;Self-love, grimalkin of the human heart,Is ever pliant to the master’s art;Soothed with a word, she peacefully withdrawsAnd sheaths in velvet her obnoxious claws,And thrills the hand that smooths her glossy furWith the light tremor of her gentle pur.But what sad music fills the quiet hallIf on her back a feline rival fall!And oh! what noises shake the tranquil house,If old Self-interest cheats her of a mouse!Thou, O my country! hast thy foolish ways,Too apt to pur at every stranger’s praise:But if the stranger touch thy modes or laws,Off goes the velvet and out come the claws!And thou, Illustrious! but too poorly paidIn toasts from Pickwick for thy great crusade,Though while the echoes labored with thy nameThe public trap denied thy little game,Let other lips our jealous laws revile—The marble Talfourd or the rude Carlyle;But on thy lids, that Heaven forbids to closeWhere’er the light of kindly nature glows,Let not the dollars that a churl deniesWeigh like the shillings on a dead man’s eyes!Or, if thou wilt, be more discreetly blind,Nor ask to see all wide extremes combined;Not in our wastes the dainty blossoms smileThat crowd the gardens of thy scanty isle;There white-cheek’d Luxury weaves a thousand charms,Here sun-browned Labor swings his Cyclop arms;Long are the furrows he must trace betweenThe ocean’s azure and the prairies’ green;Full many a blank his destined realm displays,Yet see the promise of his riper days:Far through yon depths the panting engine moves,His chariots ringing in their steel-shod groves,And Erie’s naiad flings her diamond waveO’er the wild sea-nymph in her distant cave:While tasks like these employ his anxious hours,What if his corn-fields are not edged with flowers?Though bright as silver the meridian beamsShine through the crystal of thine English streams,Turbid and dark the mighty wave is whirledThat drains our Andes and divides a world.

Under the similitude of a German-silver-spoon, ‘used by dabblers in æsthetic tea,’ we have the annexed palpable hit at the small-beer imitators of Carlyle, and copyists after the external garb of the German school, who have occasionally shown themselves up in the pages of ‘The Dial,’ a work which formerly ‘indicated rather the place of the moon than the sun:’

Small as it is, its powers are passing strange;For all who use it show a wondrous change,And first, a fact to make the barbers stare,It beats Macassar for the growth of hair:See those small youngsters whose expansive earsMaternal kindness grazed with frequent shears;Each bristling crop a dangling mass becomes,And all the spoonies turn to Absaloms!Nor this alone its magic power displays—It alters strangely all their works and ways;With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs,The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues;‘Ever’ ‘The Ages’ in their page appear,‘Alway’ the bedlamite is called a ‘Seer;’On every leaf the ‘earnest’ sage may scan,Portentious bore! their ‘many-sided’ man;A weak eclectic, groping, vague and dim,Whose every angle is a half-starved whim,Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx,Who rides a beetle which he calls a ‘Sphinx.’And O what questions asked in club-foot rhymeOf Earth the tongueless and the deaf-mute Time!Here babbling ‘Insight’ shouts in Nature’s earsHis last conundrum on the orbs and spheres;There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb,With ‘Whence am I?’ and ‘Wherefore did I come?’Deluded infants! will they ever knowSome doubts must darken o’er the world below,Though all the Platos of the nursery trailTheir ‘clouds of glory’ at the go-cart’s tail?

We should exceedingly like to hear Mr. A. Bronson Alcott’s opinion as touching the faithfulness of the foregoing. ••• There is a fearful lesson conveyed in the annexed communication from a metropolitan physician, who assures us that it is in all respects an accurate statement of an occurrence to which he was an eye-witness: ‘Duty impels me, Mr. Editor, to lay before you one of the little incidents which my situation as a medical man has brought to my notice. There is no class of men who are led with keener perceptions to investigate human nature than enlightened practising physicians. They have a hold upon the affections and confidence of every class of society; and for this reason they should feel it incumbent upon themselves to act the part of moral as well as physical agents. For myself, I think it would be well if medical men were so far constituted missionaries, as to make it a duty to point a moral whenever it would be likely to be well received. I am aware that attempts of this sort with many persons would be vain or injudicious, and sometimes nauseate perhaps, like the accompanying drugs; but eventually it might prove salutary to the soul; and although cursed for good advice, is it not in the end a blessing? But to my story: I was called a short time since to a youth about twenty years of age: he had been only a few months in the city, and I had occasionally seen him, but had little acquaintance with him, being much his senior. When I entered, one of his fits of raving, occasioned by fever, was just coming on. I approached and took his hand: ‘What do you want?’ said he; ‘you look so mild and yet so penetrating. I have not got any.’ ‘Any what?’ said I. ‘Any money,’ he replied; ‘the drawer was locked, and I could not get any without being seen; so go away!’ ‘I came to cure you, not to take your money,’ I replied. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘did I not take some from you? Look! look! There they come! sixpences, shillings! See! see! how they tumble from the wall! Look! there is a piece of gold! See! look! there they keep coming! I never took all this!—at first I only took enough to get a cigar with, now and then. See! the room is filling! I shall suffocate!’ ‘What does this mean, young man?’ said I; ‘be calm.’ ‘Did they not tell you to come and feel my pulse and see if there was not a sixpence in it?’ ‘No, no; I came to make you better.’ ‘Better? better? BETTER? Here, hide these; don’t let my friends know of them; they were stolen! I cannot look at them now. Ha! ha! ha!—I cannot!’ I was induced to remain until the frenzy of the fever had passed off, and found the young man had intervals of reason. He was now in deep despondency. I inquired his name. He had dropped it, he said; he could not debase it. ‘Debase it?’ said I. ‘Yes!’ he answered, with a groan like a howl. The next day the young man sent for me again. He appeared much altered; said that he did not wish to live; that he had ‘a gnawing at his soul.’ I remarked that he was very young to be tired of life; that if he had been guilty of any crime he should desire to live to expiate it. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘the stain will always last!’ I told him, not so; that if he heartily repented and turned to the right source for consolation, it would be vouchsafed him. ‘I feel that I cannot live,’ he replied, ‘and my friends will be better satisfied to know that I am repentant in my last moments, and that I am gone, than they would be to think of me as a vagabond, let loose upon society: they will at least feel that I shall ‘cease from troubling.’ I have not the excuse that many delinquents have pleaded, early initiation into vice. My childhood was passed with pious relatives, who labored to instil religious principles into my mind; but I ‘would none of their reproof.’ My friends not being wealthy, I was left at a proper age to my own resources. I found a situation where my talents were appreciated by my employer, and perhaps too highly estimated by myself. I had a brother who was ten years my senior, whom I loved and esteemed—may Heaven keep him in blessed ignorance of my fate!—but I thought less highly of his intellect when I saw him excited by some sublime hymn, which angels might listen to, than I did of my own, when I turned from the devotions of the Sabbath to join my idle companions. In the situation I held, I might have gained respectability; but my besetting sin betrayed me so often, that the kind indulgence of a good master could no longer conceal my crimes. I now see that the sting inflicted by vice must and will remain! We may repent, we may be forgiven; but the mind will not part with its bitter recollections!’ I was here called away for a few moments, and when I returned, the unhappy young man was in the land of spirits! I learned that he was engaged to a highly amiable young lady, who relinquished him, and shortly afterward died of a broken heart. Her sad fate threw him into a brain-fever, and as you perceive, decided his likewise. Incidents like these I am aware have often been narrated; yet if the tragedy which I have depicted should be blessed to the use of any young man abandoned to temptation and addicted to small crimes, and lead him to reflection, it will be a gratification to feel that my feeble effort, with Heaven’s help, has proved ‘a word in season.’’ ••• There are inequalities of merit in the ‘Dirge’ of ‘D. D.’ of Hartford, though the spirit of the verse is tender and touching. We annex a few stanzas, in illustration of our encomium: